Sara ran.
It wouldn’t be long before the old town was crawling with police. Even though she had only defended herself, she didn’t want to expose herself any further. She could only hope that no one had managed to catch what had happened on video. But tourists generally had cameras and mobiles primed at all times.
The soles of her shoes thudded against the cobblestones as she reached Kindstugatan. As she approached number 14, she stopped and looked around.
Was anyone following her?
It seemed not.
The next problem:
Should she really enter a building where Thörnell was?
What if he was cooperating with Dorch? With the whole cell? No, hardly. Thörnell had warned her about Rau just now. And if it had been a trap then surely Dorch wouldn’t have attacked in the middle of the street. He could just as well have been watching Sara’s door himself and then followed her through the old town.
She decided to go with her instincts. If nothing else, to see whether she had correctly guessed that Lucidor was the clue.
On the door of number 14 there was a sign informing her that this was home to an accountancy firm. Through the large window, Sara saw a couple of men and a woman in front of computers. It all looked decidedly harmless, so she rang the bell and one of the men came and opened the door.
‘Lars Johansson?’ said Sara.
‘Welcome. I’m Fredrik,’ said the man with a smile as he offered his hand. He had a beard and thick-rimmed glasses framing a pair of kind eyes. He was palpably muscular, but built like a bear so that he seemed more cuddly than dangerous. ‘This is Peter and Anna,’ Fredrik continued, gesturing towards the other two, who looked up from their screens. Sara scrutinised the group a little more closely and noticed that all three seemed to be carrying pistols in shoulder holsters under their jacket, cardigan, and blazer respectively.
‘Nicely done,’ said a voice beside Sara, and when she turned around Tore Thörnell was suddenly standing there, closing the front door behind him. ‘You’ll have to excuse the secrecy, but I’m most reluctant to state names and addresses that are classified on the phone or by text message.’
‘No problem,’ said Sara.
‘That’s the exact spot where he died,’ said Fredrik, pointing to the floor by the small kitchenette. ‘By the steps down to the cellar.’
Sara realised he meant Lasse Lucidor, but there were no steps where he was pointing. But then Thörnell pressed a button under the draining board and part of the floor slid aside, revealing a spiral staircase leading down into the darkness. Thörnell led the way, Sara following, and the hatch slid smoothly shut behind them.
‘Voi ch’entrate,’ said Thörnell, flattering Sara by not translating.
The spiral staircase ended outside a locked iron door. Thörnell pulled out his mobile and placed it in a metal box on the wall, nodding to Sara that she should do the same. She couldn’t help wondering how smart it was to abandon her means of contact with the outside world.
Oh well, she still had her gun.
Once Sara had put her mobile in the box, Thörnell entered a code into the door beside it and stepped through. Sara followed and discovered a cellar filled with computer screens and servers beneath a vaulted stone ceiling. The contrast between the fourteenth century and the twenty-first was undeniably startling. In the centre of the vault there loomed a long, rather shabby meeting table that looked as though it might have been there since the days of Lasse Lucidor. Thörnell sat down and Sara sat opposite him.
‘I’m glad,’ said the colonel, pouring them coffee from a cafetiere into IKEA mugs. Presumably not his choice, Sara assumed. ‘That you’ve come to no harm, I mean. Because you are in far greater danger than you realise.’
‘Yes, I don’t seem to be able to trust anyone,’ Sara countered, looking Thörnell straight in the eyes.
‘That wasn’t at all what you think it was,’ he said. ‘You must trust that I have your best interests at heart.’
‘I was just attacked on Västerlånggatan,’ said Sara, showing him the hole in her jacket and the cut on her stomach. ‘By Günther Dorch. Is he Rau?’
Thörnell shook his head and almost looked amused.
‘If it had been Rau then you wouldn’t have survived. What happened to Dorch?’
‘He got away.’
‘Take it as a warning. Rau is far more dangerous.’
‘Yes, you keep saying so.’
‘For good reason,’ said Thörnell, scrutinising Sara while she sipped her coffee.
So Dorch was Stefan Kremp, Sara thought to herself. That meant there were two former terrorists out to get her.
A thought occurred to her.
‘Do we have an audience today?’
She went over to the medieval brick wall and searched around the room. There was no false mirror or anything else that looked like a camera lens. For safety’s sake, she checked Thörnell’s jacket and breast pocket too, but found no bugs.
‘It’s just you and I,’ said Thörnell. ‘Believe me, what I am about to tell you is something I do not want anyone else to hear.’
