The Troubled Man (34 page)

Eber’s worries about his past eventually catching up with him were very strong. Despite the fact that East Germany no longer existed, the people he had targeted were still there. It had become clear to Wallander that nobody could assuage Eber’s fear; it was a constant presence and would probably never disappear completely. As the years passed, Eber became increasingly reserved and withdrawn; their meetings became less frequent and eventually ceased altogether.

The last time they had seen each other was because Wallander had heard that his friend was ill. One Sunday afternoon he drove out to Hoor in order to see how things were. Eber was the same as ever, possibly a bit thinner. He was about the same age as Wallander but seemed to be ageing more quickly. Wallander had thought a lot about Hermann Eber’s fate on his drive back home after the failed visit, when they had sat and looked at each other without being able to think of anything to say.

The door of the red-brick house had been opened slightly. Wallander got out of his car.

‘It’s only me,’ he shouted. ‘Your old friend from Ystad.’

Hermann Eber appeared in the doorway. He was wearing an ancient tracksuit that Wallander suspected was one of the few garments he’d had with him when he fled from East Germany. The garden was full of rubbish. He wondered fleetingly if Eber had set up cunning mantraps around his house.

‘You,’ he said. ‘How long is it since you last came to visit me?’

‘Many years. But when have you been to visit me? Do you even know that I’ve moved to the country?’

Eber shook his head. He was almost completely bald. His wandering eyes convinced Wallander that he was still afraid of a possible revenge attack.

Eber pointed at a decrepit-looking garden table and some rickety chairs. Wallander realised that Eber didn’t want to let him into the house. His place had always been a mess, but in the past he had invited Wallander inside anyway. Perhaps it’s in an even worse state now, Wallander thought. He sat down carefully on the chair that seemed least likely to collapse. Eber remained standing, leaning against the house. Wallander wondered if he still retained the acuity that had been his most characteristic trait. Eber was an intelligent man, even if he led a life that seemed at odds with his intellectual capacity. Several times he had surprised Wallander by turning up to meetings unwashed and smelly. He dressed oddly, and in the middle of winter often wore summer clothes. But Wallander had realised at an early stage that beneath this confusing and often repulsive surface was a clear head. The way he analysed what was no longer an East German miracle had given Wallander insight into a social system and a view of politics that had previously been beyond his comprehension.

Hermann Eber had often reacted with reluctance and irritation when Wallander asked him questions about the work he did for the Stasi. It was still difficult, hurtful, a pain he was unable to shake off. But at times when Wallander had been sufficiently patient, Eber had eventually begun to talk about it. One day he had admitted, matter-of-factly, that for a while he had worked in one of the secret departments concerned exclusively with killing people. That was why Wallander had thought of him when Ytterberg called and told him about Louise von Enke’s pathology report.

When Eber appeared in the doorway he was carrying a bundle of papers, and behind both ears were pencils. All the years he had lived in Sweden, Eber had earned a living by writing crossword puzzles for various German newspapers. He specialised in very difficult puzzles, aimed at the most advanced solvers. Creating crosswords was an art - it wasn’t just a matter of fitting words into a grid with as few black squares as possible; there was always another dimension: a theme hard to detect, possibly associations with various historic figures. That is how he had described his work to Wallander.

He nodded at the papers Eber had in his hand.

‘Some more brain-teasers?’

‘The most difficult I’ve done. A crossword puzzle in which the most elegant clues are linked with classical philosophy.’

‘But surely you must want people to solve your puzzles?’

Eber didn’t reply. It occurred to Wallander that the man sitting opposite him in the shabby old tracksuit dreamed of creating a crossword puzzle that nobody would ever manage to solve. Wallander wondered for a moment if Eber’s fear had driven him crazy, despite everything. Or perhaps it was living here in this hollow where the hills on all sides could be perceived as walls closing in on him.

He didn’t know. Hermann Eber was still at his core a complete stranger as far as Wallander was concerned.

‘I need your help,’ he said, putting the pathology report on the table and proceeding to explain calmly and thoroughly everything that had happened.

Eber put on a pair of dirty glasses. He studied the papers for a few minutes, then suddenly stood up and disappeared into the house. Wallander waited. Eber still hadn’t returned after fifteen minutes. Wallander wondered if he had gone to bed, or perhaps started to prepare a meal and forgotten about the guest waiting for him on the rickety garden chair. But he continued to wait, his impatience growing. He decided to give Eber five more minutes.

At that moment Eber re-emerged. He had some yellowed documents in his hand and a thick book under his arm.

‘This stuff belongs to a different world,’ Eber said. ‘I had to search for it.’

‘But you appear to have found something.’

‘It was clever of you to come to me. I’m probably the only person who can give you the help you need. At the same time, I must tell you that this aroused many nasty memories. I started crying as I was searching. Did you hear that?’

Wallander shook his head. He thought Eber was exaggerating. There were no signs of tears on his face.

‘I recognise the substances,’ Eber resumed. ‘They have woken me up out of a Sleeping Beauty slumber that I would have preferred to remain in undisturbed for the rest of my life.’

‘So you know what it is?’

‘I think so. The ingredients, the synthetically produced chemical substances mentioned in the report, are exactly what I used to work with.’

He paused. Wallander waited. Eber didn’t like being interrupted. He had once told Wallander, when under the influence of several glasses of whisky, that it had to do with all the power he once had as a high-ranking officer in the Stasi. Nobody in those days dared to contradict him.

Eber cradled the thick book in his hands, as if it were a holy writ. He seemed hesitant. Wallander would have to be careful. A blackbird perched on the rim of a plastic kiddie pool nearby. Eber immediately slammed the heavy book down onto the table. The blackbird flew off. Wallander remembered that Eber suffered from a mysterious fear of birds.

