Into a Raging Blaze

by Andreas Norman

  The pedestrian silhouette turned green and, in a quiet, communal movement, everyone around her began to cross the road.

  “Carina.”

  She was about to step off the pavement, but stopped herself. The car headlights blinded her; she couldn’t see who had called her name. A woman came toward her, smiling. Carina didn’t recognize her.

  “Hi, Carina,” she said in a clear, British accent. Perhaps it was a colleague, or some other acquaintance. She really needed someone to talk to, someone who could help her.

  It was too late by the time she realized what was happening. The woman came up to her and pretended to give her a hug, pushed against her and locked her arms together with a rock-solid grip. As if out of nowhere, a man appeared; all Carina saw was a light brown suede jacket and then someone grabbed her wrists and twisted them so that pain radiated through her arms. This couldn’t be possible, she thought, as if watching it all from the sidelines. It was surreal; it wasn’t actually happening. Then she screamed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw some people on the street turn around, just a few meters away. But they did nothing, just stood there; they didn’t understand what they were seeing. Carina was lifted off the ground; she lost her footing.

  41

  Brussels, Saturday, October 8

  A van skidded to a halt next to the row of parked cars; the side door flew open. They tried to drag her into the road but Carina managed to get a grip on two cars with her feet and braced herself, struggling wildly: it made the man and woman holding her momentarily lose their balance. She wanted to do everything she could to stay in this world, outside of the van, and for a second she almost seemed to be free. A man in overalls jumped out of the van and stepped toward her. He had a small object in his hand; it looked like a small rod. Reality vanished; everything shrank to a narrow edge. She was going to die now. She tried to emit a sound but only managed a muddled groan as he pressed the rod against her neck. The needle hurt as it was pushed into her jugular and suddenly she could sense such strange things, like the odor of a strong eau de cologne and solvents. Someone said, “Got her—I got her.” Her body turned limp, as if she was dying in a violent exhalation. She felt herself being lifted. Hands grabbed hold of her, pulled her inexorably into the dark.

  When she woke up, she was in a car, with a harness seat belt across her body. She had probably been unconscious for a minute or so, maybe longer, she didn’t know. Through the dark, tinted windows, she could see distant neighborhoods rushing by. They were on the freeway. She felt unwell and vomited violently into a bucket between her legs, and just that little detail—that the bucket was already there; that someone had expected her to throw up and didn’t want her to mess up the vehicle—left her scared stiff.

  Her body felt alien and numb, like jelly. Struggling, she turned her head. In the seats beside her were the woman and the man who had tricked her into the vehicle; in the front seats, a clean-shaven man was at the wheel and, next to him, another person. She tried not to cry, but the tears flowed anyway.

  “Let me go.”

  The words were difficult to form; she was frightened by how slurred they sounded as they came out of her mouth. The man in the suede jacket calmly dug into a bag and pulled out a blindfold. It looked like a large pair of skiing goggles. No, she wanted to scream. She couldn’t fight back; she didn’t even have the strength to turn away her head as he attached the blindfold around her face.

  Everything became dark. And, at once, she understood there was no way out. They could do what they liked with her, and no one would ever find out. That thought made her so scared she began to shake. After that, she was no longer in control of herself; she screamed, pulling at the seat belt, tearing and wrenching with all her might. But she couldn’t move an inch; the belts tightened around her body and made her gasp for air. “I’m choking!” she screamed. “I’m choking.” Then she felt a stinging pain in her neck. An enormous void opened in the darkness and sucked her into it. All sense of time vanished.

  The sounds around her changed. She had come to again. They were driving more slowly. The car occasionally jolted, slowing down before speeding back up again; it felt like they were driving along smaller streets, through built-up areas. All she could hear was the sound of the engine, because the people around her said nothing. They didn’t need to talk, of course; they already knew where they were going and what was going to happen. She couldn’t hold back any longer. She cried. The inside of the blindfold got wet and, after a while, it began to itch.

  The car lurched and then braked to a halt. The engine was turned off and the door opened. Several people took her out of her seat and lifted her from the car. Her knees buckled and she fell forward, but firm hands grabbed hold of her, gripping her hard around her arms and waist. Someone pulled off her blindfold. She squinted, trying to orient herself in the blinding light of car headlights. Darkness; sharp light. They were on a narrow road outside a low, concrete building—maybe in an industrial area. She could barely see anything because of the light from the car and the dense darkness around them; she only briefly glimpsed patches of bright light far away, low buildings made from corrugated iron, a fence and, on the other side of the fence, a railway track that disappeared into the night.

  They took her through a door and down a corridor. It was a building site. The walls were roughly sanded, brick was still visible here and there; tins of paint and tools were lying all over the place; electrical cables trailed out of the walls. It was cold.

  They took her to an empty room where someone had put plastic sheeting on the floor. In a corner there were rolls of insulation. They put her on a chair and left.

  It was silent. She was close to throwing up again, but managed to control herself.

