The Silent War

by Andreas Norman

  The boy mutters.

  Shortly afterwards, Daniel appears and sits down wordlessly.

  They eat. Rasmus eats his scrambled egg, while Daniel prefers yoghurt. Bente considers Daniel: almost grown-up, yet still a child. The boy grunts affirmatively when she asks whether they had a good time the evening before. She smiles at Fredrik across the table. They have shared so many of these quiet, meaningful glances over the years, but this morning Fredrik is reading something on his mobile and doesn’t notice that she has turned to him. She looks at her boys. She can still remember when they were just the same height as the table they are now sitting at, so lanky and tall.

  Rasmus is tense. He is due to play with his football team and is hurrying to eat his scrambled eggs even though there is plenty of time. He is anxious and wants Fredrik to double check that his trainers and kit are ready.

  The football trainers are important: Fredrik gave them to him last week and he loves them. He has declared that they are ‘epic’ because they have a ribbed rubber trim on top that improves ball control.

  Fredrik ruffles his hair but this merely annoys the boy. ‘Stop it,’ he says loudly. Fredrik immediately withdraws his hand. Contact like that can unleash anger that easily escalates into a roar. Rasmus is a sensitive child and they have to interpret his state of mind and weigh up each and every word and touch to avoid exposure to a blind rage that never seems to end, until it suddenly vanishes as if it had never been.

  ‘You’ve got plenty of time, Rasmus,’ Bente says.

  Rasmus looks at her suspiciously, and promptly asks what the time is. But she isn’t wearing a watch. Does Fredrik know what the time is? Worry oscillates between them. The boy continues to nag them. What time is it? How long will it take to get to the recreation centre? Daniel glances morosely at his little brother. The anxiety brings everything to a halt for a brief few seconds, then Fredrik stops taking an interest in his mobile and says that it is 9.35, and that it will take twenty minutes to get to football.

  It bothers her that Fredrik can’t see as clearly as she does that Rasmus needs routine and predictability. Reality confuses him and he requires support to structure it. It is typical of Fredrik to fail to notice that the boy was on the verge of a tantrum.

  Personally, she likes order. Why shouldn’t food packaging be arranged in the cupboards so you can read the labels? But Fred-rik’s mind doesn’t work like that. Neither Fredrik nor Rasmus put things where they belong. So it is up to her to keep things in order and create a safe, calm environment for the boys.

  Fredrik is lying stretched out on the living-room sofa. He is leafing through one of his silly men’s fashion magazines that he is so keen on. Has he seen her mobile? She doesn’t know where she put it down, she says.

  Fredrik hums and haws without interest. She left it at home when they went to the reception the day before. Or did she have it with her? She had drunk more wine than usual, but she normally remembers these things.

  He lowers the magazine and looks at her.

  ‘Didn’t you put it on the hall table, like usual?’

  ‘I usually do, but it’s not there.’

  She always leaves her phone to charge on that table. But it wasn’t there yesterday; she can’t picture it in her memory.

  ‘Can you call it?’

  Fredrik puts away the magazine and reaches for his mobile. She can hear the ringing on the line. She listens intently.

  Yes, now she can hear it: a low, rumbling noise. It’s coming from somewhere in the kitchen, or perhaps the hall.

  ‘Call again,’ she says, walking slowly out of the living room.

  The whirring is once again audible. From the hall. No, the porch.

  She rummages through the outer garments. The sound is nearby now, it is coming from one of the coats hanging there.

  In the middle of a ring, it stops. But she can already feel the phone’s slender, rectangular shape. Relieved, she picks it up and can’t help checking it. Other than Fredrik, no one has called.

  Only then does it strike her that the mobile was lying in Fredrik’s jacket pocket.

  ‘It was in your jacket.’

  He looks at her across the top of the magazine. Well, perhaps she put it there instead of in her coat, he suggests, before reading on.

  In his jacket? No, she didn’t put it there. But then she feels uncertain, because his jacket and her coat are a similar colour and are usually hanging side by side in the hall.

  The doorbell rings.

  When she opens it, a woman clad in a gilet and cap is standing on the step. She looks sporty and healthy. Around thirty years old, medium blonde, well-to-do.

  ‘Hi,’ says the woman in Swedish, using a pure Skåne dialect filled with warmth as if they were friends.

  She returns the greeting. The woman is vaguely familiar, but Bente doesn’t know her. They smile at each other. The woman looks at her attentively.

  ‘Perhaps I could come in?’ the woman asks, tilting her head to one side.

  There is something slightly compelling about the situation, because even though she doesn’t know the woman, it is hard to say no unless there is direct hostility, and the woman seems normal, and most definitely not threatening.

  ‘Of course,’ she says, stepping a little to the side.

  The woman comes into the porch and then continues into the hall.

  ‘What a lovely home you have.’

  Bente comes to a stop, with a floating feeling caused by not knowing what the woman wants, or why this stranger has come into her house.

  Outside on the gravel path, a boy wearing football kit appears. And in that moment, she joins the dots of reality, understands, and calls over her shoulder:

  ‘Fredrik!’

