There weren’t many people left in these buildings now, he thought to himself as he looked around the corridor. Most people had already moved to the new complex in Berlin, the country’s biggest administrative building, with a price tag of half a billion euros.
Its size and location in central Berlin should really have reminded the architects and drivers of the project of the East German Stasi’s old headquarters, but apparently that issue had had no impact – or they simply hadn’t cared.
In an open society, there was no longer such dread of activities behind closed doors.
Six doors down the corridor, Breuer knocked on Schönberg’s door and went in before Strauss could catch up.
Schönberg had a stack of files in front of him, three of them laid out side by side but with the covers closed. He must have shut them when he heard the knock. Even here on the inside, people kept secrets from each other.
‘Geiger is activated,’ said Breuer.
Schönberg didn’t reply, but simply gave her a look that said, So what?
‘That means that Abu Rasil will be activated,’ said Breuer. ‘We can take him now.’
‘You think he’s still alive?’ said Schönberg. ‘After more than thirty years of silence?’
‘He’s alive. He withdrew, but now he’s been activated again. They wouldn’t have called Stockholm if Rasil wasn’t alive.’
‘And what can he do nowadays?’
‘If he’s been activated after three decades, it’s likely to be something spectacular. We need to go.’
Schönberg sat in silence.
‘What’s the point of our department if we don’t take our warning systems seriously?’
Schönberg merely stared at her.
‘This is exactly what they’re counting on,’ Breuer continued. ‘That no one thinks Rasil is alive. That no one will do anything.’
‘How certain are you about the indication?’ Schönberg said finally.
Breuer looked at Strauss.
‘Completely certain,’ said Strauss, because he understood that was what Breuer wanted him to say. It was standard practice for the outgoing head of unit to recommend their successor, and Strauss was keen to take over from her. And it wouldn’t be many years until Schönberg’s post as head of department would be vacant. Strauss could see his career trajectory clearly before him.
‘You’ve got four months to retirement, Breuer. Send Strauss.’
Breuer didn’t dignify that remark with a reply.
Schönberg sighed.
‘How long have you been after Abu Rasil? Forty years?’
‘I was after him for ten years, then he disappeared. And I was close to catching him several times.’
‘That’s what you think, anyway.’
‘Are we going to let the biggest terrorist we’ve ever tracked get away?’
Schönberg took off his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Then he looked at his subordinates.
‘Abu Rasil is a myth,’ he said. ‘A legend that the Palestinians launched in the seventies to scare the West.’
‘And that’s exactly what Abu Rasil wants you to think.’
‘The superhuman terrorist. That one single brain was behind practically every terrorist attack in Europe at the time – the story’s just too good to be true.’
‘As a parting gift, then?’ said Breuer, locking her eyes on her boss. Both Schönberg and Strauss realised she wasn’t going to give up.
‘Go,’ said Schönberg. ‘Take Strauss and Windmüller. But you’ve only got a week.’
‘We’ll leave straightaway.’
‘Straightaway?’ said Strauss.
‘Straightaway. Rasil is naturally already en route.’
Breuer turned around and left, and Strauss ran into his own office to grab his jacket and service weapon. He could buy everything he needed on the road – except a Glock 17 and a customised Zegna in size 60.
There were no stacks of books in Strauss’s office. Instead, there were the same number of computer monitors as in all the other offices, but unlike Breuer’s, they were switched on. Plus the Nick Cave posters and Strauss’s beloved Devialet Phantom Gold – the world’s best wireless system for playing music. As his colleagues had moved across Berlin, Strauss had been able to turn up the volume more and more.
He hesitated for a second in the doorway, but then he couldn’t help himself. He turned on his Phantom with the remote control and started playing ‘The Good Son’ from his mobile.
Heavenly.
Then he quickly left and hurried down the corridor to inform their colleague that he was coming with them to Sweden. Windmüller was one of the many well-trained operatives whose task was to guarantee security and protect their lives.
Breuer’s fixation on Abu Rasil was well known, and questioned by all at the BND. This would be her final chance to prove the legend was true and that she’d been right all along.
Strauss didn’t know what to think, but he would never dare question the White Ghost. Not openly at any rate, and certainly not while she was still on active service. Breuer knew a lot of bigwigs.
None of the three had any family to notify, so all they had to do was get moving. Windmüller got into the mobile operations van, while Strauss opened the door of the BMW for Breuer. He couldn’t judge how serious the assignment was. But if Abu Rasil existed and if he had been activated, then something big was happening right now.
Something really big.
3
As soon as Agneta’s daughters had left, everything became urgent.
She grabbed a rucksack from the hall and hurried upstairs. Way back when, the bathroom had felt like the safest place – for three reasons. You could lock yourself in, there was no way to see in, and no one would ask what you were up to inside. And the many visitors to the house always used the toilets downstairs.
