“As I understand it, the plan was to stop now, before the Russians got any real influence. Säpo probably wanted to take it as far as possible without risking any real impact, in order to see how much information they could obtain.”
Klara nods thoughtfully.
“And what’s going to happen to Charlotte now?”
George shrugs. “I suppose she’ll go back to London and lick her wounds until it’s time again.” He laughs. “Unlike a weakling like me, it will probably take a bit more for the likes of Charlotte to see the light.”
“What the hell, people have died because of this,” Klara says quietly.
The images from the London Underground flash by. Patrick’s rigid, pale body on the tracks.
George nods gently.
“I didn’t know about that until yesterday. Stirling Security hadn’t anticipated Anonymous would sniff out what Charlotte was up to. Or that you’d start poking around either. The Russians are pretty damn nervous now.”
“Why did you send me into the middle of this?” Klara says. “If you knew what the hell this was about?”
George glances at her cautiously.
“I guess I wanted to help you. I knew you wanted to finish Mahmoud’s dissertation, and I could see that Charlotte would let you do that because I was paying her. I didn’t realize you’d end up getting this involved. And I really didn’t know everything would end up taking on such epic proportions. Bronzelius has made it sound like we were almost done since the beginning of the summer. But then he just wanted to push it further and further.”
He falls silent. They’ve arrived at Sergels Square now, and he turns onto Sveavägen.
“Where are we going?” Klara says.
“You’ll see. Somebody wants to meet you.”
He stops at the sidewalk outside of King’s Tower.
“Fifteenth floor,” he says. “He’s waiting for you there.”
“You’re not going up?”
George seems to shudder and shifts the gear of his car.
“No way. I’ve had enough of the view from that office.”
She nods.
“Will I see you later?” she says.
George laughs. “Whenever you want. I think after this we’ll both have quite a bit of free time.”
“What do you mean? Do you think you’ll get fired?”
He shrugs. “Who knows? It’s not exactly company policy to actively work against your client’s interests. Whether they’re Russian or not. We’ll see. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
He hands over a business card.
“Call me whenever you feel like it,” he says.
78
Stockholm—Sunday, August 23, 2015
The first door on the fifteenth floor belongs to a law firm, and the other one is unmarked and ajar. She pushes on that one hesitantly.
“Hello?” she calls out and takes a step into the dark hall.
“In here,” calls a voice from somewhere inside.
She walks through the hall cautiously and enters a large room with a magnificent view of Stockholm. The room is completely empty, except for a pale desk and two chairs in one corner. Bronzelius rises from the chair and walks toward her.
“Welcome to Stirling Security!” he says.
She looks around confused. Bronzelius is dressed in his usual uniform of dark blue jeans and a short-sleeved, plaid shirt. The shiny leather jacket is slung on one of the windowledges.
“It’s… empty?” she says.
Bronzelius nods.
“Not that there was much here before either,” he says. “But they seem to have been in a hurry to pack up what little they had last night.”
“You let them get away?”
She feels her anger growing again. All this bullshit, everyone who had to suffer for it, and he just stands there and smiles and shrugs.
“The man who organized this left the country on a flight to Moscow almost twenty-four hours ago,” he says. “He has diplomatic immunity anyway. The rest of Stirling Security isn’t in Sweden. They aren’t even registered as a company here. Besides the sign on the door, they don’t exist in Sweden at all. And now the sign is gone as well.”
“But…” she says. “It can’t end like this? My God, they were behind the riots in Bergort. They bribed a professor. And they got my colleague murdered.”
“George Lööw paid those guys in the ghetto,” Bronzelius says. “And he sent the money to your boss too. As for your colleague, we have been in contact with our British colleagues. They’re fully aware of the situation, but unfortunately there’s not much to go on at the moment.”
“What the hell was the point then?” She’s raised her voice now, can’t hold back any longer. “If no one is going to be held accountable? What the hell is the point?”
Bronzelius waits until her voice stops echoing in the empty office.
“What’s the point?” he repeats. “To send a signal. To show we know what they’re up to. It’s not just here, of course, there’s been a more widespread attempt to disrupt the work of the EU, and we’ve been working together with our European colleagues. Just the fact that Russians liquidated this office, and sent the ambassador responsible for it home, is a victory in and of itself. They don’t lose face, but they understand we see them. Just like the navy chasing submarines in the archipelago. The worst thing you could do is make one of them surface. That’s when the problems really start. What we want to do is to stop them without attracting attention. That’s the real victory.”
She shakes her head. All this for nothing.
“And Yasmine then?” she says grimly. “And Fadi?”
Bronzelius goes over to the window and looks out over the rooftops glittering in the late summer sun.
“Not my operation,” he says. “I knew nothing about it until Yasmine popped up yesterday with her story.”
“But is it true?” Klara says. “Did Säpo really infiltrate extremist groups and help to radicalize people? Is it true that you worked with the U.S. or whoever the hell is flying those drones?”
Bronzelius doesn’t say anything. He just stands there with his back to her. A few seconds pass. Then he turns to her and considers her indifferently with his blue eyes.
“Whatever was done was necessary. These groups are recruiting terrorists, you know that, right? Do you watch the news, Klara? This was a very successful operation.”