‘Let’s hear it, then,’ said Wallander. ‘What are these substances?’

‘I dealt with them a thousand years ago. I thought they were out of my life for good. Now you turn up one lovely summer’s day and remind me of something I don’t want to remember.’

‘What is it you want to forget?’

Eber sighed and scratched at where his hair used to be. Wallander knew it was important to keep a grip on him, otherwise he might disappear to spend endless hours composing his crossword puzzles.

‘What is it you want to forget?’ Wallander repeated.

Eber began rocking back and forth on his chair, but he said nothing. Wallander’s patience was stretched thin.

‘I want to know if you can identify these substances,’ he said sharply.

‘I’ve dealt with them in the past.’

‘That’s not a good enough answer. “Dealt with”? You have to be clearer than that! Don’t forget you once promised me you’d do me a favour when I asked for one.’

‘I haven’t forgotten.’

Eber shook his head, and Wallander could see that he was tortured by the situation.

‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘I need your answer, your views and your thoughts. But there’s no hurry. I can come back later if you prefer.’

‘No, no, stay! I just need time to find my way back into the past. It’s as if I’m being forced to dig out a tunnel that I’ve already refilled carefully.’

Wallander stood up.

‘I’ll go for a walk,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a closer look at the Icelandic horses.’

‘Half an hour, that’s all I need.’

Hermann Eber wiped the sweat from his brow. Wallander walked out of the hollow and back to the nearest paddock.

After half an hour, it had started to get windy, and a bank of clouds was building up from the south. Hermann Eber was sitting motionless in the garden chair when Wallander opened the rusty gate. Now there was another book lying on the table, an old diary with brown covers. Eber started talking the moment Wallander sat down. When he was agitated, as he was now, his voice became shrill, almost strident. Wallander had several times wondered with distaste what it would have been like to be interrogated by Hermann Eber when he was still convinced that East Germany was a paradise on earth.

‘Igor Kirov,’ Eber began, ‘also known as “Boris”. That was his stage name, the alias he used. A Russian citizen, the official liaison with one of the KGB’s special divisions in Moscow. He came to East Berlin a few months before the Wall went up. I met him several times, though I had no direct contact with him. But there was no doubt about his reputation: Boris knew his stuff. He had zero tolerance for irregularities or slapdash procedures. It was no more than a couple of months before several of the highest officials in the Stasi had been transferred or demoted. You could say he was the Russian star, the much-feared centre of the KGB’s operations in East Berlin. Before he had been with us for six months, he had cracked Great Britain’s most efficient spy ring. Three or four of their agents were executed after secret and summary trials. They would normally have been exchanged for Soviet or East German agents imprisoned in London, but Boris went straight to Ulbricht and demanded that the British agents be executed. He wanted to send an unambiguous warning not only to foreign agents, but also to any East German citisens who might be contemplating treason. Boris had turned himself into a universally feared legend after less than a year in East Berlin. He apparently led a simple life. Nobody knew if he was married, if he had any children, if he drank, or even if he played chess. The only thing that could be said about him with any certainty was that he had a unique ability to organise effective cooperation between the Stasi and the KGB. When the end came, we in the Stasi were stunned. The whole of East Germany would have been, if events had been made public. But everything was hushed up, of course.’

‘What happened?’

‘One day he simply vanished. A magician had draped a cloth over his head and hey presto, he was no longer there! But obviously, nobody applauded. The big hero had sold his soul to the English, and of course to the USA as well. I don’t know how he managed to conceal the fact that he had been responsible for the execution of British agents. Perhaps he didn’t need to. Security organisations have to be cynical in order to operate efficiently. It was a slap in the face for both the KGB and the Stasi. Heads rolled. Ulbricht was summoned to Moscow and came back crestfallen, even though it was hardly his fault that Boris hadn’t been unmasked. Markus Wolf, the head of the Stasi, was very close to being left out in the cold. No doubt he would have been if he hadn’t issued an order that brings us back to why you’re sitting here today. An order that was given the highest priority.’

Wallander could guess what was coming next.

‘Boris had to die?’

‘Exactly. But not only that, it would have to look as if he had been stricken by remorse. He would have to kill himself and leave a suicide note in which he described his treachery as unforgivable. He would have to praise both the Soviet Union and East Germany, and with a large dose of self-contempt and an equally large dose of our doctored sleeping pills, he would have to lie down and die.’

‘How was it done?’

‘At that time I was working at a lab just outside Berlin - interestingly enough at a place not far from Wannsee, where the Nazis had assembled in order to decide how to solve the Jewish problem. One day a new man showed up.’

Eber broke off and pointed to the notebook with the brown covers.

‘I saw you noticed it. I had to look up his name. My memory let me down, which it doesn’t normally. How’s your memory nowadays?’

‘It’s OK,’ said Wallander non-committally. ‘Go on.’

Eber appeared to have quietly registered Wallander’s reluctance to talk about his memory. It seemed to Wallander that the perception of tone of voice and subtexts must be especially well developed in people who at some stage in their life have worked in the security services, where overstepping the mark or making an incorrect assessment could result in an appointment with a firing squad.

‘Klaus Dietmar,’ said Eber. ‘He had been transferred directly from the women swimmers, I know that for certain, even though he had never been their official coach. He was one of those behind the sports miracle. He was a small, slim man who moved without making a sound and had hands like a girl’s. People who misjudged him might have interpreted his bearing as a sort of apology for existing at all, but he was a fanatical Communist who no doubt prayed every night to Walter Ulbricht before switching off the light. He was the leader of a group to which I belonged. Our only task was to produce a substance that would kill Igor Kirov but leave no trace apart from what seemed to be that of an ordinary sleeping pill.’