‘And what’s that then?’ said Sara, sitting back down.
‘You found a body outside your front door yesterday,’ said Thörnell. ‘Hans Gerlach.’
‘Alias Bo Enberg.’
‘Badly knocked about, so I gather.’
‘Tortured.’
‘By Rau.’
‘Who else?’
‘And before that, he fired shots into your apartment.’
‘Missing me by a few centimetres. And he’s been bugging the apartment,’ said Sara.
‘Why do you think he took those shots? And why do you think he left the body outside your door?’
‘Isn’t it pretty obvious? To warn me.’
‘And why did you not take those warnings?’
Sara thought about this for a moment before answering.
‘Why did he only warn me? He killed the others without hesitation.’ This was something Sara had been thinking about a great deal.
‘Because you’re a police officer.’
‘A left-wing terrorist and killer who wants to spare the cops? Maybe not, eh?’
‘You have the wrong impression of him. Rau is on your side.’
‘On my side?’ Sara snorted. ‘Those aren’t quite the signals I’m getting.’
Thörnell looked at Sara for a long time, and she stared sternly back.
‘Do you remember our discussion about Stay-Behind?’ he said.
‘Yes. A kind of secret resistance movement with its headquarters in the hidden room in your apartment. What’s that got to do with this?’
Sara had spent much of her summer convalescence reading. About the Cold War, NATO, the Warsaw Pact, the Stasi, the CIA, the KGB and Stay-Behind in various countries. A whole stack of books that had fundamentally changed her perspective on the world.
Thörnell cleared his throat slightly.
‘I must remind you that it was a contradictory time. An enemy’s enemy became one’s friend, and it was perfectly common to share mutual friends with one’s enemies. Which made alliances a quagmire. Nothing that anyone said was true, and before long the construction of false fronts had gone so far that no one knew who anyone was any longer. False names, invented memories, different versions for different players. The game took on a life of its own and it became impossible to stop it. And as they lost their grasp on reality, it became increasingly dangerous. A tightrope walk on a slack rope in absolute pitch darkness, in which you had no idea what was at either end, but you were still obliged to walk it. You had to move forward to avoid falling.’
‘Poetic,’ Sara said acidulously. ‘But it’s really just another way of saying that no one knew what they were doing. Paranoid warmongers on both sides set the agenda.’
‘I don’t agree with that. Remember the Iron Curtain which was drawn after the end of the Second World War – the entire eastern bloc became vassal states to the Soviet Union. It was a very real policy that affected millions for decades. There was no paranoid warmongering in the desire to prevent that development.’
‘And they were as afraid as we were of being invaded,’ Sara commented.
‘Which made them dangerous.’
‘I’m not saying it didn’t.’
‘Communism also spread to other parts of the world,’ the old colonel continued. ‘The whole doctrine was based on acting to deliver global revolution. In Europe, the communist parties were particularly powerful in France and Italy. And close to taking power in free elections. It was assessed that a development like that would lead to these countries affiliating themselves with the eastern bloc.’
‘“Assessed”? You mean the results of wild guessing?’
‘Not quite. We saw it happen in Czechoslovakia when the communist party became the biggest party and helped to form the government. It led to them taking power in the country and assimilating into the Soviet sphere.’
‘Surely there was a difference between Czechoslovakia and Western Europe?’ Sara objected.
‘Not really. Support for communism was immensely widespread in many of our countries. If they had been able to unite, they would have taken over. But such a course of events had to be stopped at any cost.’
‘So after the war, the CIA and MI6 established secret resistance movements in all NATO member states, if I’ve understood correctly,’ Sara added. She had read about this in her hospital bed. ‘As well as in neutral countries like Sweden, Finland, Austria and Switzerland. In Italy, it was called Gladio, in Denmark it was Absalon, in Norway it was the ROC and here you opted for Stay-Behind. But what does this have to do with Rau?’
She drained the last of her coffee and poured another cup for herself. She glanced at the many computers.
‘To prevent the communists from growing too powerful, we needed a counter-strategy,’ said Thörnell. ‘Instead of just sitting around waiting for a fait accompli.’
‘You’re thinking of the terrorist acts perpetrated by Gladio in Europe?’
‘Some went too far. I do agree in that respect.’
‘Too far?!’ Sara shook her head. ‘Bombs at Italian railway stations, the Brabant massacres in Belgian supermarkets. All controlled by the CIA and NATO. Just to lay the blame on left-wing terrorists and scare people into demanding bigger police forces and armies.’
