Into a Raging Blaze (27 page)

MI6's assessment was that Jamal Badawi had cultivated Dymek as a fresh resource: a messenger, a mole. A tool for Islamist attack planning.

But if Badawi had been part of a terrorist network, then why hadn't the Brits raised the alarm earlier? Why hadn't they spoken up about their suspicions, if they were so clear? The report Bente held in her hand seemed to be based on intelligence gathered over several months, if not years. How was it possible that Swedish Counterespionage had not perceived the slightest threat? Kempell was competent; he would have smelled that kind of infiltration within the ministry. A planned attack against an EU summit wouldn't have
escaped the notice of the Section. The Swedish Security Service had been fumbling in the dark for a long time, but now they had SSI. They had signals intelligence, they had sources, they had the ability to carry out long-term surveillance and spot the threats. Even if Stockholm hadn't spotted the threat, SSI should have discovered it. So why had no one—not the Section, not Stockholm, not Interpol, nor the German, French, or Spanish security services—seen this threat that the Brits were able to describe in such detail?

She put her fingers to her forehead and massaged it slowly, as if to try and wake up her brain from a deep sleep as it lay beneath her skull.

If Dymek wasn't lying . . . She tested the idea again. Then she had met Jean Bernier in Brussels that Thursday two weeks ago. It explained how she had gotten hold of the report. But it didn't explain why an entire IRC channel was looking for one and the same Jean Bernier. It didn't explain why Dymek would take part in the planning of an attack.

Unless there was no attack being planned. Unless there were no terrorists.

The thought reared its head, slowly, without any warning. It was just possible . . . If Dymek wasn't lying.

Was it all just her imagination? She looked at the cold walls of the living room as if they might give her clues. But the walls were quiet; the apartment was quiet and seemed to be airtight. It had gotten dark around her. Only the lamp by the sofa spread a soft light. If Dymek really had met Jean Bernier in Brussels on that one occasion on the 22nd of September, then the British analysis was wrong. Something else was going on.

She got up and turned on the ceiling light in the kitchen; she wanted the apartment to be light. Was she wrong? Had they been moving around like fish in a pond, like blind carp, swimming around and around in the belief that they were getting closer to the sea? Perhaps.

All the material that MI6 had provided, all the analyses—where had they got it from? Where, where, where? She needed to call someone: Hamrén. She reached for her cell, but stopped herself.
What would she say to make him believe her? She had nothing—nothing concrete that would change his views at this stage. The summit was four days away; the response team was on high alert; Swedish Counterterrorism was ready to respond within minutes at the first sign that the group was gathering for an attack. Hamrén wouldn't listen to her now.

She sat down heavily on the sofa and looked at the papers that lay spread across the coffee table. If her suspicions were proven right, nothing was true.

Once again, they were blind.

She gathered together the documents, knocked the bundle against the table to straighten them out, and put the stack in front of her. There was nothing further to gain here, she thought bitterly.

She went into the kitchen and in one of the cupboards she found a bottle of Famous Grouse with a drop left. She poured it into a glass and drank as she slowly wandered around the apartment. There was nothing left to do in Stockholm. The answers weren't here.

At first, all she noticed was a buzzing sound, but she didn't understand what it was. She put down her glass and went into the living room. Her cell was on silent, lying there, vibrating on the coffee table.

It was Mikael.

“We've found a guy at the Commission who's prepared to talk to us.”

“Good.” Her voice sounded odd, she noticed. She cleared her throat. “That's very good.”

“How are you?”

She was fine, she replied. Mikael really was like a barometer: he noticed the slightest shift in people. She was grateful that he didn't ask more; she couldn't say anymore on the phone. Could he arrange a ticket to Brussels for tomorrow morning? she said. For the first flight out.

31

Stockholm, Thursday, October 6

It was beginning to get dark when Carina reached Skogskyrkogården, the woodland cemetery. She had spent the entire day in Alex's apartment. Alex hadn't been home; the apartment had been quiet and peaceful. The only person she had seen was Greger, who had stopped by late in the afternoon with a few borrowed clothes and a suitcase. She had bought a ticket to Brussels and packed, just like she would before any normal trip for work. When everything was ready, she felt so nervous that she couldn't sit still and had instead wandered around the unfamiliar rooms, turned on the TV, and flipped between various afternoon shows before turning it off when she found herself watching a repeat of a nature film about gazelles. She got dressed and went out.

She had called Jamal from the pizzeria again; they had agreed to meet at the ticket gate at Skogskyrkogården subway station. To pass the time, she had then walked all the way there through the suburbs. She could already see his thin, upright figure from a distance as he stood waiting for her in the harshly lit ticketing area. She was so happy to see him again. He was fiddling with his cell and looked up and smiled at her when she appeared. She hugged him, hard, pulled him close to her. They kissed for a long time before she slowly and unwillingly let go.

