Authors: Henning Mankell
“But surely you must want people to solve your puzzles?”
Eber didn’t reply. It occurred to Wallander that the man sitting opposite him in the shabby old tracksuit dreamed of creating a crossword puzzle that nobody would ever manage to solve. Wallander wondered for a moment if Eber’s fear had driven him crazy, despite everything. Or perhaps it was living here in this hollow where the hills on all sides could be perceived as walls closing in on him.
He didn’t know. Hermann Eber was still at his core a complete stranger as far as Wallander was concerned.
“I need your help,” he said, putting the pathology report on the table and proceeding to explain calmly and thoroughly everything that had happened.
Eber put on a pair of dirty glasses. He studied the papers for a few minutes, then suddenly stood up and disappeared into the house. Wallander
waited. Eber still hadn’t returned after fifteen minutes. Wallander wondered if he had gone to bed, or perhaps started to prepare a meal and forgotten about the guest waiting for him on the rickety garden chair. But he continued to wait, his impatience growing. He decided to give Eber five more minutes.
At that moment Eber reemerged. He had some yellowed documents in his hand and a thick book under his arm.
“This stuff belongs to a different world,” Eber said. “I had to search for it.”
“But you appear to have found something.”
“It was clever of you to come to me. I’m probably the only person who can give you the help you need. At the same time, I must tell you that this aroused many nasty memories. I started crying as I was searching. Did you hear that?”
Wallander shook his head. He thought Eber was exaggerating. There were no signs of tears in his face.
“I recognize the substances,” Eber resumed. “They have woken me up out of a Sleeping Beauty slumber that I would have preferred to remain in undisturbed for the rest of my life.”
“So you know what it is?”
“I think so. The ingredients, the synthetically produced chemical substances mentioned in the report, are exactly what I used to work with.”
He paused. Wallander waited. Eber didn’t like being interrupted. He had once told Wallander, when under the influence of several glasses of whiskey, that it had to do with all the power he once had as a high-ranking officer in the Stasi. Nobody in those days dared to contradict him.
Eber cradled the thick book in his hands, as if it were a holy writ. He seemed hesitant. Wallander would have to be careful. A blackbird perched on the rim of a plastic kiddie pool nearby. Eber immediately slammed the heavy book down onto the table. The blackbird flew off. Wallander remembered that Eber suffered from a mysterious fear of birds.
“Let’s hear it, then,” said Wallander. “What are these substances?”
“I dealt with them a thousand years ago. I thought they were out of my life for good. Now you turn up one lovely summer’s day and remind me of something I don’t want to remember.”
“What is it you want to forget?”
Eber sighed and scratched at where his hair used to be. Wallander knew it was important to keep a grip on him, otherwise he might disappear to spend endless hours composing his crossword puzzles.
“What is it you want to forget?” Wallander repeated.
Eber began rocking back and forth on his chair, but he said nothing. Wallander’s patience was stretched thin.
“I want to know if you can identify these substances,” he said sharply.
“I’ve dealt with them in the past.”
“That’s not a good enough answer. ‘Dealt with’? You have to be clearer than that! Don’t forget you once promised me you’d do me a favor when I asked for one.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
Eber shook his head, and Wallander could see that he was tortured by the situation.
“Take your time,” he said. “I need your answer, your views, and your thoughts. But there’s no hurry. I can come back later if you prefer.”
“No, no, stay! I just need time to find my way back into the past. It’s as if I’m being forced to dig out a tunnel that I’ve already refilled carefully.”
Wallander stood up.
“I’ll go for a walk,” he said. “I’ll take a closer look at the Icelandic horses.”
“Half an hour, that’s all I need.”
Hermann Eber wiped the sweat from his brow. Wallander walked out of the hollow and back to the nearest paddock.
After half an hour, it had started to get windy, and a bank of clouds was building up from the south. Hermann Eber was sitting motionless in the garden chair when Wallander opened the rusty gate. Now there was another book lying on the table, an old diary with brown covers. Eber started talking the moment Wallander sat down. When he was agitated, as he was now, his voice became shrill, almost strident. Wallander had several times wondered with distaste what it would have been like to be interrogated by Hermann Eber when he was still convinced that East Germany was a paradise on earth.
