Project Nirvana

by Stefan Tegenfalk

  “They’re moving back,” Walter said and pointed out of the window. “No one will try to place a tracking device now. See for yourself.”

  Tor stared out of the window and saw the dark uniforms of the SWAT team moving away from the house.

  “They could be on the other side of the house,” Tor said, pushing Walter. Even on the other side of the house, he could see the police withdrawing.

  Tor looked at the kitchen clock. There was not much time left before they would be leaving. His mouth was dry and his stomach churned with apprehension.

  “How do you want to play it when we get to the car?” Walter asked.

  “Open the passenger door and slide across to the driver’s seat. I’ll be sitting next to you.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll find that out soon enough.”

  Walter nodded. “And then what happens?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happens to me,” said Walter. “When you’re free.”

  Tor paused. “We’ll decide that then,” he said.

  “We?”

  “Stop asking questions. Just shut your trap and do as I say. Then maybe you’ll live.”

  “I’m thinking neither you nor I will survive this,” Walter said, resignedly. “You know that – right?”

  “No,” Tor scoffed, albeit a little forcedly.

  “I suppose you know best,” Walter said and leaned back towards the chair. Soon it would be dark. He wondered if this was going to be his last evening.

  Tor stood up and ordered Walter to cover them with the blanket. It was time.

  Jonna’s mobile phone beeped and she saw she had received an MMS message. The sender was tagged unknown and, curious, she opened the message, while keeping one eye on Martin Borg’s car. The phone was slow to open the file and, after a while, an image appeared. It was the network operator’s logo with a download link for an upgrade of the phone’s firmware. A bug in the phone’s software had been found which could shut down her particular phone model. She hesitated at first, but then clicked on the link. The path was obviously to a file belonging to the network operator. After a while, a message stating that the upgrade was complete appeared. She had a feeling she should call the operator’s help desk. Not that she had any sensitive information in her phone, and she wasn’t worried about a phone virus. It was just an impulse. Just as she was about to make the call, the phone rang. The number displayed was from someone in Jonna’s section.

  “Lilja asked me to call you,” began Cederberg. “I’ll be standing in for Walter until he’s back.”

  “I see,” Jonna replied and hoped that his next sentence was not going to confirm that he was now her immediate superior.

  “That means you are working for me now,” he said straightaway.

  “I see,” replied Jonna, trying not to sound disappointed.

  Having Cederberg as her boss would be challenging, even if it was only for a few hours.

  “Are you still in Sigtuna?”

  Jonna did not know what to answer. “Yes,” she demurred.

  “Rolf Meiton said you had left.”

  “I’m on my way,” she lied. “I’ve just left Sigtuna.”

  “Good, because there’s a meeting with the National Bureau of Investigation and the Germans in two hours. SÄPO will be there too. We should have a pow-wow before it starts.”

  “SÄPO?”

  “Yes, that Borg fellow, according to Harald Morell at the NBI.”

  Martin Borg was everywhere. It was as if he had cloned himself. Perhaps Walter was right after all, Jonna thought, as she followed him onto Torsgatan and towards Kungsholmen. He was probably on his way to police headquarters. They would soon be facing each other in the same room. She watched him drive into the police garage before she drove in herself and parked on the level above. Being his shadow was going to be difficult. She was worn out and was getting a migraine. Also, she would now be under Cederberg’s beady eye. Her migraine got worse.

  Jonna went to the lift. As she waited, a thought struck her that Walter would definitely have approved of. Before she was humiliated by Cederberg, she went to Dennis Carlinder at the Surveillance Unit. She had been briefly introduced to him, during the mandatory walkabout when she started at County CID, and had not got the impression that he was quite the stuffed shirt that Walter had described. In fact, he had seemed quite sympathetic and accommodating.

  “I suppose it’s possible to find out how many new pre-paid SIM cards have been registered on the mobile network,” Dennis Carlinder said.

  “I need the locations of the cards as well,” Jonna added.

  Carlinder suddenly frowned. “You mean the positions of all newly activated pre-paid cards?”

  “Yes, so we can see how they have moved about and to which numbers they have made calls . . .”

  Carlinder was silent. He looked at Jonna doubtfully.

  “. . . for the last seven days,” she concluded.

  “Do you have any idea how much work that is?”

  Jonna nodded. A considerable amount, she thought to herself.

  “An operation like this needs Lilja’s approval,” Carlinder said. “It’s probably ten men for several days. As well as quite a few people at the different operators’ companies.”

  “Walter is a hostage,” Jonna countered, in a manner that was both deferential and resolute. “A colleague is to blame. Someone is leaking information.”

  Carlinder’s expression did not change.

  “At least, do what you can?” asked Jonna.

  Dennis Carlinder stood up and put his hands in the pockets of his dark blue chinos. His high forehead furrowed as he looked out of the window. “It is a serious matter to accuse colleagues of leaking information,” he said. “But I agree that the ramifications of the telephone call and Hedman’s escape give cause for concern.”

  “Somebody tipped off Hedman. Only a police officer could have done that.”

