The Silent War

by Andreas Norman

  The photocopier works quickly and rhythmically.

  He picks up the bundle in the feed tray and thumbs through it. There are three top secret reports on Brexit.

  Naturally she has yielded under questioning. Their threats have taken hold of Heather and now they are testing her to see whether she is useful to them. A sample, he thinks to himself with a sigh. He is on the verge of failure. The tiniest error . . . It was fortunate that he discovered this, otherwise he would have had to handle another leak.

  He pretends nothing has happened – she would only lie to him – and takes the papers out of the photocopier.

  ‘Come with me, please,’ he says warmly while heading into the corridor.

  He plays the good boss and fetches them each a glass of water and, to be on the safe side, some paper hankies.

  She has already started packing. The bookcases already have gaps, and the trinkets she used in an attempt to make her office more personal are in a moving box, together with folders and notebooks. There won’t be a trace left of her tomorrow.

  Once she is gone he will never know what passed between her and the Swedes. He has to make her realise that the only person who can save her is the sandy-haired, tranquil man in a grey suit in front of her. In London it will be too late – Vauxhall Cross will make her promise eternal silence and loyalty before casting her out.

  ‘When is your flight?’

  ‘This afternoon,’ she says, fiddling with her glass. Then it is as if she can’t hold back her despair. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispers, hiding her face behind one hand.

  He makes a deprecating gesture, like any good boss should. But it is as if she were genuinely seeking absolution.

  ‘I failed, didn’t I?’

  She is truly insistent; perhaps she wants to hear that everything will be okay. But he needs her bad conscience, so he tells it as it is: yes, she failed. He can barely stand her trembling face as she fights back the tears. He should never have given her the assignment.

  ‘We failed,’ he says.

  Her sorrow and shame provide him with the opportunity he has been hoping for. Her feelings of guilt: he needs them. Guilt is a form of loyalty.

  ‘But we may be able to resolve this,’ he says, smiling at her. ‘If you simply tell London that you found and destroyed the documents, but that we were then discovered . . .’

  ‘Should I really . . . ?’

  He nods. Yes; she should lie to them.

  Then he slowly reviews the day she visited the target, Fredrik Jensen. She hesitates in embarrassment and tries to avoid the more awkward parts of the story. He calmly asks her to tell it as it happened. He is tempted to hiss, ‘Good God, will I have to tear the truth from you?’ But he knows that won’t elicit the truth, so he makes an effort to maintain his usual calm. They will ask exactly the same questions in London, he explains; she must be prepared to answer precisely and without hesitation. So they are practising.

  ‘What happened the day you visited Fredrik Jensen?’

  The mineral water in the glass on the table in front of her ripples quietly. She is quiet. Or perhaps she is looking for the right words. Bubbles rise in the glass and emit a barely perceptible light whisper, as if the water already knows the answers.

  Then she explains. She went to Fredrik’s, well, to their home, on the Friday two weeks ago. They usually met at a hotel, Le Louise, or the apartment in Ixelles, but that day he invited her home. She clears her throat. And they slept together.

  ‘Where?’

  She looks at him in surprise. ‘The bedroom.’

  ‘And then what did you do?’

  They talked, drank some wine. He asks which wine, but she can’t remember the brand, just that it was white. She has to remember things like that, he says sternly, because in London they will ask her everything.

  When Fredrik disappeared into the bathroom she searched the house. Thanks to surveillance directed at the house, she knew there was a study upstairs, so she began there. She found a safe. If the documents were anywhere in the house it was there. She looks proud when she explains how she installed two monitoring applications on the family computer; she was quick and had time to search the bedroom and living room as well as the basement. But she found nothing. Then he came out of the bathroom. They kissed. And he wanted to do it again.

  She looks away.

  They stood on the stairs and did it. And then, while they were standing there, the younger son came home.

  ‘Their son?’

  What he is hearing now is all new to him. Why didn’t she tell him this before?

  The boy saw them. She remembers the way he stood there staring. And then he stormed off and she heard him shouting at his father and she thought everything was over. But then, in the days that followed, nothing happened. She doesn’t know what Fredrik did, but the boy kept quiet.

  She wanted to abort, but it wasn’t an option. It took a week before she managed to persuade Fredrik to invite her back to his home again. But that time she was lucky; she found Bente Jensen’s mobile lying in the hall. He must remember? Yes, he remembers. She took the mobile and installed the malware they had been provided with by London. At the Swedish reception the same evening she put the phone in Fredrik’s jacket pocket. It was risky, but it worked.

  ‘And the documents?’

  She hadn’t managed to get into the safe, she explains disconsolately. She had brought a decoder, but hadn’t had time to crack the code. She only ever had a few minutes while Fredrik was in the shower.

  He looks quietly at his young, beautiful, but no longer wholly successful agent and wonders with resignation what the Swedes have told Heather to make her willing to cooperate with them. Sapping anxiety gnaws at his intestines.

  ‘So where are the documents now?’

  ‘Surveillance suggests that Bente Jensen still has them in the safe. But I don’t know for sure.’

