Another Time, Another Life: The Story of a Crime Read online

  ALSO BY LEIF GW PERSSON

  Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Translation copyright © 2011 by Pantheon Books,

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Sweden as En annan tid, ett annat liv: En roman om ett brott by Piratförlaget, Stockholm, in 2003.

  Copyright © 2003 by Leif GW Persson.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Persson, Leif GW

  [En annan tid, ett annat liv. English]

  Another time, another life : the story of a crime / Leif GW Persson;

  translated from the Swedish by Paul Norlen.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-90705-9

  I. Norlen, Paul R. II. Title.

  PT9876.26.E7225E513 2012 839.73′74—DC23 2011017394

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  Jacket photograph by Jessica Hines

  Jacket design by Brian Barth

  v3.1

  For Mikael and the Bear,

  What’s the use of warning someone who can’t defend himself?

  —The Professor

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1: Another Time

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Part 2: Another Life

  1. Thursday evening, November 30, 1989

  2. Thursday evening, November 30–The night of Friday, December 1, 1989

  3. Friday morning, December 1, 1989

  4. Friday morning, December 1, 1989

  5. Friday afternoon, December 1, 1989

  6. Friday evening, December 1, 1989

  7. Saturday-Sunday, December 2–3, 1989

  8. Monday, December 4, 1989

  9. Tuesday, December 5, 1989

  10. Wednesday, December 6, 1989

  11. Thursday, December 7, 1989

  12. Friday, December 8, 1989

  13. Friday evening, December 8, 1989

  14. Monday, December 11, 1989

  15. Tuesday, December 12, 1989

  16. Wednesday, December 13, 1989

  17. Thursday, December 14, 1989

  18. Friday, December 15, 1989

  19. Monday, December 18–Friday, December 22, 1989

  20. Wednesday, December 27, 1989

  Part 3: Another Time

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Part 4: Another Life

  21. Autumn 1999

  22. Autumn 1999

  23. March 2000

  24. March 2000

  25. March 2000

  26. March 2000

  27. March 2000

  Part 5: Another Time

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Part 6: Another Time, Another Life

  28. Friday, March 31, 2000

  29. Friday evening, March 31, 2000

  30. Friday evening, March 31, 2000

  31. Saturday, April 1, 2000

  32. Sunday, April 2, 2000

  33. Monday, April 3, 2000

  34. Tuesday, April 4, 2000

  35. Wednesday, April 5, 2000

  36. Thursday, April 6, 2000

  37. Friday, April 7, 2000

  38. Monday, April 10, 2000

  39. Tuesday, April 11, 2000

  Part 7: A New Era

  Chapter XIII

  About the Author

  Part I

  Another Time

  I

  On Thursday the twenty-fourth of April 1975, death came during office hours, and oddly enough in both female and male form. Which is not to say the men weren’t still in the majority. Death was attractively and neatly dressed, and to start with behaved both courteously and urbanely. Nor was it by chance that the ambassador was at his place of employment, which was otherwise far from always the case. On the contrary, this was the result of careful planning, and key to the whole affair.

  The embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Sweden is located on Djurgården in central Stockholm, and has been since the early 1960s. In the northeast corner of the area that goes by the name Diplomat City, with the Swedish Radio and TV building and the Norwegian embassy as its closest neighbors, it hardly gets finer than that as Stockholm addresses go. There is nothing remarkable, however, about the embassy building itself. An ordinary, dreary concrete box in the sixties’ functional style, three stories and just over twenty thousand square feet of office space with entry on the ground floor at the north end, it is far from the most prestigious foreign posting in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  The weather was nothing to write home about that day when death came to call. It was a typical Swedish spring with biting winds, restless clouds under a pewter-colored sky, and only a vague promise of better, warmer times. For death these were ideal conditions. Best of all security at the embassy was almost nonexistent; it was a building that was easy to occupy and defend but difficult to storm. Best of all, a solitary, rather worn-out attendant manned the reception area where, if worse came to worst, the glass doors of the security passage could be forced manually. Granted, the weather conditions would not help the perpetrators when it was time to leave.

  At some point between quarter past eleven and eleven-thirty in the morning things started to happen, and the fact that a more precise point in time could not be established was also owing to the poor security. Whatever. Within the course of a few minutes, six visitors arrived in three groups of two people each, young people between twenty and thirty, all German citizens of course, and they all wanted help with various matters.

