Henning Mankell - The Troubled Man

“And what did you see?”

“Something that turned everything upside down. What is it they say? You have to stand things on their head in order to see them the right way up? That’s how it was for me, in any case.”

“Are you saying that Louise wasn’t a spy after all, then? If not, what are you saying?”

Wallander didn’t answer his question.

“I want you to sneak up to the house wall,” he said. “Stand there, and listen in.”

“To what?”

“To the conversation I’m going to have with Håkan von Enke.”

“But why all this pussyfooting around in the darkness?”

“If he knows you’re here, he may not tell the truth.”

Nordlander shook his head. But he made no further comment and edged his way toward the house. Wallander stayed still. Thanks to his alarm system, von Enke would know that somebody was moving around on the island. The hope was that he wouldn’t realize there was more than one person outside his hunting lodge.

Nordlander reached the house wall. Wallander would never have noticed him if he hadn’t known he was there. But he continued to wait, not moving a muscle. He felt a strange mixture of calm and uneasiness. The end of the story is nigh, he thought. Am I right, or have I made a huge mistake?

He regretted not having explained to Nordlander that the mission might take some time.

A night bird fluttered past, then vanished. Wallander listened into the darkness for any noise that would tell him Håkan von Enke was on his way. Nordlander was standing motionless by the house wall. The music was still oozing out through the open window.

He gave a start when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and found himself looking into Håkan von Enke’s face.

“Are you here again?” said von Enke in a low voice. “We didn’t arrange this. I could have mistaken you for an intruder. What do you want?”

“I want to speak to you.”

“Did something happen?”

“All kinds of things have happened. As I’m sure you know, I went to Berlin and talked to your old friend George Talboth. I must say that he behaved exactly as I had expected a high-ranking CIA officer to act.”

Wallander had prepared himself as best he could. He knew he couldn’t afford to exaggerate. He had to speak loudly enough for Nordlander to hear what was being said, but not so loudly that von Enke would suspect there was somebody else in the vicinity, listening in.

“George said you seemed to be a good man.”

“I’ve never seen an aquarium like the one he showed me.”

“It’s remarkable. Especially the trains traveling through their little tunnels.”

A gust of wind whooshed past, then all was quiet again.

“How did you get here?” von Enke asked.

“With the same boat as last time.”

“And you came on your own?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Questions in answer to questions always make me suspicious.”

Von Enke suddenly switched on a flashlight that he’d been hiding next to his body. He aimed it at Wallander’s face. Third degree, Wallander thought. As long as he doesn’t shine the light at the house and discover Sten Nordlander. That would ruin everything.

The flashlight was switched off.

“We don’t need to mess around out here.”

Wallander followed in von Enke’s footsteps. When they entered the house he switched off the radio. Nothing in the room had changed since Wallander’s earlier visit.

Von Enke was on his guard. Wallander couldn’t work out if that was due to his instinct, warning him of danger, or if it was just natural suspicion following Wallander’s sudden appearance on the island.

“You must have a motive,” said von Enke, slowly. “A sudden visit like this, in the middle of the night?”

“I just wanted to talk to you.”

“About your visit to Berlin?”

“No, not about that.”

“Then explain yourself.”

Wallander hoped that Nordlander could hear this conversation, standing outside the window. What if von Enke suddenly decided to close it? I have no time to spare, Wallander concluded. I have to come straight to the point.

“Explain yourself,” von Enke said again.

“It’s about Louise,” Wallander said. “The truth about her.”

“Isn’t that what we talked about last time we were sitting here?”

“It is. But you didn’t tell me the truth.”

Von Enke looked at him with the same noncommittal expression as before.

“Something didn’t add up,” said Wallander. “It was as if I were looking up in the air when I should have been examining the ground at my feet. That happened when I visited Berlin. It suddenly became clear to me that George Talboth wasn’t just answering my questions. He was also investigating, very discreetly and skillfully, how much I knew. Once I realized that, I discovered something else as well. Something horrific, shameful, a betrayal so despicable and misanthropic that I didn’t want to believe it at first. What I believed, what Ytterberg thought, what you said and George Talboth maintained, was not the truth at all. I was being used, exploited. I had stumbled obediently straight into all the traps that had been set for me. But that also opened my eyes to another person.”

“Who?”

“The person we can call the real Louise. She was never a spy. She wasn’t false in any way; she was the most genuine person imaginable. The first time I met her I was struck by her lovely smile. I thought about that again when we met in Djursholm. I was convinced later that she had been using that smile to conceal her big secret — until I realized that her smile was absolutely genuine.”

“Have you come here to talk about my dead wife’s smile?”

Wallander shook his head in resignation. The whole situation had become so repugnant that he didn’t know how he was going to handle it. He should have been infuriated, but he didn’t have the strength.

“I’ve come here because I’ve discovered the truth I’ve been searching for. Louise has never been remotely close to being a spy and betraying her country. I should have understood that much sooner. But I allowed myself to be deceived.”

“Who deceived you?”

“I did. I was just as misled as everybody else into believing that the enemy always came from the east. But the one who deceived me most was you. The real spy.”

Still the same expressionless face, Wallander thought. But how long can he keep it up?

“Are you suggesting that I am a spy?”

“Yes!”

“You’re alleging that I spied for the Soviet Union or Russia? You’re crazy!”

“I said nothing about the former Soviet Union or the new Russia. I said that you are a spy. For the U.S.A. You have been for many years, Håkan. For exactly how long and how it all started are questions only you can answer. Nor do I know what your motives are. It wasn’t you who suspected Louise; she was the one who suspected you of being an American agent. That was what killed her.”

“I didn’t kill Louise!”

The first crack, Wallander thought. Håkan’s voice is starting to sound shrill. He’s beginning to defend himself.

“I don’t think you did. No doubt others did that. Maybe you received assistance from George Talboth. But she died to prevent you from being exposed.”

“You can’t prove your absurd allegations.”

“You’re absolutely right,” said Wallander. “I can’t. But there are others who can. I know enough to make the police and the armed forces start looking at what’s happened from a different perspective. The spy they’ve long suspected was operating in the Swedish armed forces was not a woman. It was a man. A man who didn’t hesitate to hide behind his own wife as a way of providing himself with a perfect disguise. Everybody was looking for a Russian spy, a woman. When they should have been looking for a man spying for the U.S.A. Nobody thought of that possibility, everybody was preoccupied with searching for enemies in the east. That has been the case for the whole of my life: the threat comes from the east. Nobody wanted to believe that an individual might even consider the possibility of betraying his country in the other direction, to the U.S.A. Anyone who did warn of anything like that was a lone voice crying in the wilderness. You could maintain, of course, that the U.S.A. already had access to everything they wanted to know about our defense services, but that wasn’t the case. NATO, and above all the U.S.A., needed help obtaining accurate information about the Swedish armed forces and also about how much we knew about various Russian military plans.”