Another Time, Another Life

I

On Thursday the twenty-fourth of April 1975, death came during office hours, and oddly enough in both female and male form. Which is not to say the men weren’t still in the majority. Death was attractively and neatly dressed, and to start with behaved both courteously and urbanely. Nor was it by chance that the ambassador was at his place of employment, which was otherwise far from always the case. On the contrary, this was the result of careful planning, and key to the whole affair.

The embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Sweden is located on Djurgården in central Stockholm, and has been since the early 1960s. In the northeast corner of the area that goes by the name Diplomat City, with the Swedish Radio and TV building and the Norwegian embassy as its closest neighbors, it hardly gets finer than that as Stockholm addresses go. There is nothing remarkable, however, about the embassy building itself. An ordinary, dreary concrete box in the sixties’ functional style, three stories and just over twenty thousand square feet of office space with entry on the ground floor at the north end, it is far from the most prestigious foreign posting in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The weather was nothing to write home about that day when death came to call. It was a typical Swedish spring with biting winds, restless clouds under a pewter-colored sky, and only a vague promise of better, warmer times. For death these were ideal conditions. Best of all security at the embassy was almost nonexistent; it was a building that was easy to occupy and defend but difficult to storm. Best of all, a solitary, rather worn-out attendant manned the reception area where, if worse came to worst, the glass doors of the security passage could be forced manually. Granted, the weather conditions would not help the perpetrators when it was time to leave.

At some point between quarter past eleven and eleven-thirty in the morning things started to happen, and the fact that a more precise point in time could not be established was also owing to the poor security. Whatever. Within the course of a few minutes, six visitors arrived in three groups of two people each, young people between twenty and thirty, all German citizens of course, and they all wanted help with various matters.

In their homeland they were notorious. Their likenesses and descriptions were on thousands of wanted posters all across West Germany. Their faces were also to be found in airports, train and bus stations, banks, post offices, and basically any public area where there was vacant wall space available. Their images were even on file at the embassy in Stockholm, in a folder in a desk drawer in the reception area, however useful that might be. But when they actually showed up no one recognized them, and the names by which a few of them introduced themselves were different from their own.

First two young men arrived who wanted advice on an inheritance issue that concerned both Swedish and German jurisdictions, and it was clear, if for no other reason than the bulging briefcase one of them was lugging, that this was no simple matter. The guard in the reception area told the two men where they could find the official they needed and let them into the embassy.

Immediately after this came a young couple who wanted to renew their passports. A routine errand, one of the most common at the embassy. The young woman gave a friendly smile to the guard as he opened the door for her and her companion.

But then things became more complicated. Two young men showed up looking to acquire work permits. The guard explained that this was not an embassy matter but rather a question for the Swedish authorities. Instead of listening to him the two persisted. One of them even got a bit stubborn when the guard didn’t want to let them in. While they stood there arguing, one of the embassy employees, who was going out for lunch, appeared. As he exited, they both took the opportunity to slip in and immediately disappeared up the stairway to the upper floors, without taking any notice of the guard shouting at them to come back.

Then everything happened very fast. The six congregated in the stairwell outside the consular department on the second floor, pulled on balaclavas, and took out pistols, submachine guns, and hand grenades. After that they cleared the offices of superfluous visitors and personnel; a few introductory rounds in the ceiling making the plaster spray was sufficient for the majority of the staff to flee head over heels out onto the street, and the twelve who remained behind were gathered together and herded into the library on the top floor, with military precision and without wasting time on any pleasantries whatsoever.

At eleven forty-seven the first alarm about “gunfire at the West German embassy” came to the Stockholm police command center, and this unleashed an all-out response. Uniformed police, detectives from the central detective squad, the homicide squad, and the secret police, in effect all personnel that could be called out were ordered there; blue lights, sirens, and screeching tires all headed for the West German embassy on Djurgården, and the alarm they are responding to is already clear enough. The West German embassy has been occupied by terrorists. They are armed and dangerous. All police are urged to observe the greatest possible caution.

First on the scene was a radio car from Östermalm precinct, and that it arrived at eleven forty-six according to the submitted report was not because the patrol commander was psychic; his watch was two minutes slow when he noted the time, and considering what happened later this was a minor error.

By twelve-thirty, after a little more than forty minutes, the police had already surrounded the embassy, secured the basement and lower floors inside the building, set up barricades in the area outside the embassy to hold back the quickly growing crowds of journalists and curiosity seekers, set up a temporary command center, and begun to organize their radio and telephone connections to police headquarters, the embassy, and the government offices. The head of the homicide squad who would be leading the effort was on the scene, and as far as he and his colleagues were concerned they were ready to get going.

The six people inside the embassy hadn’t been twiddling their thumbs either. They had led the twelve employees being held hostage, including the ambassador himself, from the library to the ambassador’s office in the southwest corner of the top floor of the building, and as far away from the entry as they could get. A few of the female employees had to help by filling wastebaskets with water and stopping up the sinks and toilets with paper towels to prevent an expected gas attack via the water pipes. Two of the terrorists primed blasting caps at strategic places on the top floor while the others guarded the hostages and the door toward the stairwell. And after all that they were ready at approximately the same time as their opponent.

