Into a Raging Blaze

by Andreas Norman

  It was clear that he sensed something was amiss. Badawi looked at the British intelligence operative with a creased forehead. He pushed his chair back from the table slightly. The chair made a scraping sound.

  “My uncle?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about him?”

  “I want you to describe your relationship with him.”

  Silence. Then, “Well . . . he’s my uncle. I haven’t seen him for several years, but I was going to visit him this autumn. He looked after me when I was little. When my father was in prison, that is. My father was a lawyer and was imprisoned for protesting against the regime; he was gone for three years. My uncle and his wife looked after my mother and me while he was gone. I often stayed with them in Cairo before we fled. But we’re not in touch much these days. Sometimes we write; sometimes we talk on the phone.”

  “But you’re close.”

  “Yes. Of course. I’m still in contact with him.”

  “He’s the only one of your relatives in Cairo that you’re in contact with,” clarified the woman from MI6. “Isn’t that true?”

  Jamal looked at her helplessly. “Yes.”

  “You said your father was politically active. Was your uncle politically active too?”

  “Everyone was. Everyone was against the regime. Against Mubarak.”

  “In what way was your uncle active?”

  “He was . . . committed.”

  “Jamal, it’s for the best if you’re honest with us. He was in the Muslim Brotherhood, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. But everyone I knew was. We were against Mubarak, and the Brotherhood was the only thing strong enough to stand against him. Is that a crime?”

  “Is your uncle still active?”

  Badawi hesitated, worried.

  “I asked a question. Is he still active?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know whether your uncle is politically active?”

  “It’s different nowadays,” he said through clenched teeth. “Egypt is different.”

  “You’ve known him your whole life and yet you don’t know if he’s still in the Muslim Brotherhood?” She looked at him, amused. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not lying!” he exclaimed. “He’s a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he’s not interested in politics.”

  “The Ahwa group.”

  Bente leaned forward, paused the recording and rewound a few seconds. She wanted to see Jamal’s reaction.

  “The Ahwa group,” said the MI6 woman again.

  Jamal looked genuinely surprised. “What do you mean—the café group?”

  Bente paused. Rewound again. Pause. Yes, he looked surprised, as if he hadn’t understood the question. She pressed play.

  “What is your assignment within the Ahwa group?”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  The woman looked at him expressionlessly and gave an almost imperceptible nod. For her, this was just a game, in which Jamal was now playing the role of the reluctant interviewee. How many furiously silent people had sat in front of this woman before? Hundreds. Suspects brought in after rapid operations against scruffy apartments full of ammonium nitrate and the familiar, acrid smell of the diesel oil used in bomb making.

  “You are in contact with Akim Badawi,” she said calmly. “Akim Badawi is not only active in the Muslim Brotherhood, he’s also part of the Ahwa network. He has been in contact with you and given you instructions. What has he told you? What are your instructions?”

  “What instructions?” said Jamal in agitation. “What are you talking about?”

  She got out a piece of paper. “‘Their stations will be near. Their fire will loom before you,’” she read, “‘kindling desire into a blazing rage.’”

  Badawi listened and then he understood.

  “How the hell did you get hold of that?” he said, his voice smothered. Then he exploded, screaming, “How the fuck did you get hold of that? That’s private. You have no right to do that.”

  “What do the words mean?” said the British woman.

  “You’re completely crazy,” Badawi hissed furiously.

  “You’re risking twenty to thirty years in prison,” the woman said calmly. “If you’re smart, you’ll tell me what the words mean. We know you’ve been using the poem as code. What did Akim Badawi instruct you to do?”

  Jamal Badawi stammered something that she didn’t understand.

  They had a grip on him now, Bente could see that clearly. The woman from MI6 was very professional; she had him exactly where she wanted him: surrounded, contradicting himself. Badawi was sat quite still, waiting. He looked horror-stricken.

  “‘Their stations will be near. Their fire will loom before you,’” the woman said slowly. “‘Kindling desire into a blazing rage.’ What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Badawi said faintly.

  “What does it mean?”

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand. It’s a poem. Just a poem.” He was frightened; he was practically begging for mercy. He was exactly where they wanted him mentally. “What do you want me to say?” he hissed aggressively, as if attempting to escape. “My uncle likes poetry. He used to read it to me. It’s a book. He gave it to me.” Badawi spread out his arms. He was becoming incoherent, she noted. “It’s poetry that he likes. Arabic poetry—”

  “A book,” the MI6 woman interrupted him. “This one?” She held up a small yellow-bound book—the same book that Bente had found at Badawi’s apartment—and smiled sarcastically. When they had arrested him, they had presumably seized the contents of his home.

  Badawi looked at the volume silently. He began to cry.

  She opened it at a page. “Here. You’ve underlined this. These are the lines that Akim Badawi also wrote to you in an e-mail. It’s an instruction to you. Tell me what these lines mean.”

  “It’s not an instruction,” said Badawi. “It’s just poetry. Don’t you understand that?” He was beside himself; he was crying.

