Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

CHAPTER IX

Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End

Albany, New York, in December

[SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8]

The room they were sitting in was large and light, with a fireplace and generously proportioned bay window, walls covered with books, a giant-sized sofa in front of the fireplace, large easy chairs with footrests. Quite obvious that it had been furnished by someone considerably older than Johansson’s hostess, and judging by her clothes by someone with considerably more conventional taste. Her parental home, thought Johansson. Educated, intellectual people with good finances.

She had offered him a cup of tea, and because Johansson didn’t want to unnecessarily complicate things that were inherently simple he had accepted, despite the fact that he would have preferred coffee.

“Although perhaps you’d rather have coffee,” she suggested as she served his tea in a large ceramic cup.

“Tea is just fine,” said Johansson politely.

The cups were hers, in any case, he thought. Although otherwise there wasn’t much that added up. If Krassner really was the scatterbrain that he had imagined, it agreed very poorly with the woman sitting in front of him: smiling, leaning slightly forward, palpably present and with curiosity shining from her big brown eyes. Hardly a deeply mourning ex-girlfriend for example, thought Johansson.

“Tell me,” she said. “Before I die of curiosity.”

Wonder if I can trust her? thought Johansson.

“Well,” he said hesitantly. “I don’t really know where I should begin.”

“Begin at the beginning,” she said, smiling even more broadly. “That’s always the easiest.”

Okay, thought Johansson and nodded. What do I really have to lose?

“It all begins with a shoe with a heel with a hole in it.”

“A shoe with a heel with a hole in it? You mean a shoe with a hollow heel?”

So that’s what it’s called, of course, thought Johansson.

“Hollow heel, yes,” said Johansson.

“Oh, Jesus,” she said with delight. “And I’ll bet it was on John’s foot.”

“Yes,” said Johansson and nodded. “It was, but that’s not the reason I’m here.”

Naturally that’s the pattern, thought Johansson a half hour later. You should always start at the beginning. He had told about the annoying little scrap of paper with his name, title, and home address that they had found in the hollow heel, about Krassner’s suicide, about Krassner’s letter that had gone astray and that he hadn’t yet been able to read, about the actual reason for his visit to the United States, about his own private reasons for now sitting on her couch. On the other hand, he hadn’t said a word about the worry that he had also felt.

She hadn’t said anything. Just listened and nodded while she let her tea stand, untouched. When he told about Krassner’s suicide she stopped smiling and contented herself with nodding now and then. Serious, attentive eyes.

“Well, I guess that’s all,” said Johansson, making an explanatory gesture with his hands.

“Good that you came here,” she said. “I’ve actually been trying to get hold of you.”

Heavens, things are moving fast here.

“You’ll be able to read his letter soon,” she said. “I’m afraid that it’s not especially enlightening, even if it does say quite a lot about John,” she added, smiling again.

“But first you were thinking of saying a little about yourself,” said Johansson.

“Exactly,” she said. “And all policemen aren’t stupid, are they?”

“Not all,” said Johansson, shaking his head.

Then she told about herself and about her ex-boyfriend John P. Krassner, and if she had done so in the same way during an ordinary police interrogation, she would have bestowed eternal and everlasting credit on her interrogator.

Sarah J. Weissman, J. for Judith, was born in 1955. She was an only child; her parents had been divorced for the past ten years. Her mother had remarried and lived in New York, where she was working as an editor. Her father was a professor of economics, and the house they were sitting in was his. Five years earlier he was granted a professorship at Princeton and his daughter had moved in temporarily until he decided whether to sell his house. And because he was still thinking, she had stayed.

“A typical Jewish family,” Sarah summarized, smiling broadly. “Not in that correct, tiresome way but rather more practically Jewish. You noticed the Christmas tree,” she said, and giggled. “Here it’s important to have a Christmas tree.”

“Yes,” said Johansson.

“And snow-shoveling,” she said. “My neighbor usually shovels for me, despite the fact that his wife yells at him, but now they’ve gone to Florida.”

“I can take care of that if you’d like,” said Johansson, for he had learned to do that even as a little boy. Both what he should say and how he should do it.

“I can certainly believe that,” she said, nodding, “but it will get warmer after the weekend so I think I’ll take a chance and wait.”

“What kind of work do you do yourself?” asked Johansson.

A little bit of everything, it appeared. Since she completed her degree in English and history at the university she had started working freelance for several book publishers in New York; it was her mother who had opened the door to that line of business, and her main activity the last few years had been collecting information and fact-checking.

“Both nonfiction and novels. Just now I’m working on a novel about the Civil War, by one of the publisher’s best-selling authors. The author is quite pleased with me. Refuses to work with anyone else.”

I can imagine that, thought Johansson.

“She’s even proposed,” said Sarah, giggling with delight. “So just now we’re having a little crisis.”

Then she suddenly became serious again.

“John,” she continued. “I’m going to tell about John, I promise to pull myself together.”

Then she told about John. It took only a quarter of an hour and when she was through, Johansson had put all the pieces in place. I wasn’t far off, he thought.

“Now you’ve pieced it together, right?” she asked, looking at him contentedly.

“Yes,” said Johansson and smiled reluctantly. “Now it makes more sense.”

“I saw that on your face at the start,” she said. “That you hadn’t really pieced it together.”

