Project Nirvana

by Stefan Tegenfalk

  “A leak, you say,” he finally said, playing with a Finnish Finger biscuit that lay next to his coffee cup.

  “Everything points to a leak,” Jonna explained. Perhaps the hints she had dropped were a bit obvious.

  “But who, and why?” He popped the biscuit into his mouth and rinsed it down with a mouthful of coffee.

  “That’s for Internal Affairs to find out,” suggested Jonna.

  Cederberg looked at her sceptically. “You’re making serious allegations,” he said.

  “We, not I,” Jonna corrected him.

  “Did Walter explicitly order you to report this?”

  Jonna fidgeted. “Not directly.”

  “So what did he say exactly?”

  Jonna was just about to tell him about Borg, but she stopped herself. One look at Cederberg’s eyes was sufficient, and Walter had definitely forbidden her to mention Borg’s name. To make unsubstantiated accusations against a Security Service agent was tantamount to putting your head on the block. She didn’t know if she could trust Cederberg and Walter had not given her any instructions. For want of a better idea, she decided to tone down her proposals.

  “Well, he didn’t really tell me to do anything specific,” she lied, remembering how she had recently followed Borg to the police station.

  Cederberg rocked gently on his chair.

  “I suggest we wait until Walter gets back, so that he can handle it himself,” he said.

  Jonna agreed with him.

  “Hey,” said Cederberg, as she was leaving the room.

  “Yes?” she said, turning around.

  “I hope that we’re not going to have any problems working together.”

  Jonna was surprised. Had he read her mind? “I hope so too,” she answered politely.

  “I’m not like Walter,” he said.

  “No, you’re not Walter,” she replied, trying hard not to sound sarcastic.

  Ccderberg looked at her for a moment. Then he nodded cordially. “Good. Let’s hope that I don’t have to be your boss for very long.”

  He’s definitely a mind-reader, Jonna thought.

  Harald Morell of the National Bureau of Investigation introduced his counterparts from the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA). Both came from a unit called Group IK2, from International Liaison. A short, dark blonde man, with inquisitive eyes behind thick glasses, shook Jonna’s hand.

  “Klaus Wägner,” he greeted her with a firm handshake.

  Jonna introduced herself.

  “Volmar Eschenbach,” the second gentleman said. He was somewhat taller and had dark, short-cut hair and was the senior officer of the two.

  Jonna shook his sweaty hand.

  Harald Morell began in English to explain why their colleagues from Germany had come to Sweden. Four employees of a biogenetic research establishment belonging to Dysencomp AG in Frankfurt had been murdered. Their deaths took place over a nine-day period four months ago. Each victim was a prominent researcher in biomedicine; one of them actually was the Head of Research and founder of Dysencomp. The first victim in the wave of murders was the controversial Günter Himmelmann; he was killed in the car park as he left work.

  The other three were murdered in their homes, one in front of his three-year-old son. According to the German medical examiner, all the victims had had their throats cut after being stabbed in the kidney by a long, sharp blade or knife.

  This method was commonly used by military special forces trained in close-quarter combat where silent executions were required.

  According to the BKA profilers, the crimes were probably committed by somebody with a long history of mental illness. Empirical evidence suggested that the perpetrator, who probably acted alone, was a very disturbed person, but still sufficiently lucid to not leave any traces behind him; possibly, an ex-member of the military. They also believed that the murders were carefully planned, which could indicate revenge or possibly blackmail.

  It had taken the BKA police two weeks to see the connection between the four murders. The victims had lived in four different jurisdictions, so local police had first started local investigations. So they had lost valuable time. There was one name in the investigation that kept popping up as time went on. That name was Leo Brageler. All four victims had worked with the Swedish scientist and his company Biodynamics & Genetic Research, in Uppsala. Since Brageler had been wanted by Interpol for some time for murders in Sweden, it seemed probable that the Swede had something to do with the events in Germany as well.

  “Can you update us on the current situation in the manhunt for Leo Brageler?” asked Eschenbach.

  His partner Wägner had a small laptop and was taking notes.

  David Lilja had asked Cederberg to put together a presentation on the case, since Walter could not attend the meeting. As Jonna’s boss, Cederberg has passed on this important assignment. She had been given over an hour to complete the task, since she was more of an expert on Brageler than anyone else in the County CID.

  Five minutes before the meeting, Jonna had more or less completed her presentation, which included seven slides. It was therefore more appropriate that she also deliver the presentation to the Germans. Jonna was now certain that one week with that overweight man from Värmland as her boss was one week too many. Lack of sleep made her mind sluggish and unusually irritable, so she had to struggle not to say something inappropriate to her new boss.

  When she had worked at RSU, Jonna had carried out a thorough analysis of Leo Brageler and had no difficulty in describing the extremely talented scientist. She explained how he had drugged members of a jury using a drug the Swedish police called Drug-X. Breaking into the homes of a district prosecuter, judge and lay jurors, Brageler had injected the compound into their food in order to induce attacks of rage that ended in murders. All of the murder victims had been close family members of the court members, which had also been Brageler’s intention.

  The drug affected an area in the brain called the amygdala and resulted from private research that Brageler had undertaken while he worked at Biodynamics & Genetic Research in Uppsala. The basis for Drug-X came from an adaptive medicine that they were developing together with Dysencomp AG.

  Jonna described how Brageler’s family had perished in a traffic accident caused by a drunk driver and that revenge was probably the motive for Brageler’s actions. The Stockholm District Court, led by a liberal judge called Bror Lantz, had dismissed charges against a director, Sonny Magnusson, in a drink-driving case. The district prosecutor had also decided not to appeal the ruling. Two weeks later, Magnusson had killed Brageler’s wife and ten-year-old daughter in a car crash.

