Authors: Henning Mankell
“What would you say if I were to tell you that Louise was probably poisoned using methods patented by the East Germans in the good old days? In order to conceal executions and make them look like suicides?”
Talboth nodded slowly. Once again he raised his glass of ice water to his mouth; this time he drank some.
“That also happens in the CIA,” he said. “Needless to say, we have often found ourselves in a position that made it necessary to liquidate somebody. In such a way that convinced everybody it was suicide.”
Wallander wasn’t surprised by Talboth’s unwillingness to talk about things not directly connected to Håkan or Louise von Enke; but he’d made up his mind to take this as far as possible.
“Anyway, we can assume that Louise was murdered,” Wallander said.
“Could it be the Swedish secret service that liquidated her?”
“That’s not the way things work in Sweden. Besides, there’s no reason to assume she’d been unmasked. In other words, we don’t have a potential perpetrator with a plausible motive.”
Talboth moved his wicker chair into the shade. He said nothing for a while, chewing his bottom lip.
“It’s tempting to think that it’s a sort of crime of passion,” he said eventually.
He sat upright on his chair.
“Working in Sweden was naturally never the same as being behind the iron curtain, for as long as it existed,” he said. “Anybody who was caught there was almost always executed. Assuming you weren’t so important that you could be used in exchange deals. One traitor swapped for another. Spies can get careless when they’ve been out in the field, always in danger of being exposed. The pressure can become too much. That’s why spies sometimes turn against one another. The violence turns in on itself. Somebody’s success can give rise to jealousy, and the competitive urge replaces cooperation and loyalty. That is a distinct possibility in Louise’s case. For a very special reason.”
Now it was Wallander’s turn to move his chair into the shade. He leaned forward to pick up his glass of water. The ice had melted.
“As Håkan has already told you, rumors about a Swedish spy had been
circulating for a while,” said Talboth. “The CIA had known about it for ages. When I worked at the Stockholm embassy, we put a lot of resources into trying to solve this problem. The fact that somebody was selling Swedish military secrets to the Russians was a problem for us and for NATO. Sweden’s arms industry was at the cutting edge when it came to technical innovations. We used to have regular meetings with our Swedish colleagues about this worrying situation. And with colleagues from England, France, and Norway, among others. We were faced with an incredibly skillful agent. We also realized that there must be an intermediary, an ‘informer,’ in Sweden. Somebody passing on information to the agent, who in turn sent it on to Russia. We were surprised that we—or rather, our Swedish colleagues—could never find any clues as to who it was. The Swedes had a short list of twenty names, all of them officers in one service or another. But the Swedish investigators got nowhere. And we didn’t manage to help them either. It was as if we were hunting a phantom. Some genius hit on the idea of calling the person we were looking for ‘Diana.’ Like the Phantom’s girlfriend. I thought it was idiotic. Mainly because there was nothing to suggest that a woman was involved. But it would eventually transpire that the nitwit responsible had unknowingly but devastatingly stumbled onto something very relevant. In any case, that was the situation until late March 1987. The eighteenth, to be precise. Something happened on that day that changed the whole situation, sent several Swedish intelligence officers out into the cold, and forced us all to start thinking differently. Has Håkan told you about this?”
“No.”
