Hostage

by Kristina Ohlsson

  Buster had no idea whether that was true or not. His impression of Eden was that she was driven and full of grit and determination.

  ‘But there were also other reasons why Eden left the UK,’ the head of MI5 said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She was fired.’

  The Englishman’s expression was inscrutable.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Buster said.

  ‘She was fired.’

  The anger came from nowhere. Who the hell did this British toffee-nosed snob think he was, asking for an informal meeting then coming out with information that Buster should have been given several months ago?

  ‘We discovered by chance that she had been in contact with one of Mossad’s non-declared information officers in London. At first, we thought she had been the subject of a recruitment attempt, but then we realised that they knew one another. Once we started mapping her activities, we also realised that she had been in touch with another Mossad operative. And then of course there were all those trips to Israel.’

  Buster had a drink of water. He swallowed hard. He didn’t know what to say.

  ‘But her parents live in Israel.’

  ‘Correct. But we followed her once, and she met up with her parents on only one occasion, over dinner. The rest of the time she was on her own or with Israelis we were unable to identify.’

  ‘Perhaps they were just friends of hers?’ Buster could hear how unconvincing that sounded. ‘So you fired her because you thought she was a double agent – you thought she was working for Mossad?’ he added.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you failed to pass on this information to us?’

  ‘We had no choice, and for that we apologise. We couldn’t risk a situation where Eden might find out that we know about her double game.’

  ‘But if you fired her, surely she must have realised that you knew?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She was actually fired for another mistake she made in the course of duty. It was serious enough to lead to her dismissal.’

  ‘And what was that about?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you.’

  ‘But you would still call her one of the very best?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Buster tried to process the information.

  ‘Let me summarise what you’ve just said. Eden has been seen with suspected Mossad operatives. She has travelled to Israel on a number of occasions for reasons other than to spend time with her parents. She has not been confronted with this information, and has therefore not been given the opportunity to explain herself. So it could all be perfectly innocent, but we don’t know that.’

  The head of MI5 smiled for the first time since the meeting had begun.

  ‘That could be true, of course. But personally, I’m convinced that Eden is playing a double game, which makes her a dangerous colleague.’

  ‘And what do you expect me to do now? I have to pass on what you’ve told me.’

  ‘Of course. Hopefully, you will be more successful than we were.’

  ‘Didn’t you give it to your counter-espionage team?’

  ‘Yes, but there wasn’t enough evidence. It would have cost too much to confront Eden with what we had until we could work out why Mossad would want to recruit one of our agents.’

  An organisation like Mossad really didn’t need any particular reason, Buster thought. In his opinion, their Israeli colleagues were among the most ruthless in the world. Ruthless, but good.

  The Englishman scratched his head.

  ‘We didn’t really give Eden much thought once she’d left us. After all, it was three years ago. She came to work for the police here in Sweden, didn’t she?’

  Buster responded with a quiet yes. Eden Lundell had been regarded as one of the most strategic recruits for several decades within the police service. With a degree in international law from Cambridge and her background in MI5, she was an absolute dream. In addition she was a gifted linguist, and was fluent in Russian, French and Italian as well as English and Swedish. She had also completed two years’ military service in the British army. Buster knew that every intelligence service in Sweden had tried to recruit Eden when she arrived in Stockholm, but she had made it very clear that she wasn’t interested. She was tired of that closed, secretive world; she wanted to work within a more open environment. She had spent some time as a consultant within the Defence Department, but had found the work extremely boring. She had then moved to the National Bureau of Investigation, where she reorganised virtually every aspect of intelligence gathering before she left.

  Buster recalled what the head of the NCU had said when he was asked to provide a reference:

  ‘Eden is no ordinary woman – she’s a force of nature. And I’ll never forgive you if you recruit her.’

  They hadn’t spoken since.

  The mere thought that a suspected Israeli agent had been the architect behind the most sweeping reorganisation of the National Bureau of Investigation in twenty years . . . Buster could taste the fear. This was the worst possible news.

  ‘Anyway,’ the head of MI5 said. ‘I’ve done what I came to do. I don’t care what you do with the information. And let me reiterate how sorry I am that I didn’t say anything before. I’m actually in Stockholm on another matter, but when I heard about the hijacking I realised that we couldn’t keep quiet any longer.’

  He took a folder out of his briefcase and handed it to Buster.

  ‘Pictures of Eden’s contacts and the information we have on them. Not a great deal, as you can see.’

  ‘How have these Israeli operatives been behaving since Eden left the UK? Have they approached any of your other employees?’

  ‘Not as far as we’re aware. And believe me, we’ve been keeping a close eye on them since we found out about them.’

  The fact that the Israelis hadn’t turned to anyone else in Eden’s absence worried Buster. Did that mean she was irreplaceable?

  Oh, Eden, my expectations of you were never anything less than unreasonable.

  ‘One of the operatives returned to Israel a year ago,’ the Englishman said. ‘We didn’t hear anything of him after that. Until yesterday.’

  Buster gave a start.

  ‘Yesterday?’

  ‘We received new information indicating that he had returned to Europe.’

  The head of MI5 took the folder out of Buster’s hands, opened it and removed a photograph, which he placed on the table.

