Another Time, Another Life (3 page)

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.

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.