Into a Raging Blaze (24 page)

27

Stockholm, Tuesday, October 4

Carina squinted against the bright daylight streaming through the large windows. She had woken up a moment earlier with an unpleasant, floating feeling and she didn't know where she was. She was lying on a sofa and must have slept there for a long time, judging by how light it was. She was so dazed that she couldn't say with certainty what day it was. Tuesday, maybe—or Wednesday?

A garbage truck rumbled along the street below, making the windows rattle. She sat up painfully. The blanket had wriggled down around her; she pulled it away. The headache came like a slow pressure-point against the side of her skull. If felt like her head had shrunk two sizes during the night; the very smallest movement made her brain slide sideways and hurt.

It had been a long time since she had woken up in a strange apartment. The room looked completely different now: it was large and strangely peaceful. Someone had tidied up; the bottles were gone. A sudden feeling of shame came over her. At this time of the day, everyone was at work and she was here. When she tried to stand, she almost threw up. Cold sweat clung to her back. She sat stock-still until her stomach had calmed down.

The apartment was bigger than she had initially thought. Apart from the living room and the bedroom, there was also a study. In the kitchen, trash bags were lined up on the floor and a battery of bottles filled the counter, along with mountains of dirty dishes.

No one was home. She was grateful for that; she didn't want to talk to anyone right now; she just wanted to concentrate on forcing
back the nausea and getting over the dreadful hangover. She hadn't had one like it for at least ten years. She had almost forgotten what it felt like the day after a real drinking session. She found the bathroom and took a quick, cold shower. She found a tube of toothpaste in the bathroom cabinet, squeezed some on to her finger and rinsed her mouth until she could only taste mint. She felt better already.

Standing in the bathroom, she heard the rattle of the apartment door. As if being discovered in the middle of a break-in, she held her breath and waited as the person in the hallway closed the door, took off their shoes, and withdrew into the apartment. She dried herself and dressed quickly.

In the kitchen, the girl, Alex, was making coffee in a Bodum French press. “Good morning,” she said. “I thought you were gone.”

“Hi. Yes, I . . .” Carina looked at the clock on the wall. “Is it half past three?”

Alex smiled at her. “It seemed like you really needed to sleep. Coffee?”

She nodded and stayed in the doorway to the kitchen, shy about being there, an unknown guest in an unknown apartment. Alex handed her a mug and looked at her with an amused smile.

“How do you feel?”

“Okay,” she lied.

She sipped the coffee; it was so hot it tasted of metal. Outside the window, the pines swayed slowly. They looked alien.

“You look great.”

“What?”

Alex held out her cell. On the screen was a picture taken late in the evening. Carina had an arm around Greger and was laughing with her mouth wide open. She was trashed. A girl she didn't know was hanging around in front of her and sticking out her tongue.

“I don't remember any of that.”

Alex laughed.

They sat down and looked through the pictures from the party on Alex's cell. Carina didn't really feel like it, but was so weak that the mere thought of doing anything other than remaining seated
and looking at the pictures seemed like an insurmountable effort. One of the last pictures was of her lying on the sofa with her head at a peculiar angle—she looked unconscious.

“Jesus Christ. I hope Greger doesn't put them online.”

She hadn't thought about the report once since she had woken up, or the police, or the MFA; for a few hours, she had been free. But now it all came back. Reality regained its sharp contours. She needed to talk to Jamal. She finished her coffee.

“I think I need to go,” she said. “Thanks for letting me sleep here.”

“Already?” Alex looked at her in surprise. “You can stay, if you like. I'm just going to be working here for a bit.” She nodded to a laptop on the kitchen counter.

“But . . .” The police, she wanted to say. But she was embarrassed; her tongue glued to her mouth. “I need to go home.”

“Greger said that you probably shouldn't go home.”

She looked up. Lively, brown eyes met her gaze.

“No, maybe not.”

She leaned back and watched while Alex continued moving around the kitchen.

“Stay here for a few nights,” said Alex with her back turned. “Then perhaps things will have sorted themselves out.”

Alex reached into a cupboard, pulled out a box, rooted around, and handed her a small object. “Here.” A plastic Mickey Mouse figure, and, dangling from its head on a chain, a key.

Alex wanted to show her something, and took the computer with her to the living room sofa. Carina watched while Alex opened her browser and logged in to a website—a forum with different discussion threads, as far as she could tell. Alex opened up a link and let her read it. It was in mid-thread and it was hard to understand what it was about. The posts were short, like telegrams. A number of usernames were throwing around different addresses and numbers.