  Once Rasmus and Fredrik have left, the whole house is still. She loves this silence. It is as if it is healing the rooms and restoring them to their original condition. She descends the narrow stairs into the basement before stopping in the small space outside Daniel’s closed bedroom door. A guitar. Daniel is playing a chord, but stops. She continues quietly past his door, taking care not to disturb him.

  She takes a quick shower. The sauna is up to temperature.

  The heat is powerful and all-encompassing when she steps in. Her pores open, and after just a minute beads of perspiration cover her back and run between her breasts. This is her solitary ritual at the weekends: the sauna, followed by a couple of hours’ work.

  Sometimes, when Rasmus is screaming, she can’t stand it. That’s when she comes down here. She knows that Fredrik is better at dealing with their youngest, he has more patience and can continue speaking in a calm voice when she would long ago have shouted at the boy to pull himself together. Fredrik knows his boys, he has always known what sizes they wear, what they do and don’t eat, and he can handle Rasmus. When the boy is screaming he can sit down next to him and simply wait until it is possible to talk. The screaming drives her mad; she can barely deal with it any longer. As she sees it, they have an unspoken agreement: he talks to Rasmus and she stays out of the way or keeps Daniel company. Sometimes she takes a sauna.

  They built it a year ago, but only Bente uses it. Here she can be herself again: it is her own steaming territory.

  She thinks about the week to come. As Head of the Section for Special Intelligence, SSI, or just the Section as it is referred to in the field, she is responsible for one of the most secret, best protected Swedish intelligence offices in the world. But even the Section, which has recently acquired a major tranche of intelligence about the war in Syria straight from the hands of one of MI6’s own operatives, still has to battle against cuts. She has to sing for her supper.

  There is a wonderful tingle as she breathes through her nostrils. The sweat runs down her cheeks in swift small droplets.

  Three weeks have passed since that rainy Saturday when she met the Brit, B5
4. She needs to know Stockholm’s view on the documents provided to her by the British leak. All she has had so far is a brief email from Roland Hamrén, Deputy Head of the Security Service, who acknowledged her report about the contact with the Brit and in a few long-winded sentences asked her to wait.

  She assumed that Stockholm would rejoice over the documents she had found. They are so rich in detail, she has never read anything like them. Together, they provide a thorough overview of Islamic State and its structure, but above all a unique picture of how the British operate in the Middle East. Those who can interpret the material can understand how MI6 recruits its agents in war zones, which resources the Brits have in Syria and Iraq, how they are mapping Islamic State in order to eradicate its leaders. The senior people in Stockholm ought to be in raptures, which is why their silence worries her. They have asked her to wait. But what are they waiting for? No one is replying to her emails, and management always seems to be in meetings when she calls. The silence indicates sensitivity. She hasn’t done anything wrong, and it annoys her that her train of thought is even drawn that way, but it is unavoidable; their silence is making her thoughts anxiously twist themselves into tight ropes.

  She showers and loads the washing machine. There is the pink shirt, together with the other dirty laundry in the basket. She picks it up and reflects that it suits Fredrik. She quickly holds the fabric to her face and discerns the fresh, familiar scent of Fredrik’s aftershave. Then she goes back up the narrow basement stairs, back to the light.

  The weather has brought clarity to this November day. High, chilly air movement is tearing apart the cloud cover and opening up the sky. A persistent headache radiates across the crown of her head. She is airing rooms and wiping down surfaces. These chores give her a deep sense of satisfaction. Sunlight streams across the floor and everything is glittering.

  After tidying the kitchen, she reads the news on her mobile, skimming through it restlessly and fixating on facts and figures.

  This is how she catches sight of a short notice from Reuters with a link to a British newspaper. The story is modest: a thirty-year-old employee of the British Foreign Office has been found dead in a flat in north London.

  She clicks on the article.

  Daniel says something to her that she doesn’t understand. He repeats the question and she looks up, disturbed. What does he want? He asks whether there is any Coke in the house. She tells him to drink water, it’s healthier, before returning to her device.

  The man had worked in public administration for three years and was back home for a brief holiday staying with his parents. According to the preliminary police findings, no crime had occurred and the man had taken his own life. The article includes a photo of an ordinary redbrick house. The door was locked from the outside, it says.

  Daniel sighs theatrically and vanishes into the basement.

  No signs of a struggle, the article says; an odd-sounding statement. It is as if it were sagging beneath the weight of something unsaid. He was a happy guy, says an interviewed friend, he was going to be a father in a few months’ time.

  On the British newspaper’s website, she finds a picture of him. The face is out of focus, as if death has already begun to dissolve his features, but she recognises him. It’s him, she thinks in surprise. It’s B54.

  *

  Bente goes upstairs to her study and although Daniel is down in the basement she closes the door. She crouches in front of the safe and enters the code that no one except her can know.

  Inside the small cube of reinforced steel are the few objects from her secret life that she keeps at home. The two small shelves hold her lead-lined computer, three false passports and her service weapon: a Glock. Next to the weapon is the small black USB stick given to her by the Brit. She pulls out the computer, inserts the memory stick and opens the documents.