“It began outside Amsterdam at Schipol, the big airport, early in the morning. A man appeared outside the airport police’s office. He was wearing a baggy suit, a white shirt, and a tie. He was carrying a small suitcase in one hand and had an overcoat over his arm and a hat in his other hand. He must have given the impression of coming from another age, as if he had climbed out of a black-and-white film with somber background music. He spoke to a police officer who was really far too young for the job, but there was a flu epidemic and he was filling in. The man spoke bad English and announced that he was seeking political asylum in the Netherlands. He produced a Russian passport in the name of Oleg Linde. An unusual surname for a Russian, you might think, but it was correct. He was in his forties, with thinning hair and a scar along one side of his nose. The young police officer, who had never set eyes on a defector from the East before, called in an older colleague who took over. I think his name was Geert, but before he had a chance to ask his first question, Linde began talking. I’ve listened to the interrogation so many times that I know the most important parts almost by heart. He was a
colonel in the KGB, the division dealing with espionage in the West, and was seeking political asylum because he no longer wanted to do work that was propping up the crumbling Soviet empire. Those were his first words. Then he came out with the bait he had prepared in advance. He knew about many of the Soviet spies working in the West, especially a number of very competent agents based in the Netherlands. After that he was handed over to the security services. They took him to an apartment in The Hague, ironically enough not far from the International Court of Justice, where he was interrogated. It didn’t take long for Säpo to realize that Oleg Linde was completely genuine. They kept his identity secret, but they immediately began informing colleagues all over the world that they had come across a marvelous ‘antique,’ which was now standing on a table in front of them. Would they like to come and take a look? To examine it? Reports came in from Moscow to the effect that the KGB was in an uproar; everybody was scuttling around like ants in an anthill poked with a walking stick. Oleg Linde was one of those people who simply couldn’t be allowed to go missing. But missing he was. He’d disappeared without a trace, and they feared the worst. Moscow figured out that he must be in the Netherlands when their spy network there collapsed. He had begun his big ‘clearance sale,’ as we called it. And he was cheap. All he wanted was a new name and a new identity. According to what I’ve heard, he moved to Mauritius and settled in a town with the wonderful name of Pamplemousse, where he earned a living as a cabinetmaker. Evidently Linde had a background as a joiner before he joined the KGB, but I’m not sure about that part of the story.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“He’s sleeping the eternal sleep. He died in 2006. Cancer. He met a young lady in Mauritius and married her, and they had several children. But I don’t know anything about their lives. His story is reminiscent of that of another defector, an agent known as ‘Boris.’ ”
“I’ve heard of him,” said Wallander. “There must have been a constant procession of Russian defectors at that time.”
Talboth stood up and went indoors. Down in the street below, several fire engines raced past, sirens wailing. Talboth came back with the jug full to the brim with ice water.
“He was the one who informed us that the spy we’d been looking for in Sweden was a woman,” he said when he had sat down again. “He didn’t know her name; she was overseen by a group within the KGB that worked independently of the other officers—that was normal practice with especially valuable agents. But he was certain that it was a woman. She didn’t work in the military or in the arms industry, which meant that she had at least one,
possibly several, informers who provided her with information that she sold. It was never clear whether she was a spy for ideological reasons or if she did it purely as a business venture. The intelligence services always prefer spies who operate as a business. If there is too much idealism involved, the operation can easily go off the rails. We always think that agents with great faith in the cause are never entirely reliable. We are a cynical bunch, and we have to be in order to do our job properly. We repeat the mantra that we might not make the world any better, but at least we don’t make it any worse. We justify our existence by claiming that we maintain a sort of balance of terror, which we probably do.”
Talboth stirred the ice cubes in the jug with a spoon.
“Future wars,” he said thoughtfully, “will be over staples such as water. Our soldiers will fight to the death over pools of water.”
He filled his glass, being careful not to spill any water. Wallander waited.
“We never found her,” Talboth continued. “We helped the Swedes as much as we could, but she was never identified, never exposed and arrested. We started talking about the possibility that she didn’t exist. But the Russians were constantly finding out about things they shouldn’t have. If Bofors made some technical advance in a weapons system, the Russians soon knew all about it. We set endless traps, but we never caught anybody.”
“And Louise?”
“She was above suspicion, of course. Who would have suspected her of anything?”
Talboth excused himself, saying he had to attend to his aquarium. Wallander remained on the balcony. He started writing a summary of what Talboth had said, but then decided he didn’t need notes; he would remember. He went to the room he’d been given and lay down on the bed with his arms under his head. When he woke up, he saw that he’d been asleep for two hours. He jumped up, as if he had slept far longer. Talboth was on the balcony, smoking a cigarette. Wallander returned to his chair.
“I think you’ve been dreaming,” Talboth said. “You kept shouting in your sleep.”
“My dreams are pretty violent at times,” said Wallander. “It comes and goes.”