“What is this?”

“This is our little secret,” said Alex. She scrolled slowly through the thread. It was long, with hundreds of posts during the last two
days alone. This was what Greger had talked about. They were looking for Jean.

“My God,” she whispered.

“This is Greger.”

A photograph had been uploaded by the username Redstripe, next to a post.
The
photograph.

He was there in the background—Jean. He had been circled and Greger had uploaded an enlarged picture of his face.

Carina took the laptop and scrolled onward through the thread. Around ten users were currently online and posting in the thread, and the thread had a total of over five hundred posts. New ones were appearing every minute.

She shook her head, as if she needed to jolt her brain to understand what it was that she was seeing. It was incredible.

“You see,” said Alex. “You're not alone.” Her cell rang. She got up and left Carina with the computer.

She spent a long time reading the discussion thread and almost hoped, for a second, that the posts would stop flowing in, but they kept coming, each and every minute. Perhaps she had gone too far; perhaps this was a mistake. But at the same time, what did she have to lose? She went back to the most recent posts. Greger and his friends were clearly getting close. This was bigger than she had imagined possible.

“This is . . . impressive,” she said when Alex came back. “But do they know what this is about? I mean, do they know that the police—”

“Oh, yes.” Alex brushed away all further objections with a small, dismissive gesture. “It's fine. This is no biggie for them. I know most of them. They're good people and know what they're doing. What's more,” she added, as her phone chirped again, “the site is invite only.” She picked up her cell and vanished out of the room.

It was dark outside when Carina wandered down toward the center of Fruängen. It was a relief to get out; the apartment just made her restless. An intense sense of unreality still lingered, as if it lay
between her and the rest of the world. She had slept most of the day and it still felt like she hadn't quite woken up.

It would be good to talk to Jamal; she missed him. Alex was kind to let her stay, but she wasn't sure she wanted to keep staying there—although going home was no option, not yet; she didn't dare. And she didn't have a key to Jamal's apartment. She sighed.

She cut across a residential parking lot between the apartment blocks and crossed a large playground. The streetlights had already begun to come on, and glowed with a weak pink hue. The day was already over. What was she doing here? she thought dismally. She was thirty-two years old and a diplomat—at least, until recently—and here she was, wandering around Fruängen, hungover.

The center of Fruängen in the late afternoon was deserted. All these suburban centers that had been built around the nodes of the underground network felt simultaneously pleasant and depressing. The dream of a good society, but all that was left was these low, barrack-like buildings filled with grocery shops and liquor stores. Some youths were passing the time outside the video store; an older man was in one of the chairs in the hairdresser's that had fading posters with the hottest styles from the last decade still in the window.

She found a pizzeria on the outskirts of the center. Three alkies were there, staring morosely at the street. An elderly couple was eating dinner in silence. No one noticed her. She picked a cola from the fridge in the corner and waited while the two guys in front of her ordered their pizzas.

“Yes, love—what can I get you?”

“Can I borrow your phone?”

The pizza baker shrugged his shoulders wearily. There was a phone next to the till, but it was apparently not for customers. He turned around, shouted something in Turkish to someone in the kitchen and got a short response. Yes, okay, he said. He pointed at the phone. Not too long.

It rang five times before Jamal answered.

“Badawi.”

She exhaled. As soon as she heard his voice, it was as if her insides leapt. She leaned against the wall and felt warmth spreading through her body. Jamal was in Vienna, again. The delegation from the Ministry of Justice had entered a second round of negotiations about the budget for the UN agency, for which it controlled the Swedish contributions. Quietly, with one hand over the receiver so that the guy by the pizza oven wouldn't hear her, she told him what had happened. Vienna was so infinitely far away, but when she talked to Jamal he sounded like he was right beside her, as if he was at home in his apartment. It became quiet at the other end of the line. Where are you now? he wanted to know, his voice somber. She had thought he would shout loudly, get angry, but he sounded very serious, very matter of fact.

“In Fruängen.” It sounded so odd when she said it, almost absurd; she laughed even though it wasn't in the least bit funny. A friend of Greger had let her sleep in her apartment, she explained, just for a night or two.

He wanted to come back to Stockholm. “I can catch the flight tonight,” he said.