The terrorists made the first move, opening with a simple, unambiguous demand. If the police did not immediately leave the embassy building, one of the hostages would be shot. The head of the homicide squad was not a man to get worked up unnecessarily, and his self-confidence was great, if not unlimited. Besides, he had been present at the drama on Norrmalmstorg a year and a half before, and there he had learned that if the culprits only had time to get to know their hostages, then the strangest feelings of camaraderie could arise between them, and the risk of violence would be greatly reduced. This interesting human mechanism had even been given a special name, “Stockholm syndrome,” and in the general psychological delirium no one gave any thought to the limited extent of its empirical basis.

Therefore the head of homicide thought he was on a solid behavioristic footing when he sent word that he had made note of the terrorists’ wishes and was willing to talk things over. But his adversaries had different, more violent ideas. After only a few minutes a volley of shots echoed from the top floor of the embassy. Then the door to the upper corridor opened and the German military attaché’s bloody, lifeless body was thrown out down the stairs, coming to rest on the halfway landing. That done, the terrorists again made contact.

The demand remained. If the police wished to retrieve the corpse, that was fine, provided that at most two police officers did so, dressed only in underwear. And if they did not wish to retrieve more dead bodies, they should leave the building immediately. What extraordinarily depressing people, the head of homicide thought as he made his first operational decision in a crisis situation. Of course the police would leave the building. Of course they would see to removing the body. Of course. It was already under way.

Then by radio he contacted the chief inspector of the central detective squad who was leading the forces inside the building and asked him for three things. First, to send a suitable, clearly visible number of men out of the building; second, to see to it that those who remained behind regrouped discreetly on the basement level; third and finally, to appoint two volunteers who were willing to play the part of EMTs in underpants only.

Assistant detective Bo Jarnebring with the central detective squad was one of the first who, with service revolver drawn, and with a warm heart and a cool head, had rushed into the embassy building, and he was also the first to volunteer. His boss had only shaken his head. Even an almost naked Jarnebring would be far too terrifying a spectacle in this sensitive initial phase. The assignment had gone instead to two of his older colleagues who had a more jovial, roly-poly appearance. Jarnebring and two other like-minded colleagues would try to provide cover for the stretcher bearers and if necessary fire their weapons toward the upper corridor.

This duty suited Jarnebring much better, and he quickly crawled up the stairs and took position. His two colleagues succeeded with some difficulty in rolling the lifeless, bloody body up onto the stretcher that they pushed ahead of them. It was not exactly simple to do lying curled up on a stairway, but it worked. After that they very carefully started to ease back down the stairs with the stretcher dragging after them while Jarnebring held the sight of his service revolver aimed steady at the door to the upper corridor. It was at approximately that moment that he acquired his lifelong memory of the German terrorists’ occupation of the West German embassy in Stockholm. There was a smell of burnt telephone.

Suddenly he glimpsed the barrel of an automatic weapon in the door opening, and just as he tried to change position to get a clear shot at the person who was holding the gun he saw the flames in the muzzle of the barrel, heard the reports boom in the narrow stairwell and the ricochets buzzing like angry hornets around his ears. But it was his nose that remembered best the smell of burnt telephone. It was not until the next day when he and a few of the others returned to the site to help clean up that he became clear about the reason for his memory. The staircase banister was covered with black Bakelite, and about eighteen inches above the place where his head had been the bullet from an automatic weapon had carved a yard-long groove in the banister.

The Swedish police lacked both the equipment and the training for this type of effort. The combined practical experience of the police force amounted, counting generously, to no more than three similar events: the murder of the Yugoslavian ambassador in Stockholm in April 1971, an airplane hijacking at Bulltofta outside Malmö in September 1972, and the so-called Norrmalmstorg drama in Stockholm in August 1973. That was when an ordinary Swedish thief had taken the personnel of a bank hostage in an effort to force the release from prison of the bank robber most lionized by the national mass media. Both the airplane hijacking and the Norrmalmstorg drama had ended happily in the sense that no one had died, but in this new case other rules clearly applied; only an hour after the situation had begun the head of the homicide squad had a corpse around his neck and this he greatly disliked.

He therefore decided to change tactics and lie low, very low, as low as possible, if for no other reason than to give the Stockholm syndrome a second chance to have its full effect. Deep down, because he himself was a good person, he had a hard time letting go of that thought. As afternoon changed to evening he had therefore allowed his forces to conduct the police variation of the Swedish hedgehog, and he had mostly talked on the phone. With his own police command, with people from the National Police Board, representatives of the government and the Ministry of Justice, basically with anyone and everyone who managed to get in touch with him.

Late in the afternoon two colleagues from the German secret police showed up at his temporary command center. After a brief description of the situation they left him to form their own impressions. Only a quarter of an hour later an out of breath chief inspector from the uniformed police came to report that the “German bastards” were going around doling out high-caliber American army revolvers as a gift to their Swedish colleagues. So that they would have “more substantial hardware to hold on to than a lousy Walther pistol when things got serious.” The head of homicide sighed and told the chief inspector to break off these “philanthropic activities” as quickly as possible and take care to see that any gifts already doled out were rounded up.