Sarah and John had met at the university. She was eighteen, young and inexperienced. He was two years older and, if one were to believe everything he said, which she did at that time, he was a very experienced and exciting young man besides. In addition he looked good, so when her parents separated, she responded by moving into a student apartment at the university with John.

“Dad really hated John,” she said delightedly, “and because I always loved my dad more than anyone else it was actually rather logical. That John and I moved in together, I mean. My dad is a very wise man,” she added, serious again. “He’s so wise that he’s actually never accomplished anything practical, and where John was concerned he was completely right.”

She sat silent a moment before she continued.

“John’s dad disappeared with another woman when John was very small, so he grew up with his mom and her brother. Uncle John. John was christened after his uncle; he was the one who became his father figure when he was growing up.”

“Yes,” said Johansson. What should I say? he thought.

“Two of those kind of shrewd, dishonest, really thirsty, and naturally prejudiced Irishmen. You can become a Jew for less,” summarized Sarah without the least hint of a smile. “His mom died from cirrhosis of the liver a few years after we’d met and her brother no doubt simply drank himself to death, if I may say so. He died last spring. He was a really horrid sort. He was a professor here at our own university, SUNY Albany, but they were forced to fire him in spite of the fact that he had a really special background and in spite of the fact that it was no doubt our own government that paid his salary.”

“Why is that?” said Johansson. What does she mean? he thought.

“I’m getting to that,” said Sarah calmly.

The apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree, and if that was due to inheritance or environment or a little of each was actually uninteresting because either way she was the one who had to suffer. Young John had a great amount of knowledge, to a small degree factual but in everything essential fictional. He’d been involved in one thing after another and borrowed almost everything from other people, and mostly from his uncle.

She figured that out quite soon after they moved in together, and then it had only gotten worse. Already that first year, although he was still so young, he had started drinking heavily like the Irishman he was and smoking even more, and finally he hit her, for that’s what a real man did when she talked back.

“That was why I broke up with him,” she said, looking seriously at Johansson. “He hit me good and hard and afterward I thanked God for every punch. Then I broke up with him. Although it took more than two years.”

“I see,” said Johansson.

“So then he tried to take his own life,” said Sarah. “It wasn’t a bad performance, I can assure you. We were living on the third floor. It was, maximum, fifteen feet from the balcony to the lawn below, so it was completely impossible to kill yourself and it was certainly my fault, that too. As a suicide attempt it was exactly like everything else he dreamed up.”

“And yet you became his heir,” said Johansson. When he did it for real, he thought.

“Yes, he was like that. If there was something that didn’t fit, he just thought it away. He never got over my breaking up with him. He’s kept in contact the whole time, even though it’s been ten years. He’d call me in the middle of the night, often just to tell me that he had met a new girlfriend.” Sarah sighed, with a certain feeling, as it appeared. “And to anyone who could bear to listen, he always said that we were still together.”

“I see,” said Johansson.

What do you say about such things? he thought.

“He seems to have been a little strange,” said Johansson, smiling tentatively.

“He was completely nuts,” said Sarah. “But that wasn’t the biggest problem.”

“So what was it?” asked Johansson.

“In four words,” she said, “he was no good.” She put emphasis on each syllable.

“That letter he wrote,” said Johansson divertingly. “Might one be able to take a look at that?”

“Certainly,” said Sarah. “I’ll get it right away, but there’s one thing I don’t really understand.”

“Shoot,” said Johansson, smiling.

“You say that he took his own life. How sure are you of that?”

Murder, suicide, accident, thought Johansson. Then he recounted Jarnebring’s and his own conclusions, with special emphasis on the note that Krassner had left behind.

“The paper was sitting in his own typewriter, it’s typed on the same machine, we’ve compared the text with the impressions on the color ribbon that was in the typewriter. In addition, his own fingerprints are on the letter. In just those places where they should be.”

“A suicide note,” said Sarah. “So John is supposed to have left a letter where he said he was going to take his own life?”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “A suicide note, that’s how we interpret it.”

“May I take a look at that letter?” said Sarah.

“Of course,” said Johansson. “I brought a copy with me-a photocopy of the original,” he clarified. “The original is still in Stockholm. It’s in the investigation file.”

Johansson took out the copy from the inner pocket of his sport coat and handed it over to Sarah.

“Here it is,” he said.

“I have lived my life caught between the longing of summer and the cold of winter. As a young man I used to think that when summer comes I would fall in love with someone, someone I would love a lot, and then, that’s when I would start living my life for real. But by the time I had accomplished all those things I had to do before, summer was already gone and all that remained was the winter cold. And that, that was not the life that I had hoped for.”

Sarah set aside the letter and looked seriously at Johansson.

“And this is the letter that you believe John would have written?”

“Yes,” said Johansson.

“He didn’t,” said Sarah, shaking her head decisively.

“Why do you think that?”

“I don’t think,” said Sarah. “I know, and I can give you a million reasons.”

“I’m listening,” said Johansson.

“It isn’t that I’m jealous,” she said and smiled wryly. “It isn’t that he harped on for ten years that I was the only woman in his life, for he did that even when he’d hit me. It’s not that.”

What is it then? thought Johansson and contented himself with nodding. I’m not the one who was together with that bastard, he thought, suddenly feeling a slight irritation.

“I’m not a police officer but I’m good at English,” said Sarah. “American English, British English, pidgin English, slang English, go-fuck-yourself English, you-name-it English. I’m even good at Her Majesty the Queen’s English.”

