The Believer

by Joakim Zander

“Can you unlock it?” he says. “And show me the video Gabriella told us about?”

  She does what he tells her to, and he enters the number the video was sent from into a text message on his own phone and sends it.

  “Hopefully, our technicians can track the number,” he says.

  Then he leans forward and takes out a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket. He lays them on the table in front of her. She recoils.

  “Are you armed?” he says.

  She hesitates a moment before she lays Fadi’s gun next to the handcuffs. She sees Klara’s eyes from across the room widen in surprise.

  “For this to work,” Bronzelius says, “I have to put these handcuffs on you. It’s just theater. If someone is watching you, it’s better if it looks like you were arrested rather than going in willingly. Do you understand?”

  She turns her head and meets Gabriella’s eyes.

  “What the hell is this?” she says. “Fucking shackles were not part of what we discussed!”

  Gabriella looks at her confidently.

  “It’s for your own safety,” she says. “If someone followed you here, they’ll think you’re being arrested. It will explain why you didn’t go to the school in Bergort at five o’clock. Do you understand?”

  No! Yasmine wants to scream. I don’t understand any of this! I don’t trust any of you! And it can’t fail! It can’t!

  But she doesn’t scream. Instead, she bends her head and holds out her hands so Bronzelius can chain her like an animal, and lead her out into the muffled hallway, down the echoing staircase and put her into the backseat of the dark Volvo parked on the sidewalk outside.

  Fadi, she thinks. Habibi, what’s going on?

  71. STOCKHOLM—SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015

  KLARA AND GABRIELLA stand in the afternoon sun outside the front door on Skeppsbron, and Klara lights a cigarette. The smoke hangs nearly motionless in the air around them.

  “What just happened?” she says. “Are they really going to fix this?”

  It’s only been minutes since the dark Volvo rolled off toward Slussen.

  Gabriella shrugs. “I think so,” she says.

  “And if they fix it? If they manage to get a hold of her little brother? What happens to them then? He’s basically a jihadist and both have committed several crimes in the past few days. I mean, they certainly would have reason to stay away from the police, right?”

  “Yes,” Gabriella says. “But that’s the whole point. Those kids have so much shit on Swedish intelligence that it’s better for Säpo to just ignore them when this is over. When I mentioned ‘newspaper’ and ‘eyewitnesses,’ that seemed like enough for them to want to keep this away from the police.”

  “But do you really believe that kid’s story? It sounds totally nuts,” Klara says.

  “There’s a lot of shit that happens behind closed doors,” she mutters. “A hell of a lot of shit.”

  She extends her hand to Klara, asking for a cigarette.

  “It’s my last,” Klara says and hands it to Gabriella, who takes a few drags before handing it back.

  For a moment, it feels like old times. Like when they used to smoke on the steps of the library when they were at Uppsala University together, always dead broke, always sharing the few cigarettes they had. That was a long time ago. A lot has happened since then.

  “I think it’s true,” Gabriella continues. “Since Bronzelius was so quick to respond. But I agree with you, it’s hard to believe. Collaborating with the Americans to infiltrate a jihadist cell and eliminate a terrorist leader. I mean, they’ve basically disregarded every rule and regulation on human rights that they’re supposed to adhere to.”

  “Is this even part of their mission?” Klara says. “Aren’t they supposed to protect Sweden, not get involved in the Middle East? Do you think the minister of justice even knows about this?”

  Gabriella exhales the smoke slowly. “Maybe, maybe not. But they reacted a little too quickly when I contacted Bronzelius. That suggests, unfortunately, that these activities aren’t exactly unknown to the rest of the organization. What if this is part of a larger project? I mean, maybe there are more Fadis?”

  Gabriella takes another drag from Klara’s cigarette and leans back against the wall.

  “Can you imagine the headlines?”