  Carlinder shook his head. “This is crazy,” he said, “and it will be a massive scandal if you are right.”

  “So, what can we do?” Jonna asked, now in a calmer voice. Carlinder looked at Jonna for some time before saying anything.

  “If you talk to Cederberg, I will try to get Lilja to play ball,” he said finally. “This is a sensitive business, so I can only drop subtle hints to him. I would like still to have a job tomorrow. I assume you would too?”

  “I’ll also drop some hints to Cederberg,” Jonna said. “He’s not the easiest person to convince.”

  “Particularly when it comes from someone with your looks,” said Carlinder.

  “No, I suppose not.”

  While Jonna walked back to her own department, she considered the best way to pitch her story to Cederberg. Walter had expressly forbidden her to mention Martin Borg’s name. Without hard evidence, it would be professional suicide to accuse a colleague of colluding with criminals. Especially an agent from the Security Service.

  She would mention the coincidence of the mobile phone call and Hedman’s escape. If Cederberg wouldn’t listen, then she would go straight to Lilja and drop hints to him instead.

  She stopped two metres from the door of the office of her new boss. She took a deep breath, then knocked on the door belonging to the one-hundred-and-thirty-kilo Värmlander.

  Troubled, Alice McDaniel put down the message. There would be no meeting with Leo Brageler. It instructed her to put the envelope in a department store’s storage locker and then place the key in the pocket of a particular coat, which would be hanging in the fitting room of a menswear department.

  Alice did not understand a thing. Was this some kind of joke? She certainly had no intention of participating in silly games. First and foremost, she wanted to know how Leo Brageler
had got hold of her ex-directory number. If she found his explanation convincing, she would hand over the envelope. She opened her laptop and searched for the call-list entry with his telephone number. After repeatedly calling without success, she gave up. Instead, she rang Directory Enquiries, who then explained that the telephone number was from a pre-paid SIM card without any registration details. And there was no address listed for Leo Brageler either.

  Alice McDaniel became increasingly irritated. She was sitting in a hotel room in Stockholm unable to contact her client and with no answers to her questions. In addition, she was involved in some bizarre stratagem. Just great. All she could do was to ignore the damned instructions. She would jolly well take the first flight back home and if he wanted his damned envelope, he was welcome to come to the Isle of Man.

  As she got ready to check out of the hotel room, suddenly she had an idea. Why not, she thought, amused at herself. If he wanted to play games, then she would oblige him. But it would be her rules. Once he realized, he would definitely get in touch with her. Alice McDaniel logged onto her laptop and accessed the internet over the hotel’s Wi-Fi connection. She took out a write-able CD from her laptop bag and began to download.

  After parking his car in the part of the garage beneath the police headquarters that was reserved for the Security Service, Martin went up to his section in the Counter-Terrorism Unit. He unlocked the door to his office and sat down behind his desk. Then he speed-dialled the communications centre and asked if County CID had left any more information about the phone calls in the Sigtuna area. They answered that they had increased their efforts and had called in extra manpower to the investigation. That response worried Martin. He had to be more careful and try to find out if Thomas Kokk was involved in the investigation into the mobile phone calls.

  The Mentor was right. They would have to either move Leo Brageler or dispose of him. Brageler was still dangerous, even if he was practically a dead man.

  The constant set-backs were taking their toll on Martin’s patience, as well as his performance. He was beginning to suffer from a dangerous lack of concentration.

  The damned news of his set-backs was spreading through the organization like a forest fire. Martin felt impotent. He stared at the wall, fingering the amulet around his neck. The whiteboard was covered with pictures of wanted members of al-Shabaab and other organizations that recruited young Muslims and then sent them into conflicts all over the world. We give them a safe haven and then they return to their homelands and come back as terrorists. The naivety of society was limitless and Martin felt his anger growing again. At least the Serbs had stood up to the Muslims. Battled heroically in the Balkans with a modern army of crusaders. As a thank you, NATO had bombed them to smithereens.

  Martin looked at the clock. It would soon be time to meet the National Bureau of Investigation’s German counterparts. He already knew that the meeting had something to do with Leo Brageler. But what was their interest?

  Jörgen Blad stamped his feet impatiently outside the police cordon. He looked around and realized that Jonna had not been visible for some time. Earlier, he tried to exchange a few words with her, but he had been met with dismissive glances. The saying “for old times’ sake” did not seem to ring true this year. He took out his mobile yet again. After eight rings, he heard her voicemail. Jörgen left a short message and stuffed his phone back in his pocket. The odds that she would call back were as slim as the story he currently had.

  He stamped his feet a little longer and wished he had something to eat, or one of those portable infrared heaters to warm himself. The air was damp and it felt obscenely cold, although the temperature was around zero. Soon, the sun would sink over the horizon and Jörgen’s replacement from the newspaper would arrive. In fact, she should have been there two hours ago. She had unfortunately experienced some “serious” delays. Jörgen was suffering because her babysitting arrangements for her kids had fallen through. If he was lucky, the news editor himself, who was also Jörgen’s intransigent future father-in-law, would emerge from his glass bubble and say hello to the outside world. Or perhaps the self-opinionated news editor with his overblown ego might lift a finger and actually help out?

