Exposed (18 page)

Annika pushed her plate away and wiped her mouth on her napkin.

‘So what happened after the fifties?’ she said.

‘IB,’ Berit said. ‘It was set up in 1957.’

‘The Information Bureau,’ Annika said.

‘Also known as “Information for Birger”,’ Berit said. ‘He was the head of the domestic division, Birger Elmér. The section for foreign espionage was called the “T Office” for a while, after the boss there, Thede Palm.’

Annika shook her head.

‘God, what a muddle,’ she said. ‘How do you keep all this clear in your head?’

Berit smiled and relaxed.

‘I was a subscriber to
People in Focus
when the revelations came out. I’ve written a fair bit about IB since then. Nothing revolutionary, but I’ve kept up with it.’

The waiter took away what was left of Annika’s pizza, the crusts and a few tough lumps of what was meant to be pork.

‘My dad used to talk about IB,’ Annika said. ‘He thought the whole thing had been blown way out of proportion. He used to say it was all about the country’s security, and that the Social Democrats really ought to be thanked for taking responsibility for defending our way of life.’

Berit put her glass down heavily on the table.

‘The Social Democrats kept a register of people’s political affiliations for their own purposes. They broke their own laws, they lied, they manipulated the system. And they’re still lying. I talked to their spokesman today. He refuses point-blank to admit that he ever knew Birger Elmér, or had anything at all to do with the Information Bureau.’

‘Maybe he’s telling the truth,’ Annika said.

Berit gave her a sympathetic look.

‘Believe me,’ she said, ‘IB is the Social Democrats’ Achilles heel, their biggest, most monumental mistake, even though it was also the way they were able to hold on to power. They’ll do anything to cover up their abuse of power. They managed to create a map of the whole population of Sweden. They persecuted people because of their political views; they got people fired from their jobs. They’re going to lie until there’s categorical proof
of what they did. And when that happens, they’ll start coming up with excuses instead.’

‘So how did they go about it, then? Some sort of Social Democratic security police?’

‘No, they used the organization of Social Democratic workplace ombudsmen. There’s nothing wrong with the organization on the surface – it was set up to relay party messages to people at work.’

‘So why was it so secretive then?’

‘The ombudsmen did all the groundwork for the Information Bureau. Everything they reported was passed to Elmér and the government. And they’re the proof that IB and the Social Democrats were basically the same organization.’

Annika looked through the window at the summer evening. Three dusty plastic plants obstructed the view. Behind them the filthy window formed a grey barrier against the traffic outside.

‘So what was kept in the foreign archive?’ she asked.

Berit sighed. ‘The names of a whole load of agents, journalists, sailors, aid workers: basically, anyone who travelled a lot. They wrote reports, and they were supposed to predict impending crises. For instance, they had agents in Vietnam reporting back to Sweden, and that information was passed on to the Americans, as well as to the British. The reports may have looked like travel diaries, but they were actually full of intelligence information. They covered things like the Vietnamese infrastructure, how people lived, what they thought about current events, what morale was like.’

‘But Sweden was neutral!’ Annika said, shocked.

‘Oh yes,’ Berit said bitterly. ‘Birger Elmér used to meet the US Ambassador and Head of Intelligence for lunch at an out-of-town restaurant. And Elmér used to talk to Olof Palme a lot. Palme used to say that he
would deal with the politics, as long as Elmér kept the Americans happy. And so Palme would go and shout at all the demos, while Elmér did his best to keep the Yanks on side.’

‘And now a copy of their archive has suddenly popped up?’ Annika said.

‘I’m convinced the original archive is still out there somewhere,’ Berit said. ‘The question is: where?’

‘What about the domestic archive, then?’

‘That was completely illegal. It contained detailed personal information about people who were thought to be enemies of the Social Democratic Party, probably around twenty thousand names in total. Everyone on the list would have been interned if war had broken out. But even in peacetime they had trouble getting work. They were excluded from involvement in the unions, for instance. And you didn’t have to be a Communist to end up on the list. Just reading the wrong newspaper was enough, or having the wrong friends, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

They sat for a few minutes without speaking. Annika cleared her throat.

‘But this is still about things that happened forty years ago,’ she said. ‘Back then people were still being sterilized against their will, and DDT was being sprayed all over the place. Why do these documents matter so much today?’

Berit thought for a moment.

‘They probably contain a lot of pretty bad stuff, information about break-ins and bugging, and so on. But the really sensitive stuff is missing: the big picture.’

‘Which means what, exactly?’ Annika asked.

Berit closed her eyes. ‘When it comes down to it, the Social Democrats were spying for America. Any deviation from neutrality that can be proved with these
documents is, by today’s standards, even worse than keeping a register of people’s political affiliations. The government not only lied to the country, but were cosying up to one of the superpowers. Not that this was without risk, of course. The Soviets knew what the Swedish position was, largely from what Stig Wennerström told them before he was caught and found guilty of treason. The Russians built that into their military planning. Sweden would probably have been one of the first targets in any new war, because of the government’s duplicity.’

Annika looked wide-eyed at Berit.

‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘Do you really think things were as bad as that?’

Berit finished the last of her beer.

‘If all the grubby details of what the Information Bureau actually did were revealed, it would ruin the Social Democrats. People would lose whatever faith they have left in them. The archive is the key. They’d have a hard time trying to form a government any time in the foreseeable future if the archive reappeared.’

