The Believer

by Joakim Zander

  Bronzelius just looks at them with ice-cold eyes.

  “Fadi Ajam is a terrorist,” he says dryly. “I’d take it easy with the accusations if I were you.”

  “A terrorist that you created, yes,” Gabriella says and nails him with her eyes.

  Bronzelius doesn’t avoid them, and they sit like that a few seconds until he turns toward Yasmine.

  “After some reconnaissance work, we found them in an apartment in Bergort,” he says. “At that point, we brought in a SWAT team, because our assessment was that the perps would not be open to negotiation, and the apartment was then stormed with minimal risk.”

  He stops, and Yasmine leans back in her chair. Slowly, slowly it’s starting to sink in that Fadi is alive. Whatever happens now, he’s not dead. That knowledge spreads out like a net over her, a net that stops the free fall she’s been in for such a long time. A new, profound fatigue sweeps through her. They’re both alive. Everything else can wait.

  “Unfortunately, it turned out the assault was not quite as straightforward as our friends in Kevlar had hoped it would be,” Bronzelius continues.

  “What?” Yasmine says and looks up at him.

  She turns toward Gabriella.

  “What does he mean?”

  But Gabriella just nods for him to continue and gently takes Yasmine’s hand.

  “Mehdi Fahim,” Bronzelius says. “As I understand it, he was a friend of your brother’s?”

  Yasmine swallows and closes her eyes. All she can see is the image of Parisa with the baby on her arm.

  “He was in the apartment, and right now we’re looking into how this could have happened. There were only two shots fired apparently. But for some reason they hit Mehdi Fahim. It was probably a mistake. He was unarmed and, as I understand it, more or less a hostage himself. It’s a little unclear how this all fits together.”

  Now Yasmine can’t hold back the tears any longer. Slowly they fall down her cheek. It’s both relief and sadness. Hope and constant hopelessness. Mehdi betrayed them. But he protected Fadi too. Parisa betrayed them, but how many times in the past had she protected Yasmine? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Someone always pays the price.

  Behind her, she hears someone knock on the door and push it open.

  “Yasmine Ajam?” says a voice behind her.

  She turns around and sees a female police officer looking through a gap in the door.

  “If you’re finished, I can take you to your brother now.”

  All she can do is nod and look questioningly at Gabriella, tears still running down her cheeks. Gabriella finds a handkerchief in her purse and gives it to her.

  “You go,” she says. “I have a few things to discuss with Bronzelius.”

  74. STOCKHOLM—SUNDAY, AUGUST 23, 2015

  IT’S DRIZZLING AS the taxi turns off the E4 freeway toward Brunnsviken and the SAS Radisson Blu, where the conference is being held. Klara’s heart is making small, short, insufficient beats in her chest. The stress of the report and what she should say to Charlotte kept her up all night. At the same time, she’s relieved to not be hungover, for once. She’s almost forgotten how it feels not to have a headache.

  Yesterday she and Gabriella stayed up late in Gabriella’s new apartment on Mariahöjden trying to figure out what the next step should be. Apparently, another perk of a partnership in a law firm was an apartment with a great view of Stockholm, and they’d sat on Gabriella’s small balcony late into the night. She’d rarely seen anything so beautiful. The August sky turned a deeper and deeper blue above the thousands of lights of Kungsholmen and Gamla Stan. And the water below was completely still. They’d wrapped themselves in thick blankets and huddled around their teacups. No wine—for the first time in several weeks it didn’t feel necessary.

  But the conversation itself had been less enjoyable. Together they went through everything that had happened that afternoon and what Klara went through in London in detail. Gabriella had also told her about her frustrating meeting with Bronzelius at the police station. He’d listened with what seemed like half an ear to what she knew about Stirling Security, George Lööw, Bergort, and the EU meeting, and had finally dismissed it all as speculation and irritably asked her what she thought he was supposed to do with it.

  “I guess he might be right,” Gabriella had said. “There’s nothing truly concrete there. Sure, we have those bank statements. But they’ve been made from a Swiss bank account to an account in Liechtenstein, and nothing was said in the emails about what they’re for. Sure, it seems like your colleague was pushed in front of the train, but nobody saw it. Your boss’s institute is also in London, outside of Bronzelius’s jurisdiction. And as for George . . .”

  Gabriella shook her head in resignation.

  “There’s not even anything to go on there yet. One eyewitness statement that he gave money to someone who’s rumored to be leading the riots? There’s nothing here for Bronzelius and his buddies to really hold on to.”

  “Well damnit,” Klara had said. “Isn’t the whole idea that Säpo should be one step ahead, acting quickly before it’s too late—”

  “I pushed him on it, and he’s reluctantly agreed to check on Stirling Security and get back to me tomorrow. But the fact is that the most interesting part of this is going to happen tomorrow when your boss presents that report to all those EU diplomats. When she recommends that certain police functions could be privatized, then of course that will put all of this in a different light, right? The email and the payments and all the rest. What a scandal! I think all we have to do is wait until tomorrow, then we present the whole thing.”

  Now Klara glances out over the green of Haga Park as the taxi slowly approaches the hotel. Gray, heavy clouds and almost ten degrees cooler than yesterday. The summer ended overnight.

