The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (14 page)

That night Gullberg’s life underwent a radical change. The notion of secrecy took on a whole new dimension. He saw immediately the need to create a new structure around the defector.

He decided to include Björck in the Zalachenko unit. It was a reasonable decision, since Björck already knew of Zalachenko’s existence. Better to have him on the inside than a security risk on the outside. Björck was moved from his post within the immigration division to a desk in the apartment in Östermalm.

In the drama that followed, Gullberg chose from the beginning to inform only one person in SIS, namely the head of Secretariat, who already had an overview of the activities of the Section. The head of Secretariat sat on the news for several days before he explained to Gullberg that the defection was so big that the chief of SIS would have to be informed, as well as the government.

By that time the new chief of SIS knew about the Section for Special Analysis, but he had only a vague idea of what the Section actually did. He had come on board recently to clean up the shambles of what was known as the Internal Bureau affair, and was already on his way to a higher position within the police hierarchy. The chief of SIS had been told in a private conversation with the head of Secretariat that the Section was a secret unit appointed by the government. Its mandate put it outside regular operations, and no questions should be asked. Since this particular chief was a
man who never asked questions that might yield unpleasant answers, he acquiesced. He accepted that there was something known only as SSA and that he should have nothing more to do with the matter.

Gullberg was willing to accept this situation. He issued instructions that required even the chief of SIS not to discuss the topic in his office without taking special precautions. It was agreed that Zalachenko would be handled by the Section for Special Analysis.

The outgoing prime minister was certainly not to be informed. Because of the merry-go-round associated with a change of government, the incoming prime minister was fully occupied appointing ministers and negotiating with other conservative parties. It was not until a month after the government was formed that the chief of SIS, along with Gullberg, drove to Rosenbad to inform the incoming prime minister. Gullberg had objected to telling the government at all, but the chief of SIS had stood his ground—it was constitutionally indefensible not to inform the prime minister. Gullberg used all his eloquence to convince the prime minister not to allow information about Zalachenko to pass beyond his own office; there was, he insisted, no need for the foreign minister, the minister of defence, or any other member of the government to be informed.

It had upset Fälldin that an important Soviet agent had sought asylum in Sweden. The prime minister had begun to talk about how, for the sake of fairness, he would be obliged to take up the matter at least with the leaders of the other two parties in the coalition government. Gullberg was expecting this objection and played the strongest card he had available. He explained in a low voice that if that happened, he would be forced to tender his resignation immediately. This was a threat that made an impression on Fälldin. It was intended to convey that the prime minister would bear the responsibility if the story ever got out and the Russians sent a death squad to liquidate Zalachenko. And if the person responsible for Zalachenko’s safety had seen fit to resign, such a revelation would be a political disaster for the prime minister.

Fälldin, still relatively unsure in his role, had acquiesced. He approved a directive that was immediately entered into the secret protocol, making the Section responsible for Zalachenko’s safety and debriefing. It also laid down that information about Zalachenko would not leave the prime minister’s office. By signing this directive, Fälldin had in practice demonstrated that he had been informed, but it also prevented him from ever discussing the matter. In short, he could forget about Zalachenko. But Fälldin had required that one person in his office, a hand-picked state secretary, also be
informed. He would function as a contact person in matters relating to the defector. Gullberg allowed himself to agree to this. He did not anticipate having any problem handling a state secretary.

The chief of SIS was pleased. The Zalachenko matter was now constitutionally secured, which in this case meant that the chief had covered his back. Gullberg was pleased as well. He had managed to create a quarantine, which meant that he would be able to control the flow of information. He alone controlled Zalachenko.

When he got back to Östermalm he sat at his desk and wrote down a list of the people who knew about Zalachenko: himself; Björck; the operations chief of the Section, Hans von Rottinger; Assistant Chief Fredrik Clinton; the Section’s secretary, Eleanor Badenbrink; and two officers whose job it was to compile and analyse any intelligence information that Zalachenko might contribute. Seven individuals who over the coming years would constitute a special Section within the Section. He thought of them as the Inner Circle.

