Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [49]
That the Salander girl would go so far as to make a Molotov cocktail Gullberg had not foreseen. 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. Worse, as like as not, some ambitious scribbler 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 perhaps yet more insistent 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 S.I.S. now knew about the existence of the Section. All contacts with S.I.S. 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 had proposed the solution. Peter Teleborian, a psychiatrist, had become associated with S.I.S.’s department of Counter-Espionage in a quite 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, definite advice. In the event, S.I.S. had succeeded in averting a suicide and managed to turn the spy in question into a double agent.
After Salander’s attack on Zalachenko, Björck had surreptitiously engaged Teleborian as an outside consultant to the Section.
The solution to the problem had been very simple. Karl Axel Bodin would disappear into rehabilitative custody. Agneta Sofia Salander would necessarily disappear into an institution for long-term care. All the police reports on the case were collected up at S.I.S. and transferred by way of the assistant head of Secretariat to the Section.
Teleborian was assistant head physician at St Stefan’s psychiatric clinic for children in Uppsala. All that was needed was a legal psychiatric report, which Björck and Teleborian drafted together, and then a brief and, as it turned out, uncontested decision in a district court. It was a question only of how the case was presented. The constitution had nothing to do with it. It was, after all, a matter of national security.
Besides, it was surely pretty obvious that Salander was insane. A few years in an institution would do her nothing but good. Gullberg had approved the operation.
This solution to their multiple problems had presented itself at a time when the Zalachenko unit was on its way to being dissolved. The Soviet Union had ceased to exist and Zalachenko’s usefulness was definitively on the wane.
The unit had procured a generous severance package from Security Police funds. They had arranged for him to have the best rehabilitative care, and after six months they