Into a Raging Blaze

by Andreas Norman

  Bente leaned against the steering wheel. She knew there was no point getting worked up by the traffic; it was, just like the weather, a power over which no one could prevail. She had called Hamrén on his cell but he hadn’t answered. The nauseating anxiety was back, stronger now. The car crept through the traffic. Jean Bernier was dead, so why was he a target for a planned terror attack? Why was he being mentioned at all in the chatter? Once again, she was blind.

  The office was deserted. Tables everywhere were empty, desks tidied. It occurred to her that the department was going to have a big meeting this afternoon: a complete review of the situation. Presumably they were all behind the closed double doors at the other end of the floor. Counterterrorism was preparing for a major operation against Dymek and Badawi, she knew that. During the last twenty-four hours they had identified the Swedish network of people with connections to the Brotherhood. They were on high alert. All physical addresses were established; the targets were under surveillance; Counterterrorism was ready to strike. Ironically enough, the only thing missing was Dymek. Neither Hamrén’s people nor the Brits had managed to locate her since she had disappeared.

  Bente crossed the floor and stopped in front of the door. Voices were audible as a subdued murmur. She ought to be there, but it couldn’t be helped. The meeting had already begun. It would look wrong. It would be stupid to provoke Hamrén again by entering now, when she wasn’t welcome, anyway. Better to keep a low profile. For a second, she missed Brussels, her colleagues at the Section.

  It probably benefited Hamrén and Counterterrorism to keep her and all the others outside, so that they could take all the credit for the collaboration with the British and show the top bosses that they mattered, that they needed more resources next year too. Counterterrorism had almost quadrupled in size in the last few years. Hamrén was an ambitious bastard, but a skillful one too. He would probably go far.

  She sat down at a computer, logged in and brought up the files, quickly searching through the file structure: Dymek, Brussels, Ahwa. Somewhere, there had to be more about Bernier. The only thing related to Bernier was a British intelligence report and the MFA’s record of their conversation with Dymek when they suspended her. Bente flicked through the documents; the Ministry paper she had read, but the British intelligence report was new. She printed them, gathered together her papers and left the silent floor without having been seen by anyone.

  The guest apartment was absorbed in darkness. She still hadn’t had time to unpack. Her suitcase was lying open in the middle of the floor, a curious-looking beast in the darkness. She turned on the lights and put down the papers on the coffee table. It was still raining. Water ran down the tall panes of glass, gushing in sloping vertical lines from a hazy, gray sky. There were around thirty meters between where she stood at the window and the building opposite. No one was visible in any of the windows. The Section’s temporary apartment looked good, but was sparsely furnished. It was better than staying at a hotel, and safer—safe connections, all rooms swept for microphones and other hostile installations—but you couldn’t be too careful with your conversations; there were other apartments surrounding it and the walls hadn’t been reinforced. This was no place to receive visitors or talk about things of a sensitive nature. It was an apartment for eating and sleeping in, for being alone in.

  She went back into the hallway and found an umbrella by the coat stand. It was time to work, but first she needed something to eat—she was starving. She was dreaming of a glass of wine—a glass of red, and the chance to see some normal people. She needed to get out, let some air into her head.

  A few blocks from the apartment, close to Östermalmstorg, she remembered that there was an Italian restaurant. Just as she was opening the door and about to move into the stairwell, she heard someone coming up the stairs and quickly closed the door. She didn’t want to be seen here; the apartment couldn’t be connected to a face. She waited until the steps had faded away and she heard the rattle of a door being opened and closed a few stories higher in the building, before opening the door again.

  The rain bounced against the pavement and the empty street was transformed into a glittering, hazy surface of splashing water. She jogged, but got wet anyway, in spite of the umbrella. The restaurant was unexpectedly busy. Sitting around circular tables with flickering candles, there were families eating and watching the rain; children ran between the tables and got in the way of the servers hurrying to and fro with large pizzas between the kitchen and the various parties. Behind her, a young couple tumbled through the door, tittering with laughter, their hair dripping with rainwater. Bente had really only intended to buy a pizza to take out, meaning to eat it in the apartment, but the restaurant was pleasant and lively, and she decided to stay. Sometimes it was better to take a break from work and come back to it later, when thoughts had had time to rest.

