The prime minister as a young man, Pilgrim, Johansson’s own prime minister, seemed to have had a genuine interest in security work and intelligence operations. His work as an analyst also appeared to have been relatively unbound by the label his employer had put on his assignment. Whether that was in order to mislead the devil, or only a simple expression of the fact that he actually was a free operator, was beyond Johansson’s ability to judge, and Krassner no longer had any substantial contributions to make, either. But there was hardly anyone trying to rap the old prime minister’s personal assistant on the knuckles, thought Johansson.
To start with, according to Krassner but without particular details or evidence in the form of documents, he was said to have worked on the regular military cooperation between the Swedish and American intelligence services; what this actually involved was to analyze security requirements and in the end to exchange personnel, services, and the necessary material to satisfy those requirements. Here on several occasions he was said to have turned to Buchanan for assistance in both word and deed, but it was unclear what this would have consisted of in concrete terms. Krassner also pointed out that because Buchanan was working in a different branch of CIA operations, his contribution had mostly concerned arranging contacts and generally functioning as a type of door-opener and personal guarantor that Pilgrim was both “a good kid” and of “the right stuff.”
Of the prime minister’s alleged role in the building up of IB, the Information Bureau, Krassner had little to convey beyond what had come out or been suggested in the domestic public debate. Krassner recounted these briefly as generally known, clear facts, and that was all. Pilgrim had played a central role when the secret organization whose primary task was to keep the political opponents of the social democrats under supervision was established, and according to the same source, in a conversation with Buchanan as early as the fall of 1954, he was said to have made it completely clear that he considered his social democratic organization the “natural governing party in Sweden.”
Viewpoints of that type naturally disturbed Buchanan. Especially as they came from a “highly talented young man” with “stable conservative views,” and among his posthumous papers there was also a photocopy of his notations from the conversation with Pilgrim. Judging by the handwriting and the copy, written by Buchanan at the time when the conversation was supposed to have taken place, but as a piece of evidence nonetheless of secondary value because when all was said and done it was Buchanan’s version of what Pilgrim was supposed to have said. Not to mention being generally hard to interpret and cryptic in places.
All the same, thought Johansson, for by this time even Pilgrim was starting to show clear signs that his passion for intelligence operations was in the process of cooling. Instead it was his political activity and ambitions that had come to the fore, and it was also now that his career caught fire and started taking off in earnest. His political assignments started to be piled high and he’d gotten more and more say in his own job in a formal sense as well. At the start of the sixties he’d become head of the prime minister’s chancellery, and only a few years later he’d taken a seat in the government. During the following years he’d exchanged ministerial positions in the direction of the short end of the table, and when his own boss retired, at the end of the 1960s, it was time: prime minister, despite the fact that he was one of the very youngest members of the government and almost an alien species as a social democrat, considering his background, upbringing, and education.
I see then, thought Johansson, looking at his watch. The clock in his stomach had not started seriously ticking, mostly due to the fact that there were still several hours left before dinner, but he felt a strong desire to get out and move about. Not a walk, thought Johansson, for then melancholy would strike him in earnest. Drive into town, he decided, and return the book about economic history he’d borrowed from the library.
Once he was at the library he also took the opportunity to make a few inquiries of his own, and although he was only at a public library in Sundsvall, he more or less stumbled across an interesting piece of information about the mysterious Forselius that Wiklander evidently had missed. Not so strange in itself, thought Johansson, considering what he knew and what Wiklander didn’t know.
First he found a book with the title Great Swedes in Mathematics, and there he retrieved both Sonya Kovalevsky-despite the fact that she was Russian-and Professor Forselius, whose secret activities were passed over in complete silence and in which the further significance of what he’d otherwise done was in any event beyond Johansson. True, he could count, but higher mathematics left him cold. On the other hand there was nothing wrong with his eyes, and he noticed quite quickly that Forselius clearly had a disciple who was no slouch either. Who moreover shared the same name with the prime minister’s special adviser and approximately the same age too. So that’s how it is, thought Johansson, and then he returned home to his brother’s to have dinner.
Johansson lay awake quite a while that night and thought about his knowledge of the country’s prime minister, and for some reason he felt almost exhilarated as he did so. Hardly the man who’s described in the bourgeois press, thought Johansson, smiling as he lay in bed. More like some hero of the Western world out of a random issue of Reader’s Digest. He used to read the magazine cover to cover when he was young, “Humor in Uniform” and a little of the cold war’s musketeers, but no lettres de cachet, for here it was more likely a question of messages written with invisible ink, and no frothing horses but rather an old Buick V-8, rumbling along through dark and stormy nights, and if there were trapdoors they were probably in people’s heads. Although the hollow oak trees where you hid things would have been the same. Oaks could get as old as anything, after all.
There must have been a great deal worth writing about, thought Johansson, for he’d also read that in Reader’s Digest. The scoundrels from the East used to have pens that were actually pistols, umbrellas with poisoned ferrules, and innocent-looking walking sticks that with a quick tap on the handle could be transformed into shining rapiers with razor-sharp blades. But what had Pilgrim actually had, aside from his noble intentions and a good cause?
He would have needed someone like my big brother, thought Johansson. A slightly simpler companion like big brother with his shrewd head and his huge fists and his completely unsentimental ability to punch anyone and everyone on the jaw as soon as things didn’t suit him. Or like Jarnebring, perhaps? True, he wasn’t as shrewd as his brother, far from it, but when it came to genuine hand-to-hand fighting he was unbeatable. Not even James Bond could have managed him even by escaping, for then Jarnebring would have caught up with him and chopped him on the neck and given him a going-over until he was no more than an empty suit coat and a pair of limp trousers from some tailor on Old Bond Street and… About then he fell asleep, and when he woke up in the morning it was with the same smile on his lips.
Sweet Jesus, thought Johansson, laughing a little to himself. Pilgrim and Jarnie, what a radar unit.
High time to tie up my sack, and the sooner the better, thought Johansson, because it was Sunday, Epiphany Eve, and the day before his journey home. It had been a quick shower and an even quicker breakfast, and at six-thirty he was already at his place at the large desk in the farm office.