“Jesus, I’m so fucking stupid,” he says. “All of this? What the hell was it good for?”
“Fuck all that right now. We have to find out where Fadi is, and where he’s headed. And where those jihadists are. That’s all we worry about now.”
Mehdi raises his head finally and looks into her eyes.
“I know where he’s going,” he says.
53. LONDON—FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2015
SHE DOESN’T KNOW why she asks the taxi driver to take her to One Aldwych Hotel. She’s read about it somewhere, that it’s luxurious and in some way anonymous, and far from the places she usually goes. After she’s paid and stepped out onto the street, she sees through the high windows of the bar men in tailored suits ordering sophisticated cocktails for women in severe makeup with their hair up. It’s perfect. She sees a reflection of herself in the glass and is surprised she doesn’t look grittier after a week like this.
It takes half a glass of wine for her to muster the energy, or courage, or whatever it is, to remove the plastic folder and put it on the low mahogany table. She takes another sip of wine. And then another. Feels how it relaxes her, how the stress slowly flows out of her. She takes the plastic folder in her hand and goes to the bar and orders another glass. Sits down. Takes a deep breath and lifts out the first page.
The folder is thicker than she thought at first. It seems to contain around thirty pages. She reaches for the wineglass—small sips, now that she feels calmer, not as greedy—and leans over the stack of paper. The first pages seem to be printouts from Stirling Security’s website. The same pages she was browsing the other day. The same vague descriptions of what they do. The same empty boasts.
She feels her pulse quicken. Stirling Security again, but nothing she didn’t already know.
The next document is a transcript from the Liechtenstein Bank’s website. Ribbenstahl & Partners. “Market-leading confidential private banking.” OK. But she’s also already made this connection as well.
She quickly thumbs forward to what looks like an article published in a large British business magazine a few months ago. CORPORATE KREMLIN ENTERS EU LOBBYING ARENA is the headline.
She pulls the sheets out of the stack and leans back in the chair with wineglass in hand. The article is a review of how companies with ties to the Russian government have started to position themselves in Brussels in a variety of ways. The clearest examples according to the author are how Gazprom and the other Russian energy companies have hired major U.S. lobbying firms and law firms to push through EU legislation.
Klara sighs and takes another sip of wine. None of this is news to her either. She remembers this discussion in Brussels a few years back. With half an eye she turns the page and skims the reader comments on this article. Halfway through the thirty or so comments her eye is caught by some familiar words: Stirling Security. She stops and looks back through the comments until she finds that name again, in the middle of a comment by someone with the pseudonym RedThreat99.
She glances quickly through the comment in which RedThreat99 warns that it’s not just energy companies with murky ownership structures that are active in Brussels and elsewhere. The commenter points specifically to businesses in the growing security industry, which RedThreat99 says he himself works in. During a period of increasing acceptance for the outsourcing of some police tasks to contractors, it’s particularly important that policymakers are aware of who is behind companies such as MRM, Vienna Continental, and the aggressive and resourceful Stirling Security, which in recent months has established itself in several European countries. “I myself have been in meetings where the latter’s representatives were accompanied by Russian diplomats. It’s important that we don’t give away the keys to the city in our desire to save money!”
Klara turns the page, but no one had commented on RedThreat99’s short text. She lays the paper down in front of her on the table. Russian-owned security companies want to enter the European market? But there’s nothing concrete here. Everything she’s read so far, she could have found online.
Her wineglass is almost empty, and she stands up to order another. But there are several pages left in the folder, so she changes her mind, sits down again, and pulls out the last seven or eight pages, which seem to be copies of receipts for payments.
She moves the paper directly under the table lamp. Her eyes are drawn to the sum of the first page. It’s for five hundred thousand kronor, and it’s dated two months ago. She flips forward and sees a similar payment dated on the same day this month, just two weeks ago. She flips back and sees that the money was sent to an account at the Ribbenstahl & Partners bank, with an address in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. It was paid by Stirling Security.
She feels her pulse quicken and tackles the last pages in the folder. They look like printouts of an email correspondence. The sender of the first email has the initials GL and the address @stirlingsecurity.com. But it’s when she sees the recipient that she freezes, and it’s as if the murmur in the room suddenly subsides: Charlotte Anderfeldt.
As she reads through the messages between GL and Charlotte, it all seems more and more surreal. They’re written in Swedish, and there’s something about how GL formulates things that feel familiar to her, but she can’t quite put her finger on what. She can’t seem to concentrate on it either. The first email is sent from GL nearly two months ago:
Thanks for yet another constructive meeting in London! It pleases me and everyone at Stirling Security that we’ll be working together on this, and we look forward to supporting your important research. I’m attaching proof of payment so you can see the first installment has been deposited in the account we arranged at Ribbenstahl. Obviously, as previously mentioned, I can’t stress enough how important it is that our cooperation remains private. Please erase our email correspondence, as agreed. Looking forward to a productive collaboration!
Then come a couple of emails about a meeting in Stockholm a month ago. She vaguely remembers that Charlotte was in Stockholm, but she travels so much that it’s hard to remember exactly. And then comes the last email from GL, dated just a few weeks ago:
Charlotte!
