Thomas leaned back, listening to the director of communication give a long list of directives, and let his eyes roam across the participants.
Sophia in a pin-striped suit and silk blouse with sparkling teeth and apple hair over by the window. Sophia in her lacy bra and parted lips leaning against the flip-chart. Sophia with no underwear on riding the overhead projector.
He cleared his throat and shook his head, forcing his brain back to reality.
At the far end of the table sat the information director, who was also chair of the project group, and one of those responsible for factual content. The pair responsible for organization and administration poured more coffee and picked at the rapidly hardening pastries. The other participants had gathered near the window, where they sat with their jackets pressed hard into the backs of their chairs, trying to look as though they weren’t about to yawn.
His reality. Sophia’s reality.
What was Annika doing right now? What did he know about her reality?
Without him understanding how it happened, or what had been said, the meeting broke up to the scrape of chairs and relieved voices. He pulled himself together, and, without looking up, gathered his documents together.
‘Samuelsson,’ said a voice above him, and he looked up quickly. ‘How’s the collaboration with the Federation of County Councils going?’
Thomas stood up and shook the information director by the hand, feeling his brain solidify and his words dry up. What the hell was he supposed to say to that?
‘Oh,’ he said, gulping audibly, ‘it’s going pretty well.’
‘No real areas of conflict?’
He pulled his hand away to hide the fact that he was breaking into a sweat.
‘As long as we’re working towards the same goal, and have a good number of independent players in the project, it’s working fairly well,’ he said, wondering exactly what he meant by that.
‘That Sophia Grenborg, what’s she like?’
The question forced the last oxygen from his lungs; he opened his mouth but was unable to breathe.
‘Oh, you know, fine,’ he heard himself say. ‘A bit dull. Upper-class, has never had any real setbacks in life …’
The information director looked at him in surprise. ‘I meant what’s she like to work with. Is she pressing the Federation’s interests at our expense?’
To his embarrassment, Thomas could feel himself blushing, what a stupid mistake.
‘It’s okay as long as we don’t let our guard down,’ he said. ‘We can’t let them get the upper hand, so there’s a certain amount of positioning going on in advance of the congress, if I can put it like that …’
The information director nodded in concentration. ‘I understand. Listen, could you summarize your experiences, partly within your current area of focus, but particularly with regard to the regional issue, as soon as possible?’
‘Of course,’ Thomas said, straightening his tie. ‘Just tell me what you want and I’ll get down to it.’
The information director boxed Thomas lightly on his left shoulder. ‘That’s what I like to hear,’ he said, and glided out of the room.
The room emptied of people, leaving Thomas closing his briefcase. How was the collaboration with the Federation of County Councils going? Sophia Grenborg, what was she really like?
Thomas turned his back on the thought, picked up his briefcase and headed sternly towards the lifts.
The corridor outside his room was silent and gloomy; the structural pattern of the walls emphasized and warped by the lamps spreading light in fountain-shaped shadows. He hurried into his office, shut the door and sank down at the desk.
He couldn’t carry on like this. Why had he let things get this far? Everything he had struggled for for years was at risk; the relationships he had built up with his family and his employers would be worthless if he was discovered to be sharing a bed with the Federation of County Councils. His eyes fixed on the picture of Annika and the children that he had put in a silver frame on the desk, a photograph he had taken last summer at his aunt’s seventieth birthday party. The picture didn’t do them justice. The children were dressed up and slightly stiff, Annika was in a knee-length dress that flowed and softened her sharp-edged body. She had plaited her hair so that it hung quiet and controlled, like a whip, down her back.
‘That says a lot about how you’d like other people to see us,’ Annika had said when she saw which picture he had chosen to frame.
He hadn’t responded, had actively chosen not to engage in yet another discussion that would never lead anywhere. It was important to him how he was perceived by other people; that was true. Ignoring the impression you made was both irresponsible and stupid. Annika thought the exact opposite.
‘You can’t be loved by everyone,’ she would say. ‘It’s better to take a stand for what you believe than to try to please everyone.’
He ran a finger over the hard, dull metal frame, his nail lingering over Annika’s curved breasts.
An insistent internal call made him jump.
‘You have a visitor in reception, Sophia Grenborg from the Federation of County Councils. Do you want to come down and fetch her?’
He felt the sweat break out on his brow and under his arms.
‘No,’ he said. ‘She knows the way. You can let her come up.’
He put down the receiver, got up from his chair and crossed the floor, opening the door slightly and looking around the room as if he had never seen it before. He decided to lean against the desk, and crossed his arms and legs as his listened hard for noises out on the stairs. He could only hear his own heart thumping, and struggled to identify his feelings, but found only bottomless confusion.
He didn’t know. He was expectant, but he was ashamed. He felt longing, and he felt hatred.
He heard footsteps making the sound that only hers made, the steps echoed through the silence of the corridor, light and happy.
She pushed the door open and stepped into his room, and her eyes were shining with a shyness and hesitancy that couldn’t be hidden by the great wave of goodwill pouring out of them.
