The Terrorists. Dennis Lehane

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       1

      The National Commissioner of Police smiled.

      He usually reserved his smile, boyish and charming, for the press and television and only seldom bestowed it on such members of the inner circle as Superintendent Stig Malm, of the National Police Administration, Eric Möller, chief of Security Police, and Martin Beck, chief of the National Murder Squad.

      Only one of the three men smiled back. Stig Malm had beautiful white teeth and liked smiling to show them off. Over the years he had quite unconsciously acquired a whole register of smiles. The one he was using now could only be described as ingratiating and fawning.

      The chief of the Security Police suppressed a yawn and Martin Beck blew his nose.

      It was only half-past seven in the morning, the National Commissioner's favourite time for calling sudden meetings, which in no way meant that he was in the habit of arriving at the station at that time. He often did not appear until late in the morning and even then he was usually inaccessible even to his closest colleagues. ‘My office is my castle’ might well have been inscribed on the door, and indeed it was an impenetrable fortress, guarded by a well-groomed secretary, quite rightly called ‘The Dragon’.

      This morning he was showing his breezy and benign side. He had even had a Thermos of coffee and real china cups brought in, instead of the usual plastic mugs.

      Stig Malm got up and poured out the coffee.

      Martin Beck knew that before he sat down again he would first pinch the crease in his trousers and then carefully run his hand across his well-cut wavy hair.

      Stig Malm was his immediate superior and Martin Beck had no respect for him whatsoever. His self-satisfied coquettishness and insinuating officiousness towards senior potentates were characteristics that Martin Beck had ceased to be annoyed by and nowadays found simply foolish. What did irritate him, on the other hand, and often constituted an obstacle to his work, was the man's rigidity and lack of self-criticism, a lack just as total and destructive as his ignorance of everything to do with practical police work. That he had risen to such a high position was due to ambition, political opportunism and a certain amount of administrative ability.

      The chief of the Security Police put four lumps of sugar into his coffee, stirred it with a spoon and slurped as he drank.

      Malm drank his without sugar, careful as he was of his trim figure.

      Martin Beck was not feeling well and did not want coffee this early in the morning.

      The National Commissioner took both sugar and cream and crooked his little finger as he raised his cup. He emptied it in one gulp and pushed it away from him, simultaneously pulling towards him a green file that had been lying on the corner of the polished conference table.

      ‘There,’ he said, smiling again. ‘Coffee first and then on with the day's work.’

      Martin Beck looked gloomily at his untouched cup of coffee and longed for a glass of cold milk.

      ‘How are you feeling, Martin?’ said the Commissioner, with feigned sympathy in his voice. ‘You don't look well. You're not planning to be ill again, are you? You know we can't afford to be without you.’

      Martin was not planning to be ill. He already was ill. He had been drinking wine with his twenty-two-year-old daughter and her boyfriend until half-past three in the morning and knew that he looked awful as a result. But he had no desire to discuss his self-inflicted indisposition with his superior, and moreover he didn't think that the ‘again’ was really fair. He had been away from his work with the flu and a high temperature for three days at the beginning of March and it was now the seventh of May.

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘I'm fine. A bit of a cold, that's all.’

      ‘You really don't look good,’ said Stig Malm. There was not even feigned sympathy in his voice, only reproach. ‘You really don't.’

      He looked piercingly at Martin Beck, who feeling his irritation rising said, ‘Thanks for your concern, but I'm fine. I assume we're not here to discuss my appearance or the state of my health.’

      ‘Quite right,’ said the Commissioner. ‘Let's get down to business.’

      He opened the green file. Judging by the contents – three or four sheets of paper at the most – there was some hope that today's meeting would not drag on for too long.

      On top lay a typed letter with the mark of a large green rubber stamp beneath the scrawled signature and a letterhead that Martin Beck could not make out from where he was sitting.

      ‘As you will remember, we have discussed our to some extent imperfect experience when it comes to the security measures to be taken during state visits and in similar delicate situations – occasions when one can expect demonstrations of a particularly aggressive nature and well- and less-well-planned attempts at assassination,’ the Commissioner began, falling automatically into the pompous style that usually characterized his public appearances.

      Stig Malm mumbled in agreement, Martin Beck said nothing, but Eric Möller objected.

      ‘Well, we're not that inexperienced, are we? Khrushchev's visit went off fine, except maybe for that red-painted pig someone let loose in front of Logård steps. So did Kosygin's, organizationally as well as security-wise. And the Environmental Conference, to take a maybe slightly different example.’

      ‘Yes, of course, but this time we're faced with a more difficult problem. What I'm referring to is the visit by this senator from the United States at the end of November. It could turn out to be a hot potato, if I may use that expression. We've never been confronted with the problem of VIPs from the СКАЧАТЬ