Лейф Перссон - Another Time, Another Life

For Welander himself, on the other hand, life appeared more problematic. After five days an inebriated Theo Tischler called Welander’s hotel room in Berlin in the middle of the night from his apartment on Strandvägen in Stockholm. There was a brief conversation, taped, of course, by both SePo and BKA. SePo’s transcript read as follows.

TT: How the hell are things going for you guys? Do you need more ammo or what? Hello...

SW: You must have the wrong number.

TT: Hello? Hellooo... What the hell... Don’t hang up now... ( The conversation ends .)

After a little more than a week, the feature story was pretty much done. Or at least the photographer and Welander’s colleague felt they had done their part and could do no more. What remained was the promised interview with Welander’s secret contact at the Stasi. A noticeably stressed Welander managed to negotiate an additional twenty-four hours from his team members, and on Sunday the sixteenth of December the interview finally took place. An almost exhilarated Dietmar Rühl showed up at the agreed-upon meeting place in West Berlin.

First he spoke alone with Welander, who appeared considerably happier after their meeting, and then the interview was conducted. With his back toward the camera, and his voice rendered mechanically distorted, “the secret Stasi agent and major Wolfgang S.” — which is how the secret contact was introduced in the program — in a monotone tried to avoid answering Welander’s questions and assertions about various atrocities that his employer was supposed to be guilty of. The interview took an hour, Wolfgang S. received the agreed-upon compensation of fifteen hundred deutschmarks in advance, and that very same evening Welander and his team packed up and went home to Sweden.

That night a highly intoxicated Welander phoned Tischler from his apartment in Täby and said that he was feeling fine, that it was lovely to be home again, that his reporting trip had been a complete success, that he hoped he and Tischler would be able to meet soon and have a bite to eat, since it was almost Christmas... and... Whereupon Tischler had slammed down the receiver.

Welander’s feature story ran without much notice. Most of their competitors had already purchased, and broadcast, considerably more substantive stories than the material Sten Welander could offer the viewers of public television in the middle of January. Welander’s bosses were annoyed. What he had delivered had little in common with the promises he had laid out in his proposal. For some reason those colleagues whose suggestions had been rejected in favor of Welander’s were the happiest.

Another person who seemed to have reason to feel content was Welander’s contact in the Stasi, who quickly made the transition to capitalist society. Dietmar Rühl, the former Stasi captain, did not have to check tickets in the subway or stand in the coat check at the German Historical Museum. In a relatively short time he acquired three different stores in the former East Berlin selling pornography and sex accessories. According to reports business was booming.

Despite the lackluster reviews, Welander and even Tischler appeared both satisfied and much calmer. After a month SePo withdrew its surveillance of them and ended the audio surveillance on their phones. Because they already had a definite idea of what had happened, and because there was no intention of taking measures against any of them, the whole thing was put to rest. In hindsight Welander might just as well have stayed home. What he did not know was that the Americans had already confirmed the interesting information and none of them even gave Welander and his comrades a thought.

“Do you have any idea what Tischler had to pay to get their names removed from SIRA?” asked Johansson, who knew how to look out for himself where money was concerned.

“No idea,” said Berg, shaking his head. “A few hundred thousand kronor if you ask me. Certainly no more than that. The rates for such things had already started to tumble. Whatever it was, it seems to have been enough for Rühl to be able to establish himself in a new business,” Berg stated with a hint of a smile.

“How did you get wind of Welander’s little excursion to Berlin?” asked Johansson.

“Ahh,” said Berg contentedly, looking almost as if he were tasting a fine wine. “If you only knew how many informants we’ve had at Swedish Radio and Television all these years... not to mention the newspapers,” he said. “It will be interesting to see if our dear intelligence service commission dares let the veil drop when they account for this aspect of their noble mission in the service of truth.”

“So types like Welander are still in our files,” Johansson asserted.

“What else did you expect?” said Berg, sounding almost a little resentful. “That would be the last thing I would attempt... withholding such information and thus hindering the remaining part of the fourth estate in their important journalistic mission.” Although I don’t expect I’ll live to see the day, he thought, and suddenly he felt rather lousy.

Only one question remained for Johansson.

“There’s one more thing I was wondering about,” he said.

Berg just nodded. He suddenly looked rather tired, and for the first time during their conversation Johansson felt sympathy for him. I need to stop, he thought. The man must have more important things to deal with than sitting here and answering my nagging questions.

“I’ll buy your reasons for having cleaned them out of the files two years ago. Besides, the only two who were interesting were dead. But what I don’t really understand...” Johansson hesitated. Should I just forget about it? he wondered.

“Go ahead and ask,” said Berg. “I promise I’ll answer if I can.”

“What I don’t really understand is why you restored the information on Welander and Eriksson to the files on the West German embassy only a few months ago,” Johansson concluded. At the same time you retired and promised me a clean desk, he thought.

“I honestly admit that I was hesitant,” said Berg, nodding. “But it was our colleagues in military intelligence who called and tipped me off. Besides, they let it be known that more might be coming on the same subject... so I thought it over again and put them back in.”

“What was your line of reasoning?” asked Johansson.

There were pros and cons, and Berg had spent a long time deciding. For one thing, it was actually true: Both Eriksson and Welander had been up to their necks in the embassy occupation. Second, if some sufficiently qualified and careful inspector from the security service commission sat down with the material about the West German embassy, he or she might discover rather quickly that names had been removed from the material. Third, and most important, it was conceivable that new material might be added that he would no longer have any control over for the simple reason that he had retired. Fourth, and finally, he saw the openness in communication as an expression of a changed, more positive attitude on the part of their military intelligence colleagues.

“I don’t know how many times we’ve quarreled about this over the years,” said Berg. “I didn’t think I should just show them the door when at last they’d come knocking, regardless of what they had on offer. Besides, the people this concerned were dead anyway, and because Welander himself had been a journalist, the wolf pack ought to leave his remains in peace. As far as Eriksson is concerned, if I remember correctly he had no surviving family when he died. And then the military intelligence colleagues suggested that more might be coming, and that sort of thing is always hard to say no to.”