but regular surveillance. That was Bjorck's job. It was not until the end of the '80s 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 K.G.B.
Gullberg drew up a list of names that were connected to Palme: Carl Lidbom, Pierre Schori, Sten Andersson, Marita Ulfskog, 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 each other, where the contacts were made through personal friendship and trust, not through official channels and bureaucratic regulations. He met Angleton, and he got to drink whisky at a discreet club in London with the chief of M.I.6. 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 register 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, nee Sjolander, 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 and trouble 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 Bjorck 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 '80s 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. Bjorck 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 in a thousand other ways her dissatisfaction with how things stood. 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