When he got back to work he hoped that Waltin would be there so they could discuss the new turn of events, but all there was of him was a message from Berg’s secretary that Waltin had waited for the longest time but had finally been compelled to take care of an urgent errand. Unfortunately he couldn’t be reached on his pager either, but he intended to be in touch early the next morning.
“If you don’t have any objections I was thinking about taking off too,” said his secretary with an amiable smile.
They met the following morning and Waltin was just as energetic, well-tailored, and smelling of aftershave as always. Berg himself had felt better. He had twisted and turned in bed until midnight, when he finally gave up, went into his study, and put his thoughts on paper. Then he made a fresh attempt at sleeping, with only moderate success. Not until four in the morning had he disappeared into some sort of dream-filled daze, and when he and his wife were eating breakfast she suggested that he should call in sick and stay home.
“I don’t suppose there’s anything I can help you with?” she asked. Berg had only shaken his head and an hour later he was sitting at his desk. As a final measure before leaving home he had fed his nighttime notes into the document shredder in his study. Waltin had to be content with a piece of paper that addressed only three points, which Berg expanded on with a brief oral account of what had occurred at yesterday’s meeting.
“I see,” said Waltin, handing back the paper he had just read. “Sounds as if we’d need a healthy increase in appropriations. In addition, I believe we’re in dangerous territory.”
Berg nodded to him to continue.
“If we take the first point-expanding, deepening, and completing our survey of certain officers, we’re going to have a lot of problems, to put it mildly.”
“What kind of problems?” asked Berg.
“First off, purely practical problems with our collection of data. I’ll give you an example. One of my recruiters became interested in a possible informant a while ago. He’ll finish police academy in a few months and is interning with a uniformed division in Östermalm and seemed tailor-made to infiltrate those circles we’re investigating.”
“But?”
“The problem was that he was already inside. It was by pure chance that we found out about him in time.”
And how many of them are there that we’ve missed? thought Berg, groaning internally.
“Suppose we succeed in solving this,” continued Waltin. “Really penetrate, really reel in these… forces… within the corps.” Waltin smiled.
“Yes?” Berg nodded to him to continue.
“Then we need only concern ourselves with the content, and if we try to do something about it we might just as well…” Waltin shrugged his shoulders. “You know what I mean. Both you and I have been around awhile. And what would happen to us? Are any of us that suicidal?” And you have to know what I mean, since you’ve got one in your own family, he thought, but he didn’t say that.
“Suggestion,” said Berg.
“First of all, time,” said Waltin. “We have to prolong the process. Use our difficulties to explain to them why it takes such a long time, but take enormous care to avoid doing anything about the matter itself.”
“And second,” asked Berg.
“See to it that we tone down what we’ve already given them. They’ve already got too much. We made a mistake there.”
Berg nodded. What choice did I have? he thought. To be replaced by someone like the Stockholm chief constable?
“We’ll do that,” said Berg. “Can you think about the arrangements and give me a concrete proposal?”
Waltin nodded and smiled in his engaging way.
“And when did you want to have it?” he asked.
“Well, preferably right now,” answered Berg, “but because it’s you, you can have a breather till first thing tomorrow.” Waltin is sharp, he thought. He thinks like I do. The question is whether I can rely on him the same way I rely on myself.
…
“It can wait,” decided Berg. Good Lord, he thought. I’ve got ten years left, after all.
“Threats and menaces against key political persons,” he continued.
“I could drown them in that,” answered Waltin and for some reason he seemed almost pleased. “Letters, telephone conversations, tips, complaints, surveillance material, our eavesdropping. You name it. There’s as much as you’d like.”
“What do we do? Shall we frighten them or keep them calm?”
“I think we should give them a suitable selection,” said Waltin. “Frighten them just enough while we explain to them that the advantage with these types is that they’re all talk and they never deliver.”
Berg nodded. We’ll do that, he thought.
“That miserable special adviser they’ve foisted on us. Do we have any threats against him?”
Waltin shook his head.
“Not a peep.”
“This is a generally well-regarded person? Popular in broad circles?”
“Can’t imagine that,” said Waltin. “The simple reason no doubt is that hardly anyone knows of his existence, and those who know about him are maybe not so well informed about his actual job description. With a few isolated highly placed exceptions. If you want I can snoop around. Hear if there’s something in spite of it all.” Waltin smiled a meaningful smile.
“Forget about that,” said Berg, shaking his head. “I don’t intend to lie awake nights for his sake.”
Perhaps a bit too casual, thought Berg. That last bit, anyway, was probably unnecessary.
After lunch Berg had a last-minute meeting with Kudo and Bülling at their urgent request. What they had to report was so important that they could only do so directly to him. They were clearly punctual as well, for when Berg arrived one minute late they were already sitting at their places in his own conference room.
An odd couple, thought Berg as he greeted them. Kudo was small, dark, thin, well-trained, well-dressed, and obviously careful to make a keen impression. His entire being exuded high alert, and just like all the others in the corps who were the same way and that Berg had encountered during his more than thirty years, he tried to crush the metacarpals of the person with whom he was shaking hands. Bülling was tall, fair, and lanky, his head drooping as he peeked out obliquely when he shook hands. His thin hand was dripping with sweat, and as soon as Berg released it he quickly put it back into the pocket of his baggy Manchester corduroy jacket.
Hand sweat, thought Berg at the same time as an alarm bell started to ring inside him. “Abundant or profuse hand sweat can indicate large consumption of psychopharmaceuticals,” thought Berg, who had learned that by heart at internal education in personnel defense: The course where you learned everything about how to defend yourself in good time against your own personnel. Best to make discreet contact with the bureau’s psychiatrist, Berg decided, smiling extra amiably at both of his visitors. The last thing he wanted was for one of his coworkers to flip out in his office.
“Please,” said Berg, indicating with his right hand. What a strange couple, he thought.
“This is about the PKK,” said Kudo with fateful seriousness in his voice.
“Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan,” muttered Bülling with his eyes toward the tabletop.
Damn initials, thought Berg.
“I know,” he said. “The Kurdistan workers’ party, previously known as Kurdistan’s revolutionaries. Continue.” He nodded at them.
What this was about, purely concretely, was a wiretapped telephone conversation that had been snapped up a little less than a week before, after which it had taken up the entire analysis group’s combined capacity. At 22:37 hours Semir G., “known Kurdish activist,” had phoned his neighbor Abdullah A., also a “known Kurdish activist,” both living in the same apartment block on Terapivägen in Flemingsberg. After blathering about this and that in Kurdish for almost half an hour they suddenly got to the point.