  She twists the glass uneasily between her hands. But she is telling the truth. He concentrates, going through his thoughts for a dizzy moment, considering which possible risks and potential mistakes might occur.

  The small lie he has come up with must now be grafted onto the events she has just described, and be allowed to grow.

  ‘You can tell London that you opened the safe the first time you visited the Jensens. Then you were discovered by the boy. You fled and met your boss – me,’ he says. ‘You gave me the documents and I destroyed them. That’s the only thing you need to change about your story, nothing else.’

  She looks concerned.

  ‘Let that be your only truth.’

  He gets up.

  ‘Oh, and by the way,’ he says, handing her the papers from the photocopier. ‘Stop this straight away. You’re not a traitor, Heather.’

  She turns pale and he knows he has guessed correctly. The Swedes aren’t stupid; it was lucky he caught her out. Now she is bound to him through guilt and gratitude, the strongest ties there are. She will tend to the small lie he has given her.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Just tell London exactly what I asked you to. Then it’ll all be okay.’

  Sitting in front of his computer on the fifth floor, he visits the website of a modest company that makes databases. He finds their customer service page. He rests his fingertips on the keyboard for a short while as he weighs up which words to include in his next countermove. A brief message through the customer service page will have to do: We have cooperated for a long time and need to discuss the continuation of our relationship. Would appreciate a prompt response.

  Everywhere he turns there are enemies. The abyss is tugging at his feet. He mustn’t think about how close everything is to failure. He must forget the House and everything that has happened, he thinks, and look forward. If Heather just does as he has instructed her, he will win time, perhaps enough to get to the documents. Perhaps, h
e thinks with desperate hope, he can manage to make the Swedes see how deeply they are harming the relationship and persuade them to let the documents disappear. He won’t fall.

  Then he calls a number that he hasn’t used once during his time in Brussels. It rings twice before a businesslike voice answers.

  ‘Jonathan, it’s a been long time.’

  ‘I need you and your brother.’

  26

  She reads the message that arrived a few minutes earlier via their website and knows that it is Jonathan Green. She can hear the anxiety behind the words, and she knows she has the upper hand in the game they are playing.

  Over the course of just twenty-four hours, ten new young faces from counter-espionage in Stockholm have noiselessly and politely appeared – as if they had grown straight out of the lino floor. They have quietly barricaded themselves into the conference room. No one is allowed in except her.

  Gustav closes the frosted glass door behind her. Yes, he has seen Green’s message. The fish, as Gustav refers to him, is on the move.

  They released Heather to see whether the fish took the bait. The water is bobbing, the fish is swimming in big circles around the hook.

  But she is aching with doubt. They both know how loyal Jonathan Green is to his own organisation. Jonathan means it when he says he works for Her Majesty’s Government. He is under pressure, but is that enough to make him turn traitor?

  ‘Gustav, are you certain about this?’

  He shrugs his shoulders. Of course, ‘certain’ is a word people are reluctant to use in an industry of uncertainties and half-truths. Naturally he is uncertain. But she doesn’t like his restrained elation. He wants this too much, she thinks.

  ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘We play high.’

  Jonathan Green is vulnerable and open to influence, is the assessment. She can see that, but Gustav is too keen about the opportunity to haul in a shiny, rarely seen and valuable fish – one swimming deep inside British secrets.

  Gustav goes to the table where his staff are sitting and asks them to listen. Everyone stops, quiet. This is what Gustav loves, she thinks to herself as she sees him surrounded by his team.

  ‘I want to say a few words,’ he says.

  Then he talks about Jonathan Green. He asks them to remember who they are approaching. This is a man who has committed his life to working in MI6, the service that invented all the methods they are now using against him. Green is one of the most skilled individuals they have ever gone up against. If they are to tempt him, they must handle him with the utmost caution. ‘He has no reason to trust us. That’s why there will be no surveillance of Jonathan Green, except for tracking his mobile. During the contact itself there is to be no bugging, no microphones or cameras. And, since some of them are already wary, no physical surveillance throughout the operation. We will use the documents, turn the House against him, but we can’t give him any reason to suspect it.’

  A surprised silence spreads around the table.

  No babysitters. No surveillance. Only the passive tracking of Green’s mobile phone via GPS. And no one to be anywhere nearby except for him and Bente Jensen, he concludes, gesturing at her.

  She is about to leave the room when one of the men from the hotel approaches and gives her a three-digit telephone number. She recognises what it is: an emergency code. It only has to ring once for them to enter crisis mode.

  ‘Only in emergencies,’ he says with a friendly smile. ‘We’ll come straight in without knocking.’

  A layer of low cloud is moving across the dark, wet city. Yet another evening shower. Gustav wants a cigarette and wonders where on earth he is allowed to smoke. They take the lift to the roof, walking the final bit up the echoing, clattering fire stairs and emerging into the gusting wind on the roof. They have stood like this many times, her shivering next to a smoking Gustav Kempell, in Stockholm, in Vienna, in Brussels. A raindrop falls from an incredible height and leaves a dark mark on the roofing felt. Standing in the shelter provided by a large ventilation duct, they talk in low voices. Gustav asks her how things are at home. What can she say? Things are terrible. She and Fredrik aren’t talking. The EU Commission building looms before them like a fortress, seeming oddly close by. From where they are standing, it is also possible to glimpse the British Embassy in the swarm of buildings.

