The Believer

by Joakim Zander

  The time is half past eleven. They have five hours to come up with something. Five hours until she has to take the subway out to Bergort for the last time.

  Klara finally gets off the phone. She talked with someone nonstop from Kungsgatan down through the Royal Garden, and all the way here to the far end of Gamla Stan.

  Yasmine tried not to listen, but it was clear that the call started tentatively and anxiously. Klara sounded like she had something to apologize for. But then her voice changed and became livelier and happier, even though she was talking about someone being pushed in front of a train, mysterious banks, research institutes, and finally Yasmine herself.

  Now Klara turns to her.

  “My best friend Gabriella is a lawyer,” she says. “Not only that, she’s smart. And has contacts everywhere.”

  Yasmine nods cautiously. Fuck, she wants to scream. How the hell is a lawyer going to help me with this?

  “Also,” Klara continues, “she can fix stuff. If anyone can help you now it’s her.”

  Yasmine stops and turns toward the water. Out toward those fucking white ships with their tall masts, moored along Skeppsholmen on the other side of the bay. She can feel herself leaking, feel the energy streaming out of her. Slowly she sinks down on her haunches.

  “Damn,” she mumbles. “It’s not gonna work, you don’t get . . . How could this work?”

  Klara squats beside her and puts an arm around her.

  “Maybe not,” she says quietly. “Maybe it will all go to hell.”

  Yasmine gently turns her head and looks at Klara’s serious cheekbones, her slanted eyes searching the Södermalm cliffs, before turning her gaze inward again.

  “I can’t promise anything,” Klara says. “How could I? But sometimes you just have to let go, close your eyes, and hope. Sometimes that’s all you have.”

  67. STOCKHOLM—SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015

  THEY’RE SITTING ON the steps to the entrance of Skeppsbron 28, where the law firm Lindblad and Wiman has their office, when a taxi slows down on the street in front of them. Yasmine’s legs are trembling, and Klara has seen her checking the time on her phone every fifteen seconds since they arrived.

  By the time Gabriella jumps out of the backseat, Yasmine is already up, still with phone in hand.

  “Is this her?” she says over her shoulder.

  Klara nods, rises more slowly, and walks out into the sun and toward the car. Gabriella is dressed in tight, dark jeans and a long, blue-striped linen shirt that almost reaches her knees. Her curly red hair is pinned up carelessly in two loose braids. She looks more like a well-scrubbed hippie than a criminal lawyer and a partner in one of Sweden’s most prestigious law firms.

  When Klara glances at Yasmine, she can’t avoid smiling at her skeptical expression.

  Gabriella is in front of them now. She takes Klara in her arms, and when she presses her close, Klara is surrounded by the familiar scent of her perfume. Sandalwood and magnolia, she thinks. The smell of friendship.

  “I’m so sorry,” she mumbles in Gabriella’s ear. “I thought so many times . . .”

  “Shh, shh,” Gabriella whispers. “Me too, Klara. Me too.”

  She pushes Klara tenderly aside and holds her hand out to Yasmine.

  “You must be Yasmine?” she says. “My name is Gabriella. I know it may not look like it right now, but I’m actually a lawyer.”

  She takes a bunch of keys and an advanced-looking key card out of her pocket.

  “Look,” she says. “They gave me the keys to the place.”

  Gabriella unlocks the door, disables the alarm with the card, and leads them up the dark, impressive staircase to the third floor, where her office is located. She looks into a small camera, and there’s a tiny satisfying popping sound when her retina scan is approved. She unlocks the door with a key and leads them through a beautiful but unexpectedly heavy mirrored door, which opens silently. When Gabriella knocks on it, it barely makes a sound.

  “Steel plates inside oak panels,” she says contently. “It’s like a hypermodern retrofit inside an ancient Gamla Stan palace. I love it!”

  “Wow,” Klara exclaims. “It wasn’t like this last time.”

  Gabriella laughs and looks at her.