  Despite his exclusive last year, which had given the newspaper some sorely needed moolah in the till, he was standing here in the cold and being treated like an errand boy. Naturally, he had jumped a few steps on the payment ladder, but his job title was still the same. Crime reporter.

  Whatever. He didn’t envisage staying at the newspaper for a much longer period of time. If they didn’t appreciate his worth, then he would call it a day. At some point, he had to stand his ground.

  The first thing he would do when he got home was to take a warm bath and enjoy a chicken wrap from Subway. Then he would ask Sebastian to open a bottle . . .

  The police suddenly sprang into action. They pulled back from the house and the police radio was spitting out instructions. The police were agitated and moving about erratically. The instructions became more imperative and when a cameraman from TV4 stepped over the police tape, a small ruckus started. Jörgen’s photographer took some quick shots as the TV4 cameraman was escorted roughly away.

  “What’s going on?” Jörgen shouted to one of the police officers.

  He received an angry glare.

  After a short period of suspense, something finally started to happen. From the other side of the field, Jörgen thought he saw the front door open. He had difficulty seeing in the gathering gloom and the distance was at least three hundred metres. He grabbed the photographer’s camera and zoomed in with the telephoto lens. Now he could see what it was.

  She had a Nokia N95. According to his go-between, that model could be unreliable after the fake upgrade. His little program could sometimes make them freeze. The triangulation data had to be sent from a special communications port and, depending on the version of the software installed on the phone, a few small adjustments might be necessary. Mjasník was lucky. Her phone software was almost two years old, which lowered the risk of detection. He had sent the MMS message from the fake sender and she had accepted the bogus upgrade. The little program now sent her location co-ordinates every five seconds to Mjasník’s laptop by means of GPRS.

  With satisfaction, Mjasník watched the small, red triangle moving on the map. It left a trail of dots, which made it possible for Mjasník to follow at a distance of several kilometres and yet still know her location, give or take ten metres.

  The address she was currently visiting was obviously the police headquarters downtown. He wished he understood the language. He could now even eavesdrop on her conversations. Thanks to some ambitious students in Israel, the decryption algorithm for mobile networks had been broken, according to the major from the FSB. The mobile-phone industry had quickly bought and buried the software, but the FSB had not been slow to exploit the discovery.

  In today’s information society, access to the correct type of information was critical. Mjasník had already established an information bridgehead. All he needed now was access to the detective’s mobile phone. The problem was that he had still not opened his MMS message.

  The smallest locker in the department store was not very spacious, but was still big enough for the padded envelope containing a CD and a sheaf of documents. Alice McDaniel locked the door and went to the menswear department. She wondered if she was being watched by her client. If he still looked as she remembered him, he would be easy to recognize. He wasn’t unattractive. Or perhaps he had used a stand-in. The more she thought about these bizarre events, the more irritated she became.

  She looked around and tried to spot a potential stalker. But she saw neither trench coats nor sunglasses. Two mothers with prams passed her by. She quickly looked at them. No, not those two. Two youngsters were examining a jumper. Not them, too young. An elderly couple was walking towards the escalator. They were unlikely shadow
s. It was pointless. Women and men of all ages and appearances were strolling about on this floor. Any, or none, of them could be following her. She gave up and walked to the spot where she had been instructed to put the key.

  At the back of the shop, next to the fitting room, a dark trench coat, size 54, was hanging up. She put the key in the inside pocket, as instructed, and then walked away. Then she took the escalator down to the floor below and quickly walked through the womens’ wear department. As far as she could tell, nobody was following her. She disappeared behind some plastic containers with unpacked goods and then behind three large advertising posters. Five metres ahead of her was a door to the stairwell. She slid through the steel door with the “Exit” sign and ran back up to the next floor, where she tried discreetly to remain hidden from view behind a shelf of lamps. She pretended to be interested in a dark green table lamp, which was probably the most hideous thing she had seen. She now had a good view of the trench coat.

  Her heart was thumping. Her anticipation was mixed with amusement at the absurdity of the situation.

  After almost thirty minutes, she could not wait any more. The person who came closest to the coat was a young woman with a back pack. She had taken some shirts from the shelves next to it. Alice McDaniel went to the coat and felt the inner pocket. It was empty. She felt robbed. It had taken less than three minutes for her to backtrack to the menswear department. In that short time, someone had taken the key. She had been watched from the start. Then she remembered the storage locker. It was probably too late, but still worth a try. She ran up the escalator and past the sports department, continued towards the cafeteria and the wall with the storage lockers. When she arrived, she saw the key sitting in the door of locker 19. Her mobile phone was silent, but she was pretty sure they would call her soon.

  The call came after two hours.

  Jonna met Cederberg’s inquisitive stare. His smile had no effect on her and she was already irritated, although he hadn’t said a word yet. She would rather resign from the force than work for Cederberg for one more week.