“A successful operation? You radicalized Fadi and sent him down to Syria to his own death? That’s a successful operation for you?”
“A senior leader of ISIS was taken out along with twenty of his fanatical followers. That’s a successful operation no matter the context.”
He doesn’t look away.
“And as for Fadi Ajam, we didn’t radicalize him. He found his own way to a radical group. We didn’t want to kill him, he sought that out himself.”
Bronzelius had helped them in the Sankt Anna archipelago. Säpo had been involved in the hunt for her and Gabriella at the time, but Bronzelius still found a way to help them. She thought he’d done it because he cared, because he had a good heart. Now she realizes that he did it because his interests in one way or another happened to coincide with hers. He’s nothing more than a cynical and opportunistic intelligence official.
“I was silent once,” says Klara quietly. “About everything that happened a year and a half ago. And I will continue to be. But I won’t keep my mouth shut about this. What Fadi and Yasmine do is up to them. That’s their choice. But I won’t keep quiet about what I’ve been through. I owe that to Patrick. And myself.”
Something twitches in Bronzelius’s face, and he takes a small step toward her, looks into her eyes even more intensely.
“I strongly recommend you stay quiet on this matter,” he says slowly. “You don’t want me as an enemy, believe me.”
She stands still, without moving, without a flicker in her eyes.
“Do what you must,” she says. “And I’ll do the same.”
79
Arkösund—Monday, August 24, 2015
They’re sitting at the far end of the jetty, shivering in the biting wind. Above them the sky and the sea are the same dull gray color as the rocks. The trees and bushes will be green for a few more weeks, but summer is over now, there’s no doubt. She snaps the rain jacket up to her chin and squints at Gabriella through the drizzle.
“Are you sure about this?” Gabriella says.
Klara turns her gaze toward all that gray again before answering. A pair of seagulls are hovering perfectly still in the wind above Hästö. This moment is the first time in two years that she’s felt sure about anything at all. She turns back toward Gabriella and nods.
“Yes,” she says. “Completely sure.”
“And you don’t want to be named or contacted? You’re also sure about that?”
Klara nods calmly again.
“It’s not about me,” she says. “And I don’t think it would be good for me to get too much attention right now. I’m not what you’d call super stable.”
She smiles wryly and puts her arm around Gabriella.
“Besides you were always better at talking than me. Isn’t that right, partner?”
She leans her head against Gabriella’s shoulder.
“The most important thing is that it comes out,” she says. “That people know how cynically Säpo acted. They could have put a stop to the riots in the suburbs but instead watched as the rioters were encouraged and organized. And they were involved in bribing an independent expert before an EU meeting. But not a word about the rest, not a word about Yasmine and her brother.”
Gabriella shakes his head.
“Damn,” she says. “That’s an even bigger scandal, a major overstep. It’s so fucking brutal that they’re going to get away with it.”
Klara straightens up and nods.
“But they survived,” she says. “It really wasn’t clear that they would, especially not the brother. We have to take what we can get. And it’s not our story. We have no right to share it.”
“And Bronzelius?”
Klara shrugs.
“He threatened me,” she says. “But what the hell can he do? I think he’s mostly talk. Sometimes you just have to do what’s right and not think too much, don’t you think?”
She stands up and looks out across the islands. A familiar boat is rocking its way through the gray. She feels the rhythm of her heart change, calm spreads through her. Maybe it will work out this time too.
“Well then,” Gabriella says as she also stands up. “I’ll call George from the car and see how far he’s willing to go with this. At least as an anonymous source, I hope. Then we’ll talk to my contact at DN and see where this goes.”
The boat is almost at the jetty now, and Klara sees the round head of her childhood friend Bosse through the window by the helm. She holds up her hand in greeting and prepares to jump on board. But first she turns and hugs Gabriella tight.
“Thank you,” she says. “For everything. For taking care of me.”
She feels Gabriella’s cold lips against her wet cheek.
“Take care of yourself,” Gabriella says. “I’ll call you when I know more, so keep your phone on until it’s time for publication. Then it might be best to turn it off.”
Klara nods. With a practiced hop, she lands on the deck of Bosse’s old boat. It smells strongly of tar and diesel and seaweed.
It smells like home.
80
Brooklyn, New York—Wednesday, August 26, 2015
The breeze drifting in from the East River is still warm, but there’s something else in it now, something that smells like dry leaves, something that makes the menus at The Ides outdoor terrace flutter, and Yasmine’s bare arms tingle. She raises her eyes and looks out over the Manhattan skyline glittering with money and tension in the twilight. She was only gone a week, but now that she’s back, everything seems new, except Shrewd & Daughter’s credit card, with which she paid for both of their airline tickets and for their room at The Wythe in Williamsburg. But not even the card will last long when she tells them she doesn’t have anything to report about the symbols in Bergort, that there was nothing behind them.
“Wallah, Yazz,” Fadi says on the other side of the table. “We really have been living different lives.”
He can’t take his eyes off the silhouettes of skyscrapers against the navy blue sky, bewitched by the lights and life on the other side of the river.
