Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

CHAPTER XVII

And all that remained was the cold of winter

Mallorca in February

Hedberg had returned from the humid heat on Java to his little house on northern Mallorca where he’d been living in forced exile for almost the past decade. When he landed at the airport in Palma he’d been met by a cooling, early summer wind-it was almost seventy degrees even though it was only the first week in February-so in any event he couldn’t complain about the weather. He picked up his car from long-term parking where he’d left it a good month earlier and then drove home to the house in the mountains north of Alcudia. There were worse days than this, he thought.

Not all his days had been good. Considering that he hadn’t even been called for questioning, much less indicted or convicted, he’d nonetheless been subjected to a shocking assault on his rights. Naturally he’d been allowed to retain his job, but all the whispering in the corridors, the sudden silence when he came into the break room, colleagues who openly avoided him, all this had nonetheless made it impossible for him. Besides, he didn’t feel at home behind a desk. And all just because he’d tried to protect himself against a small-time gangster and a bum who tried to extort him for money that was rightfully his.

When he got the invitation to come over to the external operation and work for Waltin it almost felt like a liberation. There had been plenty of money too, a few times there had actually been quite a lot, and he liked Waltin. He was a talented guy with a lot of charm and quite a few interesting ideas. Besides, Hedberg knew that he could trust Waltin, almost as if they’d been brothers and grown up together, despite the fact that they really didn’t see each other all that often.

So he’d been all the more surprised when he went through the papers that he’d taken from that American journalist and at first had intended to get rid of in some secure way. Not that his English was like Waltin’s, but in any case he knew enough to understand most of what was there, and for a while he’d even gotten the idea that Waltin had duped him.

But the more he thought about it, the more unbelievable it seemed. It was probably no more complicated than that Berg and those social democrats in the new government that he worked for were in league with each other and that Waltin had been duped just as much as himself. Berg with his sanctimonious exterior and his well-oiled mouth was naturally the one they’d turned to in order to remove the embarrassing files the American was sitting on. Documents that showed what every thinking person ought to have been able to figure out on their own: that the country was being run by a traitor and a Russian spy. True, Hedberg hadn’t been aware that in addition he’d managed to worm his way in with the CIA in his youth, but considering all the other things he’d done, such as have his best friend murdered, for example, that had hardly come as a surprise. Nor that he got away with it that time either. Of course people like that always get away with it.

Waltin was probably as fundamentally duped as he was, and considering what had happened it was just as well. How would he have been able to discuss this with Waltin? It would have been the same as signing your own life sentence. If only he’d been certain that he could trust Waltin completely, then he wouldn’t have hesitated a moment to tell him the whole thing. The problem was that during his entire life he hadn’t met a single person who had shown themselves to be completely reliable when it really counted. So it was also wisest to keep quiet about what he knew. At least until he could be sure that not only Krassner but the whole affair really was dead and buried.

…

Actually it was he who was the real victim. He would never have dreamed of even defending himself against such a person as Krassner, if he’d only known who he was and what he was working on. On the contrary, he would have treated him to a beer or two, for he’d earned it, considering the job he was working on. He hadn’t had any choice, and exactly like the time before he’d only tried to defend himself.

Suddenly he’d just stuck the key in the lock and stepped right in, and because Hedberg had been standing on the other side of the door in a narrow coat closet there hadn’t been anywhere to go. And instead of asking him what he was doing there-he was, after all, dressed like an ordinary laborer, so he ought to have thought of that-Krassner had just attacked him and started by trying to head-butt him, and then when he’d dropped him to the floor he’d first tried to knee him and then bite him, and in that situation Hedberg no longer had any choice. He’d been forced to defend himself, and unfortunately he’d happened to break Krassner’s neck along the way. Pure self-defense, and if there was anyone who was a victim in this story it was he. To start with he had of course been duped into it, exploited in order to protect the greatest traitor in Swedish history.

The rest had been pure routine. He’d thought about throwing him out through the window from the start. For what else could he have done? The guy couldn’t just lie there. But because he still had to photograph his papers, he’d happened to see that introduction that he’d written to his book, and when he’d looked at it it had suddenly struck him that this was a typical suicide note, and then there wasn’t too much left to think about. He’d sorted a suitable pile for that traitor Berg and those other idiots, kept the rest for himself, and seen to it that it all appeared normal. Most of the time had gone to changing the ribbon in the typewriter and typing a new, similar suicide note, which he’d then put in his pocket and taken with him. He’d put the real one in the typewriter, and he’d seen that there were prints on it when he held it up against the lamp. Thank the devil for that, by the way. It was of course actually Krassner who had written it.

Then he’d broken loose the catch on the window, lifted him up, and thrown him out. Rather a grand sight, actually, as he fell straight down, and it was only when he hit the ground that he’d seen the bum who was prowling along the building exterior with his mangy pooch and almost got the whole package right in the face. When he’d pulled in his head so as not to be unnecessarily visible, he’d seen that one shoe had evidently fallen off when he was wriggling the body out through the rather narrow window. It wouldn’t do to have it lying on the floor, so he’d picked it up to throw it out too, and because the bum had just been standing there glaring with his silly little dog he’d made a serious attempt to put it right in his cap. Although this time it wasn’t exactly a quarter, like when the bums were sitting down in the subway begging change for liquor. Unfortunately he’d missed and instead hit the pooch, which had folded up and lain down flat on the ground. And nothing more than that had happened. He’d just packed up, made a final quick check, and left the place. The rest had been a question of maintaining a good face, which wasn’t too difficult since Waltin was the only person he needed to talk to.

Typical suicide, if anyone were to get the idea of asking him. One of the most typical he’d heard about, actually, with a letter left behind and the whole shebang. Ought to sit like a sports cap on those retarded policemen in Stockholm, thought Hedberg, and then he hadn’t thought about it again.