“No.” She said it hard, almost too hard. She closed her eyes. How much she would have liked to say yes, come home, fly home. “It's not necessary,” she said. “It'll sort itself out.”

“I'm going to do it.”

“But you might get involved in this.”

“I'm already involved.”

“You know what I mean.”

He said nothing. Then he burst out with, “But it has to be possible to solve this!”

“Yes,” she said, without any great conviction. “It must be.”

She had shown him that damn report, and Jamal had gotten her the classified material from the archive: he was already an accessory. She definitely had to try not to involve him anymore, she thought to herself.

Jamal said that he had called her. He had gotten worried when she hadn't answered. She explained how she had forgotten her
cell in the park. He wanted to know more detail about what had happened—had the police gotten into her apartment? Oh no, she said, not wanting to panic him. All they had done was ring the doorbell. But of course she had been frightened.

“I'm coming home on Thursday,” he said. “See you then?”

“Yes, definitely.”

They could go for a walk, he suggested. And then have dinner at his. “Things will be okay, Carina.”

“Yes, I guess so.” She sighed.

“They will. I'll help you.”

She pressed the receiver against her ear and closed her eyes. He loved her. She could hear that he loved her.

“You're beautiful,” she said quietly, and leaned her head against the wall.

One of the pizza bakers appeared behind her and took an order. He glared at her. She edged to one side.

“Jamal, I have to go. See you soon.”

28

Stockholm, Tuesday, October 4

When she got back to the apartment, Alex was sitting on the sofa with the computer in her lap. Carina sank into a revolving armchair and looked at her. She felt completely empty after talking to Jamal. Standing there in the pizzeria and hearing his voice—a little stressed, a little distant—it had only made her feel more alone after hanging up. Would things really be fine? For the first time, she didn't think so.

“Are you okay?” Alex looked up while her fingers continued to clatter across the keyboard.

Carina nodded and looked at Alex as she continued to concentrate on her work. Now and then Alex would stop and—in a smooth, slightly absentminded movement—reach for her coffee mug, before continuing her rapid finger dance across the keys; she was clearly deeply engrossed in work that amused her, because she was smiling. After a while, she finished. She stretched, cracked her fingers, got up, and went to the stereo.

“There!” said Alex. She was in great spirits, and took a few small, happy dance steps on the floor as a heavy bass came out of the speakers. “We've found him.”

Carina didn't understand at first. Jean? “Have you found Jean?”

“Greger called. They just need to double check a few things, but he was certain.” Alex pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “He's coming over this evening.”

A quiet jubilation grew inside her. Just a moment before, everything had been so hopeless. On the way back from Fruängen, she
had decided she would call the Security Service and let them bring her in before things got worse. She laughed and got up.

Now there was once again a chance for her to prove who had given her the report, that it wasn't she who had leaked the report, but that she had done exactly the opposite—she had done the right thing all along and was innocent of all their accusations.

“Can I see?”

Alex logged in and brought up the thread. The latest post was only a few minutes old. Five usernames were connected and, while Carina was watching, the screen brought up a new post:
The Waterloo address—cross ref with other parameters. Running telephone reg again just for safetys sake. Ok, logging out now
J
afk 15 min . . .

Alex leaned over her shoulder, scrolled down a few hours. “Here.”

Yes, they had actually found him. She had begun to lose hope. The whole idea of finding a person with the help of a fuzzy photo had started to seem unlikely to her, like something out of a Bond film, but she hadn't wanted to say that to Greger. She laughed. In front of her on the screen she could see them discussing addresses, alternative names, checking records.

“Bernier,” she read aloud. “He's named Jean Bernier.”

The weakness that had been dripping through her body like a heavy molten metal, pushing her into the ground, was gone. Instead she felt a tough determination filling her to the brim. She would never give up. Never.

For one, prolonged, wavering moment, they sat in silence and looked at the screen, surrounded by the pulsing music.

“Why are you looking for him?”

“Jean Bernier? It's his fault. If he hadn't contacted me then none of this would have happened. I need him to prove that I'm not guilty.”

Alex sat quietly for a moment. She had pulled up her legs underneath her and was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, which made her look even more like a backpacker in India, with her baggy pants and long hair, which she pushed to one side.

“What did he want, then? I mean, why did he choose you?”

“I think . . .” Carina said and then stopped herself. She thought about how he had caught up with her after the meeting. Everyone had been so repulsive. She remembered how much the French representative had provoked her with his usual, well-formulated way of arguing for the review of border controls in the Union. They had talked about migration flows, about security—as if it was about swarms of locusts. “He gave me the report because I had a conscience. That's what he said.”