Outside the Section, the information was known by the chief of SIS, the assistant chief, and the head of Secretariat. Besides them, the prime minister and a state secretary. A total of twelve. Never before had a secret of this magnitude been known to such a very small group.

Then Gullberg’s expression darkened. The secret was known also to a thirteenth person. Björck had been accompanied at Zalachenko’s original reception by a lawyer, Nils Erik Bjurman. To include Bjurman in the special Section would be out of the question. Bjurman was not a real security policeman—he was really no more than a trainee at SIS—and he did not have the requisite experience or skills. Gullberg considered various alternatives and then chose to steer Bjurman carefully out of the picture. He used the threat of imprisonment for life, for treason, if Bjurman were to breathe so much as one syllable about Zalachenko, and at the same time he offered inducements, promises of future assignments, and finally he used flattery to bolster Bjurman’s feeling of importance. He arranged for Bjurman to be hired by a well-regarded law firm, which then provided him with a steady stream of assignments to keep him busy. The only problem was that Bjurman was such a mediocre lawyer that he was hardly capable of exploiting his opportunities. He left the firm after ten years and opened his own practice, which eventually became a law office at Odenplan.

Over the following years Gullberg kept Bjurman under discreet but regular surveillance. That was Björck’s job. It was not until the end of the eighties that he stopped monitoring Bjurman, at which time the Soviet Union was heading for collapse and Zalachenko had ceased to be a priority.
For the Section, Zalachenko had at first been thought of as a potential breakthrough in the Palme mystery. Palme had accordingly been one of the first subjects that Gullberg discussed with him during the long debriefing.

The hopes for a breakthrough, however, were soon dashed, since Zalachenko had never operated in Sweden and had little knowledge of the country. On the other hand, Zalachenko had heard the rumour of a “Red Jumper,” a highly placed Swede—or possibly other Scandinavian politician—who worked for the KGB.

Gullberg drew up a list of names that were connected to Palme: Carl Lidbom, Pierre Schori, Sten Andersson, Marita Ulvskog, and a number of others. For the rest of his life, Gullberg would come back again and again to that list, but he never found an answer.

Gullberg was suddenly a big player: he was welcomed with respect in the exclusive club of selected warriors, all known to one another, where the contacts were made through personal friendship and trust, not through official channels and bureaucratic regulations. He met James Jesus Angleton, and he got to drink whisky at a discreet club in London with the chief of MI6. He was one of the elite.

He was never going to be able to tell anyone about his triumphs, not even in posthumous memoirs. And there was the ever-present anxiety that the Enemy would notice his overseas journeys, that he might attract attention, that he might involuntarily lead the Russians to Zalachenko. In that respect, Zalachenko was his worst enemy.

During the first year, the defector had lived in an anonymous apartment owned by the Section. He did not exist in any registry or in any public document. Those within the Zalachenko unit thought they had plenty of time before they had to plan his future. Not until the spring of 1978 was he given a passport in the name of Karl Axel Bodin, along with a laboriously crafted personal history—a fictitious but verifiable background in Swedish records.

By that time it was already too late. Zalachenko had gone and fucked that stupid whore Agneta Sofia Salander, née Sjölander, and he had heedlessly told her his real name—Zalachenko. Gullberg began to believe that Zalachenko was not quite right in the head. He suspected that the Russian defector
wanted
to be exposed. It was as if he needed a platform. How else to explain the fact that he had been so fucking stupid?

There were whores, there were periods of excessive drinking, and there were incidents of violence with bouncers and others. On three occasions
Zalachenko was arrested by the Swedish police for drunkenness, and twice more in connection with fights in bars. Every time, the Section had to intervene discreetly and bail him out, seeing to it that documents disappeared and records were altered. Gullberg assigned Björck to babysit the defector almost around the clock. It was not an easy job, but there was no alternative.