  Klara nods. It’s too crazy. She thinks of the Bronzelius they met in the aftermath of what happened in Sankt Anna archipelago. A completely unremarkable man in a leather jacket and jeans and gray, short hair. Like a dad. But he’d proven to be some kind of spider in the Swedish intelligence net, full of secrets and resources. He was the one who had connected them to the U.S. security apparatus back then, which helped them extract themselves from the terrible situation that led to both Mahmoud’s and her father’s death.

  It was a stroke of genius by Gabriella to contact Bronzelius now, and Klara couldn’t understand why she hadn’t thought of it. But that was why Gabriella was a partner in a law firm even though she was only a few years past thirty, and why she, Klara, was just a perpetual fuckup, ruining shit for everyone all the time.

  “Sorry,” Klara says and stomps out her cigarette on the sidewalk, looking away from Gabriella.

  She can’t look her in the eye. Can’t quite take her quick thinking and helpfulness. At the same time, she can’t manage without her either, apparently.

  “For what?” Gabriella wonders.

  “For everything,” she says, leaning against the wall. “For not answering your emails and not calling you. And I never really thanked you for what you did last Christmas. And I’m sorry for going into hiding basically. God, I wouldn’t be upright if it weren’t for you. And then here I come stirring everything up again.”

  Gabriella leans back against the wall beside her, their shoulders touching, and both squinting up at the sun.

  “It’s not over yet,” she says. “Hopefully Bronzelius will solve this situation with Yasmine and Fadi. But in terms of the report and George, that’s up to you.”

  Klara nods. Despite her mild headache, she still feels some kind of security. Here with Gabriella. Despite everything that’s happened. Despite everything that remains.

  She leans her head against Gabriella’s shoulder, her cheek against her hair. “I’m not doing well, Gabi,” she says.

  Gabriella strokes her cheek, her hair. “I know, Klara,” she says quietly. “But we can do this. I promise.”

  72. BERGORT—SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015

  THEY WON’T LET me take off the hood, but I know where we are anyway. It doesn’t matter if I can see, they can poke out my eyes, and I’ll still find my way around Bergort. I know every single echo, every aroma of cumin or harissa or sausage. I know the stairwells and front doors, recognize the tone of voices between the buildings, feel the cracks in the asphalt, and I know how many steps there are between the parking lots and front doors. I know everything about Bergort. Everything.

  And now we’re in a high-rise, in an apartment on the top floor that smells like weed and burned popcorn. They’ve locked me in the bedroom, and they’re sitting out there playing FIFA, and speaking in Serbian. Sometimes they peek in to check I’m still here, as if I had anywhere to go.

  After they videoed me, they left me alone here, and in the beginning I counted the seconds. 1001, 1002, 1003. I don’t know why, just to keep track of something, I guess. Just to keep the darkness outside my eyelids, keep it from getting in.

  But then I remembered what brother Shahid told me in Syria one evening as we sat around the camp stove in the cold apartment. We were talking about imprisonment and martyrdom—and everything else that feels so far away now, like a dream, like another life—and he said that if you’re taken prisoner by al-Assad’s dogs you’ll be a martyr by sunset. But if one of the rebel forces takes you, you might sit there for weeks, months, years. And the faster you let go of the world and go to Allah, the more likely it is you won’t lose your mind.

  Now I no longer have Allah, not even the
dream of justice and jihad. Now I have nothing, but a sudden desire to live.

  I’ve burned the ground behind me, and I want nothing more than to return. But those ideas are too big for the darkness of the hood. I need light. If I can’t reconcile myself to death, then I intend to reconcile myself with life.

  So I think of you. I think about how you knew exactly that for such a long time, and you tried to teach me. I think, that’s what those dictionaries were for you, graffiti and music too. That’s what those clubs in the city were. Maybe even that loser David.

  Life!

  I thought you were running away. From Bergort. From me. But everything you did was in order to live. Everything you did was to make your life better. Everything was in order to create something bigger and better than the conditions we’d been handed. And all I did was adapt. All I did was live up to minimum expectations.

