Into a Raging Blaze

by Andreas Norman

  “Everything will sort itself out,” Greger said with an emphasis that almost convinced her. “Now, this is what we’re going to do. We’ll have a bite to eat, then head to a friend’s.”

  “This evening?”

  “Yes. Alex is hosting the party. She’s one of the people who have been helping to find Jean. It would be cool if you got to meet her. You’ll like her.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m going, anyway. I can’t just sit at home. I need to get out, and I think you do too.”

  Going to a party was one of the last things she wanted to do right now, but it might be worth it if she got to meet someone who was looking for Jean. She needed to get a grip. She didn’t want to go home yet and she couldn’t just stay here in Greger’s apartment.

  “Okay,” she said without any great enthusiasm.

  “Wonderful.”

  He got up and fetched a well-thumbed pizza menu from the fridge. He threw it at her. Pick one; he would get it. He looked at her and shook his head. She was welcome to use the bathroom, take a shower if she liked. “You look like a fucking car crash,” he said with a smile.

  Perhaps Greger was right, perhaps she just needed to let go of everything for a bit. She chose a salami and arugula pizza. Greger pulled on his coat. He would be back soon. There were clean clothes in the wardrobe, he said with a nod to her bloodied T-shirt.

  “Thank you for helping me, Greger.”

  “No problem. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  When he had gone, she stayed sitting still for a long time in the quiet apartment. Finally, she was able to go to the window and look out. For a moment, she was convinced that there would be someone outside, looking up at her, but of course there wasn’t. All that was out there was a normal Stockholm suburb. From the window she could see a traffic circle lit by streetlights. On the other side of the road was a cycle track that ran along a row of recently planted, fragile-looking trees. Further away were some lower residential buildings barely visible but for their rows of windows shining out into the gloom. A cyclist passed by and kept going into the dark.

  She undressed and took a shower. The blood had dried on her face; her nose was tender but not broken and there wouldn’t be any marks. She shuddered as she thought of how she had climbed out of the window. It was extremely dangerous; in hindsight, she couldn’t comprehend that she had actually done it. Perhaps she had overreacted. The police had visited her and, as Greger said, they would never have done so if they truly believed she was a security risk. Presumably the Ministry had reported the matter to the police to establish what had actually happened and to get it off their backs. A couple of years ago, a guy at the UN Mission in New York had given a Coreu, a secret message intended for all EU capitals, to a Russian. There was an investigation, he had been recalled to Sweden and been put in the cooler. Everyone knew about the case.

  It felt good to stand under the water and let it stream over her face and body. She yearned to swim, to feel the cool tiles against the soles of her feet and then push away from the edge, to be enveloped by the water. After forty lengths her head was always quiet, empty, and her thoughts more focused. She closed her eyes and imagined surging through the water, her arms flinging themselves into the weak opposition of the water, the regular movements of her body, blood roaring through her ears.

  After the shower, she examined her body in the mirror. There were a couple of ugly bruises on her arms, as well as one under her left breast. What had she been thinking, jumping out of a fourth-floor window? She could have died. But she had panicked, she hadn’t been able to stop herself. At least now she knew that Säpo was looking for her. She looked grimly at her own reflection, fixated by her own gaze. “Fix this now, Carina,” she muttered aloud. “They will not be fucking right. You are right, remember that. You are right.”

  She pulled on her jeans and started to look in Greger’s wardrobe for a top she could borrow. All his clothes were neatly folded. It was a bit embarrassing to rummage through his socks and underwear, so she quickly chose a sweater, which proved to be a little too large, and closed the wardrobe door.

  Fully dressed, she lay down on the bed and shut her eyes. The fatigue after showering must have swept her away because she awoke with a start, with a feeling that it was the middle of the night. Only a minute or so had passed.

  On the bedside table was a framed picture: a black-and-white photo of Greger, smiling, together with a beautiful man of Indian appearance. Carina picked it up and looked at it. Presumably it was Simon, Greger’s now ex-boyfriend. They were lying together in a hammock, Simon with an arm around Greger in a tender gesture. A happy picture. She had never met Simon, but Greger had often spoken of him. He was an economist and trainer at SATS. He was Greger’s great love but, from what Greger had said about him, Carina got the impression he was fairly mean and self-absorbed. Greger had been worried and angry many times when Simon had stayed out all night, refusing to say where he had been, and about Simon’s rages, after which he would stay at one of his friend’s. It pained Greger. But they always seemed to manage to solve their problems and they really were in love. Greger normally told her in detail about the trips they had planned—this summer they had intended to rent a cabriolet and drive through southern Italy. But that hadn’t come off, she supposed. In the picture, Greger looked so happy, so relaxed, his face smooth as he lay in the arms of his man. They had been together for five years. She carefully put the photograph back.

  25

  Stockholm, Monday, October 3

  A few hours had passed and everyone at Counterterrorism now knew that Dymek was gone. People without training rarely managed to disappear like this, but Dymek was out of sight. It was surprising, and ominous. It probably meant that she had help, that there were individuals around her who were trained to handle this kind of situation.