“Igor Kirov,” Eber began, “also known as ‘Boris.’ That was his stage name, the alias he used. A Russian citizen, the official liaison with one of the KGB’s special divisions in Moscow. He came to East Berlin a few months before the Wall went up. I met him several times, though I had no direct contact with him. But there was no doubt about his reputation: Boris knew his stuff. He had zero tolerance for irregularities or slapdash procedures. It was no more than a couple of months before several of the highest officials in the Stasi had been transferred or demoted. You could say he was the Russian star, the much-feared center of the KGB’s operations in East Berlin. Before he had been with us for six months, he had cracked Great Britain’s most efficient spy ring. Three or four of their agents were executed after secret and summary
trials. They would normally have been exchanged for Soviet or East German agents imprisoned in London, but Boris went straight to Ulbricht and demanded that the British agents be executed. He wanted to send an unambiguous warning not only to foreign agents, but also to any East German citizens who might be contemplating treason. Boris had turned himself into a universally feared legend after less than a year in East Berlin. He apparently led a simple life. Nobody knew if he was married, if he had any children, if he drank, or even if he played chess. The only thing that could be said about him with any certainty was that he had a unique ability to organize effective cooperation between the Stasi and the KGB. When the end came, we in the Stasi were stunned. The whole of East Germany would have been, if events had been made public. But everything was hushed up, of course.”
“What happened?”
“One day he simply vanished. A magician had draped a cloth over his head and presto, he was no longer there! But obviously, nobody applauded. The big hero had sold his soul to the English, and of course to the U.S.A. as well. I don’t know how he managed to conceal the fact that he had been responsible for the execution of British agents. Perhaps he didn’t need to. Security organizations have to be cynical in order to operate efficiently. It was a slap in the face for both the KGB and the Stasi. Heads rolled. Ulbricht was summoned to Moscow and came back crestfallen, even though it was hardly his fault that Boris hadn’t been unmasked. Markus Wolf, the head of the Stasi, was very close to being left out in the cold. No doubt he would have been if he hadn’t issued an order that brings us back to why you’re sitting here today. An order that was given the highest priority.”
Wallander could guess what was coming next.
“Boris had to die?”
“Exactly. But not only that, it would have to look as if he had been stricken by remorse. He would have to kill himself and leave a suicide note in which he described his treachery as unforgivable. He would have to praise both the Soviet Union and East Germany, and with a large dose of self-contempt and an equally large dose of our doctored sleeping pills, he would have to lie down and die.”
“How was it done?”
“At that time I was working at a lab just outside Berlin—interestingly enough at a place not far from Wannsee, where the Nazis had assembled in order to decide how to solve the Jewish problem. One day a new man showed up.”
Eber broke off and pointed to the notebook with the brown covers.
“I saw you noticed it. I had to look up his name. My memory let me down, which it doesn’t normally. How’s your memory nowadays?”
“It’s okay,” said Wallander noncommittally. “Go on.”
Eber appeared to have quietly registered Wallander’s reluctance to talk about his memory. It seemed to Wallander that the perception of tone of voice and subtexts must be especially well developed in people who at some stage in their life have worked in the security services, where overstepping the mark or making an incorrect assessment could result in an appointment with a firing squad.
“Klaus Dietmar,” said Eber. “He had been transferred directly from the women swimmers, I know that for certain, even though he had never been their official coach. He was one of those behind the sports miracle. He was a small, slim man who moved without making a sound and had hands like a girl’s. People who misjudged him might have interpreted his bearing as a sort of apology for existing at all, but he was a fanatical Communist who no doubt prayed every night to Walter Ulbricht before switching off the light. He was the leader of a group to which I belonged. Our only task was to produce a substance that would kill Igor Kirov but leave no trace apart from what seemed to be that of an ordinary sleeping pill.”
