Free Spy Out the Land by Jeremy Duns

whispers about a group of Palestinians who had set up base in an old villa in one of the quieter suburbs, where they were said to have an arsenal of
explosives and sophisticated electronic equipment in the basement. These were the big boys: well-trained professional freedom fighters, or terrorists, depending on your particular
‘bag’. In the circles Dark was now hovering around, the Palestinians were most people’s bag.
    He had bided his time before approaching one of their acquaintances and mentioning that he was looking to obtain some supplies. Nothing big: just a couple of forged passports. He had felt his
way forward until that winter he had finally been given – casually, a joint waved in the air by a sallow young man wearing a denim suit and pointed cowboy boots – the name of an elderly
gentleman in Gamla Stan, who had given him a series of perfect documents in exchange for three weeks’ hard-earned wages. Dark had used one of them under the name of a Swedish-speaking Finn,
Erik Johansson, to obtain from the tax authorities a
person-nummer
, the ten-digit identification number that was the key to living legally in Sweden.
    In the following months, he had supplemented these documents with other material, including a Zastava M57 pistol, the brutish-looking Yugoslavian copy of the Tokarev TT-33, and one of
Husqvarna’s discontinued bolt-action rifles, both of which he’d bought through the Palestinians’ circle. Along with three more passports and a bundle of cash, he had buried it all
in a hide in a cemetery on the outskirts of the city.
    Confident his counter-measures were as secure as he could make them, he had slowly slipped into a routine existence. The biting winter hadn’t helped – more than a few times, he found
himself wondering why he hadn’t fled to the Bahamas or Monte Carlo, like the jewel thieves in Hollywood films. Stockholm was comfortable but conformist, and its long dark nights seemed to
drain all meaning from life. He was finally free from the British and the Russians – but for what purpose?
    In the evenings, he’d wander around the city looking at people, trying to fathom what drove them, inspired them – what they were
doing
. Since the war, his life had been an
unbroken sequence of deception, and it had been disorienting to let go of the daily machinery of the espionage world: the dead drops, assignations, photographed documents and intense internal
manoeuvring that had accompanied it all. Over the years he had become accustomed to the pressure weighing down on him, the ever-present dread that at any moment he might be discovered – with
it removed, he discovered that a part of him strangely missed it. All he had to contend with now were his memories, which weren’t pretty. In prison, he’d managed to stave them off with
dreams of survival, escape, even revenge. Now he had nothing to focus on but a stretch of cold grey days in Sweden until death.
    And looming over everything was guilt: for the lives he had taken directly and for those that had been taken as a result of secrets he’d betrayed. One evening after work, he had found
himself walking in the diplomatic quarter of the city and passed the British embassy. He’d been oddly gripped by the urge to walk in and give himself up. It would be so easy, and would solve
so many problems. ‘My name is Paul Dark.’ And then it would all be out of his hands. A secret trial, a long sentence . . . well, so? He could cope. And it would be just: he’d be
repaying his debt to society, as they said. He’d stood across the street for several minutes, on the verge of making a move, but in the end he’d turned away and taken the bus back to
his tiny flat, and the soul-crushing despair that was weekday evening Swedish television.
    With the return of spring, he had found a way to keep his blackest thoughts at bay. He’d volunteered at a soup kitchen near Centralstation, and although he knew it was hardly a suitable