  ‘Efraim Kiel. Forty-five years old, lived in the UK for four years, and prior to that in Spain for three years.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now it’s exactly six hours since he entered Sweden. Who knows what he’s doing here?’

  26

  13:45

  Neither of them spoke on the way back to Säpo. Eden Lundell walked fast, thinking about the mobile phone that Zakaria Khelifi insisted had belonged to someone else when Säpo linked it to their enquiries.

  If the story about the phone was his alibi, why didn’t he just give them the name of the previous owner? Was it because he was lying, or because he was guilty, regardless of who the phone had belonged to?

  Eden went straight to her office. There was a risk, or a chance, that Zakaria was both lying and telling the truth. He could be lying when he said that he didn’t remember when he had bought the phone or from whom, but he could be telling the truth when he said that it hadn’t belonged to him during 2009 and 2010. In which case, he was lying to protect someone. Someone he either loved or feared to the extent that he was prepared to risk imprisonment or deportation to Algeria rather than give that person’s name to the police. Or perhaps it was someone he sympathised with for other reasons.

  Eden opened Zakaria’s file on the computer. Operation Paradise had reached its final phase by the time she took up her post; all she knew about it was what she had read or been told. According to Zakaria, he had parents and two sisters back in Algeria. A Swedish girlfriend in Stockholm – Maria. Eden remembered seeing th
e transcript of an interview with her. She had seemed sensible, and had answered the questions truthfully. But they had only been together for a year. Eden didn’t believe the phone had belonged to her, although she couldn’t be sure. Apart from his family in Algeria and his girlfriend in Sweden, there were few people who were close to Zakaria. He had two friends that he often hung out with; neither of them had ever been the subject of an investigation by Säpo. Could one of them have bought the phone, or sold it to Zakaria?

  Eden twirled a strand of hair around her finger.

  They had so little time.

  In her mind’s eye she could see that bloody plane zooming through the sky, passing over oceans and continents, constantly moving on but with nowhere to go.

  She called Sebastian.

  ‘Can you get someone to check the phone traffic to and from Zakaria’s mobile again?’

  ‘You mean one of my so-called Arabists?’

  Eden suppressed a sigh. She couldn’t cope with an argument right now; she just didn’t have the patience.

  ‘I’m really sorry I said that.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  And that was the end of that. For the time being, at least.

  ‘We need lists of all his calls,’ she said. ‘Check the calls he made, and whether it looks as if there’s a change at some point, and he starts calling completely different people.’

  She could hear Sebastian tapping away on his keyboard.

  ‘You believe him? You believe he didn’t own the phone before 2011, as he kept on saying?’

  Eden’s eyes were itching. Bloody contact lenses.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘I just want to make sure we haven’t missed something. Even if it turns out that the phone did belong to someone else, which I don’t believe, I’m still not sure that would necessarily make Zakaria a better person.’

  She ended the call and turned her attention back to the file in front of her.

  If Zakaria’s phone had been someone else’s at the time when Säpo linked it to their preliminary investigations, then they had to come up with a way of tracking down that person, even if Zakaria refused to give them a name. And – more importantly – they had to find out if he or she had anything to do with the hijacking.

  From not having set foot in Police HQ for over a year, in the space of a few hours, Fredrika Bergman had managed to acquire a workstation within both Säpo and the National Bureau of Investigation. When she and Alex got back from Solna, they went straight up to the counter-terrorism unit, where they found Eden alone in her office.

  ‘I heard what happened,’ she said. ‘It’s lucky the neighbour happened to be passing just when you were there.’

  ‘We spoke to Karim’s wife on the way back,’ Alex said. ‘She’s staying with her parents in Copenhagen. She was shocked when she heard about the hijacking. She’s coming back to Stockholm tonight, if possible.’

  ‘What had he said to her?’ Eden asked.

  ‘Nothing, really. Everything was perfectly normal this morning, according to his wife. Karim didn’t seem stressed or anxious. We didn’t mention the fact that we think he might be involved; we just asked her a few questions in general terms.’

  ‘And how has he seemed recently? Has she noticed anything different about him?’

  ‘No, not that she could remember.’

  ‘What about the girl on the street, the one the neighbour saw? Did Karim’s wife know her?’

  ‘She’d heard about her from her daughter, of course, but she didn’t know who she was. She didn’t see her. To be honest, I don’t think the girl on the street is of any interest to us.’

  Eden gazed at someone who happened to be passing by outside the glass cube. There were far too many things that didn’t seem to be of any interest.

  ‘He refuses to contemplate an emergency landing. And he’s been in contact with one of the phones that was used to make a bomb threat yesterday,’ she summarised. ‘I wouldn’t want to be sitting on that plane with Karim as the pilot.’

  Fredrika glanced at Alex. He was pale, and she knew what was haunting him. The idea of losing his son when he had already lost his wife must be unbearable. She suppressed the impulse to reach out and touch him.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Eden said, having realised that what she had just said wasn’t particularly helpful. ‘That was clumsy of me.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Alex said, but anyone could see that it wasn’t.