Everything could have gone fine. By the early eighties Zalachenko had calmed down and begun to adapt. But he never gave up the whore Salander—and worse, he had become the father of Camilla and Lisbeth Salander.

Lisbeth Salander
.

Gullberg pronounced the name with displeasure.

Ever since the girls were nine or ten, he had had a bad feeling about Lisbeth. He did not need a psychiatrist to tell him that she was not normal. Björck had reported that she was vicious and aggressive towards her father and that she seemed to be not in the least afraid of him. She did not say much, but she expressed her dissatisfaction in a thousand other ways. She was a problem in the making, but how gigantic this problem would become was something Gullberg could never have imagined in his wildest dreams. What he most feared was that the situation in the Salander family would give rise to a social welfare report that named Zalachenko. Time and again he urged the man to cut his ties and disappear from their lives. Zalachenko would give his word, and then would always break it. He had other whores. He had plenty of whores. But after a few months he was always back with the Salander woman.

That bastard Zalachenko
. An intelligence agent who let his cock rule any part of his life was obviously not a good intelligence agent. It was as though the man thought himself above all normal rules. If he could have screwed the whore without beating her up every time, that would have been one thing, but Zalachenko was guilty of repeated assault against his girlfriend. He seemed to find it amusing to beat her just to provoke his babysitters in the Zalachenko group.

Gullberg had no doubt that Zalachenko was a sick fuck, but he was in no position to pick and choose among defecting GRU agents. He had only one, a man very aware of his value to Gullberg.

The Zalachenko unit had taken on the role of clean-up patrol. It was undeniable. Zalachenko knew that he could take liberties and that the unit would resolve whatever problems there might be. When it came to Agneta Sofia Salander, he exploited his hold over them to the maximum.

Not that there weren’t warnings. When Salander was twelve, she stabbed Zalachenko. His wounds had not been life-threatening, but he was taken to St. Göran’s hospital and the group had more of a mop-up job to do than ever. Gullberg then made it crystal clear to Zalachenko that he must never have any more dealings with the Salander family, and Zalachenko had promised. A promise he kept for more than six months, before he turned up at Agneta Sofia Salander’s place and beat her so savagely that she ended up in a nursing home for the rest of her life.

But Gullberg had not foreseen that the Salander girl would go so far as to make a Molotov cocktail. That day had been utter chaos. All manner of investigations loomed, and the future of the Zalachenko unit—of the whole Section, even—had hung by a thread. If Salander talked, Zalachenko’s cover was at risk, and if that were to happen a number of operations put in place across Europe over the past fifteen years might have to be dismantled. Furthermore, there was a possibility that the Section would be subjected to official scrutiny, and that had to be prevented at all costs.

Gullberg had been consumed with worry. If the Section’s archives were opened, a number of practices would be revealed that were not always consistent with the dictates of the constitution, not to mention their years of investigations of Palme and other prominent Social Democrats. Just a few years after Palme’s assassination that was still a sensitive issue. Prosecution of Gullberg and several other employees of the Section would inevitably follow. Even worse, some ambitious journalist would float the theory that the Section was behind the assassination of Palme, and that in turn would lead to even more damaging speculation and investigation. The most worrying aspect of all this was that the command of the Security Police had changed so much that not even the overall chief of SIS now knew about the existence of the Section. All contacts with SIS stopped at the desk of the new assistant chief of Secretariat, and he had been on the staff of the Section for ten years.

A mood of acute panic, even fear, overtook the unit. It was in fact Björck who proposed the solution. Peter Teleborian, a psychiatrist, had become associated with SIS’s department of Counter-Espionage in a different case. He had been key as a consultant in connection with Counter-Espionage’s surveillance of a suspected industrial spy. At a critical stage of the investigation, they needed to know how the person in question might react if subjected to a great deal of stress. Teleborian had offered concrete advice, and
SIS had succeeded in averting a suicide, managing to turn the spy in question into a double agent.