Burying things in the garden or heading off into the woods might seem smart in the heat of the moment, but when the equipment came to be needed, it might not be possible to retrieve it at once. She’d got that far in her thoughts, even back then.
Now she didn’t have much time. Naturally, there would already be people on the way.
The only question was: how far away were they?
And who was coming?
The toilet roll holder wasn’t up to the job no matter how hard she wielded it, so she had to run down to the basement to fetch a hammer. She hadn’t given any thought to how she was going to break up the tiling – nor how noisy it would be – so long ago, when she’d deposited the package in the bathroom wall and tiled over it.
But there was no one to hear her now.
She swung the hammer as fast and hard as she could and cracked the tiling on the first attempt. She continued striking it to remove all the rest of the tile, worked at the seam of the carefully fitted damp-proof membrane underneath and then shoved in two fingers to prise out the emergency package, wrapped up in waxcloth.
A fat bundle of thousand-krona notes – but they were no longer valid, she realised. She would have to make do with the cash she had in the house. Fortunately, they’d always kept some in the metal tin in the kitchen.
Three passports in different names, but all with expiry dates long since passed.
The codeword for the radio transmitter.
Car keys – was the car still there? When had she last checked?
An instruction booklet on how to survive the collapse of civilisation, which she reluctantly took.
Cyanide capsules.
Good God.
The pistol had never been hidden here – she had wanted that close to hand, and had settled on the bedside table. She’d come up with a laboured story about it being passed down from her father, in case anyone found it. But no one ever had.
She stopped. Was that a car?
She quickly ran to the window on the upstairs landing, carefully lifted the edge of the curtain and glanced down to the street.
Nothing there.
But
would they really park outside the house? Wouldn’t they park nearby and then sneak up? Although what would people think if they saw mysterious men creeping through their gardens in this well-heeled neighbourhood?
No, it would clearly be easiest to drive up to the house and park on the street, looking as though one had legitimate cause to be there. Perhaps they would even use a courier’s van or a pickup truck with the word ‘plumber’ painted on the side. Something no one would remember.
But they weren’t here yet. She had no idea whether she had hours, minutes or seconds.
She needed to get back to work.
*
‘My banana doll!’ Molly called out.
‘We’ll have to get it next time we see Grandma,’ said Malin.
‘No!’ Molly screamed.
Malin sighed.
‘I think we need to go back,’ she said to Christian.
She knew how fixated Molly was on her oblong, yellow plush character with its wide smile. The banana doll served as both playmate and cuddly toy, and if they didn’t fetch it at once their daughter would never stop screaming.
Christian glanced hastily at his Rolex GMT-Master II. It was the Pepsi edition, and he was more than a little proud of it.
Jesus.
This was going to take all day.
But there wasn’t much they could do about that.
They’d just gone past Brommaplan where he could have turned around, but he’d realised too late. He had to carry on to the roundabout and do a full lap of it instead – then they were on the way back.
Bloody doll.
*
The clock was ticking, so Agneta went back into the bathroom, took the packet of quick-drying cement and mixed it with some water using the toothbrush mug. She spread the mixture onto the back of the spare tile that had been at the bottom of her drawer in the bathroom cabinet all these years along with the cement, and then she put the tile over the hole and pulled the basket of towels in front of it. It wouldn’t fool anyone if subjected to thorough examination, but she might win a few days and that could be enough. It was all about buying time.
She put the toothbrush mug and tile pieces in her rucksack, along with the money and the passports. Then she went down to the kitchen and made up a bag of food. A sudden impulse made her run to the garage to add the battery charger to her bag.
Good. And now what?
Confuse matters a bit.
How?
The jewellery box. Stellan’s wallet. Something else.
The little Munch painting hanging in the guest toilet.
All of it went into her rucksack.
And now to pull out some drawers and mess things up a bit.
What else?
Of course. The reason for all of it. It took her a minute to fetch it.
She checked the time.
Too much time had already passed.
She needed to go.
She couldn’t take her and Stellan’s car – she knew that much. So she went into the garden shed and tugged out the old bicycle that had been there for decades. Pink with white handlebars. It must have belonged to one of the girls, even if she couldn’t remember ever seeing either of them riding a bike.
Over the years, the bicycle had slowly disappeared behind rakes, shovels, trimmers, a wheelbarrow and various planks of wood that might come in useful one day. A broken garden hose was tangled around the frame, handlebars and front wheel. The chain wasn’t oiled and the tyres were almost flat, but it could be ridden.
Were any of the neighbours watching? They would be questioned, and she didn’t want any of the operatives currently being set in motion finding out about her two-wheeled escape vehicle. Given how rarely her daughters usually got in touch, she ought to have upwards of a week before one of them got worried. For that long, at least, the police would leave her in peace.
The others were more of a problem.
The ones who had called.
And the ones who might have been listening.
She had no idea how much time she had.
Hours or days?
Or perhaps they would be content with the conversation and simply await the result?