She smiled as she looked at Johansson with her large brown eyes.

“How shall I put it?” she said. “John was no better at English than most Americans, and he definitely didn’t write this.”

“He didn’t?”

“No way,” said Sarah, “and because you’re still wondering if you can ask, I’m telling you that the person who wrote this is neither an American nor an Englishman. If I were to guess, I’d say someone who does not speak English as their native language, but who still writes and speaks it more or less fluently. A man, definitely a man, who in addition seems to have a poetic disposition or, more correctly, a poetic ambition.”

Like those poems I wrote when I was a boy, thought Johansson, nodding as he tried hard to appear sharp. She’s a little too clever, he thought. It’s crucial to be on your guard here.

“It’s nothing you recognize,” said Johansson. “A quotation, I mean.”

“No,” said Sarah, shaking her head. “It’s not that good.”

“Hm,” said Johansson, looking as though he were thinking deeply. “I still think it was your old boyfriend who wrote it. Purely technically, I mean,” he added quickly when he saw that she was preparing to object.

“What I mean is the following,” Johansson clarified. “I believe that he’s the one who sat and wrote this on his own typewriter. He’s the one who put the paper in the typewriter and wrote out the text. He even made a few corrections that you do when you’re copying off of something and discover that you’ve made a typo. And I don’t believe that anyone forced him to do it.”

Sarah nodded. Didn’t appear completely dismissive of the idea.

“Could it be that he copied something written by someone else?”

Sarah suddenly looked rather pleased.

“I could certainly imagine that. That sounds just like John.”

“So why did he do it?” asked Johansson.

“Don’t know,” said Sarah, shrugging her shoulders. “But that’s not the big problem.”

“What is it then? The big problem?”

“John would never take his own life,” said Sarah and nodded with emphasis.

“How do you know that?”

“He was far too pleased with himself,” said Sarah. “He would rather die than take his own life,” she said, smiling.

So he would, thought Johansson, but he didn’t say that. He contented himself with nodding.

“That letter he sent me,” he reminded her.

“I’ll get it,” she said. “I have it in my office.”

Perhaps a bit too round, thought Johansson, looking after her back as she disappeared out into the hall. Although she moves easily. Whatever that has to do with anything, he thought.

Finally, thought Johansson when just over three minutes later he was sitting with Krassner’s letter in his hands.

A common white envelope covered with postmarks, stamps, various internal postal notations, and three handwritten addresses. In addition it was opened, neatly opened with the aid of a letter opener.

“I’m the one who opened it. We’ll discuss that later. Read.”

Judging by the first postmark it had been sent from the post office on Körsbärsvägen to Johansson’s own post office on Folkungagatan on Södermalm in Stockholm, Friday, the eighteenth of October. Poste restante Police Superintendent Lars M. Johansson. The recipient’s title and name were written in a neat female hand.

Pia Hedin, thought Johansson as his heart, for reasons which weren’t really clear to him, beat a little faster.

Monday, the eighteenth of November, it had been returned, judging by the postmark, to the post office on Körsbärsvägen. There it had remained until Thursday, the twenty-eighth of November, when the same neat female hand had taken care of forwarding it to John P. Krassner, care of Sarah J. Weissman, 222 Aiken Avenue, Rensselaer, NY 12144 USA.

You can forget about fingerprints on the envelope, thought Johansson, but nevertheless as a matter of routine he held it by its farthest left corner between the nails of his left thumb and index finger while he carefully slid out the typewritten paper that lay inside, folded in the middle.

“You’re doing it cop style,” asserted an apparently charmed Sarah.

“Yes,” said Johansson, unfolding his letter. “It’s an old occupational injury that I have.”

“I love the way you’re doing that,” said Sarah, giggling. “Are Swedish detectives always that gentle with their hands?”

“Not all,” said Johansson, smiling wanly.

The short text seemed to have been written on Krassner’s typewriter. The letter was dated Thursday, October 17, addressed to Police Superintendent Lars M. Johansson; Johansson translated as he read:

Dear Police Superintendent Lars M. Johansson,

My name is John P. Krassner. I am a researcher and journalist from the U.S. We don’t know one another, but I got your name from one of my Swedish contacts, a very well-known Swedish journalist who mentioned that he knew you well and that you were an honorable, uncorrupted, and very capable Swedish police officer who doesn’t shy away from the truth no matter how frightening it might be.

I’ve written this letter as a kind of security measure, and if you have the occasion to read it, unfortunately it means that I have most probably been killed by persons within the Swedish military intelligence service or the Swedish secret police or the Soviet military intelligence service GRU.

The reason for my being in your country is that I am in the process of finishing a large-scale investigative report that I have worked on for several years. I am going to publish my investigation in the form of a book early next year. It is going to be published by a large American publisher but at the present time I am prevented from saying which publisher this concerns. The facts that I recount are however such that they are going to alter the entire security and political situation in northern Europe and not least in your own country.

I have comprehensive documentation to support what you’ll be able to read in my book. These are in secure storage along with the manuscript of the book, in a secret safe-deposit box which I have the use of. I have instructed my old girlfriend Sarah Weissman to turn these papers over to you, so that you can see to it that justice is done in your own country.

Sincerely,

John P. Krassner

What the hell is this? thought Johansson and looked inquiringly at his hostess.