  “Hi, Bente.” Hamrén came up to her. “Come with us. We’re going for coffee.”

  They went to a coffee machine. Despite being in the middle of an operation, the floor was in an evening lull. Only the people working on the Ahwa case, as it was now being called, were still working at their desks.

  The team had searched the city center, swept the large thoroughfares, but even after just an hour it was clear they wouldn’t find her. They decided to stop. Dymek was gone; it was better to quickly change tactics.

  Bente pressed the button for a black coffee. A weak headache had begun to pulse above her right eyebrow. She needed caffeine.

  “We lost Dymek,” she said. “A shame.”

  Hamrén glanced at her, as if he thought she was trying to point the finger at him for a failed operation. He was on his guard. “We’ll find her.”

  They needed Dymek. Dymek was their way in to Jamal Badawi. She was probably the only one who could give them a better understanding of the Ahwa group and the connection to Badawi. And a better understanding of herself, for that matter. Islamist groups were closed environments; it took a long time to get into them and win the trust of such people. As a non-Muslim, it was almost impossible. But Dymek was already there; she probably already had their trust. At the very least, she knew more than Counterterrorism did about Jamal Badawi.

  “I don’t like to ask you for this,” Hamrén said.

  “You mean you don’t like using the Section’s resources?”

  “Yes, yes. The Section.”

  He was tense. She understood why: letting SSI into the investigation was acknowledging that his own branch couldn’t manage the situation alone. But he had no choice. The Security Service had no right to request signals intelligence against Swedish targets. Signals intelligence was managed by the military and directed at external threats, abroad. That deficiency was the reason for the SSI’s existence—to be a silent resource shared by the Security Service and the FRA, which made it possible for Säpo to listen in to Swedish data traffic.

  She smiled at him. “Of course.”

  “Good. Good.”

  Hamrén nodded toward a chubby young technician w
ho was sat spinning on his office chair while writing at his computer. She could talk to that guy over there; he would help her with the practical stuff. Hamrén downed his coffee and returned to the office area.

  The Head of the Section’s signals intelligence unit was at home. Bente could hear the noise of the TV in the background, then the abrupt silence as he hurried into an adjoining room. She explained the situation in brief. They needed targeted searches against Carina Dymek. “And Jamal Badawi,” she added. “There will be data coming in from Stockholm, and possibly London. I don’t quite know what, but names, technical parameters. Feed in everything you get. This is top priority, so call in as many people as you need.”

  When she had hung up, she sent a text message to Mikael giving him a three-sentence situation report, then refilled her coffee cup and approached the technician that Hamrén had pointed at. He was in deep concentration as he dissected Dymek’s hard drive, and didn’t notice Bente until she was right beside him. When he found out who she was, he quickly began to tell her which measures were currently being taken: IP numbers were being found, MAC addresses, routing tables, and hundreds of other technical parameters connected to Dymek’s residential address, her work computer, and private Internet subscription. They had the work computer, but unfortunately not Dymek’s private machine. The technician shook his head. A real shame. They had submitted requests to all the large telecoms operators to be notified if a new customer called Dymek turned up. They were already tracking her bank card. Similar measures were in place against Jamal Badawi.

  “We’re expecting a lot of information during the next twenty-four hours . . .”

  “Excellent.” Bente gave him a look to tell him that was fine for now. The technician nodded and looked at her uncertainly.

  She handed over the contact number for the Head of Signals Intelligence at the Section. The technician looked at the number, taking it in carefully, as if it was an advanced algorithm. The Section was something different, something you hoped to become a part of but for which few were sufficiently qualified. It would be a pleasure, he said. He lifted the phone and made a brief call, instructed some colleagues and hung up. They were ready to begin.

  He pushed a chair toward her. She sat down and watched in silence while he began to enter new selectors. There were special templates that were used to enter search terms in the databases for signals intelligence collection. They were stored there, together with millions upon millions of names of people, places, numbers, technical codes, and specifications that were, for various reasons, of interest to the military or the Security Service and were used to filter the flood of information that was sucked into the servers of the Armed Forces twenty-four seven. You could also search the digital and analog traffic flowing through cables across continents. Somewhere they would find a hit, it was just a matter of time.

  When she got up from her seat, it was almost midnight. A group of technicians and analysts were still working at top speed on formulating selectors that they would then feed into the Section. She had spent a few hours reading the British intelligence reports, pointing out names and words that were relevant to the surveillance, but her presence was soon superfluous. Signals intelligence was heavy on the technology, and she was no technician. She knew nothing about software in cells or computers, had no idea how you created secret doors to enter other people’s e-mail accounts or how you tracked a website log-in via cookies. Her speciality was the motivation and behavior of people.

  Dymek was in flight. Perhaps she would stay still for the next forty-eight hours. Logistics were crucial in these situations. An individual with somewhere to hide and someone to arrange food, clothing, protection, perhaps even a new identity, had a far greater chance of getting away. Something told her that Dymek hadn’t left the country. They would have known if she had tried.