  In their homeland they were notorious. Their likenesses and descriptions were on thousands of wanted posters all across West Germany. Their faces were also to be found in airports, train and bus stations, banks, post offices, and basically any public area where there was vacant wall space available. Their images were even on file at the embassy in Stockholm, in a folder in a desk drawer in the reception area, however useful that might be. But when they actually showed up no one recognized them, and the names by which a few of them introduced themselves were different from their own.

  First two young men arrived who wanted advice on an inheritance issue that concerned both Swedish and German jurisdictions, and it was clear, if for no other reason than the bulging briefcase one of them was lugging, that this was no simple matter. The guard in the reception area told the two men where they could find the official they needed and let them into the embassy.

  Immediately after this came a young couple who wanted to renew their passports. A routine errand, one of the most common at the embassy. The young woman gave a friendly smile to the guard as he opened the door for her and her companion.

  But then things became more complicated. Two young men showed up looking to acquire work permits. The guard explained that this was not an embassy matter but rather a question for the Swedish authorities. Instead of listening to him the two
persisted. One of them even got a bit stubborn when the guard didn’t want to let them in. While they stood there arguing, one of the embassy employees, who was going out for lunch, appeared. As he exited, they both took the opportunity to slip in and immediately disappeared up the stairway to the upper floors, without taking any notice of the guard shouting at them to come back.

  Then everything happened very fast. The six congregated in the stairwell outside the consular department on the second floor, pulled on balaclavas, and took out pistols, submachine guns, and hand grenades. After that they cleared the offices of superfluous visitors and personnel; a few introductory rounds in the ceiling making the plaster spray was sufficient for the majority of the staff to flee head over heels out onto the street, and the twelve who remained behind were gathered together and herded into the library on the top floor, with military precision and without wasting time on any pleasantries whatsoever.

  At eleven forty-seven the first alarm about “gunfire at the West German embassy” came to the Stockholm police command center, and this unleashed an all-out response. Uniformed police, detectives from the central detective squad, the homicide squad, and the secret police, in effect all personnel that could be called out were ordered there; blue lights, sirens, and screeching tires all headed for the West German embassy on Djurgården, and the alarm they are responding to is already clear enough. The West German embassy has been occupied by terrorists. They are armed and dangerous. All police are urged to observe the greatest possible caution.

  First on the scene was a radio car from Östermalm precinct, and that it arrived at eleven forty-six according to the submitted report was not because the patrol commander was psychic; his watch was two minutes slow when he noted the time, and considering what happened later this was a minor error.

  By twelve-thirty, after a little more than forty minutes, the police had already surrounded the embassy, secured the basement and lower floors inside the building, set up barricades in the area outside the embassy to hold back the quickly growing crowds of journalists and curiosity seekers, set up a temporary command center, and begun to organize their radio and telephone connections to police headquarters, the embassy, and the government offices. The head of the homicide squad who would be leading the effort was on the scene, and as far as he and his colleagues were concerned they were ready to get going.

  The six people inside the embassy hadn’t been twiddling their thumbs either. They had led the twelve employees being held hostage, including the ambassador himself, from the library to the ambassador’s office in the southwest corner of the top floor of the building, and as far away from the entry as they could get. A few of the female employees had to help by filling wastebaskets with water and stopping up the sinks and toilets with paper towels to prevent an expected gas attack via the water pipes. Two of the terrorists primed blasting caps at strategic places on the top floor while the others guarded the hostages and the door toward the stairwell. And after all that they were ready at approximately the same time as their opponent.

  The terrorists made the first move, opening with a simple, unambiguous demand. If the police did not immediately leave the embassy building, one of the hostages would be shot. The head of the homicide squad was not a man to get worked up unnecessarily, and his self-confidence was great, if not unlimited. Besides, he had been present at the drama on Norrmalmstorg a year and a half before, and there he had learned that if the culprits only had time to get to know their hostages, then the strangest feelings of camaraderie could arise between them, and the risk of violence would be greatly reduced. This interesting human mechanism had even been given a special name, “Stockholm syndrome,” and in the general psychological delirium no one gave any thought to the limited extent of its empirical basis.