  The afternoon is long, and I do everything I can to keep my mind focused on something simple, rather than thinking about what you’re doing now, what you’re planning. So I force myself to believe that we will get free. It can’t end like this, there has to be something else, something bigger and more beautiful. A bluer sky we can fly through until we’re just dots that disappear forever. Somewhere there has to be a sea with a boat that can carry us both.

  I hear something first near the window, maybe on the balcony outside. It’s a scraping sound, and I turn my head toward it, not that I can see anything, just a reflex. I think it might be a bird, a pigeon, or a seagull, landing on the railing. Then I hear it again. One time. Two times. I don’t know why, but it makes me nervous. Maybe because I’m so vulnerable with this hood over my head and my arms tied. The sound makes me uncomfortable, and I feel my heart start to beat faster. Then come a few seconds of silence, maybe minutes.

  And then it happens. The whole room explodes, the whole apartment, with a frenzy and a volume that makes my head shake, and I scream. There are several explosions, quick, one after another, so deafening that I actually lose my hearing. A flash so intense I even sense the light through the hood, it’s like I’m inside the explosion, inside the bomb. I don’t know what I’m doing, I have no sense of myself, but I think I curl up on the bed like a child.

  All I hear is ringing in my ears, but I imagine the room filled with people. And I feel someone grab my shoulders and pull me down onto the floor. I sense someone yelling at me. Then the ringing sound stops, or subsides a little, and I hear screams, things being crushed. I hear someone shout close to my ear:

  “Police! Hold still! Don’t move! Police!”

  Again and again he roars that, and I don’t understand why, because I’m not moving. I lie perfectly still.

  And then someone pulls the hood off my head and the darkness disappears. I gasp for breath and squint against the sudden brightness.

  It’s quiet now, only the sound of boots and the occasional orders coming from the other room:

  “Keep still!”

  “Look at me!”

  When I open my eyes, I see a man in a ski mask and a helmet, dressed entirely in dark blue Kevlar, squatting down beside me. I see his weapon and gas mask on the floor beside him. A dark blue label is attached to the left breast: POLICE in gold.

  Gently he unsnaps his helmet, rolls off the ski mask, and smiles at me. He’s dark, almost black, and it doesn’t make sense. He’s not blond like a cop. He looks like us. Sweat runs down his cheeks.

  “Take it easy, brother,” he says, smiling. “It’s over now. We have you.”

  Behind him, through the open door to the living room, I see other men with identical masks on their faces and helmets on their heads, dragging what I assume are my captors over the wooden floor and out toward the hall. I close my eyes. When I open them again, they’re gone, but there’s one body left on the living room floor—stiff and still.

  The world slows down now, and it feels like it takes seconds for me to get up on my knees, seconds to creep one step toward the door, seconds for the officer in front of me to stand up, put his hands on my shoulders, gently push me back into the room, and shut the door behind him with his boot.

  “It’s OK,” he says. “A shot went off. But you’re safe now.”

  But I’ve already seen what he’s trying to protect me from. I’ve already seen Mehdi’s pale face. Already seen his dead, unseeing eyes.

  73. STOCKHOLM—SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015

  SO THEY LIED, of course, and now she’s lying on the bed in a cell, staring straight up at the gray ceiling. They lied, like they always lie, and now her head burns with hopelessness and anxiety and the thought that it’s all over.

  She closes her eyes, presses her fists to them, presses as hard as she can, and screams.

  She trusted them. How could she? How many times has she seen that same naivety in a teacher or some fucking academic doing fieldwork? Swedes, who mean well, but who brought nothing but destruction with their hollow promises and false hopes. She spent her entire childhood avoiding their bullshit and their empty phrases, their belief in the individual and their fucking pity. As if their sad lives are any better, full of day care drop-offs and box wine. They come to Bergort with their theories and methods, and think there’s some method, some way to get ahead. When all we have is chaos.

  But she wanted so much to believe this time. She forced herself to believe, even though the plan was full of holes and required her to put her life and Fadi’s into the hands of their enemies. And now she’s lying here, trying to force herself not to think about what’s going to happen to them.