  “The last time you were here I was doing a summer internship in the broom closet on the second floor. A lot has happened since then.”

  The corridor they go down is dully lit by some invisible light source that comes on automatically when Gabriella opens the door. On the walls hang a series of black-and-white artsy photographs of serious, tattooed men from some sort of institution. The warm, thoughtful light makes the office seem more like a hip record label than a law firm. Gabriella stops at the tall, white door at the end of the corridor and unlocks it. The room isn’t huge, but it’s roomy. Big enough for a light and modern sofa set beside the door and a massive antique desk in dark wood. And behind the desk: a window with uninterrupted views of the bay.

  “Wow,” Klara says again and goes over to the window. “I can’t believe you’re a partner now.”

  Klara turns around and meets her gaze. Gabriella suddenly looks a little sad.

  “They didn’t have much choice after what happened in the archipelago,” she says. “Plus all the work I put in before that. It was my turn.”

  Klara just nods. Gabriella was the one who’d figured out how to solve everything. She’d negotiated with the big shots at the CIA. She’d managed to make everything calm down, made sure no one had to lose face. She’d convinced the CIA that she and Klara wouldn’t leak the information they’d come across but would instead guard it. She’d negotiated a balance of terror.

  Klara couldn’t imagine anyone who’d earned this view more than Gabriella. Still she knows that Gabriella also thinks of Mahmoud every day, that she can’t fully avoid the idea that his death paid for her career.

  When she turns away from the window Gabriella is already sitting on the sofa next to Yasmine with a computer in her lap.

  “So,” she says in a quiet, neutral tone, “your brother has been kidnapped? Tell me how you found that out, and we’ll go from there.”

  68. STOCKHOLM—SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015

  THE OFFICE IS fucking crazy, like something from a movie, better, even better than the Lydmar. Because this is for real, not a backdrop you buy with a credit card.

  It reminds Yasmine of the Ally McBeal reruns she and Fadi used to watch on the living room floor in Bergort. Who knew that the whole time it was happening for real just a subway ride away?

  It’s hard to stand still, hard not to constantly check the time, so she sits down on the gray couch.

  She can’t stop her legs from bouncing. Time flies by. She wants to scream at them that it’s time to fucking do something, anything, but before she knows it that Gabriella woman sits down beside her, still looking like some kind of inner-city hippie, like she should be into pottery or painting or something. But her eyes are open and cool, and also experienced, and that makes Yasmine relax for a moment.

  “So your brother has been kidnapped?” Gabriella says. “Tell me how you found that out, and we’ll go from there.”

  And so she begins to tell her, fast and shaky, stumbling over words because time just rushes by, and they’ve already wasted too much. She tells them about the film they sent to her phone and then about the pictures her mother sent. About the symbols on the walls of Bergort and the weapons in the bag. About the riots and George Lööw and his stacks of money in the school parking lot.

  When she mentions him, she sees Klara and Gabriella exchange a quick glance, as if they actually know much more about this, about him, than she does. But she continues to tell her about the betrayal and the grove beyond the dandelion field where she shot the gangster, whose name is apparently Rado, in the leg.

  And then she tells them all about Fadi, about his trip to Syria, and how he came back for revenge. How Fadi managed to shoot a brother in the shoulder, who claimed to be working for Säpo,
Swedish intelligence. How they fled to the city, how Fadi must have been betrayed by Mehdi. And then she tells what she knows about George. What he said about the box of stencils and money and Stirling Security.

  And then she talks about the video they sent her again; she’s forgotten where she began.

  Meanwhile, Gabriella says nothing, she just keeps her eyes on the screen and types so fast and irregularly that it sounds like someone popping popcorn.

  But when Yasmine brings up the film again, Gabriella gently puts a hand on her arm.

  “We can stop there,” she says.

  Then she’s silent for a moment as she scrolls through what she’s written, and Yasmine looks at Klara, who’s leaning over to follow the text as well.