“Otherwise the boys from tech will go crazy on us,” he added both judiciously and pedagogically. For regardless of how things went with those inside, there would be a forensic investigation at the crime scene at some point, and much of that would involve attributing discharged bullets to the right weapon. This he knew better than almost anyone else, because he had devoted more than twenty years of his career to investigating serious crimes of violence.

The opponents inside the embassy had not in any event expressed any active dissatisfaction with the police command’s new tactical arrangements. They had their hands full with monitoring the situation at the same time as negotiations went on with their own government and the Swedish government about the demands that had been made: immediate release of twenty-six comrades from German prisons, among them the leaders of the Baader-Meinhof group. Transport by air to a friendly host country plus twenty thousand dollars on top of that for each and every one of those released. If their demands were not met, they would start shooting hostages, one each hour starting at ten o’clock that evening. It was as simple as that.

There followed hours of waiting without anything in particular happening while the clock ticked on toward ten. It was decided, for lack of anything better to do, to hasten the preparations for the tear gas attack that had been under consideration for the past few hours.

The time had reached quarter past ten before the final word from the German government in Bonn-via the Swedish government in Stockholm-reached the terrorists at the embassy. Only a few minutes later someone inside must have got tired, went and fetched the embassy’s trade attaché, led him up to a window, and shot him from behind.

One of the police detectives, well situated in a so-called nest at a neighboring embassy, saw the trade attaché being murdered, and when he reported his observations-“I think they shot him in the back or the neck”-the head of the homicide squad suddenly lost heart. The promised effects of the Stockholm syndrome, this good, consoling cigar, seemed more remote than ever. It had been less than ten hours and already two of the hostages had been murdered.

A while later he started to hope again. Eleven o’clock passed without anyone else being shot, and only a few minutes later the terrorists inside the embassy suddenly released three female secretaries from among their hostages. A ray of hope in the gathering April darkness, and… maybe still, thought the head of homicide, for a tear gas attack was not something he was looking forward to. That could only end with further misery. At the same time the authorities had a good idea of how many hostages there were. A rapidly shrinking group, which would not last longer than early morning if the terrorists made good on their promise to execute one per hour.

The release came at a quarter to midnight. The head of the homicide squad had left the construction shed where he had set up his temporary command room to finally stretch his legs, take a breath of fresh air, and smoke yet another cigarette. First he saw the flash of light from the embassy building, then he felt the shaking in the ground below him, and only after that did he hear the series of explosions. The clouds of glass splinters, building material, smoke, and last of all the screams from the people inside the building. People climbing out of windows, throwing themselves out, jumping, clinging to the façade, tumbling, falling, getting up again, or remaining lying. That was how he remembered it when he thought back, in just that order: the flashes of light, the shaking, the detonations, the smoke, the screams, the people.

In contrast to the TV reporter who led the live broadcast from the scene, the head of the homicide squad had not jumped off the ground, and whether his feet did rise or spread was none of his doing in any event. On the other hand he had thought a bit. I’ll be damned, he thought, despite the fact that normally he never swore. Then he put out his cigarette and returned to his chair in the temporary command center. Clearly high time, for inside it was already a complete circus.

Half an hour later it was almost all over, and wonder of wonders, with one exception all of them-the terrorists and their hostages and his colleagues down in the basement of the embassy and in the vicinity of the building-seemed to have survived the explosion. A number were wounded, a few were even seriously wounded, but they were all alive.

The terrorists were seized, and if he and his colleagues weren’t completely mistaken, it was a clean sweep. In any event everyone his detectives and investigators had been able to observe and count up earlier in the day and evening. One was still inside the embassy; he had just been found, or at least half of him, and he had been identified several hours previously. Four of the culprits were seized in the parking lot behind the embassy building, where they had most likely gathered in a vain attempt to flee in the rented car in which they had driven there twelve hours earlier-which was stupid of them because the police had already secured that car in the afternoon.

The fifth and last of the terrorists was seized as he was staggering around in the garden of the Norwegian embassy. Sooty and with clothes smoldering, hair singed off, burned all over, blinded, completely confused, he was at first mistaken for one of the hostages. But that part had been sorted out. Three of them were taken to the hospital, one in poor and one in miserable condition, but two had been in good enough condition to be sent directly to the jail in police headquarters after bandaging. All of them were in handcuffs, and two of them with ankle shackles to be on the safe side.

Jarnebring had left just after two in the morning, one of the last from the squad. Remaining were his colleagues with the uniformed police who would attend to guarding the barricades, and the technicians who stood trying to stay warm while waiting for the fire department to finish up. At home a worried wife was waiting, on the verge of climbing the walls, along with three small sleeping children of which the oldest had passed out from excitement in front of the TV several hours ago but without having been the least bit worried.

He himself felt strangely absent, and when his wife told him that his best friend and closest colleague Lars Martin Johansson must have called ten times during the afternoon and evening, he only nodded and pulled the telephone cord out of the jack to be on the safe side. Then he fell asleep, slept without dreaming, and woke up six hours later. He was completely clear in the head despite the strange persistent feeling that what had happened had not concerned him. The odor of burnt Bakelite was still there too. It will pass, he thought. It will pass.