He walked towards her, turned off the main light and pulled her to him as he pushed the door shut. He kissed her hard and senselessly, her mouth was bitter and warm, he took her breasts in his hands, as her hands reached inside the back of his trousers.
They panted into each other’s mouths and pulled off their clothes and lay down on the desk, the mug of pens hit him in the back and he swept it aside along with everything else behind him, she climbed on top of him, her eyes capturing his, her lips swollen and trembling. He slid inside her as if she was warm butter, and leaned his head back and shut his eyes as she slowly began to ride him. The slow waves made his body take flight. As his orgasm approached he opened his eyes wide and happened to stare straight into Annika’s, as she tried to hide her resigned tolerance of the family party she had not been able to avoid.
He couldn’t help the cry he let out as he came.
In the silence afterwards he could hear the monotonous whirr of the air conditioning, the singing of the wires in the lift-shaft, an abandoned phone on another floor that rang and rang and rang.
‘We’re mad,’ Sophia Grenborg whispered in his ear, and he couldn’t help laughing. Yes, they really were mad, and as he kissed her and stood up, she tumbled off him and fluid ran out of her and down onto one of the project papers.
They hastily put their clothes back on, giggling and fumbling. Then stood close together, their arms around each other’s waist, smiling into each other’s eyes.
‘Thanks for today,’ Sophia said, and kissed him on the chin.
He caught her mouth, biting her tongue.
‘Thank you,’ he breathed.
She pulled on her coat, picked up her briefcase and was about to leave when she suddenly stopped.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I almost forgot what I came for.’
He was sitting on his chair, leaning back, feeling the sle
epiness that always followed sex. Sophia put her briefcase on his desk, opened and took out a folder of papers bearing the logo of the Ministry of Justice.
‘I spent some time with Cramne this afternoon; we went through the outline for the action plan.’ She smiled at him with an almost bovine look on her face.
He felt his face close up, the need for sleep vanish.
‘What?’ he said. ‘I thought I was supposed to do that?’
‘Cramne called me. He couldn’t get hold of you because you were in a meeting. You can read it through this evening and call me early tomorrow morning, can’t you?’
He looked at his watch.
‘I have to pick up the kids,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I’ll have time tonight.’
Sophia blinked, something pale falling across her nose. ‘Okay.’ Her voice was suddenly smaller and sharper. ‘Call me when you can.’
And she turned and left the room, shutting the door behind her. Thomas stayed in his chair, suddenly aware of the stickiness around his groin.
How was the collaboration with the Federation of County Councils going? Sophia Grenborg, what was she really like?
He lunged forward, crumpled up the project document and threw it in the bin, left Sophia Grenborg’s discussions with the department next to the mug of pens and hurried off to the nursery.
Annika’s legs had almost gone to sleep on the uncomfortable chairs outside Anders Schyman’s room when the editor-in-chief finally opened the door and let her in.
‘I’ve got ten minutes,’ he said, turning his back on her before she had chance to reply.
She stood up, trying to shake some life into her legs, and feeling strangely ill at ease. She followed Schyman’s broad back into the room, taking nervous steps on the swaying floor. She was unnerved by his attempt to hurry her along, and sank into one of his visitor’s chairs, putting her notes on top of some sort of diagram on his desk.
The editor-in-chief walked slowly back behind his desk and sank into his creaking chair. He leaned back.
‘You’re not letting go of this terrorist angle, then,’ he stated, clasping his hands together over his gut.
‘I’ve uncovered information that’s extremely controversial,’ Annika said, staring down at her notebook, realizing it was open on the wrong page. She quickly pulled the notes over to her and searched feverishly for the summary she had put together. Schyman sighed.
‘Just tell me instead,’ he said, and Annika put the book down in her lap. She was fighting against a stubborn sense of falling, which was making the floor sway like mad.
‘The terrorist’s name is Göran Nilsson,’ she said. ‘Born in Sattajärvi in the Torne Valley in nineteen forty-eight, the son of a Læstadian preacher.’
She picked up her notes and leafed through them.
‘He moved to Uppsala to study theology at the age of nineteen, joined the Rebel movement in the spring of nineteen sixty-eight and became a Maoist. Abandoned his studies and moved back to Norrbotten where he worked for the Church. He joined Maoist groups in Luleå under the codename Ragnwald, and seems to have lost his faith, because he arranged a civil marriage ceremony. One way or another he was involved in the attack on F21, even if the police don’t believe that he actually carried it out. He disappeared from Sweden on the eighteenth of November nineteen sixty-nine and hasn’t been seen since then. The wedding, which was supposed to take place on the twentieth of November in Luleå City Hall, just two days after the attack, was cancelled.’
Schyman nodded slowly. ‘Then he went to Spain and became a professional killer for ETA,’ he filled in, glancing at the newspaper spread out on one of the side tables.
Annika raised her hand, putting her feet down hard to find solid ground.
‘It’s F21 that’s the interesting bit,’ she said.
‘I thought you said the police had discounted him, that he didn’t carry out the attack?’
She swallowed silently, nodded.