  Bente paused, rewound and watched the sequence again. Then she fast-forwarded. The agent had moved on, asking questions about his contacts. Badawi had pulled himself together. Someone had brought him a box of tissues.

  “You met Carina Dymek.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “How long did you work to build up your contacts, Jamal?”

  “What contacts?”

  “Redstripe, Sala82.”

  Silence.

  “Frontline, Sabo, Darknite.”

  Badawi had shrunk a little into his chair and was staring at her. “I don’t understand.”

  “Your contacts, Jamal.”

  “I . . .” He stopped himself.

  “Who else have you recruited, Jamal?”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s best you tell us now, before it’s too late. Tell us what you’ve done.”

  He continued to shake his head.

  “You met Carina Dymek barely two weeks after Akim Badawi sent you this e-mail. Right? Four months later—a few weeks before a summit meeting—you managed to get her to find the plans for the EIS, the European Intelligence Service. You probably know the name, you’ve read the Commission’s proposal.”

  Badawi stayed quiet.

  “A week later, a group of people are discussing how to infiltrate a summit meeting, how to find individual EU civil servants. And everyone is talking about the EIS. You probably know the person leading the discussion online. Was it you who told Carina to contact Greger Karlberg?”

  “No . . .”

  “Don’t lie.”

  “I don’t know him!” Badawi exclaimed in a shrill tone. “He’s a friend of Carina’s. He wanted to help her. She was suspended from work and he was just trying to help. I don’t know him, I promise. And I don’t understand what IRC channel you’re talking about—or whatever the hell it is. I don’t get what you’re talking about.”<
br />
  The words came at a furious pace, as if spilling out of him in a spasmodic contraction. He wept quietly. They waited for a while, not out of pity but because they wanted him to regain some composure.

  “Jamal, we also need to talk about the report. Where are the copies?”

  Bente fast-forwarded. Two and a half hours into the interview, Badawi was sat on the chair, motionless and pale. He stammered, tried to correct himself. Now they were asking about Cairo, about his contact with Akim Badawi. They held up photographs of people that MI6 had under surveillance. He replied in a monotone. The fear shone on his face. He was crying. They let him dry his eyes and then carried on. He had dropped all his defenses—it was visible. His face was a mask of confusion. He was fighting for his life; he begged them to believe him, to listen to him. It was clear that he grasped the situation; everything hinged on what happened in this room, but he couldn’t find a way of getting out. Sarah, the woman from MI6, asked a question, but he was no longer answering. She repeated the question, but he didn’t seem to understand it, just sat there with his head bowed and his eyes shut.

  The British woman stopped and waited. Badawi shook his head.

  “I . . .” he said with a thick voice, then broke off.

  He was in a bad way, Bente could tell: on the verge of panic.

  “What is this?” he said quietly, in Swedish. “Please.”

  He stared at them. The room was silent. He turned unexpectedly to the side and looked right into the camera, as if he had only now discovered its presence. He stared through the lens at her. He was innocent. Bente knew that, but what could she do? Washington had already requested his extradition; London had requested his extradition too. She couldn’t change the rules. All she had done was her job. She reached across the table and turned off the TV. Hands, she thought. She had to wait for her hands to stop trembling before she rejoined the others.

  45

  Brussels, Monday, October 10

  The darkness was broken again. They took her to a windowless bathroom and gave her a towel. It was the first time she had showered since she had arrived, and it felt wonderful. The sensation of water running over her body made her remember her apartment, Stockholm, Jamal. Everything felt so distant; would she ever see any of it again? She stood, hunched in the shower cubicle and ran the water as hard and hot as she could bear, letting it stream over her arms, legs, back, and head. For a second, she could feel her body again, feel the warmth against her skin. After a while, there was a bang on the door. A woman came in and told her to put on the clothes that were in there: a pair of soft sandals, a pair of baggy sweatpants, and a T-shirt. She got ready and opened the door; she didn’t want to provoke them.

  They took her up some stairs to a new room. It was large and cold. There was a bed, a table, and a chair. And a window. There were steel bars in front of the pane of glass, but for the first time she saw daylight again—a grainy, emerging light that forced its way between the bars. She couldn’t take her eyes off it; they filled with tears in response to the unfamiliar light. Slowly, a soft pink was emerging outside.

  So they wanted her to stay here now, instead of down in the pitch dark. A woman was sitting on the bed, watching her. They had put out a plate of food and a bottle of mineral water. She sat down and ate with her hands; she was famished. She glanced around. The men who had interrogated her weren’t there; it was just her and the woman in the room. Her minder was wearing jeans and a khaki green T-shirt, and looked remarkably ordinary—they were about the same age.

  “Who are you?” Carina heard her own voice; it sounded strange and hoarse. “You’ve got no right to keep me here.”

  The woman didn’t reply.

  “Where am I?”

  The woman looked at her disapprovingly and at first didn’t seem to want to reply. She had a stern face. Her mouth was tight. With an Irish accent, which surprised Carina, she said, “You’re on the way to heaven, love. How’s about that?”