Here comes the second proof of payment, which you’ve surely already seen in the account? As we said on the phone, a meeting the day before the conference at our office on Kungsgatan 30 would be perfect. I suggest 11:00 A.M. I’ve shown your rough draft to Orlov, and he’s going to clear it with international management, but he’s very positive for the most part. Just some details to adjust, as I’m sure you can appreciate. Good work!
Best, GL
There’s a ringing sound in her ears. She lifts her eyes and suddenly it feels like all the well-dressed guests are looking furtively at her. She quickly rakes up the papers and heads out to the street.
The early evening is warm and sticky. She leans against the glass windows of the bar, takes out a cigarette, and feels a sort of calm spread through her when she lights it.
A Russian-owned security company. A bank in Liechtenstein, where Charlotte has had a million kronor deposited. The conference in Stockholm, where Charlotte will present her expert recommendation to the EU justice ministers about the possibility of privatizating certain policing functions. A recommendation that Klara has not yet read.
And Patrick’s body on the tracks in Little Venice. The contents of the folder she’s holding in her hand are probably what got him killed. The men in black leather jackets were following him. She wasn’t crazy.
“Charlotte,” she whispers quietly to herself. “What have you got yourself mixed up in?”
54. BERGORT—FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2015
THEY’RE SITTING ON the slope that leads up to the subway tracks, on the other side of the sidewalk, and the afternoon sun flashes off the dusty windows of the low-rise apartment building Mehdi pointed out. To the right of the building Yasmine sees the neglected field she walked across earlier today. It’s incomprehensible that was just a few hours ago. You can still make out the tracks of t
he ambulance and police cars that drove over the field.
She looks up at Mehdi and shades her eyes from the sun.
“Damn, Mehdi,” she says. “Are you sure about this?”
They have been here for almost an hour, and the longer nothing happens the more desperate she feels. Fadi is about to do something terrible, something unforgivable. Something that will make him have to disappear for good—before he’s even come back. At the same time she can’t help but understand. They betrayed him and turned him into a murderer. Everyone has betrayed Fadi. Eventually you strike back, no matter the consequences. She understands that too well; in the end nothing else matters.
Mehdi nods, but not very convincingly.
“This is the where the beards meet anyway,” he says. “Somewhere near the top.”
“Fadi told you that?”
Mehdi shrugs.
“Everyone knows that. If he’s gonna attack some beards in Bergort, then it would be them.”
Yasmine leans back. What she wants most is to just curl up and sink into a deep darkness until this whole thing is over. But she barely has time to close her eyes before Mehdi shakes her leg.
“What did I say?” he says, pointing down toward the sidewalk.
Yasmine sits up halfway and follows his finger with her eyes. Two men are approaching across the asphalt. One is North African and the other has a long shirt, wide trousers, a kufi on his head, and a long straggly beard. The other guy is younger and wearing more Western-style clothes. But still has the beard. Their voices are low, only a hum, and disappear completely when they open the door and enter the stairwell.
“They seem to be meeting up there,” Yasmine says quietly.
She bends down toward the bag they picked up from within the thicket behind the school and gently pulls out the well-worn Kalashnikov.
She sees Mehdi turn. His eyes are frightened and shaky when he sees the gun.
“What the hell are we gonna do, Yazz?” he says. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t care what you do, loser,” she says. “I’m gonna do whatever needs to be done, len. That’s all.”
She keeps her eyes on the sidewalk, but all she sees is a large man jogging toward the building. He has no beard, but he’s wearing a kufi on his head.
“There’s another one,” she says, nodding in that direction.
The man disappears through the front door, which slams behind him.
She crawls out of the bush to get a better overview. She can’t see him. Yet it’s as if she can feel Fadi’s presence, like a radio frequency, a vibration in the air that only she can pick up. She turns back and gets down on her knees to pick up the gun and get it ready.
She’s scarcely grabbed hold of it, when she hears a crash from somewhere above, followed by screaming voices through an open window or a balcony door. The sound of something falling to the floor and smashing. More voices screaming and begging. She stands up, her legs trembling, rifle in hand.
“Fuck,” she says. “He’s already in there. He’s inside!”
55. BERGORT—FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2015
YOUR NOTE IN one hand. At the top of the stairs, outside the attic. My gun in the other. Suddenly I’m so close to you. A phone call away. At the same time, I’m so close to what I came home for, the only thing I’ve been living for during the past month. Just minutes from it, the light is already falling at an angle through the dirty windows half a floor below me.
The brothers will be here at any moment. I let go of your note and unfold it again. Your handwriting, your words. Why did you come back? Why now? Four years, sister. Why only now?
Sometimes brother Shahid told us about martyrs in the evenings, and we listened half terrified, half impressed. How they prepared for their suicide missions. How they kept to themselves, without any outside influences. How someone else took care of food and everything else for the week before, so they could spend their time praying and thinking about their mission, and the paradise that awaited them. And how, finally, when the bomb was wrapped around their chests, they were led nearly the entire way to their target. So they only had to focus on going straight forward, without any distractions, no thoughts except of paradise, so their task would remain simple and clean.
