The Generals

The Generals

Born in 1926, Per Wahlöö was a Swedish writer and journalist who, alongside his own novels, collaborated with his partner, Maj Sjöwall, on the bestselling Martin Beck crime series, credited as inspiration for writers as varied as Agatha Christie, Henning Mankell, and Jonathan Franzen. In 1971 the fourth novel in the series,
The Laughing Policeman
, won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Per Wahlöö died in 1975.

JOAN TATE

Joan Tate was born in 1922 of English and Irish extraction. She traveled widely and worked as a teacher, a rehabilitation worker at a center for injured miners, a broadcaster, a reviewer, and a columnist. She was a prolific writer and translator, well known for translating many leading Swedish-language writers, including Astrid Lindgren, Ingmar Bergman, Kerstin Ekman, P. C. Jersild, Sven Lindqvist, and Agneta Pleijel. She died in 2000.

Murder on the Thirty-first Floor

A Necessary Action

The Assignment

The Steel Spring

With Maj Sjöwall

Roseanna

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

The Man on the Balcony

The Laughing Policeman

The Fire Engine that Disappeared

Murder at the Savoy

The Abominable Man

The Locked Room

Cop Killer

The Terrorists

On a small island in the temperate zone a court-martial has assembled. Corporal Erwin Velder is on trial for his life. Some of his 127 alleged crimes are military, but others are civil and moral: bigamy, rape and sacrilege. Per Wahlöö’s new novel takes the form of the proceedings of the trial, stretching over three months.

It emerges that this trial is of great political importance to the régime. The result is a foregone conclusion: Velder has been prepared in prison by ‘specialists’ for three years. He is a physical and mental wreck and confesses to all but one of the charges. In reality the court-martial is an elaborate rehearsal of the events of the last eight years. The past and the dead are on trial.

A group of civilised, intelligent men took over the island, we learn, and began to build an ideal state. There were no politics, religion, laws, bureaucracy or taxes. The country was carefully developed and enjoyed great prosperity and general happiness under the loosely exercised authority of the state’s founders. After five years the first cracks appeared with a disagreement in the ruling council. Slow disintegration set in: a secret armed force was built up by one of the rulers and eventually civil war broke out. The rout of the liberal party was followed by full-scale fighting between the ‘fascists’ and the ‘reds’.

At the time the action of the book takes place the country has enjoyed, officially, three years of peace after the cease-fire, but in fact the Generals, who rule with an iron grip, are ceaselessly struggling for power with one another. As the inevitable verdict is pronounced on the innocent, unprotesting Velder, the latest coup takes place.

Lieutenant Brown
: Are the members of the court prepared to proceed with the internal section of the session?

Colonel Orbal
: Of course.

Lieutenant Brown
: Present at the internal section of today’s proceedings are the President of the Court, Colonel Orbal, Major von Peters, Army, Colonel Pigafetta, representing the Air Force, Commander Kampenmann, Navy, and Justice Haller, co-opted to this extra-ordinary court martial as civil law observer and representative of the Ministry of Justice.

Major von Peters
: You’ve forgotten yourself.

Lieutenant Brown
: Case presented by Lieutenant Brown, Air Force, appointed to General Staff Operations Division.

Major von Peters
: Excellent. Continue.

Lieutenant Brown
: At non-internal sections of the sessions, Captain Schmidt from the General Staff Judicial Section will act as Prosecuting Officer.

Major von Peters
: He’s too soft.

Lieutenant Brown
: Assistant Prosecuting Officer is Lieutenant Bratianu.

Major von Peters
: Bratianu, he’s a good man.

Lieutenant Brown
: The accused will be defended by Captain Endicott from the Air Force.

Major von Peters
: Who chose that particular man?

Colonel Pigafetta
: I did. He’s under orders, after drawing lots.

Major von Peters
: Well, Bratianu’s a good man.

Lieutenant Brown
: Justice Haller has asked to be allowed to make a statement.

Tadeusz Haller
: May I speak?

Colonel Orbal
: What?

Tadeusz Haller
: I requested to be allowed to speak.

Colonel Orbal
: Of course. Request granted.

Tadeusz Haller
: As representative of the Ministry of Justice, I should like to point out that the government attaches great importance to this session. I need only point out that for more than three years this case has been prepared in different stages.

Commander Kampenmann
: Why?

Tadeusz Haller
: I’ll be coming to that point shortly. Counsel for the Prosecution will submit one hundred and twenty-seven charges and the documents of the case already amount to ten thousand pages.

Major von Peters
: Prosecuting Officer.

Tadeusz Haller
: Pardon?

Major von Peters
: Prosecuting Officer, I said. Not Counsel for the Prosecution. This is a court martial.

Tadeusz Haller
: I beg your pardon. Well, to continue, the considerable care which has been devoted to the preliminary work on this session naturally has a definite purpose behind it. The conclusions and verdict of this court, together with the already existing proceedings and documents, will form the basis of work to be carried out by the civil-military legislature, that is, the Legislative Assembly.

Major von Peters
: Don’t talk to us as if we were idiots.

Tadeusz Haller
: I beg your pardon. That was indeed not my intention. Well, to continue, although it may seem somewhat superfluous, I should like therefore on behalf of the Ministry of Justice and the Legislature to emphasise with extreme urgency that the case be completed in minutest detail and investigated thoroughly in all its moral, judicial, pardon, military-judicial and psychological aspects.

Colonel Orbal
: Who’s treating us like idiots?

Commander Kampenmann
: I still don’t understand this exaggerated interest in this particular individual.

Tadeusz Haller
: The man whose case is now to be tried has acted as representative for two separate régimes, and, in addition, been a member of two separately organised revolutionary movements.
He has served in the armed forces of all of them and has betrayed them all.

Major von Peters
: But you can’t betray armies that don’t exist. You ought to express yourself more precisely.

Tadeusz Haller
: I … understand your viewpoint. A slip of the tongue. It will not be repeated.

Major von Peters
: Excellent. Have you ever been a soldier, Mr Haller?

Tadeusz Haller
: With all due respect to this court martial, I feel that that is a matter of irrelevance. More important, perhaps, is that this court has the opportunity to reveal the mental mechanism of an individual who has committed treason against the State, and who both before and during the relatively limited time of the duration of the war …

Major von Peters
: What war? You mean the disturbances. You really ought to express yourself more precisely.

Tadeusz Haller
: … and both before and during the attempts to overthrow the government, broke more or less every essential moral law fundamental to our ideology, our way of life, and our constitution. That is why the Chief of State has expressed the definite wish that the case be handled with the greatest care and that the motives, impulses and errors of the accused which led to the deeds be investigated and accounted for in the minutest detail. It is also the Chief of State’s intention at the completion of the session to hand over the assembled material to the legislature for closer analysis. The Chief of State has emphasised that point very strongly.

Major von Peters
: Why didn’t you say that in the first place?

Commander Kampenmann
: I still don’t understand why the sections of this case that lie outside military jurisdiction can’t be dealt with by a civil court.

Tadeusz Haller
: As the honourable members of the court are no doubt aware, we are still very much in arrears with the task of legislation. It would have created great difficulties to have had this case tried by a civil court. In addition …