During the Second World War the English leader Winston Churchill would often maintain that “He who is forewarned is also forearmed.” During the most difficult years he had repeated this almost like an incantation, in Parliament, in his cabinet, and in public speeches to his severely tormented population: “He who is forewarned is forearmed.” And in hindsight, considering how it all actually ended despite the initial miserable odds, this must have been true for him in any event, and for a sufficient number of his countrymen. But this time, in Sweden, it did not apply, for when something did happen it seemed to have come as a total surprise, despite the fact that the warnings had been arriving thick and fast for several years.

II

The first government official who found out what was going on was not the minister of justice-which it should have been-but the prime minister. It turned out that way owing to the simple workings of human nature.

As soon as the dispatcher on duty at the police command center was sure this was serious and not just another false alarm, he pulled out the list of procedures that applies in such situations from the folder on his desk. The rest was routine. First he called the head of the homicide squad, who was his immediate superior at the police department in Stockholm. The homicide chief answered on the first ring, hemmed and hawed a few times, and asked the dispatcher to get back to him as soon as he knew anything more. Then the dispatcher called the contact person at the secret police who, in accordance with instructions, phoned the assistant undersecretary at the Ministry of Justice who was responsible for the practical aspects of the ministry’s and the government’s contacts with the secret police.

There was a busy signal at the assistant undersecretary’s office, and while waiting for the call to go through-because the seconds were ticking by painfully slowly, and so that he could at least have something better to do if the bastard on the other end of the line was to continue gabbing for all eternity-he moved the beeping receiver to his left hand and with his free right hand used his other telephone to dial the direct number to the prime minister’s undersecretary. The undersecretary answered at once and was informed in less than a minute. And just as the secret police officer put down the receiver he heard the previously occupied assistant undersecretary shouting “hello” in his left ear, and what happened after that was completely in accordance with instructions.

As stated, this departure from procedure was never discovered, much less pointed out. It lacked any significance whatsoever for either Swedish or German contemporary history, and the officer from the secret police had not thought much about the matter himself. On some occasion he mentioned it, as a small detail in a good story in the company of trustworthy colleagues, after a nice dinner along with the second cognac and the coffee. But it had never been more than that.

The prime minister and his undersecretary were involved from the beginning; the minister of justice would take the conviction that he had been “the first to find out” with him to the grave. While the afternoon of the embassy takeover gradually passed into evening and then night, a growing troop of members of the government, high-ranking police officers, and officials in the government offices gathered at the prime minister’s office, none of them particularly happy. Life felt heavy and unjust, for this event did not directly concern them and the Sweden that they, in established democratic order, had been given to lead.

First there was the murder of the Yugoslavian ambassador, involving Croatian extremists and separatists, and a dead Serbian ambassador, and in any event, Sweden had no responsibility for all that. Then other Croatian terrorists hijacked an SAS plane to free the murderers of the ambassador, and in the process risked the lives of almost a hundred ordinary Swedes. The plane finally landed in Spain, where the hijackers immediately gave up and turned themselves over to the police. And now: a half-dozen crazy students calling themselves the Socialist Patients’ Collective, who wanted to overthrow German society by force and who chose to do so in Stockholm, of all places. This was not just, and it was un-Swedish with a vengeance. The fact that in between all that a domestic piece of talent from the traditional criminal lumpen proletariat took hostages in a bank on Norrmalmstorg was something they would have to put up with.

First there had been discussions in the prime minister’s office about how the hostages could be rescued without further unnecessary bloodshed. There was more than enough as it was. Ideas were in short supply, but at last the prime minister, who had been a reserve officer in the cavalry, suggested that the police should storm the building. But the idea was immediately dismissed by a unanimous top police command. Swedish police lacked both equipment and training for such missions, despite the fact that, as the national commissioner so alertly took the opportunity to point out, funds for such operations had been requested by the department on several occasions and for several years running, but no money had been granted. Now they had neither equipment nor training, despite apparent willingness.

“It would be a pure suicide mission,” the national commissioner clarified in his rasping dialect, and an even greater gloom settled over those assembled.

When the West German government then gave their reply categorically rejecting the terrorists’ demands, the mood quickly reached a low ebb, and at last, for lack of anything better and because something had to be done, it was agreed that a little tear gas should be fired into the building. While this effort was being planned, however, things resolved themselves of their own accord when the top floor of the embassy building was literally blown into the air. It was unclear why, but that was a question for later that others could answer. Because for the most part those inside the building seemed to have pulled through, there were more important questions on the night’s agenda.

At that point they moved over to the government’s conference room, and the discussions quickly took a new direction. Namely, how they could be rid of the five surviving terrorists as quickly as possible. The very thought of having them in Swedish prisons, with the prospect of constant attempts to free them through new airplane hijackings, kidnappings, and all the other outrages their comrades might conceivably think up, was just about the worst thing that could be imagined.

“They’ve got to go. There’s nothing to discuss,” as one of the older cabinet ministers summarized the matter even before the deliberations had begun.

