THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
Generalsekreteraren

Stockholm in 2001. Alex, a young student, is beginning an internship at the World Bank and starts off by working a few weeks at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm. As if by coincidence, Alex comes across a document that has been top secret for the past 40 years. It is no longer restricted under the Secrecy Act
but it should not have remained in the archives, everything else had been removed and destroyed years ago.

Stockholm in 1961. Dag Hammarskjöld is Secretary-General of the UN and Cold War paranoia is rampant. The Swedish police and military are given to understand that the Americans are getting worried after reading Dag Hammarskjöld’s private diary. Is it possible for a man suffering from such deep religious concerns to be in charge of the United Nations? Is he suffering from omnipotence? Where is he taking the world? Perhaps not in the direction that the United States wants.

John Warden, a secretive UN officer, appears in Alex’s life. He suggests that the Swedish Government knew about the threats against Hammarskjöld, but that they did nothing to prevent it. John persuades Alex to find out more about what really happened when Hammarskjöld’s plane was shot down in the Congo in 1961. The party leaders in the Cabinet are most concerned about the document, and Alex is finding it hard to understand what is going on as his life is turning into something that is more like an American action movie – with him as the prey.