  After a short time, a waiter spotted her and secured one of the last tables for her. Perhaps it was a risk, eating dinner like this, so close to the secure apartment. She couldn’t help but think like that, but couldn’t say why it would be risky. She was just so used to thinking in that way. She constantly tried not to be noticed, not to leave traces in the consciousness of others—even eating dinner in a pizza restaurant set off a small alarm somewhere inside her. Regulations said that one should avoid habits that made it easy to recognize and track employees of the Section. But she knew she was unnecessarily cautious. Presumably, no one would notice her here. She ordered a glass of red and a quattro stagioni, then sat nibbling on the grissini sticks left by the server in a small basket, while she amused herself by observing those around her. A young couple. Some businessmen. At the table furthest from the door, a family.

  The young couple in their early twenties were celebrating something, judging by the expensive sparkling wine they had ordered and the way in which they clinked glasses. The man was in high spirits and talked constantly while the woman listened with small smiles and nods. The businessmen weren’t as interesting; they seemed mostly to be conducting polite conversation while cautiously eating their pasta. The family comprised a couple in their forties, their three children romping around the room and an older couple who looked like maternal grandparents. The grandfather was happily joking with the grandchildren, which made his daughter, who was trying to get the children to calm down, annoyed. Bente couldn’t help but observe people like this, at a distance. It was one of the reasons she had started out at Counterterrorism almost twenty years ago. There was rest to be had in watching others without having to get involved. People’s behavior revealed their inner selves. For a long period, she silently followed what was going on around her in the restaurant, and was so engrossed that she almost jumped when the server discreetly placed her pizza before her.

  While she ate, she went through the Dymek case. Even if she accepted that Badawi really had recruited Dymek, there was still this business with Jean Bernier. If Jean Bernier had been dead for two weeks, it meant that the time of death had been around the end of September. They had found him at his cottage that he and his wife had rented for many years. That his death was being written off as natural causes meant nothing. There were a number of ways to make death appear natural.

  Back in the apartment, she sat down with the papers again and leafed through the MFA’s notes from the last conversation they had held with Dymek, rereading it. At the end of the short memo, she found a chronology of events: September 22nd—desk officer Dymek participates in the COSEC council working-group meeting.

  That was the day that she said she had met a person who had given her the report. Dymek claimed not to know who the man was—that she didn’t even know his surname—just that a man called Jean had given her the EIS report. Bente stopped herself: Jean. Dymek had been very certain that he had been called Jean, which was all she had really been able to say about the man she said had given her the report. Jean Bernier. Naturally, it was him; it made sense. He “just appeared” after the meeting. He had given he
r a report.

  Bente got out her diary. She belonged to the shrinking number of people who still didn’t use digital calendars. At the Section, they were careful about things like that. Digital notes were vulnerable to hacking; old paper diaries just needed to be locked in a safe. The 22nd of September was a Thursday. Jean Bernier had, in that case, still been alive at lunchtime.