Alex looked at her thoughtfully, took a final drag on the cigarette, and stubbed it out on the foot of a lamp. “So do you have one?”

“I guess so.”

She had always been proud to work in the Foreign Service. She had never doubted Swedish foreign policy, not really. She had always believed that, if you did a good job, things would be okay. And yet, here she was, in hiding.

Greger turned up at around seven, along with the enormous, shaven-headed guy who introduced himself as Victor. “Great party yesterday,” said Greger, grinning knowingly. “You really came alive.” Apparently she had been completely impossible to wake up, even when they had tried to carry her to a mattress in the study. Did she feel better? Victor smirked when he thought she wasn't looking.

They sat around the coffee table, each with a cup of coffee. Greger pulled out a notepad filled with handwritten numbers, jottings, and a grainy black-and-white printout of the photo. It was very pixelated but she could still see clearly that it was the face of the man in Brussels.

“It took a few days, we had to double check a few things, but I'm pretty sure we've got the right guy.”

“Jean Bernier.”

“Exactly.” Greger turned the pages of his notepad. “French citizen, lives in Brussels. The thing is, there were five Jean Berniers in the Brussels area. But there was only one who matched the photo—the one you said you met.” Greger tapped the printout. “He works at the EU Commission, in something called . . . GD Home. He's a lawyer. Although perhaps you already knew that.”

It seemed right. GD Home, or the Directorate General for Home Affairs, as its full designation ran, was the part of the EU Commission that dealt with matters concerning police cooperation, terrorism and organized crime, and border controls.

Greger cast an eye at her briefly before continuing. “He often turned up in connection with departments . . .”

“A2 and A3,” said Victor, who was half reclined in one corner of the sofa.

“Exactly. Victor managed to get on to an EU server,” said Greger with a grin.

“Okay.” She kept her mouth shut, tried not to think about what that actually meant. It was illegal.

“We acquired an extremely informative list,” Greger continued and passed her a piece of paper.

She glanced down it: a list of names, roles, titles. “What is this?”

“Employees at A2.”

Someone called Markus had found a page on LinkedIn and, through that, they had been able to compare the information with the Belgian motor-vehicle register, Victor explained in a satisfied tone. Then they had run the picture through various recognition software before managing to hack into an EU server. “That solved most of it. I put a Trojan on it . . .”

Greger and the others keenly discussed various technical issues, which very quickly became incomprehensible to Carina. She half-listened while reading the list. There were around one hundred names and, in amongst many others, it said,
Bernier, Jean
.

GD Home had legislative powers for anything to do with migration, law enforcement, which data could be stored and for how long, as well as hundreds of other areas. Their reports shaped thinking in the capitals of the Union.

The EU Commission consisted of eighteen Directorate Generals and each Directorate was fighting to survive. As one-eyed giants, those working on competitive matters saw competition in everything; GD Home probably saw the world as nothing but a matter of interior security. The Directorate General always tried to expand
its influence through repackaging politics and recovering important issues to its own corridors, winning over member states, winning over the EU parliament. It employed cadres of researchers and experts, courted capitals and their governments, and then made proposals. Its reports landed on the tables of governments and told ministers what was good and what would never fly. It shaped European politics. It had the power to change the lives of millions. It was from those corridors that Jean Bernier had come. He had sought her out. But what had he expected? She flipped through the list again. Did he think he would be able to go against a giant like the EU Commission? Perhaps he was just crazy. She sighed.

“Here are the addresses.” Greger tore a page out of his notepad: a list of telephone numbers and addresses. They had been forced to check all Berniers in Brussels to be sure, he explained. There were eight; five of them were called Jean. It was hard to say which of the addresses was right, but it was probably this one—he tapped his finger on the one at the top; it was circled—an address in Waterloo, in the southern quarter of Brussels. She nodded. Waterloo: that was the right area. Affluent, prosperous, lots of diplomats and civil servants in the EU bureaucracy lived there.

“This is great. I'm so, so grateful . . .”

“No problem.” Greger laughed. The pleasure had been all theirs.

Carina took the notepad and slowly turned through the pages; she looked at the photograph of Jean Bernier for a long time. She hadn't thought that it was possible to find out so much information about one person, but they had been thorough. Here was everything she needed. It was possible.