‘“Destabilise in order to stabilise” was how they described it. A lot of stupid things were done at the time.’
‘Stupid? Yes, I guess you might call it that. Are things better now then?’ Sara snorted.
‘Much better.’
‘Given your hatred of communists, surely Rau ought to be mortal enemy number one for you. Why don’t you want me to chase him down?’
Thörnell was quiet for a long time. For once, he looked down at the table instead of meeting her eye.
‘Sara . . . What I’m about to tell you is something you can never tell anyone. I really ought to have you sign a non-disclosure agreement, but I’m not sure that would make any difference in your eyes. I’ll just have to trust you.’
‘Like I trusted you, until you let someone listen to our conversation from your secret room.’
Thörnell refrained from commenting.
‘You have children, a family,’ he said instead. ‘Your whole life ahead of you. So please, listen to me. And repay my trust in you by not repeating it.’
‘Repeating what?’
Thörnell paused and slowly spun his mug one hundred and eighty degrees before answering.
‘Our good friend Rau was a double agent. He was inserted into Kommando 719 by the West German Stay-Behind network.’
‘What are you saying? The person who fired into my apartment is under NATO control?’
Sara felt anger welling up inside her again.
‘Let me finish,’ Thörnell said calmly.
‘Don’t you bloody dare try and defend him!’
‘No. But you have to—’
‘Did you know about it? Did you know that he would take the shots?’
‘Definitely not. But let me explain.’
‘How the hell are you going to explain that he might have killed my son?’ said Sara, who had to restrain herself from lunging at Thörnell.
‘Wait! Listen. Rau’s mission was to incite the terrorists and make them show their brutality to the people here, thus minimising sympathy for the communists.’
‘So you work with Rau? Do you still?’
‘No. And I never have done. As part of my posting to NATO, I had a certain level of oversight, but nothing more than that. I know that Rau attended training camps with both the Red Army Faction in Lebanon and with NATO’s Gladio outfit in Sardinia. There aren’t many who have been trained by both sides like that. A successful infiltration. He was provided with a considerable criminal record by the West German police and then began turning up at demonstrations, in cafés and at various collectives where he was always militant in discussion.’
‘So you wanted to agitate the communists through him and make them more violent? That sounds insane. How could you be so terrified of these tiny little groups? Did people really think there might be a revolution in Sweden?’ Sara said, with doubt in her voice.
‘They didn’t just think it,’ said Thörnell. ‘Haven’t you read all the articles in the tabloids about the Soviet plans for an invasion of Sweden? A constant state of alert was the reality we lived in back then. We were always on the brink of war.’
A memory returned to Sara. A nuclear strike drill at school, their teacher showing them how to crawl under their desks. As if that would have helped, she thought to herself.
‘And it wasn’t just the communists who had militaristic plans. Do you remember the op-ed written by that group of naval officers in Dagens Nyheter, or are you too young for that? The one where they attacked Olof Palme. In 1985,’ said Thörnell, looking at her searchingly.
‘I know about it. They thought he posed a security risk.’
‘Exactly. Said he wasn’t protesting the submarine incursions into Swedish waters because he was in the pay of the Soviet Union. It is worth noting that in all countries where military chiefs have publicly distanced themselves from a leader elected by the people, this has been followed by a military coup. It’s probably very fortunate that we never found out what would have happened had Palme actually gone to the USSR that spring. There were widespread reports that a large group of military officers and police had laid the ground for a coup to take place while Palme was in the Soviet Union. In the end it never happened, since he was gunned down.’
‘Didn’t some people think the Palme murder was the beginning of a coup?’ said Sara.
‘Yes. And some still think it was, but that it failed because some key players backed out of it on the night of the murder,’ said the colonel.
‘You mean to say that there was reason to believe those theories?’
‘What most people don’t know today is how many different scenarios were possible at the time. Anything could have happened. It’s easy after the fact to believe that the Soviet Union and East Germany were predestined to fall, and that Sweden was secure in its neutrality. But many times we were just minutes or millimetres away from catastrophe or a complete about-turn. No one realises how completely inconceivable it was just a week before the fall of the Wall that it would be torn down, or that the Soviet Union would disintegrate. Just like no one could conceive of the idea that Sweden might become a communist dictatorship. Or a fascist one, for that matter.’
Three loud beeps were followed by the iron door opening and Fredrik entering with an iPad in his hand. He went over and showed the screen to Thörnell, who looked at it and nodded.