This is how I’ve thought of myself since I came back. This is how I thought of my days in the basement. Like preparation, sharpening the blade. Even if I don’t pray anymore. Even though I’m no longer hoping for paradise. One final act of courage. One last act of chaos and justice. Then nothing.
But here you are. Here’s your note.
And with it comes thoughts I shouldn’t have. Thoughts of my life, myself. Thoughts I’ve been pushing away, that I no longer have the right to think. Not since my brothers were wiped out. Not since I destroyed them. Since then I have no life beyond this. I press the gun harder into my hand. Look at the magazine for the thousandth time. Since then I can’t allow myself any thoughts other than revenge.
I take out your note again. Read your words one more time before I tear it into a hundred pieces and let it go. The pieces fall down the stairs like confetti, like snow, like forgetting.
They land soundlessly on the worn stone steps just as I hear the front door opening far down in the building. I hear the brothers’ voices echoing in the concrete. The gun is heavy and cold in my hand.
I close my eyes and listen. First, I hear brother Taimur’s voice, almost a whisper in the concrete.
“I don’t mean hands aren’t awrah, brother, but when they’re so strict, they risk losing people, you know?”
The usual talk about life in the Caliphate. The other brother just hums, and I guess that it’s brother Tasheem. He’s always silent, lets the others do all the chatting and complaining. It flashes before my eyes. In my head, I have executed them all every waking hour for a month. One by one. Had them kneeling in front of me with their hands on their heads. Then just let the bullets sweep over them. But now, when I’m so close? I force myself to remember the body parts in the red sand. Force myself to remember the rows of dead. They have earned this. They have brought this on themselves.
My heart is pounding, and I take the second magazine out of my pocket. Turn it over. Look at it. Fourteen bullets in total. This wasn’t my plan. I was supposed to have the rifle. But I can’t wait any longer. Especially not now, not after I found the note. I don’t know how long my determination will last. I can already feel it tottering.
The men who were my brothers are at the door now. The same door I went through many times. The doorbell is still broken, and I hear them knocking, hear the door open. Then Dakhil’s voice.
“As-salamu alaykum, brothers. Come in.”
And the door closes behind them. Three of them. Only one left. The biggest traitor of them all. I feel the sweat running down my neck, even though it’s cool here inside these concrete walls. I feel the blood rush through me, way too fast, and I wish I could will it to flow more slowly, wish I could force the calm.
Then I hear the door open downstairs. Hear rapid footsteps coming up the stairs. Hear someone taking the steps two at a time. And I creep down two steps, peek out through the black metal railing. I hear his increasingly heavy breathing coming closer. I swear I can smell him.
Suddenly he’s standing in front of me, his back to me, with his fist against Dakhil’s door. He looks the same as always. Broad shouldered and wearing a little hat. Jeans and boots. He barely has time to knock before the door opens.
“You’re late, brother,” Dakhil says.
He doesn’t make it any farther, because I hurl myself down the stairs—two steps, three steps at a time—holding the gun with both hands in front of me. He doesn’t make it any farther, before I’m pushing my gun into the back of al-Amin’s head and pressing him toward Dakhil. He doesn’t make it any farther, before the world starts spinning around me, and he screams fearfully and starts to back down the hallway, and I push al-Amin in front of me, and I scream something too.
I wave my
gun, and a shot goes off, and the sound is deafening. I hear them screaming and crying as well, something crashes to the floor. And I scream again, more loudly now:
“Do as I say! Do as I say!”
Again and again. It’s as if I hear my own voice from outside, and it sounds high and shrill. Al-Amin tries to turn his head backward, but I beat his head with the barrel of the gun until one of his eyebrows splits and bright red blood streams down his face and neck and onto his T-shirt and jacket. But I don’t care, I just yell and push and pull them into the living room. I force them in front of me in the room where we, where I, used to sit. And I’m yelling and screaming and waving the gun. It’s chaos, like being in the middle of a wave, I can’t see clearly, don’t know the difference between space and time. I just force them onto the thick rug, force them down onto their knees. Force their hands behind their heads, and they do what I say. They see the madness in me, and they do as I say. And I look at them. I hear Dakhil’s voice somewhere below my own.
“Brother Fadi, this is my home, our home, please, brother . . .”
And I hit him too with the barrel of the gun so that his head bounces to the side. He collapses on the floor.
“Shut up!” I scream. “Just keep your mouth shut!”
And then silence, everything falls silent for a moment. I look at them, and in their eyes I see such complete surprise, such fear, that for a moment it fills me with doubt. But I can’t stop now, can’t let this feeling disappear. And I raise the gun at them again. But at the same time, something doesn’t make sense.
There are more people than I expected. I count more than four. At the edge, there’s a little boy on his knees. Or he looks like a little boy, younger than me. He stares straight ahead and a tear runs down his cheek. I lose focus again, I struggle with it, move toward him.
“Who are you?” I scream. “What the hell are you doing here?”
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