  ‘Are you okay?’ says Gustav, blowing smoke.

  She nods. She is ready.

  27

  A beep notifies him of a new message on his mobile, and he is already holding the phone before the noise has stopped. For a second, he thinks it may be Robert, or by some miracle Frances. But the sender is unknown; it contains a link.

  He looks at the picture. It is an advert on an auction site in the ‘Home Electronics, Computers, Accessories’ category.

  There is a photo of an ugly black flash drive.

  USB flash drive in perfect condition, reads the description. For sale or will consider exchange for item of equivalent value. The seller wants to be contacted by email. He quickly writes a brief message:

  I am interested.

  He waits. A minute or so later, a reply appears that confirms his suspicion that he is not on an auction site at all, but is in fact within an isolated, digital room controlled by Swedish counter-espionage:

  What do you have to offer?

  He snorts. They are so shameless; typical Swedes, boorish and no finesse. They have already drained Heather, and have the documents, but naturally they are trying to blackmail him. He gets up and paces anxiously around the room, tension making him feel empty. No, he thinks. He knows what they want from him. He can see the line of thought they are pursuing; nothing would be more valuable to them than giving himself up to them in exchange for their saving him by destroying or returning the documents. But a pact like that would hollow him out and transform him into the thing he hates the most: a traitor.

  Let’s talk about it, he writes, stopping to think. Perhaps he can still play this to his advantage. I can come to B’s.

  Hours pass. Then:

  OK.

  Shortly thereafter an address and time arrive. They want to meet tonight; it suits him well. The address is so familiar – he knows every room in the house, even though it has only been described to him by Heather.

  At lunch he takes a long walk around the city, despite the rain. He wanders aimlessly through the centre and into the lanes around Grote Markt. No one is following him.

  For a while he toys with the idea of telling them all about the House and pinning the blame and responsibility on Robert. It is a titillating thought – because the Swedes might report it up the chain of command, to their government, who in turn would sooner or later want to discuss the matter with his government, and if that happened, then the powers that be would back away from their new Assistant Head, even if Robert doesn’t think so. All the warm hands currently holding Robert up would let him fall. Because, in any choice between sacrificing Robert or being forced to handle a political scandal, the government would dump the bastard. But if that is to happen, he must cooperate with the Swedes, and he is no traitor. Focus, he thinks. There is no room for sweet dreams of revenge.

  *

  Back at work, he opens the safe in his office and removes a worn-out black pay-as-you-go mobile. Then he replaces it with his normal phone, and locks the safe. The message that appears when he turns the mobile on is brief: On the way. The two resources landed at lunch, so why haven’t they been in touch again? He can’t stand waiting; he hates the feeling of his entire future being determined by unpredictable chance.

  He paces the corridor, stopping for a while in front of a world map. Which country would be best to disappear in, if it became necessary? He drinks a glass of water in the toilets and tries to avoid his employees, hissing in irritation at an analyst when the mild-mannered man knocks on his door for a signature. He re
ally must keep calm, even if he is tempted to kick things over in pure frustration. Immovable in his seat, he stares out at the roundabout. Occasional raindrops hit the windowsill like gentle hammer blows on a coffin.

  When the phone rings he answers straight away.

  Half an hour later he enters a hotel room. The two men are sitting on a large bed, yet another football match blaring on the TV. They get up, relaxed, and shake his hand. They are security-conscious and don’t lower the volume. He looks around; they seem to be comfortable, and beneath the TV are two empty beer bottles next to several empty crisp bags. They shouldn’t be drinking, he thinks in irritation. It has been a long time since he worked with this kind of resource. They have a laid-back, jokey manner that he struggles with. Their familiarity with violence means they have a marked lack of respect. He pulls out a chair and sits down in front of the TV. While they go over what will happen that evening, Anderlecht score against KV Mechelen and the joy rumbles from the TV.

  28

  Everything that is now happening is happening for the first time. She has never done this before – let a meeting with another intelligence service take place in her own home. But Gustav liked the suggestion; it was informal, it could be a way to make Jonathan Green feel safe.

  She takes a gulp from her coffee mug, the bitter taste helping her to focus. Standing at the window in the living room she looks out onto the street.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Gustav replies curtly.

  He is sitting immovable on the sofa, as if transformed to a waxwork, except for one foot that is bobbing up and down. Even Gustav is nervous. If Green refuses to cooperate, then what happens? ‘We try,’ Gustav said. ‘If the fish doesn’t bite, then no harm done.’ She isn’t so sure.

  It is eight o’clock, the agreed time. She shifts her weight.

  Jonathan Green has been in the British Embassy all day, according to their tracking of his mobile, apart from a one-hour walk through the city centre. Ten minutes ago he had still been there – he didn’t seem to be leaving his office, so far as Gustav’s team could tell.