‘So who blew up the plane?’ Anders Schyman said in a neutral tone of voice, his hands still.
She was silent for a few moments before she replied.
‘Karina Björnlund,’ she said. ‘The Minister for Culture.’
The editor-in-chief didn’t move a muscle. His hands remained clasped above his shirt buttons, his back stayed at the same angle, his eyes didn’t move, but the air in the room had suddenly turned grey, difficult to breathe in.
‘I presume,’ Schyman said after a silence of indeterminate length, ‘that you have bloody good back-up for this accusation.’
Annika tried to laugh, but the noise came out as a dry snigger.
‘Not really,’ she said, ‘but the minister really is the most likely culprit.’
Schyman leaned forward quickly, heaving himself out of the chair with the help of the desk and walked across the floor, not looking at Annika.
‘I don’t know that I want to listen to this,’ he said.
Annika was halfway out of her chair to follow him, but felt the whole room lurch. She sank back and picked up her notes.
‘The footprints found at the scene were size thirty-six,’ she said. ‘They must have been made by either a child or a small woman, and of those two alternatives an adult woman with small feet is most likely. Women hardly ever turn to terrorism unless it’s together with their men. Ragnwald planned the attack, his fiancée carried it out.’
Schyman interrupted his restless wandering across the floor and turned to face her, hands by his sides.
‘Fiancée?’
‘They were due to get married, parish assistant Göran Nilsson from Sattajärvi and Karina Björnlund from Karlsvik in the parish of Lower Luleå. I’ve checked all the Göran Nilssons and Karina Björnlunds with their backgrounds against the historical information in the National Population Address Register, and they’re the only two.’
‘The terrorist and the culture minister?’
‘The terrorist and the culture minister.’
‘They were getting married two days after the attack?’
Annika nodded, watching her boss’s unfeigned astonishment, and felt the ground slowly solidify beneath her again.
‘How do you know that?’
‘A wedding announcement in the Norrland News published less than four weeks before the attack.’
Anders Schyman folded his arms, rocked back on his heels and looked out of the large, dark window towards the Russian embassy.
‘You’re quite sure that Karina Björnlund, in the autumn of nineteen sixty-nine, was planning to marry a man who ended up becoming a professional killer?’
She cleared her throat and nodded, and Schyman continued his reasoning. ‘And our Minister of Culture would have destroyed the property of the state, murdered one conscript and wounded another, all for love?’
‘I don’t know that, but it seems logical,’ Annika said.
The editor-in-chief went back to his chair and sat down carefully.
‘How old was she?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘Was she living with this bloke?’
‘She was still registered at her parents’ address in Karlsvik.’
‘What was her job?’
‘In the wedding announcement it said she was a student.’
Anders Schyman picked up a pen and wrote something on the corner of a diagram.
‘Do you know,’ he said, looking up at Annika, ‘this is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard.’
He let the pen fall, the small sound of plastic on paper grew and echoed in the silence, the floor opened up beneath her and she was falling.
‘I’m glad that you came to me with this information,’ he went on. ‘I hope you haven’t mentioned this nonsense to anyone else?’
Annika felt the heat rising in her face, and her head was starting to spin.
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘Not to Berit? Not Jansson?’
He studied her close-up for a few seconds, then straightened his back.
/> ‘Good.’ He turned away. ‘From now on you won’t be covering terrorism at all. You will not spend a minute more on Karina Björnlund or this bloody Ragnwald or any explosions in Luleå or anywhere else. Is that understood?’
She jerked back against her chair, away from his breath, which had come extremely close again.
‘But isn’t it at least worth carrying on and checking?’ she said.
Anders Schyman looked at her with such incredulous astonishment that she felt her throat burning.
‘That Sweden’s most sought-after terrorist for more than three decades happens to be a teenage schoolgirl from a village in Norrbotten who lived with her mum and went on to become a minister in a Social Democratic government?’
Annika was breathing fast through her mouth.
‘I haven’t even spoken to the police—’
‘So much the fucking better.’
‘They must have questioned her, maybe there’s an entirely innocent explanation—’
An angry signal from the intercom silenced her.
‘Herman Wennergren is here now,’ Schyman’s secretary said over the crackling speaker.
The editor-in-chief took three long strides to the intercom and pressed the button.
‘Ask him to come in.’
He released the button and glanced over at Annika with a look that condemned her to the underworld.
‘I don’t want to hear another word about this,’ he said. ‘Get out.’
Annika stood up, surprised that she hadn’t collapsed completely. She grabbed her notebook with hands that didn’t feel like they were her own, and aiming for the door at the end of a long tunnel, fumbled her way out.
30
Anders Schyman watched the door close behind Annika Bengtzon, disappointment burning in his gut. So incredibly sad. Annika was so thorough, so ambitious. Now she had evidently lost her grip completely. Lost touch with reality and fled into some sort of fantasy world with terrorists in government and professional killers involved with local politicians in Östhammar.
He had to sit down, and turned his chair so that he ended up looking at his own reflection in the dark glass, trying to make out the contours of the concrete buildings spread out below the Russian flag.
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