Лейф Перссон - Another Time, Another Life

In the simplest version of events, she was involved with and had been exploited by a boyfriend almost twice her age. A twenty-eight-year-old academic and TV reporter who was involved with a sixteen-year-old doctor’s daughter from a good family during the liberated seventies? It could happen — but there were still limits, Wiklander thought as he filled in his list of questions for internal surveillance. It’ll work out, thought Wiklander, who felt secure in his conviction that regardless of what the explanation was, his coworkers would dig it out for him.

Wiklander devoted the rest of the afternoon to routine tasks mostly related to things other than the West German embassy. After an hour his assistant head detective called on the phone to report that she and her colleague had just retrieved a photo of Helena Stein from the photo studio that in the seventies had taken pictures for the French School on Döbelnsgatan in central Stockholm.

“Excellent,” Wiklander grunted, returning to his quickly receding pile of papers. This is going like a dance, he thought.

After another half hour the same detective phoned and reported that Helena Stein was now identified as the “fourth man.” A photo identification had been conducted at Stridh’s kitchen table at home, and he had immediately and without hesitation pointed her out from among a dozen different photos depicting her classmates, which had been obtained from the same photographer.

“Brilliant,” said Wiklander. We’re going like gangbusters now, he thought.

Only fifteen minutes later there was a knock on his door, despite the fact that the red light was on.

“Come in,” Wiklander called.

In the door stood yet another of his many female coworkers, this one from their own group for internal surveillance. Despite the fact that she looked like a little girl in an old Swedish folk ballad, she was a detective inspector whose name was Lisa Mattei. Her mother was a detective chief inspector with the personal protection squad of the secret police, thirty years older and far from the female ideal of the folk ballad.

“This is about this Stein,” said Mattei.

“Yes,” said Wiklander energetically. “Are you through with her?”

“Depends on what you mean by through,” said Mattei, raising her slender shoulders in a gesture of indifference. “In any event, she seems interesting enough,” she said, handing a computer printout to Wiklander. “Read the top lines and you’ll see what I mean.”

This can’t be true, Wiklander thought as he read. Then he set the paper down on his desk and looked at his coworker.

“Do you know whether the boss is here?” he asked.

“Which one do you mean?” Mattei said, looking rather impertinent.

“Johansson,” said Wiklander. No messing around now, he thought.

“He just came in,” said Mattei. “I’m guessing he’s sitting in his office having Danish pastries. On several previous occasions I’ve noted remnants on the lapel of his jacket that indicate such activities.”

It’s always something, Wiklander thought, but naturally he didn’t say that.

“Not a word,” he said. “Not a word to anyone.”

It was true that Johansson also had a red lamp beside the door to his office, but it was almost never lit. This was because if you wanted to go into his office, you first had to pass the office where his secretary sat, and there was no red lamp in the world that could compare with her.

“Is the boss in?” said Wiklander to Johansson’s secretary, nodding to be on the safe side at the closed door behind her back.

“Yes,” the secretary said coolly. “But he’s occupied and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“It’s like this, you see,” said Wiklander, looking as if he meant it besides, “I have to see him immediately.”

“Has the enemy landed on our coasts?” the secretary asked, giving Wiklander a very cool glance as she tapped on the keyboard in front of her.

“Something along those lines,” said Wiklander, nodding.

“Then it’s okay to go in,” the secretary said, gesturing toward the closed door behind her back at the same time as a discreet click of the lock could be heard.

Johansson was sitting in the chair behind his large desk, drinking coffee and munching on a sizeable Danish pastry.

“Sit yourself down,” said Johansson jovially, pointing toward one of his three visitors chairs. “What can I help you with? Unfortunately you can’t have any Danish because I just took the last one, but I’m sure I can arrange coffee.”

“It’s fine,” said Wiklander, hoping he didn’t sound the way he felt.

“You seem harried,” Johansson asserted. “Do we have a problem?”

“Depends on what you mean by problem,” said Wiklander, sounding rather evasive. Is it a problem if all hell’s broken loose? he thought.

“We’ve identified the fourth man,” said Wiklander. Best to take this in an orderly sequence, he thought.

“But that’s just great,” said Johansson. What’s the problem? he wondered.

“The fourth man is a woman born in 1958,” Wiklander continued. “And we’re quite sure about that,” said Johansson. Forty-two years old, an excellent age for a woman, he thought; he himself had a wife who was only a few years older.

“As certain as we can be,” said Wiklander.

“What’s the problem then?” asked Johansson. Sixteen, seventeen years old at the time of the West German embassy, a bit on the young side, thought Johansson.

“This,” said Wiklander, handing over the same computer printout he had received five minutes earlier.

“So what’s this?” said Johansson, not making the slightest motion to reach out for the paper.

“I asked one of the gals in our internal surveillance squad to do a complete search on her, but when she started on it our internal warning system came on, because the colleagues who do background checks are already in the middle of a complete workup on her.”

“So why are they doing that?” Johansson asked.

“The woman in question is named Helena Stein and she’s an undersecretary in the defense department,” said Wiklander. “She’s an attorney, and before she became an undersecretary in the defense department she worked for a number of years in the prime minister’s office and at the ministry of foreign trade on issues dealing with our manufacture and export of war matériel. She took her current job in the defense department two years ago. A background check was made on her then as well, and she seems to have passed without any problems. All undersecretaries have a high security clearance as you no doubt know, Boss — and in her particular case it’s even higher than the majority of other undersecretaries. Maybe that isn’t so strange considering her job,” Wiklander concluded.

“I should damn well think I know who Stein is,” said Johansson, looking almost amused. In his case it would have been dereliction of duty not to know the name of the undersecretary in the defense department, and that she had apparently disappeared from their files at roughly the same time she was appointed undersecretary did not of course make the matter any less interesting, he thought.

“But that’s not the problem,” said Wiklander.

“So what is it?” asked Johansson. This is getting better and better, he thought.

“The reason they’re doing a new background check on her now is that the prime minister’s office requested one yesterday. This concerns the absolute highest existing level of secrecy, and they want it to be done with the greatest possible speed and well in advance of the government meeting in fourteen days.”

“So why do they want one?” asked Johansson, despite the fact that he already sensed the answer. There aren’t that many jobs to choose from, he thought, and his own was already taken.