The only one who raised objections was the advisory cabinet minister in the Ministry of Justice, the government’s own judicial expert, and as it happened the same man who had written the terrorist legislation that would be the basis for the immediate deportation. According to him the problem was not complicated at all. If the government’s intention was to use the terrorist law, then there was no legal basis for deporting the five terrorists, but because this was no time for judicial subtleties a united government, including the legal consultant, decided to immediately deport the five using that very same Swedish terrorist law that actually applied only to foreign citizens and therefore was not even an issue for the Ministry of Justice.

“You can’t have the statute book under your arm in these kinds of situations,” as the cabinet member responsible for “foreigner issues” so elegantly summarized the decision. She was a woman besides, the youngest in the government, the youngest cabinet member ever, and as decisive as male colleagues twice her age.

For her, Friday the twenty-fifth of April was a day filled with practical tasks from early dawn until long past midnight. First she had to try to get a little order in the jurisprudence, to the extent possible, and then clear up a thousand and one practical details in connection with the deportation itself. The Germans, for example, had promised to send over an airplane to bring home their countrymen, but the fact that it never showed up was of minor importance. From the start the Swedish authorities had decided that a Swedish plane would be on standby at Arlanda, fueled and ready, with an eager, rested crew and accompanying nursing personnel.

The medical condition of the deportees was a problem. None of them was in wonderful shape, but for three of them at least the doctors had given the go-ahead, and it was even simpler with the fourth one. He was so severely burned that if the bed he was lying on had been moved a few feet he might as well have been killed on the spot. It would be necessary to wait a week until his condition was stable enough for him to survive the trip home to West Germany. Letting him die en route was not an option. That was the sort of thing that made people want to take revenge. But after a week he was allowed to go home, and once home he had the good taste to spend another week in a German hospital before he died.

It was the fifth one, the female participant in the occupation of the embassy, who represented the major problem, for on her case the opinions among the medical experts were sharply divided. The first doctor asked saw no problem at all in proceeding with her deportation, but when the cabinet minister responsible, a large number of police officers, and the necessary nursing personnel went to the hospital to pick her up, the senior physician responsible started to dig in his heels. Finally he played his trump card and simply refused to discharge her. If she were to be taken away, someone else would have to take the medical responsibility, and he wanted an affidavit from the cabinet minister attesting that he was opposed to the transport.

If it was his patient’s well-being he had in mind, this was not very smart of the doctor-it suggested a significant underestimation of his opponent, for in a situation like this you do not win any victories if you go around with a statute book under your arm. Without changing her expression, the cabinet minister took out a pen and wrote out the order for deportation. Then she wrote a brief affidavit for the doctor, and she and her entourage took his patient to Arlanda. Immediately after three a.m. on Saturday the government transport plane finally lifted off toward its secret destination in West Germany with its cargo of four German terrorists.

What had happened was definitely not a cheerful story, but in the general misery the government could be happy that public opinion was united behind them. In addition, for once the goodwill was shared by the populace and the media. The man on the street was, to put it simply, furious. The whole thing was very un-Swedish, and at the same time it was typical for the Germans to foist their problems on their peaceful neighbors-something the Germans unfortunately had been in the habit of doing for far too long. In brief, you got the terrorism you deserved, and besides, everyone who had been abroad in winter knew that the Germans always push ahead in the lift lines at the most popular ski resorts, despite the fact that these were in Austria and Switzerland.

In the media various editorial writers and so-called experts were feasting on the shortcomings of the German government. Not only had the German government avoided taking any responsibility; it even had the gall to shift the responsibility onto the Swedish government, the Swedish police, and the Swedish people. In addition, to be on the safe side they were so completely and utterly incompetent that the only reasonable conclusion was that the German embassy in some mysterious way must have self-ignited, and that the terrorists’ contribution to the matter was to be seen more as an effect than a cause.

Considering what had happened, the media reception was almost phenomenal, with only one exception, found of course in the major conservative morning newspaper. On its editorial page, “the nest for generally retarded and inverted opportunists,” as the prime minister used to summarize things when he was in one of his extravagant moods, a brief contribution appeared in which the writer had the gall to compare the German terrorists’ occupation of the embassy with the blowing up of the English strikebreaker vessel Amalthea in Malmö Harbor by Anton Nilson and his comrades sixty-seven years earlier.

This piece of writing upset the government’s minister of finance to such a degree that a week later he grabbed a firm hold of his suspenders during a fine bourgeois dinner at home with the business elite and took the opportunity to “read the riot act to the newspaper’s editor in chief.” According to witnesses who were present, it was superb entertainment and, considering the limited social establishment in the small country of Sweden, completely logical when seen against the background of what had happened. But it never really went further than that. The whole matter was far too un-Swedish.

III

It was not a bad police investigation, it was a truly lousy investigation, and considering that it concerned one of the most serious crimes in postwar Sweden, this was not really easy to understand. One of the explanations discussed within the top police command, including in confidential conversations between the national commissioner of police and his closest younger colleagues, was that the government, in some mysterious way, seemed actively disinclined to touch the subject, and that this in turn had rubbed off on the police. Here was a crime with clear political overtones, at the same time a government that was very clearly pushing the whole matter away, and what could the police do with that?