She glances at him across the table, thinking that it’s like looking at herself when she first came here. She wants to put her arms around him, wants to hold on to this crazy magic, these days of confusion when everything is still possible.
“I promise you that my life didn’t look like this, Fadi,” she says. “I lived in a glorified closet with David in Crown Heights. Slept on a concrete floor, while he did drugs. Not exactly the high life.”
He nods but barely seems to hear her. They’ve been here for two days now without thinking about the future. Two days of waking up jet-lagged before dawn and walking along the streets and bridges and carefully finding their way back to each other again. Sometimes they don’t talk at all, but just walk beside each other in the dawn light while the city wakes up around them, as if it’s enough to just be alive.
“Still,” Fadi says. “It’s a long ways from Bergort.”
Darkness has fallen, and the lights of Manhattan are reflected in the river beyond the warehouses and galleries by the time Yasmine sees Brett coming out onto the terrace. She immediately feels anxiety press down like a sash across her chest.
“Jalla, Fadi,” she says. “Here comes the guy I’m meeting with. Brett, the guy I work for. Jesus, this is gonna be rough.”
Fadi straightens up in his chair and turns around to look at him. She’s told Fadi everything. Everything about how their mother sent her pictures of the symbols, how she used them to get Shrewd & Daughter to pay for her trip to Stockholm. And how Brett was the one who made it happen. And now she’s going to betray him.
Brett arrives at their table now with a bag in one hand and some kind of whiskey drink in the other. He bends down and kisses Yasmine on the cheek.
“Great to see you,” he says with a smile, flashing his straight, white teeth.
“You too,” she says with a little less enthusiasm in her voice. “This is my brother, Fadi.”
They shake hands, and Brett sits down at the table and takes out his computer.
“First time in New York?” he says to Fadi, smiling.
Fadi nods. “How did you know?”
Brett leans back in his chair, takes a sip of his drink, and looks out over the Manhattan skyline. “Your eyes,” he says. “They’re still big as dinner plates.”
“Brett,” Yasmine says. “It’s just as well that I confess immediately. A lot of strange stuff went down in Stockholm.”
She takes a deep breath. What will be will be. She can’t tell him that the symbol was created by a Russian company in order to foment unrest in the suburbs of Stockholm, and that she still doesn’t quite understand the meaning of it. Better to say that she hadn’t found anything at all. That it was a false alarm. What will be will be, she’ll have to find a way to pay back Shrewd & Daughter for her expenses if that’s what they want. Fadi is alive, nothing else matters. But Brett doesn’t seem to be listening to her, he’s busy searching for something on YouTube.
“Look here,” he says, and turns the screen so she and Fadi can see.
The film seems to be shot in some kind of basement venue. A deep bass-line vibrates in the laptop’s small tinny speaker, and on the screen a man stands with his back to the audience. He’s dressed in worn jeans and a black T-shirt with a ski mask over his head. The monotonous bass turns into a dull, deep beat and the crowd pushes up against the stage, screaming and shaking their hands in the air. The beat stops, and for a moment you hear only the cheering and screaming of the crowd. There is an electrical intensity in that venue, an expect
ation that threatens to turn into a riot. But just before the audience explodes and attacks each other, the beat speeds up, and the man in the ski mask turns around and throws himself headlong into a rap that’s fast and syncopated, but so clear every single word is discernible if you concentrate.
“What’s this?” Yasmine says.
She listens to a few bars and glances at Fadi, who’s swaying his head.
“That’s a sick beat,” he says.
The rapper is close to the audience, sometimes touching their hands, sometimes hitting them. He jumps and kicks, dances, curls up on the floor of the stage, and prostrates himself in front of the audience. It looks more like a punk concert than hip-hop. Then the beat slows down again, and the rapper stands still for a moment. Brett pauses the movie and turns to Yasmine.
“Check out the T-shirt,” he says.
Yasmine leans closer to the screen. On the rapper’s T-shirt there’s a clenched fist inside a five-pointed star printed in red.
“What…” Yasmine says and looks up at Brett’s smiling face.
“A pretty elegant symbol, right?” he says. “And a great fucking rapper. Sort of a younger, angrier Eminem. He calls himself Starfist.”
“Starfist?” Yasmine says. “Like the symbol? I don’t understand a damn thing.”
Brett laughs and closes the computer.
“Shrewd & Daughter have been watching him a long time. He’s from Baltimore. Very political. He’s been performing anonymously for a few months. Geneviève has been leaking his songs on SoundCloud and YouTube without giving him a name. Basically that ‘no brand’ shit. Especially during the riots in Baltimore this spring, he became a kind of faceless symbol of the unrest in some circles. Everything was Geneviève’s idea, a way to build up hype for the right people. And now that he’s been established as a concept, they think this is the right time to launch him more conventionally. And if that’s the case, he needs a name. And something more, something that clearly identifies him. When you showed up with the symbol… it was perfect, and now the symbol has become his trademark, or he’s become the face of the symbol. However you want to look at it. He’s scorching hot now, and he’ll be huge soon. He’s already done interviews on CNN, and Vice made a documentary about him. He’s always wearing that T-shirt now and the ski mask, of course. Strong fucking look.”
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