Now he chuckled again.
“Seven percent is bad enough,” said Berg.
“That the number should be nine hundred seventy was, by the way, a piece of information I got from the chief constable. Do you mean that he could have underestimated his own personnel by more than fifty percent?”
Sweden’s most moronic police officer and the only one who votes for the social democrats, if you believe what he says himself, so he might very well have, thought Berg.
“I am the one, no doubt, who is misinformed,” said Berg. “However that may be, it’s bad enough.”
“These hundred or so you’ve picked out for us”-the special adviser mostly seemed to be thinking out loud-“do they form just the tip of an iceberg or are things on the contrary so fortunate that you’ve managed to include pretty much all of them?”
“Unfortunately one has to account for a certain number of omissions,” said Berg defensively.
“Now, if one were to harbor such opinions while observing so-called normal human behavior, that’s to say without running around shouting ‘Heil Hitler’ and singing ‘Die Fahne Hoch’ while dressed in a peaked cap with a skull on it…”
“There is probably a risk of that, yes. Unfortunately,” said Berg. Where are you going now? he thought.
“But rather, one settles for silent complicity and writes one’s recommendations in one way and not another and uses simple scheduling and planning, for example, to ensure that no female officers are allowed to set foot in the field or that no immigrants are admitted to the police academy. As long as one is content with that, one doesn’t end up in your survey, in any case?”
No, thought Berg. How would you be able to do that? But he didn’t say that, of course.
“Answer is yes,” said Berg and just as he said that he wished he had bitten off his tongue instead.
“Answer is yes,” repeated the special adviser, looking as though he had just tasted something extra delicious. “It sounds like a serious deficiency in the method of investigation itself.”
Get out of this, thought Berg. Turn it around.
“I interpret your comments to mean that perhaps you have been thinking about the matter, that you have some concrete suggestions?”
“I don’t know about suggestions. Regardless of whether there are five or fifty percent we have to find a way to get rid of them. Preferably immediately, and in the worst case as soon as possible. We are talking about the Swedish police, not about the SS or the SA or the Gestapo. Not even about the Secret Swedish State Police, or Sestapo, which for some reason they preferred to call themselves in the good old days.”
How naïve can you be? thought Berg. The union would never go along, and someone like you surely ought to have learned that, at least.
“Unfortunately I see certain problems with legislation and employment-security regulations and union interests. To only mention a few of the factors in this connection.” Berg shrugged his shoulders eloquently.
It hadn’t gotten better. They’d gone over time by almost two hours. And he couldn’t excuse himself and leave, either. Especially not when perhaps that was precisely what they hoped he would do.
“I was thinking about your excellent memorandum, the one about the secret police and the military as the great threats against democracy,” said the special adviser. “Not the ones who go around in uniforms that your survey deals with. It’s not the traffic cops who keep me awake at night.” Now he seemed to be thinking out loud again.
“Not me either anymore,” the minister interjected happily, speaking for the first time in half an hour. “Not since I stopped driving,” he said and tittered.
“No,” said Berg politely. “Yes,” he added inquiringly, looking at his tormentor. What are you driving at? he thought.
“Would you describe your own coworkers as more or less reliable than those characters you’ve just described for us?”
“That is clearly a completely different category of officer,” said Berg emphatically. “Behavior, opinions, or thoughts of the type described would never be tolerated by us.” Finally, solid ground under his feet, he thought.
“Secret police officers are more intelligent than regular police,” the special adviser clarified. “More controlled, more reticent, completely normal in their outer, observable behavior, in short. Above all, are they more reticent?”
“Certainly,” said Berg, in spite of the fact that he now saw the direction in which they were heading. Fortunately they’re significantly more reticent than most, he thought.
“If you make the Hitler salute before a job interview you won’t be working for the secret police, period,” said the special adviser. “Sounds like a tricky group to investigate.”
“What do you mean?” asked Berg, even though he already knew.
“More talented, reticent, discreet, quite normal in their behavior. But how do they think, in reality? They’re all police officers, of course, same background, same education, same experiences. Many of them are even born and bred.”
“I have complete confidence in all those who are working for us,” said Berg with even more emphasis.
“It’s no doubt there that we differ,” said the special adviser. “Misunderstand me correctly,” he added quickly. “What I mean is only that self-evident lunatics, the kind that clearly show what they think and feel and intend, have an almost calming effect on me. It’s the others that disturb me.”
Me too, thought Berg, but it was the last thing he would think of saying to someone like that.
Now it has to be over soon anyway, thought Berg, stealing a glance at his watch. Otherwise I’ll simply have to think of something regardless of the consequences.
“A completely different matter,” said the adviser, observing Berg behind half-closed eyelids.
Be content to nod, thought Berg, nodding.
“Purely concretely, and if we try to enter these people’s mind-set, though apart of course from the material content and the qualitative substance. I am speaking of those so-called colleagues who are included in your investigation.”
“Yes?” said Berg questioningly. You never learn, he thought with irritation.
“What do they dislike the most,” he said. “Person, fact, social phenomenon, thing? What’s their lowest common denominator?”
So this was where we were going, thought Berg.
“The prime minister,” said Berg. “If there is a particular person that you have in mind, then unfortunately it is the case that the prime minister seems to form a recurring object of hatred.”
“So that’s why they use his portrait for target practice during their open-air activities,” said the special adviser, and for some reason he was smiling broadly as he said it.
“I am not aware of that as a fact,” answered Berg, but it didn’t seem as though the other was listening: he was reclining comfortably in his chair, eyelids half-lowered, hands clasped over his fat stomach, although no longer smiling.
That man is definitely not in his right mind, thought Berg.
Before they left they agreed that this was a question to be viewed with the utmost seriousness and assigned the highest priority. In addition the survey must be broadened. How did it look in the rest of the country? How did it look within the secret police and the military? And what of that business of the threat against the prime minister and the country’s highest political leadership?
They wanted a comprehensive compilation of data as soon as possible. Broadly and in depth and without wavering or shying away from any facts, however unpleasant they might be. The purely practical aspects were turned over to Berg and his coworkers with confidence. What is going on? thought Berg as he sat in the backseat of his service car en route to his office on Kungsholmen. It’s already dark out; soon it will be winter, and what happened to summer, actually? Where did it go?