  All she knows is that they interrogated her about Mehdi and his gangster friends, and she told them everything she knew without mentioning George Lööw. She’d told Gabriella she wouldn’t. That was something they would take care of later, so the cops wouldn’t get confused and would focus on saving Fadi first. After she’d told the abbreviated story to Bronzelius, he vanished and left her alone in an interrogation room, until a regular cop with a regular cop attitude picked her up and brought her here, without listening to any of her questions or protests. He’d just pushed her down on the bed, despite her screams and blows. Locked the door and left her alone.

  She doesn’t know how long she’s been in the cell when she hears the sound of the lock being turned in the door. When it opens, she’s already sitting up on the bed with her feet on the floor. It’s the same fat cop as before, crumbs still on his uniform.

  “It’s time for questioning,” he says. “Stand up. Hold out your hands.”

  “What?”

  Yasmine has risen up from the bunk, and she sees he’s got a pair of handcuffs in one hand.

  “Did you hear me?” he says. “Questioning. Hold out your hands.”

  Humiliation courses through her, mixed with worry for Fadi. But she has no other choice, and anything is better than this cell, so she extends her hands, and he chains her again like an animal or a slave, and they walk slowly through the sterile, greenish-gray corridor to the interrogation room she was in earlier in the day.

  “What time is it?” she says.

  But the fat cop pretends not to hear her, unlocks the door to the room, and pushes her gently inside.

  “Sit,” he says. “They’ll be here soon.”

  But it takes awhile, and the handcuffs chafe her wrists. This room is so close to hopelessness that it takes all her energy to even sit upright, to keep her mind from wandering too far. Finally, she hears the door being unlocked and straightens in her chair, steels herself, preparing for whatever, for the worst. But she refuses to turn around, refuses to give them that, so she sits there stiff and straight with her back to the door.

  “Where is my brother?” she says quietly, straight into the wall.

  She hears a man enter the room and go around the table. From the corner of her eye, she sees Bronzelius is back.

  “Who the hell handcuffed you?” he says.

  But she doesn’t hear him. The panic is growing within her, a jet engine accelerating beyond her control.


  “Where is my brother? Where’s Fadi?” she screams.

  She beats the table with her handcuffs and stands up.

  Bronzelius takes a step toward her, holding up his hands to calm her.

  “Fadi is doing well,” he says. “We took him to the hospital just to make sure. It’s routine, nothing to worry about.”

  It sounds like he’s speaking inside a jar or a tunnel, his voice is muffled and echoing and what he says is impossible to believe.

  She collapses, suddenly too weak to stand, and she feels the plastic cool and slippery under her as she sits down. Bronzelius squats down beside her.

  “Breathe,” he says. “Your brother is safe.”

  He gets up again and opens the door to the hallway.

  “Somebody better get their ass in here and unlock these fucking handcuffs,” he shouts.

  A half hour later, she’s sitting at the table again, this time without handcuffs and with Gabriella at her side. Gabriella’s eyes, which were so warm when they hatched this plan a couple of hours ago, are now so hard they seem to bore straight through Bronzelius.

  “I find this completely fucking incomprehensible,” Gabriella says with such calm and focus that the air vibrates. “Is there no end to how fucking incompetent you are? Locking her up? Refusing to let me see her? Handcuffs? After what my client has been through. How is that even possible?”

  Every word she says goes straight into Yasmine’s body. Every word makes her struggle harder to keep her tears from flowing. Has anyone ever been so unreservedly on her side? Has anyone ever taken her side at all?

  “Calm down now,” Bronzelius murmurs while staring across the table. “A thank-you might be in order. We have solved your problem, so to speak.”

  “It’s cool,” Yasmine whispers cautiously to Gabriella. “Seriously, Fadi is safe, that’s all that matters.”

  “Fadi wouldn’t have needed saving if it weren’t for the interference of these imbeciles,” Gabriella mutters.