She went back inside for one final check. Then she glanced through the pane of glass in the front door. There was nothing out of the ordinary outside. She buttoned up her parka and put the hood over her head. She would be hot, but she had to disguise herself somehow.
Finally, she went over to her dead husband and kissed him on the top of his head.
‘Thanks for all the years. Cross your fingers for me.’
She patted him on the cheek and then vanished outside to the bicycle, before pedalling away.
At the very moment Agneta Broman disappeared round the bend of Grönviksvägen on her old bicycle, Malin Broman-Dahl’s black BMW M550d xDrive Touring came rolling along Nockebyvägen before turning on to Grönviksvägen, with just a few hundred metres to go until it reached the parental home at number 63.
4
The sound was deafening. Cars honking, trucks with students on the back and sound systems worthy of a festival. Old classics and pumping house. Each vehicle was playing music so loudly that the windows of the magnificent stone buildings rattled.
Balloons, champagne bottles, blue and yellow flags. A crowd.
Young people filled with hopes and expectations.
Parents and grandparents and wealthy old aunts were arriving at the school that was always the first to let its graduating students out. There were placards with first names and baby photos and class affiliations. School class, that was. Other class affiliations were marked using watches, clothes and bags – and the makes of the cars that were misparked with malicious disrespect on all the streets around Östra Real upper secondary school. Parking wardens circled until the mandated five minutes had elapsed and they could start ticketing, like hyenas waiting for a lion to have satisfied its appetite on the dead zebras so they could have their turn.
Even the usually deserted upper section of Artillerigatan was crammed with people on the way towards the playground of the exclusive school. Here were ageing directors in yellowing peaked graduation caps, over-made-up trophy wives unhappy that they couldn’t wear their fur coats in the heat and young men with slicked-back hair who in their first years after graduating from high school had already had time to found two or three of their own companies. Green and red trousers were still popular among the men here, Sara noted.
All this circus because a bunch of teenagers were finishing school. Heading nowhere.
Enjoy this day, she thought to herself from her position in the sauna-hot car. Because tomorrow you’ll be a statistic. Unemployed, without a place of your own. A problem for society. Enjoy it while you can.
When a three-year-old ‘Ebba’ floated past on a student placard in the hands of a proud father, Sara realised she hadn’t ordered one like it for her own Ebba.
She noted it in her mobile calendar. As soon as her shift was over: get a placard for her daughter.
Sweat ran from her brow, sliding down her cheeks. The small of her back was completely soaked.
Sara and David had made an early start, so they’d secured a legal parking spot opposite the door they were now watching at Artillerigatan 65, just by the long wall running towards Östra Real. Now they were surrounded by empty plastic drinks bottles and greasy fast food packaging, and feeling an increasing need for a wee.
David Karlsson. And Sara Nowak.
Sara had put her hair up in a bun and put on a Ralph Lauren baseball cap in order to blend into the neighbourhood. When she lifted the cap to wipe the sweat from her brow, she saw in the rear-view mirror that it was time to dye her hair again. Her hair was brown, but the roots were fiery red. It looked as if her scalp was on fire.
As a child, Sara had been called ‘the Indian’ because of her red hair. Not particularly logical, and very tedious in the long run. She’d also been called ‘the giraffe’ since she was taller than most of the boys in the cl
ass – 177 centimetres, just like Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista. Her height and distinctive cheekbones meant she’d spent her teens on the receiving end of hundreds of clumsy chat-up attempts, telling her that she looked like a model. So many that Sara had eventually tried out precisely that career, despite mostly thinking that she looked odd.
Modelling had gone fairly well, but she remembered what it had been like sitting around waiting for assignments, feeling uncomfortable. Offered up like a product in a catalogue, while customers sat there, picking and choosing uncertain girls. A clothes horse with the right length legs.
Being dependent on others’ appreciation and opinions about her outer appearance hadn’t suited her at all. So she’d terminated the contract with the agency and started training in the martial arts instead, in order to find an outlet for all the rage that the selection processes and touchy-feely photographers had built up in her.
Now she was proud of her height and her hair colour, but she still dyed her hair brown to avoid being easily recognisable during reconnaissance work. She really didn’t like having people’s gazes on her. Particularly men’s, since her job in the prostitution unit meant she’d come to associate covetous glances with very unpleasant people.
‘Jesus Christ, it’s hot,’ said Sara, closing her eyes as she held the small hand-held fan they’d bought in Clas Ohlson to avoid draining the car battery by using the air conditioning.
‘It’ll be fun to see how long it takes for people to start complaining about the heat,’ said David. ‘The first hot summer in decades.’
He looked from the door to his watch and back again.
‘How long has he been in there now?’
‘Don’t know. Too long. He’s probably done. We’ll go in on the next one instead.’
‘OK.’
‘But maybe we could scare this one a bit when he comes out? Try and put him off, even if we can’t get him done.’
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