“It’s a typical John P. Krassner letter,” said Sarah Weissman and smiled faintly, as if she were a mind reader. “I know, because I’ve received a few hundred in the past ten years.”

So that’s how it is, thought Johansson.

“I don’t understand what he means,” said Johansson. “It’s true that Sweden has both a military-intelligence service and a secret police, but I can assure you that they really don’t run around murdering people. Least of all American journalists.”

“Ah! You think the Russkies did it,” said Sarah and winked.

“That I find extremely hard to believe,” said Johansson. “Considering how he died, I mean.”

“Me too,” said Sarah. “And if I hadn’t found out that he actually had died, I would have thrown it away, just as I’ve done with all his other letters. It was in my mailbox when I came home from New York last Friday. I was there working for a few days. I don’t usually read other people’s letters, actually, but considering what’s happened… well, you understand.”

“I understand,” said Johansson, nodding.

“He sent a similar letter to me about a month ago,” said Sarah. “In that one he reported that he was in Sweden on a secret assignment. He was like that. John’s entire life was a Top Secret Mission. He could be completely out of it. When we moved in together he used to tape strands of hair on the door if we went out, to check if anyone had sneaked in while we were gone. I hardly dared sleep at night.”

“Did it say anything else?” said Johansson.

“It said something about you,” said Sarah, smiling. “It said that one of his, quote, secret Swedish informants, end quote, had given him the name of a, quote, honorable Swedish cop, end quote. And if something happened to him I was to see to it that you got the letter that he sent to you poste restante, which was I suppose almost a guarantee that you never would have received it, but because John was the way he was…” Sarah shrugged her shoulders in a meaningful way.

“Tough shit,” said Johansson, smiling.

“To say the least,” said Sarah. “In addition I was to make copies of all of his secret documents for you,” she continued. “So that my mom and I could arrange a publisher for him and his so-called book.”

“I understand,” said Johansson. The fellow doesn’t seem to have been quite right in the head, he thought.

“So you can just forget that nonsense about the major publisher that he was unfortunately prevented from saying anything about. It was a typical John publisher. Existed only in John’s head.”

“Might one be able to read that letter that he wrote to you?” Johansson asked.

“No,” said Sarah, shaking her head. “You can’t because I’ve thrown it away. I threw away all his letters, and you would have done the same.”

The key that was in the hollow heel, thought Johansson.

“Those papers,” said Johansson. “That he was supposed to have in a safe-deposit box. Do you know what they are?”

“Not a clue,” said Sarah. “The only thing I know is that it’s my safe-deposit box.”

A little more than six months earlier, a month or so after John’s uncle had died, John got in touch with Sarah and asked her to rent a safe-deposit box in her name but for his use. He needed it to store certain “secret and very sensitive documents” with which he was working. Sarah had refused at first but because he nagged and nagged and nagged she had finally given in. Under certain conditions, however.

“That I kept one of the keys and that if he put the least little thing whatsoever into it that might be suspected to contain something illegal, then I would personally carry all of it to the police.”

“And he went along with that?” said Johansson.

“Of course,” said Sarah. “I guess that was what he was hoping for. That I would go and snoop in his little deposit box and become his own little secret coconspirator.”

“Did you ever check what he had in the safe-deposit box?” asked Johansson.

“Yes,” said Sarah. “It had been about a month since I’d rented it and because I was at the bank anyway on other business I actually did that.”

“Well,” said Johansson, smiling. “What did you find then?”

“It was empty,” said Sarah. “It was a typical John safe-deposit box.”

But after that she hadn’t checked the safe-deposit box. When she received the letter that she threw away she hadn’t even thought about doing so. When she found out that he had died she still hadn’t thought about doing so. And when she read John’s letter to Johansson, it was a Friday evening and the bank was closed for the weekend.

“They open tomorrow at nine o’clock,” said Sarah. “So you can get your papers then.”

Since I’m here anyway I might as well do it thoroughly, thought Johansson.

“Is there a nice hotel here in town?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Sarah, smiling. “The Weissman Excelsior is the very best and you can even sleep in dear Dad’s bed.”

“I don’t want to be a nuisance,” said Johansson.

“Not a nuisance in the least,” said Sarah. “But there is one thing I’m wondering about.”

“Yes?”

“I actually tried to phone you yesterday,” she said. “When I’d read the letter that John sent to you, I tried to call you at home. In Sweden.”

“I have an unlisted number.”

“I know,” said Sarah. “I spoke with directory assistance in Stockholm. Then I called your office too. The Swedish National Police Board, the Swedish FBI. John wrote that you were head of an FBI. The Big Boss.”

Oh, well, thought Johansson and smiled weakly.

“And what did they say?” he asked.

“That I should call on Monday during office hours and talk with your secretary. I also spoke with someone on duty and he was very polite but no one was allowed to talk with you.”

“Did you tell them your name?” asked Johansson. Where do all these curious women come from? he thought.

“Of course,” said Sarah, smiling broadly. “I said that my name was Jane Hollander and I worked with the state police in Albany and that it was an urgent official matter.”

Sigh, thought Johansson.

“Jane and I are old classmates,” said Sarah, giggling. “She actually is a police officer and works with the state police, so it was almost true, but it still didn’t help.”

“Nice to hear,” said Johansson and smiled.

“But you just show up and knock on my door. Just as easy as pie.”