  Therefore the head of homicide thought he was on a solid behavioristic footing when he sent word that he had made note of the terrorists’ wishes and was willing to talk things over. But his adversaries had different, more violent ideas. After only a few minutes a volley of shots echoed from the top floor of the embassy. Then the door to the upper corridor opened and the German military attaché’s bloody, lifeless body was thrown out down the stairs, coming to rest on the halfway landing. That done, the terrorists again made contact.

  The demand remained. If the police wished to retrieve the corpse, that was fine, provided that at most two police officers did so, dressed only in underwear. And if they did not wish to retrieve more dead bodies, they should leave the building immediately. What extraordinarily depressing people, the head of homicide thought as he made his first operational decision in a crisis situation. Of course the police would leave the building. Of course they would see to removing the body. Of course. It was already under way.

  Then by radio he contacted the chief inspector of the central detective squad who was leading the forces inside the building and asked him for three things. First, to send a suitable, clearly visible number of men out of the building; second, to see to it that those who remained behind regrouped discreetly on the basement level; third and finally, to appoint two volunteers who were willing to play the part of EMTs in underpants only.

  Assistant detective Bo Jarnebring with the central detective squad was one of the first who, with service revolver drawn, and with a warm heart and a cool head, had rushed into the embassy building, and he was also the first to volunteer. His boss had only shaken his head. Even an almost naked Jarnebring would be far too terrifying a spectacle in this sensitive initial phase. The assignment had gone instead to two of his older colleagues who had a more jovial, roly-poly appearance. Jarnebring and two other like-minded colleagues would try to provide cover for the stretcher bearers and if necessary fire their weapons toward the upper corridor.

  This duty suited Jarnebring much better, and he quickly crawled up the stairs and took position. His two colleagues succeeded with some difficulty in rolling the lifeless, bloody body up onto the stretcher that they pushed ahead of them. It was not exactly simple to do lying curled up on a stairway, but it worked. After that they very carefully started to ease back down the stairs with the stretcher dragging after them while Jarnebring held the sight of his service revolver aimed steady at the door to the upper corridor. It was at approximately that moment that he acquired his lifelong memory of the German terrorists’ occupation of the West German embassy in Stockholm. There was a smell of burnt telephone.

  Suddenly he glimpsed the barrel of an automatic weapon in the door opening, and just as he tried to change position to get a clear shot at the person who was holding the gun he saw the flames in the muzzle of the barrel, heard the reports boom in the narrow stairwell and the ricochets buzzing like angry hornets around his ears. But it was his nose that remembered best the smell of burnt telephone. It was not until the next day when he and a few of the others returned to the site to help clean up that he became clear about the reason for his memory. The staircase banister was covered with black Bakelite, and about eighteen inches above the place where his head had been the bullet from an automatic weapon had carved a yard-long groove in the banister.

  The Swedish police lacked both the equipment and the training for this type of effort. The combined practical experience of the police force amounted, counting generously, to no more than three similar events: the murder of the Yugoslavian ambassador in Stockholm in April 1971, an airplane hijacking at Bulltofta outside Malmö in September 1972, and the so-called Norrmalmstorg drama in Stockholm in August 1973. That was when an ordinary Swedish thief had taken the personnel of a bank hostage in an effort to force the release from prison of the bank robber most lionized by the national mass media. Both the airplane hijacking and the Norrmalmstorg drama had ended happily in the sense that no one had died, but in this new case other rules clearly applied; only an hour after the situation had begun the head of the homicide squad had a corpse around his neck and this he greatly disliked.

  He therefore decided to change tactics and lie low, very low, as low as poss
ible, if for no other reason than to give the Stockholm syndrome a second chance to have its full effect. Deep down, because he himself was a good person, he had a hard time letting go of that thought. As afternoon changed to evening he had therefore allowed his forces to conduct the police variation of the Swedish hedgehog, and he had mostly talked on the phone. With his own police command, with people from the National Police Board, representatives of the government and the Ministry of Justice, basically with anyone and everyone who managed to get in touch with him.

  Late in the afternoon two colleagues from the German secret police showed up at his temporary command center. After a brief description of the situation they left him to form their own impressions. Only a quarter of an hour later an out of breath chief inspector from the uniformed police came to report that the “German bastards” were going around doling out high-caliber American army revolvers as a gift to their Swedish colleagues. So that they would have “more substantial hardware to hold on to than a lousy Walther pistol when things got serious.” The head of homicide sighed and told the chief inspector to break off these “philanthropic activities” as quickly as possible and take care to see that any gifts already doled out were rounded up.