The teenagers at the next table got up and left, with a great deal of noise. They tumbled out into the warm evening, leaving behind them an abstract pattern of peanuts and spilled shandy on the table. Annika and Berit watched them go through the window, as they crossed the road to the bus-stop. A number 62 pulled up and they disappeared onto it.

Should I say something about the Ninja Barbies? Annika wondered.

Berit looked at her watch.

‘Well, I guess it’s time,’ she said. ‘My last train goes soon.’

Annika hesitated, as Berit waved to the waiter.

Oh, I can’t be bothered, Annika thought. No one’s ever going to find out.

‘Thank goodness I’m off tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait.’

Berit sighed, then smiled. ‘I’ve got a couple more days’ work ahead of me with IB,’ she said. ‘But it’ll be worth it.’

Annika smiled back. ‘Yes, I can see why you’d think that. Are you a Communist yourself?’

Berit laughed. ‘And I suppose you’re spying for IB?’

Annika started laughing as well.

They paid and headed out into the summer evening as it gradually changed colour and texture, from evening to night.

She was woken by the draught. She stayed in bed and shut her eyes. Through her eyelids she could just make out the sharpness of the light through the open window. It was morning. Not late enough to make her feel bad about wasting the day, but late enough for her to feel properly rested.

Annika pulled on her dressing-gown and went out into the stairwell. The cracked mosaic on the floor was pleasantly cool under her feet. The toilet was one flight down; she shared it with the tenants on the upper floors.

The curtains flapped like great sails in the draught when she came back into the flat. She had bought thirty metres of light linen material and draped it over the old curtain rails, and the effect was striking. The flat was painted white throughout. The previous tenant had painted everything with undercoat and then given up. The flat walls reflected and absorbed light, making the rooms translucent.

She slowly wandered through the living room and into the kitchen. The floor space was uncluttered, she had almost no furniture. The tiles were different shades of grey, from decades of cleaning and lime-wash. The ceiling hovered like a white sky high above her, clean
and soft. She set some water to boil on the gas stove, measured three spoonfuls of coffee into her Bodum cafetière, poured on the water and pushed the plunger down. The fridge was empty. She would have to get a sandwich on the train.

The morning paper lay in shreds on the hall floor: the letterbox was too small. She picked it up and sat down on the floor with her back against the pantry door.

The usual stuff: the Middle East, the election campaign, the heatwave. Not a single line about Josefin. She was already history, just another statistic. Yet another article about the Information Bureau. This time she actually read it. It was by a professor in Gothenburg who was demanding an independent inquiry. Right on, Annika thought.

She couldn’t be bothered to go and shower in the next building, so just splashed herself with water from the tap in the sink. The water was no longer ice-cold, so there was no need to heat it up.

The evening papers had just been delivered, so she bought both of them from the newsagent on Scheele-gatan. The
Evening Post
was leading with IB, of course.

Annika smiled. Berit really was one of the best. Her own articles were well-placed, on pages eight, nine, ten and the centrefold. She read through her piece on the police suspect, and thought it was pretty good. She had written that the police were following a line of inquiry concerning a person close to Josefin. Josefin had felt threatened and scared before. There were indications that she had been abused previously. She smiled again. Without mentioning Joachim, she had made it very clear what the police were thinking. Then there was the orgy of grief out in Täby. She was pleased that she had managed to keep strictly to the facts. The picture had
turned out fine; they had used one of some girls next to the candles. They weren’t crying in the picture, which was a relief.

The other evening paper didn’t have anything special, apart from the next instalment of their series about ‘life after your holiday’. She thought she might read that on the train.

The wind had got up, blowing the hot air around. She bought an ice-cream for breakfast on Bergsgatan, then walked down Kaplansbacken towards the Central Station. She was in luck: the Intercity train to Malmö was due to leave in five minutes. She settled down in the buffet car, and was first in line for a sandwich when they started serving. She had not had time to get a ticket, and bought one from the conductor.

Apart from her, only three Middle Eastern-looking men got off at Flen. The bus to Hälleforsnäs left in fifteen minutes, so she sat on a bench in front of the town hall, staring at a sculpture entitled
Vertical Longing
. It was spectacularly awful. She ate a bag of sweets on the bus, before getting off outside the supermarket.

‘Congratulations,’ Ulla, one of her mother’s friends, said. She was standing smoking next to a flowerbed, wearing a bright green coat.

‘What for?’ Annika wondered with a smile.

‘On all your success! Front pages and everything! Everyone here in Hälleforsnäs is so proud of you!’ Ulla shouted.

Annika laughed and waved off the praise. She walked up past the church, heading for home. It all seemed dead and abandoned. The red-painted blocks of flats were steaming in the heat.

I hope Sven isn’t there, she thought.

The flat was empty. All the houseplants were dead. An overfull bag of rubbish was stinking out the kitchen.
She took it out to the garbage chute, then opened all the windows. The plants would have to wait. She didn’t have the energy to deal with them right now.

Her mother seemed genuinely pleased to see her. She hugged Annika with clumsy hands, cool but slightly sweaty.

‘Are you hungry? I’ve got some elk stew on the stove.’

Her mother’s latest boyfriend was a hunter.

They sat down at the kitchen table, and her mother lit a cigarette. The window was open, and Annika could hear some kids arguing about a bicycle outside. She looked down the hill towards the ironworks, its rough tin roofs stretching as far as the eye could see.

‘So tell me, how did you do it?’

Her mother smiled expectantly.