“Yes,” said Johansson.

“So how did you do it?” said Sarah, looking at him with curiosity. “How did you actually find out about that letter with my address? I’ll die of curiosity if you don’t tell me.”

“Pure chance,” said Johansson modestly, “just pure chance.”

“Pity,” said Sarah ironically. “And here I’d gotten the idea that you were pretty smart.”

“You said something about John’s uncle,” said Johansson, who wanted to change the subject.

“Yes, he was a really horrible person. Fortunately he died last spring. I thought we might go to his house so you could see how he lived. John was living there too the past few years.”

“And that won’t be a problem?” said Johansson.

“Not in the least,” said Sarah happily. “It’s my house now. First John inherited it from his uncle, and now I’ve inherited it from John. I was thinking about donating it as a summer camp for young black drug-users from New York,” said Sarah delightedly.

“Sounds interesting,” said Johansson neutrally.

“It sure does,” said Sarah. “They were the people John’s uncle thought the very worst of. It’s true that he hated almost everyone, but young black drug-users from New York were the ones he hated the very most. He’s going to twirl like a propeller in his grave when he finds out about it. Then we can have dinner afterward. I know a really good place right in the neighborhood, a Vietnamese restaurant.”

Vietnamese, thought Johansson. Good thing Jarnebring isn’t along.

Practical business. First Johansson borrowed her phone and called his hotel in New York. After a certain amount of discussion and financial compensation, it had been arranged. It was good enough if he was out of his room before three o’clock the following day and because he was supposed to check in at Kennedy by six o’clock he at least had the time worked out. First the bank as soon as it opened in the morning, after that the train to New York, then the hotel to pack, pay, and check out. Then it would have to be a taxi to Kennedy to check in, a little quick Christmas shopping, and after that the evening plane directly home to Stockholm, where he would arrive on Tuesday morning. A completely feasible schedule, thought Johansson, and if he only had a little time left over he would phone work and see to it that one of his colleagues picked him up at Arlanda and drove him directly to the office.

Then he shoveled snow. Sarah had a car that was snowed in, in the garage, and all things considered, not least considering the next day, it was a better alternative than a taxi. Johansson started shoveling dressed in a sport coat; when he was through he was in his shirtsleeves, and despite the fact that the temperature was almost zero, he felt markedly refreshed. The garage door had frozen stuck, but after a few hefty pulls with his feet solidly on the ground it had come unstuck and could be opened. Inside was his reward: an almost new Volvo station wagon.

“You have a Volvo,” said Johansson delightedly. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“Surprise, surprise,” said Sarah, smiling.

It was Johansson who got to drive, which was practical considering that his hostess had packed herself into an ankle-length red wool coat with hood, lined leather boots, and thick knitted mittens. For the most part only the tip of her nose protruded.

“I got the car from Dad,” she said. “He wanted me to drive safely, but I think it’s way too big.”

“It’s one of the safest cars there is. Your dad seems to be a very wise man,” Johansson stated.

“Big, safe, and Swedish,” said Sarah, beaming. “I’m glad you got to meet a relative.”

Wonder if she’s interested in me? thought Johansson.

On the way they stopped at a good-sized shopping center where Johansson bought a set of clean underwear, a shirt, and a toothbrush. For some reason all of these articles were on the same shelf right before the checkout counter.

What a peculiar country, thought Johansson. Wonder how many unplanned overnights there would have to be for it to be profitable to give them a shelf of their own, in Albany, more than three hours’ drive north of New York, of all places?

“Can I help you, detective?” said Sarah and smiled inquiringly. She had lowered the hood of her winter coat and her frizzy red hair was like a halo around her head.

“No,” said Johansson and nodded toward the shelf by the checkout. “There was just one thing I was thinking about.”

“Planning for the unplanned,” said Sarah and smiled.

This must be the cleverest woman I’ve ever met, thought Johansson, for of course he was like that himself as well.

Then they drove out to the house where John had lived before he went to Sweden, where he died.

What an extraordinarily lugubrious place, thought Johansson, who made it a point of honor to constantly expand his vocabulary. The house stood on a rise fifty yards from the road. It was built of brick that had turned black with age and was large enough to hold an entire summer camp of young drug-abusers. Turn-of-the-century American neo-Gothic, a mausoleum of gloominess that concealed its secrets behind tall lead-cased windows.

“What do you think?” said Sarah, smiling with delight. “It sure is cozy.”

“I think you should sell it,” said Johansson. “Otherwise those poor kids will take an overdose.”

On the lower floor was a large hall that opened onto an even larger living room. Dark men’s-club furniture from the era before the war, and rows of framed photographs crowded together on the sooty mantelpiece above the fireplace. On the brown-spotted wallpaper were light rectangular and square areas, evidence of paintings that had previously hung there. On the facing long wall was a pair of half-open double doors into a neighboring dining room, where merely sticking his head in caused Johansson to lose his appetite. It was untidy with a vengeance. Ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts, crumpled cigarette packs, and dried-up apple cores, newspapers tossed on the floor, piles of books that had been taken off a bookshelf that was still leaning precariously. In the middle of the floor was a motley pile of outdoor rattan furniture barely covered up by a worn-out Oriental rug.

“Elegant, isn’t it?” said Sarah.