  “Tell me about the man who claimed to work for Säpo again,” Gabriella says. “Everything you know.”

  Yasmine shakes her head and feels her leg start jumping again. They’re wasting time. They’re focusing on the wrong things. How will this help anyone at all?

  It was a mistake to agree to this. She stands up, presses her hands against her temples.

  “Seriously?” she says. “I promise you, Swedish intelligence didn’t take him. Not jihadists either. This is about making sure I’ll shut up. And revenge for shooting Rado. These are the gangsters that Stirling Security hired to whip up the riots. They took Fadi. Whether Stirling Security knows something about this is another thing. You don’t get it, in Bergort if you shoot somebody you don’t get away with it.”

  She falls silent and her eyes are black with stress and frustration.

  “Can we concentrate on saving my little brother now instead of talking about this secret agent shit?”

  Gabriella leans forward and takes Yasmine’s hand in hers, pulling her back down on the couch.

  “Believe me,” she says. “That’s what I’m doing.”

  And there is something in those eyes, something in this room, that stops any further protest. So Yasmine tells her again. But all she has is what Mehdi told her, and what Fadi wrote in the letter to her, the ink getting fainter and fainter and then turning to nothing more than a fingerprint in the paper. She hasn’t even had time to talk to him about it.

  “And then?” Gabriella says. “When you were in the apartment yesterday with the jihadists, as you call them, you realized it was only this al-Amin who was behind the betrayal?”

  “Yes,” she says. “He admitted that he worked for Säpo. The others seemed completely shocked.”

  “So your impression is that al-Amin infiltrated the group, and that he steered Fadi to these soldiers in Syria who he then annihilated? And that he also wanted to get Fadi killed?”

  Yasmine nods impatiently.

  “Would you be willing to talk to the press about this?” Gabriella says.

  Yasmine shakes her head. “Seriously,” she says. “I know you’re trying to help, but I just want to save Fadi, OK?”

  “But if it would help Fadi, would you be willing to talk to newspapers on the record? I don’t think it will be necessary, but I have to know.”

  “If it would help Fadi. Absolutely. Of course. I would do anything.”

  Gabriella smiles at her and strokes her hand.

  “Good,” she says. “Then we really have something to work with. Let me make a few phone calls, before we continue, OK?”

  69. STOCKHOLM—SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015

  GABRIELLA IS GONE for a quarter of an hour, and with each minute that passes, Klara sees Yasmine disappear more and more into herself. She barely even checks her phone anymore, just stares straight ahead and answers Klara’s attempts at conversation with monosyllabic answers.

  It’s difficult to take in everything Yasmine told them—even when Klara grabs hold of Gabriella’s computer and scrolls through her notes. The brother who was radicalized and then brutally exploited. She feels her stomach knot up when she looks over at Yasmine. If she’d read in the newspaper that Swedish intelligence, working with the Americans, had infiltrated a jihadist group and it led to the death of an ISIS leader, how would she have reacted? Maybe she would have raised an eyebrow, but she might also have thought it sounded like a successful operation. Now, when Yasmine told her the sad story of her brother, she feels only disgust for what Säpo did. Is it possible that they would be so ruthless as to recruit and sacrifice a Swedish citizen?

  And then George Lööw and Stirling Security on top of that.

  She leans back in her chair. Trying to understand what this is all about. Is it possible that a company would go that far? Buying a researcher is nothing new in and of itself, even if this seems particularly egregious, what with the huge sums in the Liechtenstein bank account. But to assassinate someone for trying to piece together the puzzle? Are the stakes that high?

  She thinks about Yasmine’s story again. How the riots in the suburbs seem to be orchestrated by Stirling Security. How even the symbols sprayed on the walls were created by the company. Even the ski masks that the kids wear at night come from them.

  Slowly it dawns on her what Patrick was onto.

  Stirling Security’s intentions must be to create a new market for private security companies—a market that they of course hope to dominate. If they can get political support for the privatization of some of the duties of the police force, they could earn a lot of money selling their services. And that’s why Charlotte’s report by an “independent academic” is so important.