“How are you, darling?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I'm okay.”

The weather had cleared up and a glowing evening light that would soon turn into darkness lay across the trees. The chapel and
the edge of the woods on the ridge came alive momentarily in a blaze of light before quickly darkening. They aimed for the large cross that towered up toward the purple sky.

Jamal looked tired and haggard; he had dark circles under his eyes. He had probably been working around the clock for the last few days; the kind of negotiations he had been involved with in Vienna could go on all night.

As they walked toward the chapel, she told him in detail about what had happened. How the police had turned up, how she had fled the apartment, and that she had stayed at Alex's.

They passed the bare chapel building and were soon in among the pine trees. The woods rose around them like a columned hall filled with straight, dark trunks. Rows of older graves ran through the lines of trees. They walked along the gravel path that led through the woods while she told him about how Greger's friends had helped her to find Jean. Jamal walked silently alongside her, listening.

A hundred meters ahead, the track twisted. Low barracks could be glimpsed, dark and barred up. Not a soul was visible. But, by one of the barracks, there was an SUV parked. She reacted to the expensive car being parked there, but couldn't say why and let go of the thought.

They turned off the track and began to walk along a small gravel path that led between the trees, past a number of family graves.

“My God, Carina,” Jamal said finally, when she had told him everything.

It upset her to hear him sound so skeptical. A chilling thought crossed her mind: what if he said he couldn't cope with her situation? What if she was going to lose him too?

“You don't think I'm doing the right thing, is that it? Be honest.”

“I don't know. I really don't know,” he said in a low voice. “By doing what you're doing, you just risk complicating things. It's one thing to try and work out what happened and quite another to flee the police. And tracking people down on the Internet . . . That's . . . hacking. I mean, wouldn't it be better to talk to the police, explain what happened?”

“And what would I say to them? No one believes what I'm saying. I have to get hold of the man who gave me the report, otherwise there's no point in going to the police. Surely you understand that? I have to go to Brussels.”

He shrugged his shoulders as if he didn't know what to say and stared off between the trees.

She felt the anger welling up and said sharply, “I've fought for eight years to get to where I am today, and there's no fucking way I'm going to let them consign me to the scrapheap just because it suits them. I haven't done anything wrong. I was just doing my job. And I'm going to prove it to them. I won't back down.”

“I know. I understand that,” said Jamal in a conciliatory tone. “But you shouldn't have started trying to trace this man,” he added. “I think, if you talked to the police, things would sort themselves out.”

“How can you know that?” she said abruptly. “I tried, didn't I? I did everything by the book. And what did I get in return?”

He spread out his hands. Naturally, he didn't know. He kicked a root that was sticking out of the ground.

“Don't you care?” she said.

“Yes, I do care,” he said. “I care about us. About
us
, Carina.”

“Then help me.”

“Can't you try talking to the MFA?” he said.

“I
have
tried! There's no point!”

The air went out of her. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps she had been wrong, despite having tried to do the right thing all along. Maybe she should never have accepted the report and maybe she shouldn't have asked Greger for help. She was so tired of it all and she was very close to tears. They were standing here, opposite one another, like any old quarreling couple. That wasn't how it was meant to be, not with Jamal.

She reached for him. “Say something—please.”

He shook his head and gave her a hug, but it was a brief and edgy embrace, a placatory gesture. Neither of them knew how to continue the conversation, every word had become so overwrought with meaning.

They had reached the outer edges of the cemetery and continued walking between more recent graves. The ground had leveled off here. It was beginning to get dark. High above them, the treetops bristled.

When the wind turned and carried sound toward them, she heard tires on gravel and, for a second, she thought she saw something moving on the gravel road—two or three darker shadows moving between the trees and breaking off into the shelter of the motionless trunks, a shift in the horizon that caught her attention.

“What is it?”

“There's someone there.”

“Where?” He squinted.

“Over there. On the road.”

Jamal stood still and looked in the same direction. He couldn't see anything. Perhaps she had imagined it. The darkness between the trees was so dense that it created its own shapes, darker patches in the dark of night. Maybe there was nothing to see.

They left the cemetery via one of the small roads that led through the wall, and came out next to two ochre-red wooden houses with white trim, lying there like a dreamy postcard in the darkness. The main road carrying traffic into Stockholm was just a few hundred meters away.

They walked along the road and came to a twenty-four-hour burger joint, sat enthroned in the middle of a deserted parking lot like an illuminated temple.

Jamal had been quietly walking a few paces behind her since they left Skogskyrkogården, but asked her now whether she wanted to come back to his place. She could stay there, then go to Arlanda from his. She had hoped he would ask. A taxi picked them up them ten minutes later and drove them to Fruängen.