The only thing Johansson looked at closely were the photographs on the mantelpiece. Twenty-some photos of one or several persons with frames of silver, pewter, and wood, and judging by the motifs they had been taken over a period of about fifty years. A man was pictured in all the photos except one, a portrait of a woman in early middle age. She was high-busted, had her hair set in a bun, wore a dress with a collar, and was staring sternly at the photographer.

“John’s mother,” said Sarah. “The reason she’s staring like that is that as usual she’s dead drunk. All the others are of his uncle, the colonel, visiting fine people that he’s met.”

“You say colonel,” said Johansson. “I thought you said he was a professor.”

“We’ll discuss that later,” said Sarah. “After you’ve looked at all his photos where he’s visiting fine people that he’d met.”

Not a bad summary, thought Johansson. In the photo where he was the youngest, the uncle was dressed in full academic regalia with a flat hat, black robe, and chain, courteously bowing toward a white-haired skeleton in the same getup. In the others as a rule he was dressed in uniform or double-breasted suit with broad lapels, and depending on the outfit he was either saluting or shaking hands with other men, without exception older than himself and, judging by their appearance, higher class as well. Two of them Johansson even recognized. The first from his school history textbook, for it was President Harry S. Truman, who, politely leaning forward, was shaking hands with Uncle Colonel-Professor, who, despite the broad-striped suit, was standing at stiff attention with his chin thrust forward and a steely glance. Who the hell is it that he resembles? thought Johansson.

In the other photo he was standing in dress uniform, saluting a small bulldog-like man who seemed to be looking at something else, unclear what but in any case outside the picture, and who quite recently, in a historical sense, had been host to Johansson and his colleagues: the legendary head of the FBI, founder of the FBI Academy in Quantico, J. Edgar Hoover. He resembles someone, thought Johansson with increasing irritation, and it wasn’t Hoover, for he only resembled himself.

One of the photos was more informal. The colonel in his forties with a somewhat older man, both in double-breasted striped suits, smiling broadly toward the photographer with their arms around each other’s shoulders. There was also summer and sun glistening on the waves of Strömmen in Stockholm with the palace in the background. It must have been taken outside the Grand Hotel, thought Johansson with surprise, and from force of habit he turned the photograph over. A brief handwritten text: “Comrades in the field, Stockholm, June 1945.”

“My hometown,” said Johansson delightedly, despite the fact that he had been born in the sticks north of Näsåker, and handed the photo over to Sarah. “This is Stockholm. You can see the Royal Palace in the background.”

“Very nice,” said Sarah politely. “Do you know who he’s hugging?” she asked, giving the photo back.

No one I know, thought Johansson, shaking his head. “Not a clue.”

“But Hoover you recognized,” she said and smiled teasingly. “The fact is, here at home this man is almost as big a legend as Hoover. His name was Bill Donovan, known as Wild Bill. He was the first head of what in time became the CIA, although during the war it was called OSS, Office of Strategic Services. I believe it was in 1947 that they changed the name to CIA.”

So that’s how it was, thought Johansson and nodded. Who is it that he resembles? he thought. It wasn’t Wild Bill Donovan, even if he and Uncle Colonel were rather like one another.

He thought of it on the stairway to the upper story. Of course, it’s that human disaster Backstroem, thought Johansson with delight. Apart from the difference in age they could be identical twins, he thought.

“Special Agent Backstroem,” said Johansson out loud to himself.

“Pardon?” said Sarah.

“It was nothing,” said Johansson. “I was just thinking out loud.”

It’s strange how often you think of things when you’re on a staircase, he thought.

On the upper story there was a hallway, and past that a narrow corridor with rows of doors to a half dozen bedrooms of varying size, besides one larger and one smaller bathroom.

“I was thinking about starting by showing you the colonel’s room,” said Sarah.

The colonel? The professor? A man with at least two strings on his lyre, thought Johansson.

Colonel John C. Buchanan had obviously had the use of the largest bedroom in the house, with his own bathroom. The furniture also provided a picture of the man who had lived there, even if a very curtailed one. Against the one short wall stood a tall, narrow bed with a mahogany headboard and frame that still held a mattress, although the linens were gone. On each side of the bed stood a nightstand of the same type of wood and on the one to the right of the pillow was an old-fashioned iron bed lamp with a parchment shade.

On the opposite wall stood an English desk and a desk chair in the same style with a high back and broad arms, upholstered in green leather. On the wall above the desk were ten or so lighter areas where paintings or photographs of various sizes had clearly been hanging, and the desktop was also completely empty of objects with the exception of an electroplated penholder.

The room had two high windows out toward the street, where Johansson could see Sarah’s black Volvo. A cornice hung over heavy dark curtains, running on tracks, that could be pulled closed. On the opposite long wall toward the corridor stood a large green safe of 1970s vintage with a combination lock and the solid door standing ajar. Inside it was empty.

Empty, thought Johansson and looked at Sarah.

“You call him the colonel,” he said, “but first you told me that he was a professor at the university in this city.”

“Yes,” said Sarah. “He was, in the formal sense-professor, that is. He wrote a dissertation in political science right before the war. I’ve never read it but Dad did when I started seeing John, and Dad was completely crazy for a whole month. He was as crazy as he usually gets when you award the year’s Nobel Prize in economics.”

Now she’s smiling again, thought Johansson.