The head of the Stockholm police department’s homicide squad was not a man who devoted himself to political theorizing. That sort of thing could be left to other people, and the government’s attitude on one issue or another left him cold. He didn’t usually even vote for them. On the other hand he was indignant because the government had meddled in his investigation and repatriated his perpetrators. How could a crime investigation be conducted if there was no opportunity to question the suspects?

The homicide chief had personally looked forward to being able to talk with them-in peace and quiet, in proper sequence, and as many times as needed to put all the pieces in the right place. He had managed this countless times before, and he was convinced he would have done so this time too, and without even needing the help of an interpreter. For in contrast to his colleagues he actually had a diploma, from Whitfeldska secondary school in Gothenburg no less, and his old school German was still impeccable. What the government had been guilty of in terms of technical investigation was pure sabotage. And the damage was not mitigated by the fact that they were certainly completely unaware of that fact.

So he and his colleagues basically had to be content with conducting a technical investigation under conditions that were far from ideal. Immediately after the explosion it appeared as if all hell had broken loose. According to what the terrorists had mentioned on the phone during one of their extortion calls with the government, they were supposed to have brought at least thirty pounds of TNT into the building and there was nothing at the scene that belied that assertion.

The efforts of the fire department, however unavoidable they were, had not made matters better-pouring tons of water on top of all the other debris was not good. But what had disturbed him and his colleagues most were all the more or less extraneous individuals running around at the crime scene. Their German colleagues, for example, hadn’t added much to the affair, even if he made allowances for their involvement. If you were to be formal, the crime scene was actually German territory, so he had no right to simply tell them to leave.

It was the same way with the “felt slippers” from Sec and their irritating (to say the least) bad habit of always standing and glaring over his colleagues’ shoulders when they were only trying to do their job. When in addition they had the gall to offer him their own technicians, he really put his foot down, because if you worked that way it would all turn out to be a muddle, and personally he did not intend to spend his time pissing in the woods. Others could do that, and if they didn’t want to rely on him and his men, they could take over the whole damn case themselves.

But it had not been good, and when the police chief, after more than a week, on the same day they took away the outer barricades, informed the homicide chief that the continued investigation would be run by the secret police, he had actually experienced it as a relief.

He and his colleagues, on the other hand, had managed to establish a fairly good idea of the reason for the explosion. There was nothing to point to the terrorists’ having deliberately blown up the building. Instead most everything suggested an accident, carelessness, and ignorance combined, and the one who probably caused the discharge was the terrorists’ own “explosives expert” who, like all children, put his fingers in the wrong place. He never would have passed an ordinary Swedish rock-blasting examination, as was shown with enviable clarity by the wiring and connections that survived the explosion, even if the tabloids had praised his expertise in this area.

But there was never more to it than that, and as far as the homicide chief was concerned it was really all the same. As mentioned, what the secret police actually accomplished in the investigation they took over was unclear. In any event nothing was done that led to judicial proceedings or legal actions; instead as usual they “worked in silence,” and if anyone were to ask the homicide chief about it he was convinced that, as so often before, they had not accomplished much of anything. You didn’t need to be a police officer to figure out that there must have been more individuals involved than the six terrorists who occupied the embassy building itself.

Who otherwise could have left the message that at one o’clock in the afternoon on Thursday the twenty-fourth of April landed in the mailboxes of three different international news agencies housed in the Swedish News Agency TT’s office in the first Hötorget skyscraper, less than two miles and no more than five minutes by car from the West German embassy out on Djurgården? The six people inside the building-“commando holger meins” as they called themselves with lowercase letters throughout-could not have done it in any event.

The head of the homicide squad had thought a good deal about what must have happened before the six had entered the embassy. They must have had somewhere to stay; they must have done reconnaissance on the scene, likely tracked those who worked there and mapped out their routines, investigated suitable ways to get there and to flee if something went awry. They must have had a roof over their heads, beds to sleep in, tables, chairs, and eating utensils, vehicles to ride in, food and drink and all the practical nastiness in the form of weapons, explosives, and false documents. All combined, the preparations for the operation must have taken at least a month or two.

In a word, the terrorists must have had help. Probably from several individuals. Probably from individuals with a connection to Sweden and Stockholm. Individuals who spoke Swedish, who were familiar with the area, with the surroundings, with local customs, usage, and everyday necessities such as buying a ticket for the subway or shopping for large quantities of food in a grocery store without attracting attention. Ordinary, anonymous people their own age without a criminal record who looked and thought the way they did.

The head of the homicide squad was not one to complicate matters unnecessarily. In his profession he had learned that the simplest explanation is most often the right one. A group of young students, he thought. Radical, motivated, with self-discipline and minds in good working order. Perhaps they even lived together in one of those strange collectives he had read about in the newspaper. And a not terribly bold guess was that they were Swedes.

When he turned over the case to his colleague at Sec who would be assuming responsibility for the investigation, he brought up his musings. Simply a few words in passing, which of course he should have spared himself. His colleague was not a real police officer but rather a legally educated police superintendent of the usual self-confident type and his reaction was familiar.

