Another Time, Another Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

to stay; they must have done reconnaissance on the scene, likely tracked those who worked there and mapped out their routines, investigated suitable ways to get there and to flee if something went awry. They must have had a roof over their heads, beds to sleep in, tables, chairs, and eating utensils, vehicles to ride in, food and drink and all the practical nastiness in the form of weapons, explosives, and false documents. All combined, the preparations for the operation must have taken at least a month or two.
    In a word, the terrorists must have had help. Probably from several individuals. Probably from individuals with a connection to Sweden and Stockholm. Individuals who spoke Swedish, who were familiar with the area, with the surroundings, with local customs, usage, and everyday necessities such as buying a ticket for the subway or shopping for large quantities of food in a grocery store without attracting attention. Ordinary, anonymous people their own age without a criminal record who looked and thought the way they did.
    The head of the homicide squad was not one to complicate matters unnecessarily. In his profession he had learned that the simplest explanation is most often the right one. A group of young students, he thought. Radical, motivated, with self-discipline and minds in good working order. Perhaps they even lived together in one of those strange collectives he had read about in the newspaper. And a not terribly bold guess was that they were Swedes.
    When he turned over the case to his colleague at Sec who would be assuming responsibility for the investigation, he brought up his musings. Simply a few words in passing, which of course he should have spared himself. His colleague was not a real police officer but rather a legally educated police superintendent of the usual self-confident type and his reaction was familiar.
    He had nodded with the expression of a man who always knows best, sighed wearily, and drawn a well-manicured index finger along his long nose. “I’m sure that thought has occurred to us too,” said the police superintendent deliberately, but that was it. Before long the head of the homicide squad thought less and less about the whole matter, and after a few years it was not even included in the assortment of heroic police stories he used to tell when he encountered real policemen. Nowadays there were newer, better ones.
    Otherwise the secret police should have had a few things to work with. The warnings that German terrorists were planning some form of action on Swedish soil had arrived with increasing frequency during the year preceding the embassy occupation. It was a jumble of high and low, just as it ought to have been: anonymous leads, information from various informants, and even a report prepared by one of Sec’s own undercover agents, but they all had one thing in common. There was nothingconcrete or tangible to get hold of, and during the spring it had seemed most likely that the whole thing had settled down. All was quiet on the informant front; not even their best informants had the least little thing to bring in.
    A few leads and observations had also arrived via colleagues within the open operation. Mostly they concerned “mysterious vehicles” and “shady individuals” who had been observed at and around the West German embassy before the terrorists’ action, but despite investing a lot of time in following them up, they had not led to anything. It was exactly as usual, in other words, for leads of this type almost never led to anything. This is in contrast to activities you initiated and guided yourself in the form of surveillance, infiltration, and the organized gathering of information through telephone monitoring, other types of eavesdropping and radio surveillance.
    The recurring assertions in the media that the secret police had ignored a clear threat were discussed at several of the secret police’s command meetings, and also in the secret police’s