“Although he really was a colonel, I guess,” said Sarah. “He became an officer when we entered the war and I believe he retired sometime in the early sixties. It was then he got that position at the university. It was an open secret that it was in gratitude for his time in the military. It’s true they created a new professorship for him, in contemporary European history or something like that, and the lectures he gave attracted a certain amount of attention, to put it nicely, and he was always just called the colonel.”

“What did he do in the military?”

“Intelligence officer,” said Sarah, nodding decisively. “To put it simply, he worked for the CIA, or its precursor, the OSS. I said that already, didn’t I? He did his service in Europe, among other places in your home country. He was at the embassy in Stockholm for several years. You saw the photo yourself down in the living room.”

“You’re quite certain that he worked for the CIA?” said Johansson.

“Quite certain,” said Sarah, shrugging her shoulders. “That’s what everyone said. John harped on it constantly and what other reason would there be to stand and hug someone like Wild Bill Donovan?”

And why did they take a photo when they did it? thought Johansson. I would think it must almost have been considered official misconduct in those circles.

“Did you ever meet him?” asked Johansson.

“I met him a few times when John and I were together. He was just as unhappy that John was seeing me as Dad was that I was seeing John, so on that point they were in agreement.” Sarah smiled and shook her head. “He didn’t like me,” she continued.

“Why is that?” said Johansson. “Was he as crazy as his nephew?”

“Because I’m Jewish,” said Sarah.

“I understand,” said Johansson. How the hell do you respond to that, he thought.

Then they were in John’s room. Considerably smaller and without a bathroom, but for the most part furnished along the same fundamental principles minus the safe and the heavy curtains but plus a TV, VCR, and radio cassette player. Clearly someone had lived in the room until quite recently, a person who wasn’t especially orderly, at that.

“Housecleaning was never John’s strong suit,” declared Sarah.

That’s not the problem, thought Johansson. Where are the traces of the person who’s been living here?

On the wall above the desk hung an old oil painting depicting some horses grazing in a meadow, quite certainly something inherited from his uncle and of highly questionable value as a work of art. In addition a few framed posters, the most memorable of which was a photograph, grainily shot against the light, of a young, vulnerable Marilyn Monroe leaning over a balcony railing.

On the nightstand beside the bed was a clock radio. On the desk were some of the things usually found on a normal desk. An unwashed coffee cup, paper clips, brads, coins, and a number of pens, a cheap watch with a worn-out band, typing paper, and envelopes. A tall, adjustable table lamp screwed tightly onto a strong iron plate. A few paperback books, all of them mysteries or thrillers. But no bookcase, no calendar, no notebooks, no neatly organized albums with photographs, no private videotapes or cassette tapes. Nothing at all.

It looked the same inside the large brown armoire on the short wall across from the bed: jackets, jeans, and shoes, shirts, undershirts, underwear, and socks, stored all over the place, clean clothes mixed with dirty. On the floor was a golf bag with a half dozen clubs and stuck down among the clubs a Remington short-barreled semiautomatic 12-gauge shotgun. Loaded with a full magazine and to be on the safe side with a shell fed into the bore.

“What did he have this for?” Johansson asked as he drew the shell out and locked the safety catch.

“I don’t know,” said Sarah, shaking her head without the least hint of a smile. “He was just like that. Take it away, please.”

Finally they walked around the house. They were even up in the attic and down in the cellar, and the first impression was also the only lasting impression that Johansson had. Most memorable was the enormous pile of empty bottles that they found in the cellar. A mountain of glass: bourbon, Scotch, and Irish whiskey bottles plus a few hundred extra that had contained American vodka, and when Sarah saw the mountain she didn’t lose her cheer.

“Did I mention that the old man drank a bit?” Another giggle.

Then they locked up and went to a Vietnamese restaurant only a few hundred yards farther down the street, lit up with paper lanterns and with its own Christmas tree before the entry.

Phenomenal food, although hardly something you would dare offer Jarnebring, thought Johansson a little more than an hour later. They had started with a soup made of something that looked like seaweed and that according to Sarah was seaweed, a very special and good-tasting seaweed. After that they ordered some kind of Vietnamese ravioli filled with thin strips of smoked duck breast. Johansson drank beer while Sarah drank white California wine and talked and smiled for the most part the entire time.

First he asked her about the house they had just visited. Where were all the paintings, books, art objects, and other personal belongings that ought naturally to have been found in a house of that size? Sold, according to Sarah, over a period of years and apparently for the same reason that had brought about the death of their owner.

“I don’t know what kind of pensions the CIA has,” said Sarah. “I guess you’ll have to call their office in Langley and ask.”

It had been ten years since Sarah had been a guest in the house; according to her recollection it hadn’t been so remarkably furnished even during the time when the colonel had also drawn a salary as a professor.

“It was mostly junk. Not that many books, and the art was roughly like that painting of the horses you saw in John’s room. What I recall the best is that he had a lot of scrap metal with a military connection that he collected, a lot of helmets and swords and medals and that kind of thing. He himself was terribly proud of his collections. I doubt that he got millions for them, but it’s clear they weren’t completely worthless, I guess. This country is full of crazy people who collect such things.”

Then Johansson had led the conversation on to John, and he’d done so using John’s room as a starting point. What had bothered him, “as a cop,” was not that the person who was living there seemed to be a real pig, for Johansson had seen considerably worse, but rather a pig who seemed to lack personal qualities and interests. You didn’t like things like that if you were a policeman, which Johansson was.