  It was sad, an intelligent young woman ruining her prospects like this. And Jamal Badawi, employed at the Ministry of Justice—diligent, good reports, no complaints. What made a young man like that fall in with a crowd of terrorists? There were models for understanding profiles like that, yet there was still something fundamentally incomprehensible about people, who had all the best opportunities, rejecting them, turning their backs on society, and throwing away their lives.

  Bente passed a row of civil servants, all sitting at their computers, unmoving, and she couldn’t help but stop. Different, grainy sequences of film flickered on their screens. Counterterrorism and parts of the National Bureau of Investigation were processing a mass of surveillance footage from central Stockholm. If Dymek had been caught on film, they would find her before morning. Stockholm wasn’t big.

  The fresh, humid air grabbed hold of her coat as she came out of the office. She took a deep breath. The October darkness lay tightly between the buildings. At the crossing outside the Security Service building, the traffic lights were blinking yellow. Only on a cold autumn night in Stockholm could city streets be this deserted.

  Dymek was gone. But a person on the run was forced to hide every day, every hour and minute; the person hunting her only needed one moment to find her.

  They needed so little: one word in a phone call, a transaction, a card payment, a brief visit to one of the web pages now being watched. It was time for the machines to do their work.

  All that remained for Bente to do was one of the key occupations of her profession, which it had taken her a long time to master but which she had begun to appreciate more and more over time. She had to wait.

  The ability to be still, in anticipation, waiting for the right moment and then knowing it was time to act—that was an art. It required calm, distance, and an ability to see the big picture. It required patience and an ability to endure uncertainty. But she was used to it. When the right moment came, she would know—and be ready.

  26

  Stockholm, Monday, October 3

  The apartment thronged with people she didn’t know. The loud music enveloped her in her chosen spot by one of the speakers. She looked around, sipping the beer someone had handed her. Greger had vanished. The last time she had glimpsed him, he had been in the kitchen, talking about something to do with computers to a guy with a clean-shaven head who was as fat as a Buddha.

  She hadn’t even met Alex, the host of the party. She and her friends were old hackers, Greger had told her on the way over in the taxi. They were different, lived an existence far from the nine-to-five of everyday life. Alex had done completely wild things. Greger had excitedly begun to tell her about when they had tried to get into NASA’s systems. Carina had refrained from asking questions; she didn’t want know.

  In the middle of the floor, several people had begun to dance to the music. A heavy bass pulsed between the walls in the small apartment. There was an unbelievable crowd; the entire living room was a mass of bodies moving in the darkness. She watched them while she finished her beer, before forcing her way into the kitchen, getting a new one, and then changing her mind and pouring a large whiskey from one of the bottles on the counter. She still had no job to go to in the morning and might as well get a little drunk. Tomorrow, when she had slept and things looked clearer, she would call Jamal.

  Around her in the small kitchen, people were pressed together, talking animatedly. She sat down at the kitchen table. The whiskey stung her throat. It was good, smoky. She got another.

  “I’ll have one, too, please.”

  She looked up. A guy with long blond bangs was standing next to her.

  “There aren’t enough girls who drink hard liquor. Girls should drink more hard liquor in general. Cheers.”

  “Cheers.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Carina.”

  “Martin.”

  “Hi, Martin.”

  He swayed but regained his balance by leaning against a cupboard door. “How do you know Alex?”

  “I don’t know her. I came with Greger.”

  “Ah, Greger. I know him. We do stuff together.” He grinned.
“It’s cool that so many of us are here, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you know about Alex’s site?” he burst out. “It’s sick. I thought everyone knew about it.”

  “What’s it about then?”

  “Different projects. We build game environments. Things like that.”

  Alex, he explained, worked at EA but did fantastic things with open source code as well. EA? Yes, Electronic Arts. They made computer games. He looked at her in amusement. “You’ve no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “No.”

  He smiled.

  “No, I know nothing about computers.”

  “But you drink whiskey; that’s a good start.” He reached for the bottle and sploshed a little more into his glass and then hers.

  She ought to say no, but part of her wanted to get hammered. She held out her glass. It felt good to talk about something completely different; for a short time, she had gotten away from all the thoughts whirring in her head. For the first time in years, she had no idea what she should do and, right now, she didn’t have the strength to think about it.

  “What do you do, then?”

  “I work at the MFA.”

  “Cool.”

  It just slipped out, an old habit. It wasn’t even true any longer, she thought bitterly. Like so many others, he reacted with a mixture of curiosity and reverent distance, as if, in his eyes, she had been transformed into some other, alien being. The worst sort were the ones who began to ask her about current foreign affairs, as if she was a mouthpiece for the government, but he didn’t seem to be one of them.

  “So, what . . . ? You’re an ambassador?”

  She laughed. “No, no. I’ve been fired.”

  It was a silly thing to say and she regretted it immediately. The guy looked at her somewhat vacantly, unsure whether she was joking. He drained his whiskey.