  The woman sat perfectly motionless on the bed with her gaze fixed on a point somewhere on the floor. What did she mean, ‘on the way to heaven’? Carina drank from the bottle of water and felt sick. She looked at the woman, but her face gave away nothing.

  The door opened. Two men came in toward her. It was time, they said to the woman.

  “Stand up.”

  They quickly escorted Carina out of the room. They walked faster than they had done before; they seemed stressed. They gave her back her own clothes and told her to change into them. None of them made the slightest move to leave her alone; they remained where they were and watched, stony-faced, as she changed. They wanted her to brush her hair and wash her face after eating: they threw wet wipes and a comb at her. She tidied herself up. But for what? She could barely stand; she shook with fear. Something was going to happen. Please, she thought, please, please, please let me live.

  They put a blindfold over her eyes and took her down the stairs and along a corridor. She heard steps around her. Then a door opened and, without any warning, she was outside. It was cold. The chilly morning air swept around her and gave her goosebumps. At once she could smell damp grass covered in dew, cold night air, and the burned smell of electricity in power lines. She gasped and filled her lungs full to bursting. Wait, she wanted to say to them, just a second. She had never before found the smells of early morning to be so intense. She stumbled on the gravel and felt hard hands holding her up, quickly leading her on, away from the building.

  A car started. They put her inside and fastened the straps around her so tightly she could barely turn her head. Then she heard the car door close. They set off and rolled down the driveway from the building, bumping along a crunchy gravel road before beginning to move faster and more smoothly.

  “Where are we going?”

  No one answered.

  “Where are we going?” she screamed shrilly.

  “Shut your mouth, for God’s sake,” said a dark voice right beside her, in English.

  She said nothing. She knew there was no point in asking questions, demanding her rights. There was no mercy, no justice. She couldn’t do anything except let herself be carried. She began to cry quietly. Perhaps this was how her life was going to end.

  They drove for what felt like hours before she noticed the noise from the road had changed. She felt the increase in speed, heard the drone of trucks whizzing past in the next lane: a freeway.

  A sense of confusion filled her. Just a few meters from her were ordinary people in their cars—on the way to work, on the way to their everyday lives—and yet no one could do anything to rescue her.

  They turned off somewhere. The speed changed. They were getting close. She was breathing through her mouth, her heart beating like a drum.

  Without warning, they took off her blindfold as the car stopped. There were three people—two men and a woman—all dressed in the same windbreakers. One of the men got out, opened the door, and took her out of the car.

  They were in a warehouse, surrounded by boxes and containers. A goods warehouse. It was cold and windy.

  They quickly took her into a freight elevator and went up one story. The men leading her seemed to be Americans. They spoke to one another briefly. She didn’t catch what they were saying; it was just a few short commands.

  They came out into an even larger warehouse area. Around them there were men working in overalls, carrying bags, and throwing them on to rattling luggage belts. No one batted an eyelid as she was hustled past them.

  They led her to a door where one of the men produced a pass card and swiped them in, then led her down a narrow corridor. Carpets absorbed the sound of every step. Not a soul was visible, just empty meeting rooms. They reached a room with frosted windows, a table with metal legs, and a few plastic chairs. They pushed her on to one of the chairs.

  On the wall was a poster advertising an airline’s trips to the Maldives. She stared at the picture; it showed an atoll in a turquoise ocean. She concentrated on the poster and avoided look
ing at her minders. They seemed restless. This was presumably a normal morning at the office for people like them. But where were they? She was going to be moved, or so it seemed, but where to? Would they make her disappear forever? She looked at the door. She wanted to cast herself through it and run. One of the men looked sharply at her, as if he already knew what she was thinking. She looked down at the floor.

  They waited like this for several minutes, until the woman stretched, listened to her earpiece, and nodded to the others.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  They moved down long, narrow corridors and exited through a perfectly ordinary, gray door. Suddenly they were in the hubbub of an airport. They walked past glittering tax-free stores, cafés, and row upon row of chairs in waiting areas, where people sat with their bags or stood queuing by their gate. She looked around, trying to ascertain which airport they were at. Above the enormous thoroughfares, an announcement rang out in French; the signs were in French. The men were walking on either side of her, with a firm grip on her arms. The woman wasn’t visible, but Carina knew she was somewhere behind them, not in the masses. People moved around them all over the place, streaming toward them in a flood of voices and faces, colors, and flickering reflections. Carina managed to read a sign that flashed by: CHARLES DE GAULLE.

  She was in France, and this was Charles de Gaulle airport on a normal morning. It was so overwhelming that she stopped. The men reacted immediately, pulled her arms and made her keep moving.

  They passed the gate without even stopping, let alone showing a passport or boarding card; the woman at the counter seemed to pretend they didn’t exist; she was reading some papers. Inside the aircraft, they showed her to an unoccupied seat. She groped her way forward and sank into it. She was last; everyone else was already settled. One of the men checked she was seated and put her bag in the overhead locker with a professional, helpful air that felt completely at odds with what had gone before. So they had gotten that back from the hotel in Brussels. Then they turned and vanished through the door.