Alex was still out. The apartment was dark. Carina quickly gathered together her clothes and emptied the contents of her bag into the suitcase Greger had brought for her earlier. There was still a creased copy of the report in the bag, as well as the other documents, along with the USB memory stick. That damn report. What
should she do with it? She couldn't take it to Brussels; if she was discovered carrying sensitive material like that, she would be charged with breach of secrecy. But the papers couldn't be allowed to disappear, although right now she felt like throwing the whole lot down the garbarge chute. She looked around the apartment.

There was a small gap under the fridge, just a few centimeters high, where the electronics of the fridge were located. An oblong plastic grill covered it. She gently coaxed it off and pushed the report and other documents into the gap. They just fit. Then she put the USB stick in as well, before replacing the plastic grill. When she stood up, nothing was visible. To discover the hiding place, you would have to be on all fours, peering under the fridge.

She wrote a short note for Alex, thanking her, and promising to let her know when she was back in Sweden. Then she left the apartment, locked the door, and pushed the key through the mailbox.

It felt like a huge exhalation to arrive at Jamal's place. The quiet, tidy two-room apartment was just as it always was. Jamal turned on some music and went into the kitchen to make tea and sandwiches. She lay stretched out on the sofa and closed her eyes. The phone rang. She could hear the mumble of Jamal's reply in Arabic and saw him go into the bedroom.

She watched Jamal as he sat huddled up on the edge of the bed with his cell pressed to his ear. She didn't understand what he was saying, but it was clear he didn't want to talk to whoever was at the other end and was trying to end the conversation. He looked so anguished. Who was it that kept calling him all the time? Perhaps she was just tired and worried, perhaps she just wanted to be left in peace with Jamal, but the call annoyed her.

Finally, Jamal flipped his cell shut and came out to her, sitting down heavily on the sofa.

“How are things, darling?”

He sighed, just shook his head.

“Who was on the phone?” she said.

“You don't want to know,” he mumbled.

“Yes,” she said with emphasis. “I do.”

He looked dead tired. “It's like this,” he said in a low voice. “My mother . . . isn't well. She's sick. She imagines lots of things.” The words came out slowly, as if getting them out of his mouth was a huge struggle. “She thinks she's being watched by the police—things like that. Then she calls me, says a lot of stuff.” He sighed deeply and slumped slightly.

“I didn't know . . .”

“It's okay. It's just me who knows. Me and a quack,” he said with a sad smile.

“Oh, love.” She stretched out her hand.

They sat quietly beside one another on the edge of the bed.

“Are you getting any help?” she said after a while. “I mean . . . is anyone taking care of her?”

“No.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They prescribe her medication. She takes it for a while, and then she stops and gets ill again. That's when she starts calling me.”

Carina stroked his neck. He was alone, it occurred to her. She wanted to hold him until that loneliness went away, but something in his manner made her hold back.

“I'm used to it,” he said slowly after a long time, during which she thought he had decided to say nothing more. “It's been like this for years—ever since we came to Sweden. My father was never happy here. He missed home. What was he supposed to do in Sweden? In Egypt, he was a lawyer, had all his friends and family. But here? Nothing.” He spread his hands out. “When Dad died, Mom lost it completely. She had been getting by while he was alive. It goes up and down. It's been a long time, but she's getting sick again.”

He got up and went into the kitchen.

While they were eating their sandwiches on the sofa, Jamal said, “The report . . . I didn't mean that you weren't doing the best you could. I understand that you are.”

“It's okay, Jamal,” she said. “You're entitled to be worried.
I'm
fucking worried.”

“Things will work out.”

“I hope so.”

She looked at him and stroked his arm. Here they were, sat together like an old couple, full of troubles. Why couldn't they just live their lives in peace and be happy together? Her vision became blurry. Angrily, she brushed the tears out of her eyes.

Later, when the apartment was dark and still, Jamal lay close beside her in bed. They were quiet. She felt his breath on her neck. She needed to get up in five hours' time, but that didn't matter; she didn't feel like sleeping.

“Are you asleep?”

Jamal was awake too. She turned over and shuffled closer. Their naked bodies were soft and warm, fragile in a way that was completely different from the hardness of their bodies when they made love. She carefully slipped her arms around him and kissed him.

In less than a month they would be in Egypt. Just the two of them, in Cairo. She saw it through the darkness: the cafés, the bazaars. She imagined how they would wander the city during the day, returning to the hotel for the hottest hours of the afternoon, and at night, when they had visited various restaurants, they would lie together, just like this, but with the nocturnal sounds of a metropolis murmuring through an open window. She leaned toward Jamal. “I love you,” she whispered. But Jamal didn't answer; he was asleep.