  There were no windows in the room, or they were covered; the only light came from a raw, glaring builder’s lamp hanging from the ceiling. How strange, she thought; completely normal light bulbs, like at any normal building site. All sound was sucked up by the surroundings. The walls were probably soundproofed; no one would ever hear if she began to scream. Only now did she realize that, all along, there had been a video camera on a tripod, pointing at her. Why was she here? It was as if her entire brain was mired in molasses; thoughts were groggy and shapeless. She tried to concentrate but the room kept floating sideways.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there. The room was silent and cold. She ought to be able to hear traffic, she thought, a dog, voices—anything that showed there was life outside. But not a sound was audible, not a trace of life made it into the room. She wanted to shout out for someone, but this entire place told her that there was no point. She looked at the door and decided she had to get to it. But she couldn’t get up; her body was so weak that she barely had the strength to sit up straight. Maybe this was how she was going to die. The thought grew inside her head and paralyzed her.

  The door opened and two men came in. One of them was younger than the other, wearing khakis and a green polo shirt, with muscular arms spilling out of the top: a soldier. The other man was older and so large that, when he lumbered through the door, the room seemed to shrink. It looked like he had just stopped by on the way to work; he was wearing chinos and a white, crumpled shirt, and seemed completely relaxed. He had a broad, weather-beaten face and looked at her completely calmly, without moving.

  The men went to a small table at the side of the room and put on white latex gloves. She watched the large man’s broad neck, his thick arms underneath the rolled-up shirtsleeves. What did they want with her? Something about his calm manner frightened her so much she could hardly breathe.

  The big one turned around, a furrowed face with eyes that calmly glanced around before fixing their gaze on her. He scratched his head through his bristly, reddish hair, as if contemplating what to do now, before fetching a chair and sitting down in front of her.

  “Say your name,” he growled in British English.

  She obeyed without thinking. He had a tone that didn’t accept no for
an answer. Her knees shook uncontrollably. Her legs trembled; she tried to get them to calm down.

  “Why am I here?” she managed to say. “You have no right to do this.”

  The men watched her, wordlessly. The big one, with the reddish hair, leaned back with his hands in his pockets and looked at her with an attentive, sarcastic gaze. The soldier leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.

  “What?” she exclaimed. Her voice cracked.

  They didn’t answer. She looked down at the floor. There was silence in the room; all she could hear were gasping breaths. She understood at once that it was her panting and tried to calm herself. Breathing was suffocating her. Finally, the giant-like man seemed to have made up his mind. He straightened up. He informed her calmly that she would be wise to cooperate. She should be aware that she risked prosecution under British and American law for crimes related to national security.

  “I am going to ask you some questions and I want you to answer them truthfully,” he said. “Nod if you understand.”

  She nodded quietly.

  “What is your relationship to Jamal Badawi?”

  She stared at him. Jamal? “What do you mean?”

  “Answer the question,” he said quickly. “I want to know how you know him. Your relationship.”

  For the first time, she met the man’s gaze. She didn’t understand how they knew about Jamal and why they cared about him. It had been her who had mishandled the report; she had made the mistake.

  “We’re in a relationship.”

  He wanted to know when they had first started seeing each other. She remembered the days they had spent strolling around together, the beautiful weather, and how they had sat outside, drinking coffee, down by Riddarfjärden. But she was dazed, couldn’t manage to remember a date, or even a month; it was as if the question was extremely complex. Had it been the beginning of May? Why was he asking about Jamal? she wanted to say. Jamal had nothing to do with it all. They couldn’t hurt him—not Jamal.

  He leaned forward. “When did you meet for the first time?”

  She understood nothing. Who were these people?

  “Concentrate,” said the man on the chair. “Look at me.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re asking about Jamal.”

  “Answer the question.”

  He looked at her calmly, as if assessing her, but there was something in that eerie calm that was so unpleasant she looked away. He asked the question again. Jamal.

  Now she remembered: they had first met in May—the beginning of May. “I don’t know what you’re up to,” she said, “but there must have been a misunderstanding. I don’t understand . . .”

  He raised his hand, shook his head. “Just answer the questions. Akim Badawi: does that name mean anything to you?”

  At first she said no, but then stopped herself. Akim Badawi.

  The man looked straight at her and asked again. So she didn’t know who Akim Badawi was—was she sure? “Answer the question,” he said. “Akim Badawi.”

  “He’s Jamal’s uncle.”

  “So you do know him.”

  “No. Jamal’s told me about him.”

  And what had he told her about him? the man wanted to know. What did Jamal say about him?

  She didn’t really know what to say. She noticed how the questions took shape around her like silent accusations. He had told her about Cairo, she said, about how he had grown up. She felt sick; she was telling them things Jamal had told her, only her, late at night, in his apartment.

  “But you and Jamal have planned a trip to Cairo. Is that right?”

  She nodded.

  “Who were you going to meet in Cairo?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “It’s a vacation.”

  He leaned back and looked at her for a while.

  “Carina, you would be wise to take this seriously. We know that you were going to borrow a house from Akim Badawi. You were going to meet him. You know Jamal Badawi well and you were going to meet Akim Badawi. Who else were you going to meet in Cairo?”