  The scent of autumn in the air is a relief. The taxi finally stops outside the entrance to the conference hall where today’s preliminary meeting will be held.

  “Do you think there are enough police officers?” the taxi driver says, nodding toward the roped-off area around the conference hall.

  Klara smiles wryly and pays.

  “Well, we’ll have to hope,” she says.

  She realizes he’s right when she steps out onto the gravel. She counts at least ten police cars and buses scattered around the parking lot, and there are barricades set up by the entrance. A couple of policemen are unloading shields and helmets behind one of the buses. Of course, a meeting of EU justice ministers on the theme “The Impact of Liberalization” is an obvious target for the antiglobalization movement. Tomorrow Haga Park will be full of left-wing activists.

  Today is just the preliminary meeting. The ministers don’t come until tomorrow. But if there’s one thing Klara learned from her years in EU politics, it’s that the preliminary meetings are what’s important. It’s here, among the more important civil servants and politicians’ advisers, that agendas are set and guidelines drawn up. It’s here that decisions are born, and foundations laid. That’s why Charlotte’s report is so important.

  It’s half past seven, and Klara is standing in line with suit-clad representatives of the collective, dubious European democracy. The security check is rigorous, like at an airport or the European Parliament, bags are x-rayed, and everyone has to go through metal detectors before entering the old armory, which has been renovated into a five-thousand-square-foot, Nordic-style conference hall of white and blond wood.

  Klara registers and receives her name tag.

  “Has Charlotte Anderfeldt registered yet?” she asks the young, blond intern in a tight dress, working behind the counter.

  The woman taps on her tablet.

  “No. Professor Anderfeldt doesn’t seem to have signed in yet. But according to the program, her presentation will be at eight-thirty, just after the introduction, so she can’t be far away.”

  Klara nods and heads for the table where they’re serving coffee and a continental breakfast. She looks at her phone. No missed
calls. No messages. The time is a quarter to eight. Fifteen minutes until this all kicks off. Then another half hour until Charlotte’s presentation. Klara is starting to sweat. It’s not like Charlotte to show up at the last minute. Not at all.

  Then someone gently grasps her elbow, and she turns around so quickly that the black coffee spills onto the saucer.

  “Klara,” George Lööw says. “I need to talk to you.”

  He looks like he always does—freshly showered and immaculately groomed. The suit looks new. The white shirt and red tie as well. Another attendee—a round man in his forties—shakes hands with him in passing: “George! They set the fox loose among the chickens, I see!” the man says in a thick German accent and laughs heartily.

  George forces a laugh as well and pats him affectionately on the shoulder.

  “Otto! Good to see you!” He makes a gesture to indicate he’s busy but happy to talk later. He pulls Klara through the crowd toward the security checkpoint while waving, smiling, and making “Call me!” gestures with his free hand. This is obviously his milieu.

  Finally, they exit into the foyer, which is less crowded.

  “George!” she says, making an effort to smile. “It’s been a really long time!”

  “Yes it has,” George says, his smile as strained as hers. “We can catch up later. The thing is that we have a little problem on our hands right now.”

  “OK,” she says. “But what a surprise to see you here!”

  “Is it?” he says, looking at her with curiosity. “Didn’t Charlotte tell you I would be here?”

  She frowns and tries to meet his eyes, but he’s scanning the crowd behind her.

  “No,” she says cautiously. “She’s never mentioned you.”

  “She hasn’t?”

  He sounds genuinely confused and looks straight at her.

  “I was the one who recommended you to her in the first place. How did you think you got the job?”

  She takes a step back.

  “Excuse me?” she says. “What did you say?”

  “Klara,” he says and focuses his eyes on her again. “Where is Charlotte?”

  “Wait,” she says. “What do you mean you got the job for me?”

  “Forget that right now,” he says impatiently. “She needed somebody who could speak Swedish, and I sent over your name. That’s all. But where is she, Klara? This is really fucking important! You can’t imagine how much is at stake.”

  Klara is very close to saying that she knows all too well what’s at stake, and how important it is to him, but stops herself at the last second.

  “I really don’t know,” she says. “She should be here any second. How do you know her, George?”

  But before she can finish her question, he’s turned his back on her and disappeared into a sea of identical suits.

  75. STOCKHOLM—SUNDAY, AUGUST 23, 2015

  A HALF HOUR LATER, the meeting’s rules of conduct have been covered and the keynote speaker—a world-famous venture capitalist with a newly awakened interest in democracy—is obviously approaching the end of his presentation. It’s probably ten minutes tops until Charlotte’s presentation.

  What do they do if she doesn’t come? The report has already been written, and it will be published at lunch whether she’s here or not. A woman in her fifties with short, blond hair squats down beside Klara.

  “You work with Charlotte Anderfeldt?” she says in English with a slight French accent. “I’m one of the organizers of this conference. And this is a catastrophe!”

  Even though she’s whispering, her desperation is all too clear.

  “Where is Professor Anderfeldt? Has she been in contact with you?”

  Klara shakes her head.

  “I’ve been trying to reach her with no luck,” Klara says.

