The Bomber

by Liza Marklund

  ‘I broke the pattern in the family, because I trained as an architect. My parents were sceptical; they thought I would be better suited as a nursery-school teacher or an occupational therapist instead. But they didn’t stop me, because they were very modern people. I studied at the Royal Institute of Technology, got one of the highest marks in my year.

  ‘Why did I choose to work with buildings? I love buildings! They speak to you in such an immediate, clear way. I love travelling, just to communicate with the buildings in new places, their shapes, their windows, their colours … their radiance.

  ‘Inner courtyards give me a sexual thrill. Shivers run down my back when I travel through the Stockholm suburbs, washing hanging out to dry above railway lines, balconies leaning out.

  ‘I never look straight ahead of me when I walk, I look up. I’ve walked into traffic signs and ventilation units all over the city because I was looking up at the buildings. I find them fascinating; it’s as simple as that. I wanted to build a career around my great passion. So I studied for years and learned to design buildings.

  ‘When I graduated I realized that I had made the wrong decision. Buildings on paper don’t talk. Sketches of buildings are a mere imitation of the real thing. So I went back to college after just one term out in the labour market. I studied to be a construction engineer instead. That took several more years.

  ‘When I was finished, they were recruiting staff for the state-owned company that was going to build the new Victoria Stadium in South Hammarby Harbour. I got a job there, and that was how I came to meet Christina Furhage for the first time …’

  68

  Beata fell silent again. Annika sat for several minutes, waiting for her to continue.

  ‘Would you like to read what we’ve done?’ Annika eventually said, but Beata shook her head.

  ‘I know you’ll make it sound good. I’ll read it later, when you’ve finished.’

  She sighed and went on. ‘Of course, I knew who she was. I’d seen her in the paper plenty of times, from when the whole Olympics campaign started, then when Sweden won and she was appointed managing director for the whole project.

  ‘Where was I living all this time? Oh, where I live now, in a lovely little house next to Skinnarviks Park on Södermalm. Do you know the area around Yttersta Tvärgränd? It’s grade-A listed, so I had to be really careful when I renovated it. My home is very important to me, the house I live and breathe in. We speak to each other every day, my house and me. Exchanging experiences and wisdom. I don’t have to point out that I’m the novice in those conversations, do I? My house has stood on those cliffs since the end of the eighteenth century, so our conversations usually involve me listening and learning. Christina Furhage came to visit me there once; it felt right that my house should make her acquaintance. That helped me later on when I had to make my difficult decision.’

  The woman fell silent again.

  ‘What did your work involve?’ Annika asked.

  ‘Is that really important?’ Beata said, sounding slightly surprised.

  No, not remotely, but it buys me some time, Annika thought.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Loads of people work. They want to know what you had to do at work, what you thought about when you were doing it, and so on …’

  Beata sat up straight.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course they do. I can see that,’ she said.

  You egocentric fucking bitch, Annika thought, and smiled.

  ‘I don’t know how familiar you are with the construction business? Maybe you don’t know how negotiations happen? Well, it probably isn’t that important on this occasion, because construction of the Victoria Stadium was such a unique case that none of the usual rules really applied.

  ‘Stockholm was awarded the Olympic Games under Christina Furhage’s leadership, as you know. It wasn’t an obvious appointment; she had to fight to get the job.

  ‘Christina really was fantastic. She could wrap the old sods in the Olympic movement round her little finger. Us women really enjoyed having a boss like that. Well, I didn’t meet her very often, but because she kept an eye on every single detail of the whole project I bumped into her every now and then.

  ‘I admired her immensely. Everyone smartened up their act whenever she appeared, everyone tried their best. She had that effect on people. What she didn’t know about the organization of the Olympics and the construction of the stadium wasn’t worth knowing.

  ‘I was actually employed by Arena Bygg AB. Because I was both an architect and a civil engineer, I was given a number of large administrative responsibilities. I took part in negotiations, I produced sketches and calculations, visited subcontractors and agreed contracts. A general factotum, really, albeit a fairly senior one.

  ‘The actual construction of the Victoria Stadium started five years ahead of the Games. Christina herself appointed me as project manager. I remember very well her asking me. I was summoned to her office, a magnificent room close to Rosenbad, with a view out over the waters of Strömmen. She asked me what I was doing and whether I was enjoying it. I didn’t think I performed very well, I was stammering and my palms were sweating. She seemed quite unique, sitting there behind her gleaming desk, big and small at the same time, sharp but still beautiful. She asked if I would like to assume responsibility for the construction of the Victoria Stadium in South Hammarby Harbour.

  ‘I felt giddy as she said those words. Yes, yes! I wanted to shout, but I just nodded and said it would be a great challenge, an exciting responsibility that I felt capable of living up to. She hastened to add that I would obviously have several managers above me, including, at the end of the chain, she herself. But she needed someone to assume operational responsibility of the actual construction, someone to make sure the timetable was followed, that the budget wasn’t exceeded, and that the delivery of materials occurred in the right place and at the right time. And of course I would have a whole group of team-leaders under me who would each have responsibility for a particular section of the work, within which they would allocate and organize the work. These team-leaders would report to me on a daily basis, so that I could do my job and keep Christina and the management team informed.