He had nodded with the expression of a man who always knows best, sighed wearily, and drawn a well-manicured index finger along his long nose. “I’m sure that thought has occurred to us too,” said the police superintendent deliberately, but that was it. Before long the head of the homicide squad thought less and less about the whole matter, and after a few years it was not even included in the assortment of heroic police stories he used to tell when he encountered real policemen. Nowadays there were newer, better ones.

Otherwise the secret police should have had a few things to work with. The warnings that German terrorists were planning some form of action on Swedish soil had arrived with increasing frequency during the year preceding the embassy occupation. It was a jumble of high and low, just as it ought to have been: anonymous leads, information from various informants, and even a report prepared by one of Sec’s own undercover agents, but they all had one thing in common. There was nothing concrete or tangible to get hold of, and during the spring it had seemed most likely that the whole thing had settled down. All was quiet on the informant front; not even their best informants had the least little thing to bring in.

A few leads and observations had also arrived via colleagues within the open operation. Mostly they concerned “mysterious vehicles” and “shady individuals” who had been observed at and around the West German embassy before the terrorists’ action, but despite investing a lot of time in following them up, they had not led to anything. It was exactly as usual, in other words, for leads of this type almost never led to anything. This is in contrast to activities you initiated and guided yourself in the form of surveillance, infiltration, and the organized gathering of information through telephone monitoring, other types of eavesdropping and radio surveillance.

The recurring assertions in the media that the secret police had ignored a clear threat were discussed at several of the secret police’s command meetings, and also in the secret police’s parliamentary committee. As so often in the past it was possible to show that this was pure nonsense, baseless idle speculation intended to damage the operation. Measures had been taken that there was reason to take, and for a few weeks, when the host of rumors was at its strongest, the West German embassy had been entered on the list of highly prioritized surveillance objects.

The result of that measure had been unambiguous. No indications whatsoever had emerged that something was in progress, and the allocated extra surveillance had been withdrawn, which was a gift from above because the Russian squad suddenly had an unexpected need for extra personnel. The parliamentarians in the committee were completely satisfied with the report they received. The occupation of the West German embassy was an isolated incident, planned and executed by a faction within the West German terrorist underground that could best be described as a collection of fanatical loose cannons from the University of Heidelberg. According to information Stockholm authorities had received from their colleagues in the German secret police, many of the faction’s more established comrades-in the regrettably extensive circle of radical elements-had taken strong exception to what had occurred. The embassy occupation had not benefited the common struggle.

Leading that struggle to a successful finish demanded better planning and more organization. The Swedish secret police, strangely enough, drew the same conclusion in the report that was submitted to their committee less than a year after the embassy drama. “For this reason, among others, the risk of another, similar event on Swedish territory, directed against German or Swedish interests and executed by German terrorists, is judged to be very small.” There were “other risks that [were] significantly more serious,” and regardless of whether this was true or false, it would have been bureaucratic suicide to maintain the opposite. And the secret police’s investigation of the embassy drama was thereby concluded.

IV

What remained were the memories. Police memories.

Jarnebring remembered the smell of burnt telephone, but because that was an extremely unusual smell even at his place of work, less common even than the odor of madeleines, that was not what would bring up the images in his head. Other things did, or nothing at all. Sometimes, most often in his dreams, the memories of those minutes in the stairwell of the embassy would come crowding in on him without his having the least idea how or why. It was no big deal, for fairly soon he stopped talking about what had happened, and not long after that he also stopped wondering about it. We human beings are fortunately constituted in that respect, he thought.

His best friend and closest colleague, Lars Martin Johansson, a newly appointed detective inspector as of a month before the embassy occupation, also had his memories despite the fact that he had not even been in the vicinity of the West German embassy. On Thursday the twenty-fourth of April 1975 he had taken comp time to take care of his two small children who were too runny-nosed to go to day care. He had followed the embassy drama from the couch in front of the TV in his living room on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan on Söder. And he had definitely not phoned Jarnebring ten times, despite what Jarnebring’s wife at the time maintained. He had phoned three times, neither more nor less, and not to satisfy his curiosity either but to ease his worry about what might happen to his best friend.

In a way he too had become a victim of what had happened. In his line of work there was no merit in sitting at home taking care of sick children while all of his comrades who were able to stand upright were in position with service revolvers covering the embassy. The gibes had come pouring in and had continued for quite some time. They reached their peak about a month after the embassy drama, when someone furnished the name plate outside his office with a printed label with his name at the top, and below that his new title: DIRECTOR OF THE GRASS SNAKE DAY CARE CENTER.

For a time what had happened was also played out in some quiet bickering with his best friend and closest colleague. When the phone rang in their joint office-often because someone wanted to speak with a different Lars Johansson than the one who happened to sit with Jarnebring in the police headquarters on Kungsholmen-it would be resolved by waiting as long as possible to answer. Usually it was the caller who gave up first.

But not always, and when the ringing at times got too persistent, Lars Martin Johansson would glance up from whatever papers he was occupied with at the moment, sniff like a foxhound, and look questioningly at his best friend and colleague.

“Am I the only one who thinks it smells like burnt telephone?”

And after that Jarnebring would always pick up the receiver.