  If Carina Dymek had told the truth. If there really had been a Jean, and if he had really been Jean Bernier. She tested the idea. Until now, she hadn’t deemed Dymek to be believable, but there was something in the way she expressed herself, so naïvely and stubbornly, that wasn’t rational if she was truly hiding something. On the other hand, people who withheld the truth often tried to protect themselves by telling the part of the truth they couldn’t deny, while denying all else till blue in the face, lying if necessary. But Dymek didn’t give that impression. She hadn’t been afraid, hadn’t tried to humor her bosses. She could have dodged questions and explained things away. But she hadn’t changed her story, even when she found out she was being suspended. If Dymek had told the truth, she had met Jean Bernier that Thursday, the 22nd, after the meeting in Brussels. She received the report, whereupon they went their separate ways. Perhaps Jean Bernier had gone to his cottage afterward, on the same day, possibly, or a day or so later, and died there shortly afterward. Had Dymek accompanied him there? Could Dymek be his killer? No, nothing suggested that was the case. She had caught a flight home to Stockholm on Thursday evening, just two hours after the meeting. There were even minutes from the meeting that clearly showed Sweden had made several contributions to discussions during the afternoon session. Dymek hadn’t left the meeting. She wouldn’t have had time to get to the cottage in northern Belgium and then back to Brussels in time to catch her flight, even if she had gone straight there and back, stopping for no more than a minute or two. Mikael had texted a link to a map of where Bernier had been found, in the middle of a nature reserve north of Ghent.

  She got up and wandered around the apartment, before coming to a stop in front of the window. If Dymek was telling the truth, then Jean Bernier was completely unknown to her, someone who had appeared completely unexpectedly—a stranger.

  She reached for the British intelligence reports and slowly read through the one about the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ahwa group again. Here they were, talking about an Islamist network within the Brotherhood, its structure and its key persons. The British intelligence services had clearly had them under observation for some time, since they suspected they posed a threat to Europe. The report was long—over fifty pages—and described, among other things, persons in the Badawi family living in Cairo and London, which made it clear they had used wiretaps, e-mail intercepts. The Brits had carefully documented regular contact between people in the circle surrounding Jamal Badawi’s uncle and Jamal Badawi himself. According to the report, there were e-mails that they considered to be coded messages. Jamal Badawi, said the report, had worked systematically for a long time to get inside the Swedish administration, into the Government Offices and the Ministry of Justice, in order to wait, like a sleeper agent, until the right moment. Carina Dymek, stated the report, had been that opportunity.

  It said it there, in black and white. According to the report, Badawi had contacted Carina Dymek and started a relationship in conjunction with beginning to plan an attack against a summit meeting. MI6 noted in the report that Dymek was probably well suited for the needs of the Ahwa group. She was tied to Badawi, the nephew of a well-respected figure in the Ahwa group, by their relationship. Her name was clean, no one knew who she was: she was the perfect clean skin. Badawi had won Dymek through courting her. He had then built up a close relationship with her through sexual contact and, in that way, kept Dymek close to him. The relationship had been built over a longer period of time, following the Russian method, said the report. Ensuring she was compromised by asking her to leak classified material was a step toward making her dependent on Jamal Badawi and therefore more useful to the group in Cairo. Getting her to become an accomplice to the planning of the attack was also not difficult, as her bond to Jamal Badawi had grown strong. She was probably unaware of the Ahwa group’s ultimate plans. The report suggested that Dymek had probably been chosen carefully by the group in Cairo. The British had, in some unfathomable way, managed to find out that she had strong opinions about EU policies toward Europe’s southern neighbors. At several EU meetings she had voiced strong criticism of “the EU’s colonial overtones in relation to the Arab nations.” An anonymous source in Brussels was cited.

  MI6’s assessment was that Jamal Badawi had cultivated Dymek as a fresh resource: a messenger, a mole. A tool for Islamist attack planning.

  But if Badawi had been part of a terrorist network, then why hadn’t the Brits raised the alarm earlier? Why hadn’t they spoken up about their suspicions, if they were so clear? The report Bente held in her hand seemed to be based on intelligence gathered over several months, if not years. How was it possible that Swedish Counterespionage had not perceived the slightest threat? Kempell was competent; he would have smelled that kind of infiltration within the ministry. A planned attack against an EU summit wouldn’t have escaped the notice of the Section. The Swedish Security Service had been fumbling in the dark for a long time, but now they had SSI. They had signals intelligence, they had sources, they had the ability to carry out long-term surveillance and spot the threats. Even if Stockholm hadn’t spotted the threat, SSI should have discovered it. So why had no one—not the Section, not Stockholm, not Interpol, nor the German, French, or Spanish security services—seen this threat that the Brits were able to describe in such detail?