  And if it also appears that the police force isn’t up to the task, if the people are fed images of burning cars and hordes of faceless protesters . . . They’re hoping people will get fed up and start to believe there’s no other option, but to privatize parts of the police force.

  Could that be how this all hangs together?

  She sees the screen from Arlanda Express in front of her. How news reports from the chaos in the suburb were interrupted by advertising that offered a solution: Stirling Security. And as if that weren’t enough, Stirling Security seems to have some connection to the Kremlin?

  She has to get a hold of Charlotte. She has to tell her that she knows how this all fits together, to prevent her from presenting that report tomorrow.

  Still, that Patrick would be murdered for this. And Yasmine would find herself in danger. And what does this mean for her personally? What kind of danger is she in?

  There is no alternative but to talk to Charlotte. And with George Lööw.

  She’s just taken out her phone, but doesn’t have time to call, before she sees Gabriella standing in the door again.

  “Yasmine,” she says quietly and sits down next to her. “Things are going to happen very fast now and be very messy. But we’re going to save your brother, OK?”

  70. STOCKHOLM—SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015

  GABRIELLA BARELY HAS time to explain what the plan is before Klara says from the window:

  “I think they’re here.”

  Then Gabriella pats Yasmine’s cheek, stands up, and goes downstairs to open the front door and let in the people who are here to pick up Yasmine.

  But Yasmine aches with uneasiness. This is so fucking wrong. They’ve taken control of this now, Gabriella and Klara, and they mean so fucking well. They believe in order when Yasmine knows that all of this is chaos, and she wants to protest: Listen to me! You don’t get how this works!

  But the words stick in her throat. Because she knows the only thing that will work is if she turns herself over to the kidnappers and Bergort. This is eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. There are no shortcuts. Bergort will not be content with anything less than blood. She knows that she hates herself for having allowed these middle-class ladies to take over. They know nothing about this. And she hates Klara and Gabriella for lighting that little light on the horizon, the light of another solution. She hates them because they raised her hopes, and made her stumble from her own crooked, pitch-black path, which is the one that leads home.

  But now it’s too late, the cops are standing in the Ally McBeal office with t
heir ironed jeans and leather jackets, their close-cropped, gray hair and holsters on their belts for cell phones. Now they open their mouths and introduce themselves with their hillbilly accents as Bronzelius and Landeskog from Säpo, and they speak calmly and sit down next to her on the couch, pretending they’re all friends, like they don’t hate her kind.

  “So from what I understand,” the one named Bronzelius says, “there’s just a few hours left until this deadline?”

  She says nothing, just stares straight ahead. Gabriella takes a seat next to her.

  “Yasmine,” she says. “I understand that you don’t trust me or these two. But I promise you that they won’t do anything to you. I have explained to Bronzelius what Fadi has been through, and it will be a huge scandal if it’s true. I’ve told him that if anything happens to you or him, anything at all, we’ll go to the press immediately. And I can promise you that’s the last thing they want. So you don’t need to trust them because they’re nice, but you can trust they don’t want their mistakes to be made public. We have more on them than they have on you. Do you understand? What happened to Fadi would be a scandal for them.”

  “But it won’t help, you don’t understand,” Yasmine mumbles.

  She turns her head and looks at Gabriella. She wants to trust her. But she’d also like to tell her to go to hell, tell all of them. But that light is dancing on the horizon. That tiny hope that for the first time ever, they can win without anyone having to lose. Win-win. She knows how false that hope is, but what’s the alternative? Going out there and handing herself over to a bunch of hardened gangsters? Risking getting both herself and Fadi killed.

  “Fuck it,” she says quietly. “What do we do?”

  “First, we need your phone,” Bronzelius says. “Then we’ll take you in and go through everything you know in detail.”

  She sighs when she hears “take you in,” but she still takes out her cell phone and hands it to him.