Someone else who had strong memories of the embassy drama, besides having been involved from start to finish, was then police constable Stridh. Stridh was driving a patrol car on Östermalm, and Djurgården was part of his area. Stridh was also in charge of the patrol car that arrived first at the West German embassy, according to his own notes up to the moment before central command sent out the alarm he was responding to, and only due to the fact that his watch was a few minutes slow.

Stridh’s quick action had greatly surprised both his bosses and his colleagues, among whom Stridh was best known-to put it gently and collegially-for his thoughtfulness. His colleagues had nicknamed him “Peace at Any Price,” and he was not someone who had become the human face of the Stockholm police department’s rapid action out in the field. There were others who had done that.

The reason that he had been the “first man on the scene” at the West German embassy was not due to the fact that he normally patrolled in that area and thus, purely statistically, ought to have had at least a decent chance of doing so. He was actually a master at avoiding such things, and especially in spring when there were many of his motorized and considerably more ready colleagues who would take the opportunity for a drive out on Djurgården. There was a different reason.

The week before the embassy drama he had responded to a simple, rather harmless request over the radio. There was a guard at the Norwegian embassy who had observed a suspicious personal car prowling around the area and wondered, “Was there anyone in the vicinity who would check the vehicle in question?” Because this sounded innocent enough and the car it concerned was only fifty yards ahead of them on Djurgårdsbrunnsvägen in line with the Maritime History Museum, Stridh and his colleague had taken the assignment. They stopped the vehicle and conducted an ordinary, routine traffic check.

It was a fairly new, far from inexpensive Mercedes. It was being driven by a young man, about twenty-five, and beside him sat an even younger woman. All papers were completely in order, and the young people in the car were pleasant, a bit giggly and a little nervous, as decent people easily get when stopped by the police. Without his having asked the question, the young woman explained that this was her parents’ car and that they were just out for a drive with no particular destination. Stridh had no further questions. He nodded amiably as he gave back the young man’s driver’s license, and when he and his colleague had driven away he thought about spring and youth and love. Then they drove to the station to take a coffee break, and if it hadn’t been for what happened a few days later, he would certainly have forgotten the entire incident.

His colleague on the radio had called again. The same guard had observed the same vehicle he had seen a few days before, and he asked if there was possibly a car in the vicinity that could keep an eye out for the vehicle in question and preferably also take a swing past the embassy and talk with the person who had called. Stridh had taken the assignment, and to keep things simple he had driven straight to the embassy without looking for any Mercedeses en route. There were plenty of cars of that make in that particular area.

At the embassy Stridh had spoken with the guard who had called the police. He was about thirty-five, Norwegian, a nice guy who without asking served coffee and cookies while they were talking. Norway, Norwegians, and the Norwegian embassy did not have a score to settle with anyone, yet the embassy guard had observed the vehicle in question on at least four occasions in as many days. Considering that the Germans were right across the street, after his second sighting he had decided to call the police.

“Have you talked with your colleague at the German embassy?” asked Stridh.

He had not. If he could avoid it, he did not talk with Germans for personal reasons. He preferred to talk with the Swedish police.

“They put my father in Grini,” he explained, and that was good enough for Stridh, whose major interest in life was not police work but modern European history. In contrast to some of his colleagues he had never had any problems with his historical sympathies.

“I know what you mean,” said Stridh with a Norwegian intonation and smiled. Nice guy, he thought.

When he drove away half an hour later he first intended to write a few lines about the matter, but on closer consideration he decided to let it be. A simple mental note would have to suffice, for regardless of whether the guard seemed to be a good, reliable fellow, his information was far from certain. Thus he could not say without a doubt that it had been the same car all four times. Two times it was, for then he had managed to get the license plate number. And unfortunately he had a rather uncertain memory of the driver. The first time it was a young man who drove, and he had someone beside him in the passenger seat; this the guard was “rather certain” of, but he had not managed to see if it was a “boy or a girl.” The second time that he had taken the license plate number he was “almost sure” that the car was being driven by “a boy” and that he was alone in the vehicle, but if he was also the same young man as the one who had a passenger with him on the earlier occasion he could not say.

After having pondered the matter further, Stridh decided that there must be some banal, natural explanation and to refrain from the mental note as well. Right before lunch on Thursday the twenty-fourth of April 1975, he changed his mind. The next morning, despite the fact that he was dead tired after working far into the night, he drove to the station, borrowed a typewriter, and wrote a lengthy, completely perspicacious summary of his observations and his conversation with the guard at the Norwegian embassy. This he gave to his boss, who nodded and promised to pass it on to “the spies up at Kungsholmen.”

After that nothing happened. No one called, and as time passed he forgot the whole thing. You just had to assume that one of the secret police colleagues had checked the whole thing out and reasonably come to the same conclusion that he himself had at first-namely, that there was some banal, very innocent explanation.

Therefore he had been extremely surprised when almost fifteen years later, in the middle of December 1989, a Commissioner Persson from the secret police rang the doorbell to his pleasant little two-room apartment on Rörstrandsgatan and wondered whether he had time to talk about the observations he had made in connection with the events at the West German embassy in April 1975.