  “I can see no other alternative,” the woman says. “You will have to present the report. I mean you and Charlotte wrote it together, right?”

  Klara’s chest tightens. She shakes her head emphatically.

  “I’ve only written a small part!” she says, struggling not to raise her voice. “Just the chapter on legal limitations. I haven’t even seen the finished version. Besides, I believe Professor Anderfeldt and I came to completely different conclusions.”

  The woman just looks at her.

  “Catastrophe,” she hisses back. “Complete catastrophe.”

  At the podium the moderator is finishing his brief summary of the speaker’s introduction and looks out in confusion into the audience.

  “Now we were supposed to begin with the first item on our agenda,” he says and looks around worriedly. “The presentation of a report on the outlook for the privatization of police functions from a European perspective. The report has been compiled by Professor Charlotte Anderfeldt at the King’s Centre for Human Rights in London. But I’ve just learned that it appears that Professor Anderfeldt has been delayed. I therefore suggest we postpone this item and instead begin with . . .”

  He’s interrupted by a door opening in the back of the conference hall. The whole room turns around. Charlotte enters through the door.

  “I take back that last,” the moderator says over the subdued murmur in the hall. “It seems Professor Anderfeldt has finally found her way here!”

  “I beg your pardon for this unnecessary drama,” Charlotte says as she takes her seat between the moderator and the other panelists.

  Klara can hardly believe her eyes. Charlotte looks fairly calm, but her eyes jump back and forth between her computer and the audience in a way that Klara doesn’t recognize.

  Charlotte sighs deeply, as if preparing, while her presentation opens on the screens around the hall.

  “I’m here to present the first case study at this conference that will take a position,” she begins. “And it concerns a question that has been raised recently in several EU countries: what would be required in order to privatize certain police duties. This is particularly relevant in the context of the large popular protests we’ve seen lately.”

  She looks up and lets her eyes play across the hall.

  “Stockholm itself is a perfect example; in just the last week we’ve seen recurring riots in the suburbs. Riots for which the police have been severely underequipped, lacking the flexibility necessary to effectively deal with the problems that have arisen.”

  She pauses and looks out over the audience.

  “This conference is no exception. The large police presence here today is a testament to the expectation of civil unrest.”

  All around the room attendees nod and lean forward to listen more intently. Klara feels the hairs rise on the nape of her neck. George and his customers have succeeded in creating an atmosphere that fits Charlotte’s presentation with incredible skill. How could you possibly protect yourself from this kind of lobbying? What are you to do with a company that can create its own reality by fomenting and exploiting grievances in the suburbs, while simultaneously purchasing an “independent expert” to present a solution that best suits their case?

  The cynicism of it is staggering and utterly ruthless. Klara turns around and meets George’s gaze for a moment. He looks calmer now, she thinks. Onstage, Charlotte continues to speak.

  “It is obvious that our communities face major challenges in terms of resource allocation and efficiency within the policing sphere, and it is therefore natural that questions regarding alternative solutions have been raised.”

  She makes it sound so reasonable, so technocratic.

  “In several member countries, there have been claims that private actors would be more flexible and cost-effective. Parallels have been drawn to the positive economic outcomes of privatization in health care enacted in recent years, including here in Sweden.”

  Charlotte turns her head and looks directly at Klara. For a moment she falls silent. Then she slowly turns her eyes back toward the audience.

  “But what our research has shown is that the problems of privatizing policing are almost insur
mountable from a purely democratic point of view.”

  Klara gasps for breath. Could she have heard correctly? What is Charlotte saying? It must be precisely the opposite of what Stirling Security has paid her to say. Has she changed sides?

  “What we’ve chosen to focus our work on are the legal issues and the risks to democracy that arise when considering the privatization of central government functions, such as policing. For this part of our work, I have to thank my colleague Klara Walldéen for her careful research that highlights these legal problems and for her summary of case studies in this field.”

  It’s as if she’s inside a kaleidoscope where the pieces have rotated to form a completely different pattern from what she expected. Klara sits perfectly still, while on the stage Charlotte carefully goes through the part of the report Klara wrote.

  She turns to see how George is reacting. But his seat is empty, and she catches a glimpse of him exiting toward the lobby with his phone pressed to his ear.

  On the screens around the room, she sees her own conclusions being presented one by one. Without a doubt, the focus is only on the problems of constitutionality and on democratic constraints.

  For a moment she wonders if she imagined everything that happened over the past week: The emails between Charlotte and George. The money paid to the Liechtenstein account and to the people in Bergort. The symbol Yasmine told her about. All of that for nothing?

  “The entire report will be posted on the conference website this afternoon,” Charlotte says at last.

  And then she’s finished. Klara hardly notices that the monitors have been turned off, that the moderator has announced a coffee break, and that the attendees are moving around her, buzzing on their way toward the refreshments table at the back. Charlotte’s final words ring in her ears: “The privatization of policing, beyond purely administrative tasks, appears very difficult to defend from a democratic or legal perspective.”

  Charlotte’s report is exactly in accordance with what Klara wrote. If Stirling Security, whoever they are, were aiming to create a positive image for the privatization of the police force, they’ve failed spectacularly.