“You and your fucking prime numbers,” said the special adviser sourly. “I’ve got a job to take care of, you know. Besides, I’m sure you’re cheating with the military’s big computer,” he added indignantly.
“Why do you think that?” said Forselius slyly. “Perhaps I just think better than you do?”
“Ha ha,” said the special adviser, who was a poor loser and a completely insufferable winner.
Then they played billiards and drank highballs half the night before Forselius staggered up to his guest room on the second floor early on Christmas morning. There he fell asleep immediately after he’d kicked off his shoes and despite his advanced age flung himself on top of the bedspread.
Waltin had prepared himself carefully. First he’d found out everything that was worth knowing about that fat red-haired sow and her miserable husband. Neither background, money, nor schools, but no one would have expected that, he thought contentedly. Dreary four-room apartment in a suburb, no children, the sow clearly worked at the phone company and was otherwise best known for kicking herself weary under men other than the one she was married to. Certainly started as one of those old-time switchboard operators who sit putting things in small holes the whole time and then it had just gone on from old habit, he’d thought, giggling with delight.
…
As soon as he was bored he used to take out the pictures he’d taken of her as she lay tied up with muzzle and blindfold and everything, and for a while he’d seriously considered sending the best picture as a reader’s contribution to those miserable porno rags you found in pretty much all places where there were lower-class men, but on further reflection he’d refrained. Perhaps I might need her again, Waltin had thought, and the thing about her husband appealed to him much more.
He’d called him up a month or so after the encounter with the sow, and when he’d said who he was the miserable little shit had been so flattered that Waltin regretted that he hadn’t recorded him on tape.
“As I said,” Waltin had said, “I need to freshen up my technical knowledge without blabbing about it to the whole operations bureau.”
“Of course, of course,” Wiijnbladh had gushed. “Then I propose Saturday morning, for I’m at the after-hours unit then and for the most part I’m usually alone there,” he had said officiously. Wonder who gave him my name? This can lead who knows where, he had thought, and in his mind he had already seen himself as head of the secret police’s myth-shrouded, covert tech squad.
“Fine with me,” Waltin had replied in English. “Shall we say ten o’clock on Saturday?” Wonder if he understands English, he’d thought.
“Discretion a matter of honor,” Wiijnbladh had said, unknowing procurer that he also was.
Wiijnbladh had met him dressed in white coat with a sash; only the stethoscope was missing. Plus the education, of course, but altogether it was better than Waltin could even have imagined in his wettest, most secret dreams. Then they’d walked around the unit and Wiijnbladh had shown and demonstrated and babbled like a little windmill while Waltin had had a half erection practically the whole time.
“Here, for example, we have a Matisse that came in last week,” Wiijnbladh had said, showing a painting that someone had set on a workbench. “Forgery, of course,” he’d said, sighing like the art connoisseur he surely was.
What do you say? Waltin had thought. I thought he’d painted that with his feet.
“I have a few pieces myself,” Waltin had declared with the bon viveur’s matter-of-factness. “Feels nice to hear that you keep a close watch on those kinds of things.”
Of course he had gotten on a first-name basis with him as soon as they’d shaken hands. That was half the fun. Then he’d made little snide remarks during the course of the journey whenever there was an opportunity.
“It’s just horrible that someone could do that to a child,” Waltin had said, shaking his head mournfully while Wiijnbladh showed him a little pair of undies on which one of Wiijnbladh’s colleagues in the forensic vineyard had evidently succeeded in identifying semen stains.
“Ugh yes,” Wiijnbladh had said.
“You have kids yourself,” Waltin had said; this was more a statement than a question, and of course he’d already known the answer.
“Unfortunately,” Wiijnbladh had answered, “my wife and I have not had any success in that regard.”
And in no other regard either, it appears, despite the fact that she can hardly be accused of a lack of willingness, Waltin had thought, making an effort to preserve an indifferent and sufficiently regretful expression.
“I myself don’t even have a woman by my side,” Waltin had said, shaking his head. I hardly have time to screw everyone else’s, he thought.
“Yes,” Wiijnbladh had said, and suddenly he’d seemed to have his thoughts somewhere else. “Although marriage can have its drawbacks.”
What is he saying? Waltin had thought. This is almost too good to be true.
Finally Wiijnbladh had shown him the weapons room: hundreds of weapons of all imaginable sizes and manufacture. Military and civilian automatic weapons, rifles and ordinary shotguns with whole or sawed-off barrels, revolvers and pistols, shootable walking sticks, pen pistols, bolt pistols, nail pistols, even a regular slaughtering mask.
“Mostly confiscations we’ve made in connection with various crimes,” Wiijnbladh had explained. “Although we purchase quite a few as well, to have in our weapons library.”
Yes, for you probably can’t read, Waltin had thought. What an unbelievable mess, he’d thought. Weapons on the walls, on shelves, in boxes and cabinets. Weapons and parts of weapons in an old shoe box that someone had clearly started sorting into smaller piles before he’d found something else to do. Weapons and parts on tables and benches and even a sawed-off, disassembled shotgun that someone had set aside on the seat of a chair before he’d run off to do who knows what.
“Seems to be quite a lot,” Waltin had said, nodding, as a telephone started ringing in the background.
“We have almost a thousand weapons here in the unit. Excuse me a moment,” Wiijnbladh had said.
“Sure,” Waltin had replied, and as soon as he’d heard him lift the receiver in the room outside, and without understanding how it really happened or why he did it, he’d stuck his hand down in a half-opened drawer, fished up a revolver with a short barrel, and let it glide down into his very deepest pocket.
“Excuse me,” Wiijnbladh had said when he came back, “but that was the after-hours unit that called.”
“Not at all,” Waltin had said. “If there’s anyone who should beg pardon it’s I, who am taking you away from more important tasks. I’d like to thank you greatly for the visit. It’s been very instructive.”
Almost as good as that time he’d seen dear Mother come out of the doorway where she lived and with the help of her canes and the usual antics limp away toward the stairway to the subway.
Wiijnbladh and his wife as usual celebrated Christmas with his sister-in-law, her semi-alcoholic husband, and their fourteen-year-old son in the town house in Sollentuna where they lived. It was exactly as wretched as it always was. First they ate and then they watched TV and then they passed out Christmas presents, and after that they watched TV again.
Then his brother-in-law fell asleep on the sofa after the usual intake of beer, wine, and a dozen shots, spiked coffees, and highballs. His head leaned back against the sofa at a ninety-degree angle, mouth wide open, violently snoring. His wife and her sister disappeared out into the kitchen, where they sat and giggled and drank wine behind a closed door. The son remained sitting, glaring furtively at Wiijnbladh when he thought he didn’t see him. Judging by his look he was retarded and undependable, thought Wiijnbladh, the only consolation in this connection probably being that he would soon turn fifteen and then Wiijnbladh would be able to look him up in the crime registry to see what he was really up to when he was expected to be in school or sitting at home doing his homework.