  She put her fingers to her forehead and massaged it slowly, as if to try and wake up her brain from a deep sleep as it lay beneath her skull.

  If Dymek wasn’t lying . . . She tested the idea again. Then she had met Jean Bernier in Brussels that Thursday two weeks ago. It explained how she had gotten hold of the report. But it didn’t explain why an entire IRC channel was looking for one and the same Jean Bernier. It didn’t explain why Dymek would take part in the planning of an attack.

  Unless there was no attack being planned. Unless there were no terrorists.

  The thought reared its head, slowly, without any warning. It was just possible . . . If Dymek wasn’t lying.

  Was it all just her imagination? She looked at the cold walls of the living room as if they might give her clues. But the walls were quiet; the apartment was quiet and seemed to be airtight. It had gotten dark around her. Only the lamp by the sofa spread a soft light. If Dymek really had met Jean Bernier in Brussels on that one occasion on the 22nd of September, then the British analysis was wrong. Something else was going on.

  She got up and turned on the ceiling light in the kitchen; she wanted the apartment to be light. Was she wrong? Had they been moving around like fish in a pond, like blind carp, swimming around and around in the belief that they were getting closer to the sea? Perhaps.

  All the material that MI6 had provided, all the analyses—where had they got it from? Where, where, where? She needed to call someone: Hamrén. She reached for her cell, but stopped herself. What would she say to make him believe her? She had nothing—nothing concrete that would change his views at this stage. The summit was four days away; the response team was on high alert; Swedish Counterterrorism was ready to respond within minutes at the first sign that the group was gathering for an attack. Hamrén wouldn’t listen to her now.

  She sat down heavily on the sofa and looked at the papers that lay spread across the coffee table. If her suspicions were proven right, nothing was true.

  Once again, they were blind.

  She gathered together the documents, knocked the bundle against the table to straighten them out, and put the stack in front of her. There was nothing further to gain here, she thought bitterly.

  She went into the kitchen and in one of the cupboards she found a bottle of Famous Grouse with a drop left
. She poured it into a glass and drank as she slowly wandered around the apartment. There was nothing left to do in Stockholm. The answers weren’t here.

  At first, all she noticed was a buzzing sound, but she didn’t understand what it was. She put down her glass and went into the living room. Her cell was on silent, lying there, vibrating on the coffee table.

  It was Mikael.

  “We’ve found a guy at the Commission who’s prepared to talk to us.”

  “Good.” Her voice sounded odd, she noticed. She cleared her throat. “That’s very good.”

  “How are you?”

  She was fine, she replied. Mikael really was like a barometer: he noticed the slightest shift in people. She was grateful that he didn’t ask more; she couldn’t say anymore on the phone. Could he arrange a ticket to Brussels for tomorrow morning? she said. For the first flight out.

  31

  Stockholm, Thursday, October 6

  It was beginning to get dark when Carina reached Skogskyrkogården, the woodland cemetery. She had spent the entire day in Alex’s apartment. Alex hadn’t been home; the apartment had been quiet and peaceful. The only person she had seen was Greger, who had stopped by late in the afternoon with a few borrowed clothes and a suitcase. She had bought a ticket to Brussels and packed, just like she would before any normal trip for work. When everything was ready, she felt so nervous that she couldn’t sit still and had instead wandered around the unfamiliar rooms, turned on the TV, and flipped between various afternoon shows before turning it off when she found herself watching a repeat of a nature film about gazelles. She got dressed and went out.

  She had called Jamal from the pizzeria again; they had agreed to meet at the ticket gate at Skogskyrkogården subway station. To pass the time, she had then walked all the way there through the suburbs. She could already see his thin, upright figure from a distance as he stood waiting for her in the harshly lit ticketing area. She was so happy to see him again. He was fiddling with his cell and looked up and smiled at her when she appeared. She hugged him, hard, pulled him close to her. They kissed for a long time before she slowly and unwillingly let go.