Sarah had nodded in agreement. John was a slob who at the same time was conspicuously uninterested in generally accepted human means of enjoyment; a bed was something you slept in, clothes something you put on yourself because it was warm or cold or rained or snowed, and eating was something you did when you were hungry.

“Drinking beer, on the other hand, was something you could do all the time.”

“He must have had some interests, don’t you think?” Johansson persisted.

Few, according to Sarah. What he read were mostly just mysteries, spy novels, and other similar junk, and when he watched TV he seemed to change channels the whole time.

“He wasn’t even interested in sports. That golf bag in his closet must be something he got from the colonel. I know that he was a member of a golf club for awhile, but that he resigned his membership when they started to accept black people.”

Nice guy, thought Johansson, but he didn’t say that.

“John didn’t even like walking; he thought it was a waste of time. When we went out during the time we were together he used to station himself in the darkest corner of the bar and drink beer while he checked out girls and looked mysterious. He thought that was really exciting.”

“But he must have done something,” persevered Johansson, who was starting to get seriously interested.

“John was only interested in John. I don’t think he was even interested in women, in spite of all the conquests that he bragged about. I believe it ran in the family. His uncle was completely uninterested in women. Everything he said and did only concerned other men. Women weren’t part of the equation for him.”

So that’s how it was, thought Johansson, who had worked for more than twenty years as a policeman.

“A true member of the homoerotic society,” Sarah summarized. “Of course he hated gays too.”

“Did John have any friends?” asked Johansson.

“Lots,” said Sarah and giggled. “What do you think?”

John had lived in his own little world. “The John World,” in which there was no place for friends. There were only scoundrels great and small, spies and terrorists, and because he himself was one of the few remaining white knights, his life was in reality a mission.

“To unmask them and see to it that they ended up in jail. That was what life was all about for someone like John. Although he liked men like you. Big, strong cops, and if you’d met him I’m convinced that you would have kicked him in the butt within five minutes.”

I see, one of those, thought Johansson, who had been a policeman for all of his adult life but had still never kicked anyone in the butt, for he used to let his best friend, Bo Jarnebring, take care of that detail for them both in those days.

“I’m quite certain that’s why he became a journalist,” Sarah concluded.

John had worked as a journalist for several years, and for a while he had even been employed as a reporter of some fame at the local TV station.

“He looked so good that no one heard what he said,” Sarah explained. “But then he got ambitions and started at our largest local paper as an investigative journalist, and it was then that the shit hit the fan.”

According to Sarah, that the shit hit the fan was ultimately due to the restaurant where they were eating, and the one who had seen to it that it hit where it did was actually not John but his uncle the colonel. The restaurant was owned by a Vietnamese family who had come over as boat people at the end of the seventies. They had quickly found economic success in their new homeland and today they owned and ran more than ten businesses in Albany and the surrounding area: restaurants, laundromats, and convenience stores as well as a building supply store and a large motel.

In the early eighties they had opened the restaurant where Johansson and Sarah were sitting, only a couple of stones’ throws from the house where the colonel lived, and it was then too that the colonel had gone seriously crazy. Vietnamese were the Enemy, and as the Enemy they were riffraff, according to the colonel. “Not real warriors, just common gangsters,” and as for the almost two hundred thousand of them who had fled to the United States, they were either communist infiltrators or common deserters who ought to have been shot on the spot. First he’d risen up from his drinking bench and gone around the neighborhood with a petition, but the interest among his neighbors had been tepid and instead it was getting more and more crowded at the newly opened restaurant. It was high alert and red alert and the colonel had succeeded in converting his nephew to the cause.

“Which unfortunately was not that difficult, I guess,” Sarah said and sighed. “However it happened, John succeeded in getting the newspaper to start publishing a series of articles that we had a Vietnamese mafia on our hands. After two articles, publication was interrupted and to make a long story short, the newspaper had to pay a lot of money and John was fired.”

“Was there anything that he wrote that was true, then?” Johansson asked, occupationally injured as he was.

“I can’t imagine what,” said Sarah. “It was certainly a typical John disclosure.”

…

Then they had fruit for dessert, but when Sarah ordered green tea Johansson felt more than a slight hesitation.

“Do you think they have coffee at a place like this?” he asked, lowering his voice.

“Of course they do. Vietnamese aren’t numbskulls. If I were you I would order a double espresso.”

She’s actually really pretty, thought Johansson. Although a little sharp perhaps.

It was Johansson who drove the black Volvo home to Sarah’s. It’s true that he had had two beers, but because they’d been sitting in the restaurant for almost three hours, and because he would never dream of doing it at home, it wasn’t such a big deal. When they came back they had sat down in the living room and talked awhile. Sarah had asked him if he wanted to have wine, whiskey, or something else, but he had declined. Why-he didn’t really know himself; he had just said no thanks, and therefore things had turned the way they had. After a rather short time the conversation had run out. She had shown him to his room, said good night, stood on her tiptoes, and given him a light kiss on the cheek as she smiled and nodded, and that’s how it was.

Johansson brushed his teeth, put on his clean new American underwear, and crept down into her dad’s bed, which was both large enough and hard enough for Johansson’s requirements. Five minutes later he was sleeping, on his right side and with his arm under the pillow as he always did when he was at home, but without having followed his older brother’s advice. How would that look, in her papa’s bed? thought Johansson just before he fell asleep.