  ‘ “I need loyalty,” Christina said, leaning towards me. “I need your absolute conviction that what I’m doing is right. That’s a precondition for anyone taking this job. Can I trust you?”

  ‘I remember the way she was glowing at that moment, spreading her light over me, filling me with her own power and energy. I wanted to scream YES!, but instead I just nodded. Because I understood what had just happened. She had taken me into her inner circle. She had made me her crown princess. I had been chosen.’

  Beata started to cry. She bowed her head, her whole body shaking. The rope leading to the noose lay at her feet, and her hands were clutching the battery and detonator wire tightly. As long as she doesn’t cry so much that she short-circuits the battery and sets off the explosives, Annika thought.

  ‘Sorry,’ Beata said, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her coat. ‘This is very hard for me.’

  Annika didn’t reply.

  ‘It was a big responsibility, but in actual fact it wasn’t that difficult. To start with, the site was cleared, there was blasting and excavation, filling in and levelling. Then the construction crews moved in. It was supposed to take four years. The stadium had to be ready for various test events one year before the Games themselves.

  ‘It went well enough at the start. The workers drove around in their machines doing what they were supposed to. I had an office in one of the barracks by the canal – you might have seen them if you’ve ever been out to take a look at the site? No?

  ‘Well, I did my job, spoke to the men on site, made sure they did their jobs. The men who did the actual work weren’t very talkative, but at least they listened when I told them what needed to be done.

  ‘Once a month I would go to Christina’s office and tell her how the work was going. She always received me wit
h great warmth and interest. After every meeting it felt like she knew everything already and just wanted to check my loyalty. I always left the office with a nagging sense of anxiety in the pit of my stomach, as well as a peculiar feeling of delirium and lightness. I was still in the inner circle, I had the power, but I would have to go on fighting to keep hold of it.

  ‘I really loved my work. Sometimes in the evenings I would stay late after the men had left. All alone, I would scramble about the rocky remains of the old Hammarby ski-jump, imagining the finished stadium, the huge stands reaching to the sky, the seventy-five thousand green seats, the perforated steel arch of the roof. I would run my hands over the plans, and I put a big picture of the model on the wall of my office. I talked to the stadium right from the start. Like a newborn child, it didn’t answer, but I was sure it was listening. I watched every detail of its development like a nursing mother, astonished at every new change in her child.

  ‘The real problems started when the foundations were laid and the builders arrived. Several hundred men who were going to perform the work I was responsible for. They were led by a group of thirty-five team-leaders, all of them men between forty and fifty-five years old. At this point my duties multiplied fourfold. I was given three deputies to share responsibility with me, all of them men.

  ‘I don’t know where it went wrong. I carried on working just the same as I had done before, trying to be clear and straight and precise. The calculations worked, we were on schedule, the materials arrived on time, in the right place, and work went on and kept to the required standards. I tried to be happy and friendly, made sure I treated the men with respect. I can’t say when I first noticed things going wrong, but it didn’t take too long. Conversations that ground to a halt, scornful expressions I wasn’t supposed to see, patronizing smiles, cold eyes. I arranged meetings to share and gather information, and I found them constructive, but my message clearly wasn’t getting through. In the end the team-leaders just didn’t turn up. I went out and tried to round them up, but they just looked at me and said they were busy.

  ‘Of course I felt like an idiot. The few who had turned up questioned everything I said. They thought I had ordered materials in the wrong order, to the wrong place, and anyway the whole order was pointless because they had already solved the problem in a different way using a different supplier. Naturally, I got angry and asked what right they had to ignore my orders and take decisions like that themselves. They answered patronizingly that if this project was ever going to be ready on time, then they needed someone who knew what he was doing.

  ‘I remember how I felt when I heard those words, how something inside me snapped. I mustn’t die, I thought. The men got up and left, derision in their eyes. My three deputies left as well, and went to chat with the men outside. I heard my deputies pass on my orders and the information I had printed on the sheet of paper in my hand, and now the men were listening. They would accept my orders if someone else conveyed them. There was nothing wrong with my work, my judgement or my skills. No, there was something wrong with me as a person.

  ‘After that meeting I called in my three deputies and said we needed to plan our next move. I wanted the four of us to take control of the organization and our employees, to get the work going in the direction we had staked out. They sat round my desk, one at each end and one opposite me.

  ‘ “You can’t handle this job,” the first one said.

  ‘ “Can’t you see you’re getting in the way of the whole project?” the second one said.

  ‘ “You’re a joke in this post,” the third one said. “You have no authority, no legitimacy, and you’re incompetent.”

  ‘I stared at them. I couldn’t believe my ears. I knew they were wrong. But once they had started there was no stopping them.

  ‘ “The only thing you’re good at is blowing your own trumpet,” the first one said.

  ‘ “You demand too much from the men,” the second one said. “They know you’re being unreasonable, can’t you tell?”

  ‘ “You’re going to get frozen out,” the third one said. “You’re here for the wrong reasons, and you’ve got the wrong background.”

