“Or to tell just a chosen few.”
“Exactly. I may be paranoid, but I didn’t want to risk having Dahlman leak the story.
So we decided to inform the whole staff on the same day the agreement was made
public. Which meant that we kept the lid on it for over a month.”
“And?”
“Well, that was the first piece of good news they’d had in a year. Everyone cheered
except for Dahlman. I mean—we don’t have the world’s biggest editorial staff.
There were three people cheering, plus the intern, and one person who got his
nose out of joint because we hadn’t told everybody earlier.”
“He had a point...”
“I know. But the thing is, he kept on bitching about the issue day after day, and
morale in the office was affected. After two weeks of this shit I called him into my
office and told him to his face that my reason for not having informed the staff
earlier was that I didn’t trust him to keep the news secret.”
“How did he take it?”
“He was terribly upset, of course. I stood my ground and gave him an ultimatum—
either he had to pull himself together or start looking for another job.”
“And?”
“He pulled himself together. But he keeps to himself, and there’s a tension between
him and the others. Christer can’t stand him, and he doesn’t hide it.”
“What do you suspect Dahlman of doing?”
“I don’t know. We hired him a year ago, when we were first talking about trouble
with Wennerström. I can’t prove a thing, but I have a nasty feeling that he’s not
working for us.”
“Trust your instincts.”
“Maybe he’s just a square peg in a round hole who just happens to be poisoning
the atmosphere.”