  She has read them so many times that she already knows parts off by heart. But now the lines of text shimmer with a new and sombre import.

  There are more than one thousand files. Several of them are top secret reports from British sources in Raqqa – to all appearances well-hidden, infiltrated sources close to Islamic State. The British code word for IS is Hydra, and many of the documents seem to relate to an operation known as Hercules. What stands out is a number of photos of a house built in the traditional Ottoman style. There are no notes about the house or its address. There are, however, photos of a cobbled courtyard that appears to be part of the house. There are also pictures of a basement and other rooms.

  Her analysts at the Section have reviewed the photos, enlarged them and examined every pixel in the dark rows of windows around the inner courtyard to see what is hiding behind the shadowy panes of glass. They have analysed the robust wooden door standing ajar, and tried to distinguish the room that can be seen in the gap. They have scoured the cloudy sky for flight trails and other details that might reveal where the house is. The architecture suggests it is a Turkish building, especially given the windows, the shape of the roof and the appearance of the roof tiles. Another cue is a silhouette glimpsed in the far distance: a mountain ridge. This means they are certain the house is somewhere in eastern Turkey. Given that the documents relate to the war in Syria, the house may be in the town of Reyhanlı, on the border with northern Syria, or more likely in the slightly larger town of Antakya, a few miles further into Turkey. It is obviously a location the Brits want to keep secret, because there is no address to be found anywhere in the documents. But many of them refer to the location as ‘the House’. Simply ‘the House’.

  There are another ten or so photos which are much clearer. They are photos of a row of men, captives, referred to as clients in the documents. The pictures are supplied with British Intelligence’s brief notes and remarks: names, dates, prisoner numbers. Then there are other photos that seem to be a form of documentation: each showing a man whose face has been beaten to a pulp, date, name, prisoner number. They are dreadful photos. Some of the numbers correlate with other pictures: a man with a swollen face reappears several times, a man with an exhausted expression that might be found in an antiquated medical reference work under the heading ‘madness’ is photographed five times. There are also notes here that they have been able to interpret as codes and abbreviations used by the American military.

  Apart from the pictures, there are hundreds of reports that all refer to conversations conducted at the House. Most are analyses of interrogations where the focus is on various terrorist groups. Bente is familiar with many of the names and places mentioned. Many of the reports discuss al-Qaida, and later reports Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front.

  But the files that make her most uneasy are ten or so tables. These include a list of Arabic names, prisoner numbers and two dates: probably the date they arrived as prisoners and the date they left the House, along with a column for notes about their medical condition. Many of the tables are several years old, but there are also some that are brand new. When they reviewed the documents, there was a clear pattern: the first tables are from the period 2001–2009, and then there is an interval followed by some tables dated two years ago, in the autumn of 2014, and later. By all accounts, prisoners – clients – were taken there during the War on Terror, with prisoners returning once again two years ago after a hiatus.

  She can see that prisoner 154-3 has diabetes. Another has high blood pressure. These clinical documents come from the heart of a deadly bureaucracy that she is not meant to have the slightest insight into, and several of the documents have been created by one Jonathan Green. The first time she saw the name, she thought she had misread it. She couldn’t see how he had anything to do with a facility of this kind in south-eastern Turkey. But it struck her that he had been posted in Damascus once upon a time, and that it was likely the same Green. The other person to have signed many of the interrogation reports is Robert Davenport. She knows of only one Brit with that name – the Head of the MI6 Mi
ddle East Department.

  B54 had good cause to be careful. Still, he had obviously not been careful enough.

  Never before had anyone so directly contacted her, and it worried her. She had alerted Stockholm, because to the outside world she was merely a business owner with a start-up making custom databases. Anyone who knew more than that might pose a threat to her entire operation.

  But the man turned out not to be a threat. He was a professional, but with friendly intentions. He had asked whether they would like information about British activities in Syria. After a few days’ silence he returned and answered her control questions. Yes, he was a British citizen. Yes, he was an analyst in British Intelligence. He refused to give his name, but promised he had information that they, as close partners of Great Britain, ought to see. They also ought to inform their politicians, in his view. His tone was bombastic. She didn’t trust him, because the Brits might just as easily be doing this to see how she and the Section reacted. It might even be Stockholm testing her to assess how she, as Head, would deal with that kind of contact. But during the week that she was in contact with the Brit, it became clear to her that he was serious, acting independently and because of an inner conviction, as he had said. He took care to point out that he was no traitor, even if that was how everyone would see it. He didn’t want to provide any information except about the House, in which the code name Hercules appeared repeatedly. He promised to give them more information as soon as he could. Then, after a few days’ silence, he asked to meet.

  And now he was a brief news story, a cursory death notice. The article implied he had hanged himself. But who hangs themself just before they are going to be a father? she thought to herself. What sort of son was completely healthy but let his parents come home to find him hanging lifeless? No, it didn’t add up.

  She calls Mikael, her right-hand man. He answers sounding out of breath. He laughs.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Just a moment.’