  ‘I remember looking at them, and their faces changed. Their features faded, turned white and shapeless. I couldn’t breathe, I thought I was suffocating. But I got up and walked out. I’m afraid it wasn’t a very graceful departure.’

  The woman sniffed a bit, her head bowed. Annika glanced at her with distaste. So what? she felt like asking. That’s what it’s like for all of us. But she said nothing and Beata went on.

  ‘When I was lying in bed that night, my house spoke to me, comforting words whispered through the pink patterned wallpaper. I couldn’t go in the next day. Fear paralysed me, gluing me to my bed. Christina rescued me. She called me at home and asked me to turn up at work the next morning. She had some important information for everyone on the site.

  ‘The next morning I went to my office with a great sense of peace. At eleven o’clock we were all called to the north stand. My deputies weren’t speaking to me, but I smiled at them so that they would understand. Soon Christina would be there.

  ‘I waited until they were all there before going out, and I made sure I arrived at the stand at the same time as Christina. With her light, clear voice carrying all the way to the back of the stand, she said that she had come to inform us of a change in the leadership of the construction project. I could feel her warmth and couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘ “Beata Ekesjö will no longer be project leader, and is being replaced by her three deputies,” Christina said. “I have every confidence in her successors, and I hope that work will proceed as successfully as it has up to now.”

  ‘It felt like the sky had changed colour, all white, sparking with lightning. The light changed, and everyone froze to solid ice.

  ‘My awareness of what I had to do was born that day, but I hadn’t yet formulated my goal, even to myself. I left the north stand and the stadium while everyone was still there, listening to Christina’s charismatic voice. I had a bag of gym clothes with me, because I had been planning to go to the gym straight after work. I emptied the bag into my locker and took the bag with me round to the back of the barracks. That was where the explosives were kept, roughly a hundred metres away: there are strict rules governing how far away they have to be kept because of the risk of detonation. There was just room for a box of dynamite in the sports bag, it was as if they were made for each other. It was very heavy, twenty-four kilos net, twenty-five gross, roughly the same as the average suitcase. But you can carry it a short distance, especially if you go to the gym three times a week …’

  ‘Hang on a moment,’ Annika said. ‘Aren’t there loads of security regulations about storing dynamite? How could you just go in and take it like that?’

  Beata looked at her condescendingly.

  ‘Annika, I was in charge of the site. I had my own set of keys for every lock. Don’t interrupt me.

  ‘There were fifteen charges in the first box, little weapons rolled in pink plastic, 1,600 grams each, 50 by 500 millimetres. I put the box in the boot of my car and drove home. I carried my treasure carefully inside my house. That evening I stroked them with my bare hands. There were small metal catches at the ends. The plastic felt cold to the touch, my weapons looked and felt like sausages straight from the fridge. They were fairly soft; I used to sit there bending them back and forth in the evenings. Just like sausages, only heavier.’

  Beata laughed at the memory. Annika felt sick, partly from tiredness, but mainly because of the other woman’s utter madness.

  ‘Can we take a break?’ Annika wondered. ‘I’d love a Coke.’

  The Bomber looked up at her.

  ‘Okay, but just a few minutes. We have to get finished tonight.’

  Annika felt herself shiver.

  69

  ‘They didn’t know what to do with me. My contract specified the construction of the Victoria Stadium and the Olympic v
illage. It would cost them money to fire me, and they didn’t want that. Besides, I could do the job, so it made no sense to pay good money to get rid of skills they needed. In the end they made me project leader of the construction of the technical complex next to the stadium, an unremarkable ten-storey building full of control rooms and offices. There’s probably no need to say that the building felt dumb and dead compared with my stadium? An empty concrete shell without any real design, and it never learned to talk.

  ‘There was already one manager there, his name was Kurt and he used to go on regular drinking binges. He hated me from the outset, seemed to think I was there to spy on him. The features of his face blurred for me that first day on the job. I could never really see him properly after that.

  ‘Everything on the site was a mess. It was all running late, and was badly over budget. I started carefully clearing up the mess Kurt had created without him noticing. On the occasions when he found me taking a decision, he shouted at me. But after I got there he didn’t lift a finger. A lot of the time he didn’t even show up. I reported him the first time it happened, but he got so furious that I never did it again.

  ‘Now I had to make regular site inspections, which I hadn’t had to do before. The concrete often changed colour, and sometimes I floated, unfettered and weightless, a few inches above the ground. The men changed shape and look. When they asked me to order more viewpoints, or wondered where the rule of thumb was, I stayed quiet. I knew they were making fun of me, but I had no defences. I tried to be efficient but forceful. I talked to them, but the building refused to talk back. I kept to the schedule and managed the calculations, I walked around the site, and the bell jar around me remained solid. We were ready on time, and only slightly over budget.

  ‘Christina conducted the inauguration. I remember how keen and proud I felt that day. I had done it, I had bounced back, I hadn’t given up. I had made sure the technical complex was ready in time for the test events. I hated the actual building, but I had done my duty. Christina knew that, Christina would see it, Christina would realize that I deserved a place in the light again. She would see me for who I was and elevate me to my rightful place again, at her side, as her sister in arms, her crown princess.