‘Yevgeny. And his wife. This is what the modern KGB man looks like.’
He addressed the last bit to Sara while holding up the tablet to her. The display showed the street outside. A forbidding man with chiselled cheekbones and a woman in head-to-toe Gucci were strolling past. Sara thought the man looked familiar. But where could she have seen him?
‘Are we busted?’ Fredrik asked, cool as a cucumber.
‘I think they’re probably tourists for real,’ said Thörnell. ‘Otherwise he would have brought another woman. They never bring their real wives on assignment.’
‘OK.’
‘But keep an eye out. They may have changed the rules. Because they know we know.’
Fredrik left and Thörnell turned back to Sara.
‘I thought you were retired,’ she said.
‘I am. But they might as well ask me, given I’m here. Where were we?’
‘Fascist dictatorship.’
‘Ah yes. That’s where Rau came into the picture too. Operation Winter was to have taken place in the spring of ‘86 – a brutal attack in Stockholm’s city centre by Kommando 719 while the Prime Minister was in the Soviet Union. Forcing the military to deploy and save the country. But when Palme was assassinated, they cancelled the operation and regrouped.’
‘Was it the same with Operation Wahasha?’
‘Operation Wahasha wasn’t our plan – it was the Stasi’s.’
‘But if Rau was deployed by Stay-Behind and he was the one running Operation Wahasha, then NATO had agreed to its execution.’
Thörnell looked at Sara for a while before he said anything.
‘The attitude in certain key parts of the major defence alliance was that the Swedes were far too naïve. We Swedes perceived Sweden as being so stable and safe that we didn’t believe anything could happen here. Our communists were not only tolerated, but almost had the common touch. Lars Werner was popular well beyond his own party. No one took them seriously; no one thought they would be capable of driving through a revolution. At the same time, they were largely funded by the Soviet Union and completely loyal to them. They sided with them in all international conflicts and demonstrated against the USA and NATO.’
‘But Wahasha was about the king.’
‘The assessment was that something big was needed to discredit the communists. And in Sweden the king has always been beloved, even by the proletariat. An attack on him carried out by communist guerrillas backed by the DDR and Stasi would nudge Sweden in the right direction.’
‘You would have let them kill him?’
The idea was far too shocking for Sara to quite digest.
‘It might not have been necessary,’ said the colonel. ‘It would probably have had the same impact if he had survived an assassination attempt.’
‘And why did you think that impact was needed? Hadn’t glasnost and perestroika already begun to transform the eastern bloc?’
‘Gorbachev’s popularity made the demonisation of the Soviet Union increasingly difficult, but the hawks at NATO didn’t think his politics would lead to any form of democratisation. And West Germany was already home to Willy Brandt’s “Ostpolitik” – which was based on forging closer relations with the East Germans and USSR. “Change through rapprochement” as he called it. The Soviet Union with a human face might deceive even more people.’
Sara did her best to take in all this information. She leaned back and shut her eyes for a while to order her thoughts, then she perched her elbows on the table and looked at Thörnell.
‘So to summarise: you have to protect Rau to ensure that your own secrets don’t come to light? Which would be particularly unfortunate given the current campaign for Sweden to join NATO?’
‘It’s not the ideal time, no.’
‘Does that mean that I have all of NATO against me? And the CIA?’ The thought was dizzying.
‘We’ve tried to keep this in-house. Well, the Germans know about it.’
‘Is Operation Wahasha still live?’ Sara asked.
‘What’s live today is something I’m most definitely unable to say. But it would probably be a very good idea if you kept quiet about Operation Wahasha.’
‘For both me and you, I suppose.’
Sara smiled grimly at him and got up, as if to show that their discussion was over.
Thörnell followed Sara out. They went through the metal door and she stopped a couple of steps up the spiral staircase while he locked up. ‘You have no protection and no assistance,’ he told her.
‘You’re helping me.’
‘Only with information. I have no say these days.’
‘Then I suppose I’ll have to manage by myself,’ said Sara, nodding farewell to Thörnell. Then she turned around and continued up the stairs.
‘Wait, don’t forget your mobile.’
Sara turned around again and took the mobile that the colonel had retrieved from the metal box.
She stood there frozen to the spot for a few seconds staring at Thörnell’s hand.
And then it hit her.
‘The mobile!’ she shouted. ‘Abeba’s mobile!’
She turned on her heel and ran up the stairs and into the street. On the way, she called Anna.
Thörnell watched her disappear into the distance. Then he pulled out his own mobile and dialled.