Eber stood up and disappeared into his house. Wallander couldn’t resist the temptation to peer in through a window. He had been right in his assumptions. The room was in a state of absolute chaos. Every square inch was filled with newspapers, clothes, trash, dirty plates, and half-eaten meals. Some sort of path through all the mess could just about be discerned. The stench from inside the room seeped through the windows. The sun had disappeared behind a bank of clouds. Eber reappeared, adjusting his tracksuit pants. He sat down and scratched his chin, as if plagued by a sudden itch. Wallander had the distinct impression that he was sitting opposite somebody he would hate to change identity with. Just for a moment, he was endlessly grateful for being who he was.
“It took us about two years,” said Eber, contemplating his filthy nails. “Many of us thought the Stasi was committing far too many resources to the effort to nail Igor Kirov. But the Kirov affair was all about prestige. He had sworn allegiance to the holiest dogmas of the Communist church and would not be allowed to die in a state of sin. It didn’t take us all that long to find a chemical combination that corresponded to the most commonly prescribed sleeping pills available in England at that time. The problem was finding a moment when it would be possible to circumvent all the security protecting him. The most difficult part, of course, was getting past his own vigilance. He knew what he had done and was well aware of all the hounds baying for his blood.”
Eber suffered a sudden attack of coughing. There was a wheezing and rasping in his bronchial tubes. Wallander waited. The wind was getting stronger, and the back of his neck felt cold.
“Any agent knows that the most important thing in his or her life is to keep changing routines,” Eber continued once he had recovered. “That’s what Kirov did, of course. But he overlooked one tiny detail. And that mistake cost him his life. Every Saturday, at three o’clock, he went to a pub in Notting Hill and watched soccer on the television. He always sat at the same table, drinking Russian tea. He would arrive at ten to three, and leave as soon as the match was over. Our cat burglar, who could break into any building you care to name, kept him under constant surveillance for quite a while, and eventually he came up with a plan for how to eliminate Igor Kirov. The weak link was two waitresses who were sometimes replaced by temporary stand-ins. We could replace them with some of our own. The execution took place in December 1972. The waitresses we supplied served him the poisoned tea. In the report I read it was stated specifically that the last match Kirov watched was Birmingham City versus Leicester City. The result was a draw, one to one. He returned to his apartment and died an hour or so later in his bed. The British security service had no doubt that it was suicide. The letter they found seemed to be in his own handwriting, and his fingerprints were on it. There was great rejoicing in the East German secret police; Igor Kirov had finally met his fate.”
Hermann Eber asked a few questions about the dead woman. Wallander answered in as much detail as he could. But he was growing increasingly impatient. He didn’t want to sit here answering Eber’s questions. Eber seemed to detect his irritation.
“So you think that Louise died after swallowing the same substance that killed Igor Kirov all those years ago?”
“It seems so.”
“Which would mean that she was murdered? And that the assumed suicide was an illusion?”
“If the pathologist’s report is correct, that could be the case.”
Wallander was skeptical and shook his head. Such things simply couldn’t happen in the world as he knew it.
“Who makes stuff like this nowadays? Neither the Stasi nor East Germany exists any longer. You’re living here in Sweden, thinking up crossword puzzles.”
“Secret police organizations never die. They change names, but they are always there. Anybody who thinks there’s less spying in the world today just doesn’t get it. Don’t forget that quite a few of the old masters are still around.”
“Old masters?”
Eber seemed to be almost offended when he answered.
“Irrespective of what we did, no matter what people say about us, we were specialists. We knew what we were doing.”
“But why should Louise von Enke of all people be subjected to something like this?”
“That’s not a question I can answer.”
Wallander was feeling both tired and uneasy. He stood up and shook Hermann Eber’s hand.
“I’ll be back; you can count on that,” he said by way of good-bye.
“So I gather,” said Eber. “In our world, we are used to meeting again at the most unlikely times.”
Wallander went to his car and drove home. It started raining just as he came to the roundabout at the turnoff to Ystad. It was pouring by the time he ran from the car to his front door. Jussi was barking from his kennel. Wallander sat down at his kitchen table and watched the rain pattering on the windowpane. Water was dripping from his hair.