  She stared at him. “No one.”

  He released a drawn out sigh and turned around. The man who had been standing quietly by the wall came forward and told her not to lie. He spoke with an American accent. They would check everything she said, he told her calmly, and a lie would go against her in a trial. She could expect the harshest punishments under the law for the crimes she was going to be charged with. Just so she knew.

  “But it’s true,” she burst out. She tried her best to answer their questions, but noted that she wasn’t at all saying what they wanted to hear. She knew vaguely that what they were trying to get her to say was completely crazy; it didn’t make sense. What contacts were they talking about? She had no contacts in Cairo; she was just saying things as they were. But they weren’t satisfied. They looked at her. The soldier began to pace back and forth.

  The man in front of her shook his head and leaned forward. “You won’t convince me that you weren’t going to meet anyone in Cairo. We both know that’s not true. We’ll continue to hold you here until you tell us the facts. Answer truthfully.”

  She stared at him. Please, she thought, please leave me alone.

  The men looked at each other. The man on the chair nodded at the soldier and said, “If my colleague over there had his way, we would start off dealing with you like the Americans usually do with terrorists.”

  “Please,” she whispered.

  He got out a piece of paper and held it up to her face, letting her read it. “What do these lines mean?”

  She read them slowly. It was a poem. “I don’t know.”

  “Your little boyfriend, Badawi, says he read it to you. What does it mean?”

  “What?” A maelstrom of despair swirled through her.

  She remembered: the poem—the poem that Jamal had read to her—was that what he meant? A sob forced its way up through her like a sharp knife. She groped for words. She wanted to bite back, to silence him, to stop him asking all his questions that were destroying everything, soiling it all.

  “What have you done to Jamal?”

  “Answer the question. The poem. What does it mean?”

  She just shook her head and said she didn’t know—it was all she could get out.

  His voice took on a hard, metallic tone. “You’re in a relationship with Jamal Badawi and have planned a trip to Cairo to meet Akim Badawi. These are people prepared to carry out acts of terror, ready to kill hundreds or thousands of people. Tell me exactly what Jamal has told you to do.”

  Everything inside her screamed that they were wrong. They were wrong. They didn’t know Jamal.

  “He’s not a terrorist.” The words came out of her in a whisper.

  “The EU summit meeting next week is the target,” he said. “Who else is in on the plan?”

  “What plan?”

  The punch landed just under her left eye, a firm strike that came as a surprise and hit her hard. She almost fell off the chair. The man who had been by the wall was now by her side, pushing her violently back on to the chair. Instinctively, she felt her nose: her hand came away smeared with blood. Tears filled her eyes and her cheek burned. The man stood, leaning over her, close to her face. The unexpectedly sharp, nauseating smell of his aftershave enveloped her.

  “We’re going to hurt you. Do you understand? We won’t stop until you tell us who they are. Who is planning the attack?”

  She struggled to breathe. “I don’t know.”

  He grabbed her neck and squeezed her throat; the pain struck her like a cast-iron pan over the head. It felt like her head was going to explode. She lost her breath; for a few seconds, her entire body writhed. Finally, he let go; she gasped for air. Then she vomited with her hands on her knees, threw up so much that it splattered everywhere.

  The man turned away and lit a cigarette. When it was all out, she felt a little better. Her head was clearer. She spat and emitted an odd, involuntary belching sound. A lit
tle saliva dripped to the floor; she dried her mouth.

  The man turned back to her. “Names,” he said, right in front of her face. “Give me names.”

  She just wanted him to stop, for him to understand that there was no point in continuing, and to leave her alone, but then the man grabbed her throat again. It hurt like crazy; it felt like he was going to crush her windpipe. She shrunk into herself, trying to get free of his grip, and pulled instinctively backward, away from his face—but he kept hold of her head with one hand around her neck and the other around her larynx, like a vice. Everything became a giant ball of pain and she screamed, but all that came out was a kind of snort. He asked the same thing over and over: Who? The low, serious voice penetrated her like an icy chill. The other, younger man appeared too—asking the same questions in a shrill voice, his angry face right against hers.

  “Names. You have to give us names!” they shouted. “Who else is involved? Give us names. Who were you going to meet in Cairo?”

  The big man groaned as he almost lifted her from the floor. She could smell his sweat, feel his rock-solid, hairy hands over her mouth, and she glimpsed his face, completely distorted. She couldn’t breathe. He’s killing me, she thought. I’m dying. The panic welled up inside her and she tried to break free. Now the other one—the soldier—was holding her too. He grabbed hold of her wrist and bent it, and a pain that felt as if her arm was going to break shot up to her head and made everything else in the room blurry.

  She sat huddled in complete darkness. Perhaps this was how she was going to die. Maybe this was what it was like to approach your own death, to wait in the antechamber of your own annihilation, because she was now sure there was no way back. While she had been in the plastic-sheeted room, she had hoped for an opportunity to give some kind of explanation, to reason with them—until they hit her. Then she had realized that this wasn’t the kind of place where there was mercy, where it was possible to reason. Here, she would vanish. She cried.