  ‘Have we spoken to the airline about the possibility of giving Karim direct orders?’ Fredrika asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Eden said. ‘In a case like this, it’s unusual to force the captain into a course of action that he hasn’t chosen for himself. He and he alone is regarded as the best person to decide what to do with the plane in the event of a hijacking.’

  ‘But if the captain himself is responsible for the hijacking, then surely that should put things in a different light?’ Alex said.

  ‘Sounds reasonable,’ Eden agree. ‘But if the captain is the hijacker, then I think it’s foolish to believe that he’s going to take orders from the police.’

  Fredrika could see that Alex was starting to get agitated.

  ‘We have to get in touch with Erik,’ he said. ‘He’s the co-pilot, and he’s just as capable as Karim of landing the plane.’

  ‘And how’s that going to happen?’ Eden said. ‘Is he going to knock Karim down first? I know the co-pilot’s role is to take over the plane if the captain shows signs of unreliability, but I don’t think that rule applies in this case. Karim is not going to hand over to Erik voluntarily.’

  She got up and came around the desk to join Alex and Fredrika. In her high heels she was taller than Alex.

  ‘We’ve got to be clever now,’ she said. ‘Because we don’t have much time. At the moment we haven’t got enough evidence to call Erik secretly and ask him to put Karim out of action and land the plane himself. That would look like complete insanity if it got out, particularly if it all went wrong.’

  If it all went wrong.

  If everyone on board died.

  If they had to inform all those desperate people who were calling the police right now, wanting to know if their relatives were on that plane . . . if they had to inform all those people that the plane had gone down, and that their loved ones were at the bottom of the Atlantic.

  Fredrika shuddered.

  ‘If Karim is involved, it would explain something else,’ she said. ‘How the note got into the toilet.’

  ‘That occurred to me as well,’ Eden said.

  They were interrupted by Sebastian, who yanked the door open without knocking.

  ‘That was quick,’ Eden said. ‘Have you already finished working through the list of calls?’

  ‘What list?’ Alex wanted to know.

  Eden waved away his question.

  ‘It’s about the bomb threats that were made yesterday,’ Sebastian said.

  Fredrika could see that Eden was disappointed, and wondered what she had been hoping for. She thought she would have enjoyed working with Sebastian; he seemed calmer than Eden, less spiky and more amenable.

  ‘You know our guys went out to Arlanda to look for the four phones that were used to make the bomb threats?’

  ‘The phones someone had forgotten to switch off, which meant they could still be located,’ Eden said with a nod.

  ‘Airport security helped them to search. It took seconds. They found all four in a waste bin in the multi-storey car park next to the domestic flights terminal.’

  Alex leaned back cautiously against one of the glass walls.

  ‘And the voice distorter?’

  ‘No sign. But we’ve got the phones, and forensics have secured fingerprints. The phones were new; they found prints belonging to just one person, and on only one of the phones.’

  ‘One person’s prints on one phone?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And do we have a match?’

  ‘No. But judging by t
he size of the prints, it seems unlikely that they were made by a woman.’

  Eden burst out laughing.

  ‘I don’t want to be rude, but I’m afraid no one was expecting you to find anything other than a man’s prints on those phones!’

  Was that true? Fredrika wondered. From a statistical point of view, a man was more likely than a woman to be behind serious violent crime, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be a woman. She remembered the case she and Alex had worked on a few years ago: a priest and his wife had been murdered, and nothing had turned out to be the way they had first thought.

  ‘We have to find out if they’re Karim Sassi’s prints,’ Eden said.

  ‘How do we do that?’

  ‘Call the prosecutor. We need permission to go into their house and lift prints for comparison.’

  Fredrika suddenly thought of something.

  ‘His car is at the airport. His wife mentioned it.’

  ‘Excellent. Call her and get the registration number – forget the house for now.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Alex’s voice sounded deeper than usual.

  ‘We don’t have time to put together some jigsaw puzzle and play guessing games,’ he said. ‘I suggest we go to the prosecutor and get a search warrant. I want to go back to Solna and turn Karim Sassi’s house upside down. We need a breakthrough, and we need it now.’

  For a second, Fredrika was afraid that Eden would launch a counter-attack, put Alex in his place for taking the lead in her office. But she didn’t, because she knew he was right.

  ‘Let’s do that,’ she said. ‘Let’s ask for a search warrant right now.’

  27

  14:30

  Alex headed back to Solna while Fredrika stayed behind at Säpo. Eden had found her a workstation in the open-plan office. She would only need it for one day. No longer. One day – after that the plane would have run out of fuel and the drama in the skies would be over.

  Fredrika felt a knot of fear in her stomach. Hundreds of people trapped on board a plane that wasn’t allowed to land. A plane that could plunge to earth or be destroyed by a bomb in the baggage hold.

  Their options were limited. They could go for an emergency landing. Meet the hijackers’ demands. Or find whoever was behind the threat, thus freeing the passengers and crew. They hadn’t managed to come up with any alternative courses of action. And if it turned out that Karim Sassi was involved, they had no options at all, because in that case it wouldn’t matter if they identified his fellow perpetrators on the ground; Karim Sassi would still have the power to determine the fate of Flight 573.