“I’m lucky,” said Talboth. “I never remember my dreams. I’m very grateful for that.”
They walked to the Italian restaurant Talboth had mentioned earlier. They drank red wine with their food, and spoke about everything under the
sun—except for Louise von Enke. After the meal Talboth insisted they try various kinds of grappa, before insisting just as strongly on paying for everything. Wallander felt distinctly tipsy when they left Il Trovatore. Talboth lit a cigarette, being careful to turn his head away when he blew out the smoke.
“So,” said Wallander, “many years have passed since Oleg Linde talked about a female Swedish spy. It seems implausible to me that she should still be operating.”
“If she is,” said Talboth. “Don’t forget what we talked about on the balcony.”
“But if the spying was in fact still going on, that would exonerate Louise,” said Wallander.
“Not necessarily. Somebody else could have picked up the baton. There are no simple explanations in this world. The truth is often the opposite of what you expect.”
They continued walking slowly down the street. Talboth lit another cigarette.
“The middleman,” Wallander said, “the person you called the
intermediary
. Do you have just as little information about him?”
“He has never been exposed.”
“Which means, of course, that ‘he’ could just as well be a woman too.”
Talboth shook his head.
“Women seldom have such influential positions in the military or the arms industry. I’d bet my paltry pension it’s a man.”
It was a very warm evening, oppressively so. Wallander could feel a headache coming on.
“Is there anything in what I’ve told you that you find particularly surprising?” Talboth asked halfheartedly, mostly to keep the conversation going.
“No.”
“Is there any conclusion you’ve drawn that doesn’t fit in with what I’ve said?”
“No. Not that I can think of.”
“What do the police investigating Louise’s death have to say?”
“They don’t have any leads. There’s no murderer, no motive. The only clues are the microfilm and documents hidden in a secret pocket in her purse.”
“But surely that’s proof enough to show that she’s the spy everybody has been looking for? Perhaps something went wrong when she was due to hand over her material?”
“That’s a plausible explanation. I assume that’s the basis on which the police are proceeding. But what went wrong? Who was it that met her? And why did it happen just now?”
Talboth stopped and stamped on his cigarette butt.
“It’s a big step forward in any case,” he said. “She’s obviously guilty. The investigation can concentrate on Louise now. They’ll probably find the middleman sooner or later.”
They continued walking and came to the entrance door. Talboth tapped in the code.
“I need more fresh air,” Wallander said. “I’m a dyed-in-the-wool night owl. I’ll stay out for a bit longer.”
Talboth nodded, gave him the entry code, and went inside. Wallander watched the door closing silently. Then he stared walking along the deserted street. The feeling that something was fundamentally wrong struck him once more. The same feeling he’d had after leaving the island following the night he’d spent with Håkan von Enke. He thought about what Talboth had said, about the truth often being the opposite of what you’d expected. Sometimes you needed to turn reality upside down in order to make it stand up.
Wallander paused and turned around. The street was still deserted. He could hear music coming from an open window. A German hit song. He heard the words
leben, eben
, and
neben
. He continued walking until he came to a little square. Some young people were making out on a bench. Maybe I should stand here and shout out into the night, he thought.
I don’t know what’s going on
. That’s what I could shout. The only thing I’m sure about is that there’s something I’m not getting. Am I coming closer to the truth, or drifting further away from it?
He strolled around the square for a while, growing more and more tired. When he returned to the apartment, Talboth seemed to have gone to bed. The door to the balcony was locked. Wallander undressed and fell asleep almost immediately.
In his dreams the horses started running again. But when he woke up the next morning, he could remember nothing about them.
When Wallander opened his eyes, he didn’t know where he was at first. He glanced at his watch: six o’clock. He stayed in bed. He could hear through the wall what he assumed was the noise of the machines adjusting the oxygen level of the water in the gigantic aquarium, but he couldn’t hear whether the trains were running. They lived a silent life in their well-insulated tunnels. Like moles, he thought. But also like the people who wormed their way into the places where decisions were made, decisions they then stole and passed on to the other side, which was supposed to be kept in ignorance.