  “The line between genius and insanity can sometimes be very thin,” Eschenbach said, after Jonna finished her presentation.

  “Yes, but to exact revenge in such a complex way requires a sophisticated intellect,” Jonna explained.

  “Has Brageler any military background?” Eschenbach asked.

  “He hadn’t done any military service, so I think we can rule him out as the perpetrator of any crimes requiring military skills.”

  Eschenbach nodded in agreement. “Indeed,” he said. “Then there is the question of motive.”

  “Yes,” said Lilja. “What could the motive be?”

  Eschenbach put down his pen on the table. “We have investigated the projects that all four were involved in. Even Leo Brageler. But we haven’t found much because a major part of the research data has been destroyed.”

  “Destroyed?” Martin asked.

  “Yes, two days before Günter Himmelmann was murdered, a sophisticated deletion of data was performed on the company’s computer servers. The primary, temporary and back-up systems were all purged of any data related to a certain project. Only someone with full system privileges and considerable compute
r expertise could do something like this. We have an IT technician in custody who claims that Günter Himmelmann himself gave the order to destroy data and was even directly involved. In Germany, it seems the Prussian mentality, of carrying out orders without asking questions, still lives on.”

  Klaus Wägner looked up from his laptop with a faint grin.

  “What type of project were they working on?” Borg queried.

  “We don’t know,” Eschenbach said. “All we do know for sure is that it went under the name of Project Nirvana.”

  “Nirvana?”

  “Yes, according to other scientists that worked for Himmelmann, they used Nirvana as the working name.”

  “It must be the same project as the drug we call Drug-X,” Cederberg suggested.

  “It could be, but it’s hardly probable,” Jonna said with some confidence. “Considering the statements from Brageler’s co-workers in Sweden.”

  While Cederberg sulked, Lilja and Morell agreed with her.

  “Why were other scientists involved in the project?” Lilja wondered. “Didn’t they know what they were working on?”

  “The project was divided into different, autonomous parts, where everything had to be approved by an inner circle of scientists, with no direct communication between the different research centres,” Eschenbach said. “For security reasons, it was strictly forbidden to share information between research groups without the approval of Himmelmann and the other three scientists. In addition, the research centres were at different geographical locations, so there was no direct contact between the scientists. Approximately eighty scientists were involved in Project Nirvana without actually knowing its ultimate objective.”

  “It’s a common method for running large development projects nowadays. By breaking down a big project into smaller parts, it makes the development process faster. Each participant focuses on their own, small part without knowing about the bigger picture. In this project, there were only four people other than Brageler who knew the whole story.”

  The room was quiet.

  Finally, Cederberg was forced to speak. “Eighty scientists who didn’t have a clue about what was going on? Sounds crazy, if you ask me.”

  “Not really,” Eschenbach said. “They were researching the structure of something called ribosomes. They control the proteins in the cells of the body and they are one of the smallest components in the human body that we know of. According to representatives of the company, they were working on a type of adaptive medicine. In layman’s terms, a smart drug.”

  “We know about this from our Drug-X investigation,” Lilja said. “These so-called adaptive medicines are at least ten years away.”

  Eschenback concurred.

  “How could Günter Himmelmann act so secretly without the knowledge of the board and the company management?” Borg asked. “Even if he was the founder of the company, it must have cost a considerable amount of funds.”

  “The board and management group got their reports. How accurate they were is difficult to say. Remember that Dysencomp has almost five thousand employees. Most of its growth is through acquisitions, but still the company has grown from one hundred and fifty people to five thousand in twenty-five years.”

  “So funds could get lost in the company,” Jonna said.

  Eschenbach shook his head. “Not really. Not even a company like Dysencomp, which has two hundred million euros in annual profits, can finance a project of this type.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lilja. “There were only eighty scientists involved.”

  “The project had an annual budget of three hundred million euros for over seven years.”

  “Where did the money come from?” Borg asked. “The board?”

  “The board approved annual donations that amounted to the company’s expenses for this particular project.”

  “Donations from whom?” Jonna asked.

  Eschenbach had a troubled expression. He took up his pen and twisted it a few times. “A fund registered in Panama,” he said, “but we don’t know who is behind the fund. And somebody high up in the Panamanian Government is anxious to keep it that way.”

  “Could the Americans help us out here?” Morell asked.

  Eschenbach shook his head.

  “Not without a small invasion. Politically speaking, the relationship between the USA and Panama is glacial, after their accusations that Panama is a transit country for drugs heading to North America.”

  Martin looked puzzled.

  “But the board members must know where the money came from,” he said. “They can’t just have approved these enormous donations without any knowledge?”

  “Each year, billions of dollars are donated to companies all over the world,” said Eschenbach. “While some can be traced to criminal activities, others are legitimate donations for different types of research. There are funds for financing new technology in transplants, heart and lung disease. The list is endless and it is global. A donor can be anonymous, yet still place conditions on how the money is used. Internationally, there is still plenty of respect for privacy surrounding donations into cures for diseases.”

  Martin shook his head. “So what proportion of those funds is money laundering?”

  Eschenbach did not seem to understand the question.

  Morell intervened. “The motive is not clear and the murderer is still unidentified,” he concluded. “So the only lead you have at this time is Leo Brageler?

  “Correct,” Eschenbach confirmed.

  “Unfortunately, we can’t help you there,” Morell said; all eyes were on him. “Brageler has disappeared off the face of the planet. To be honest, we don’t have the slightest idea where he is or even if he is still breathing.”

  Eschenbach exchanged a look with his partner, Wägner.

  “Our superiors want . . . no,” he corrected himself. “Our superiors demand that this case is solved. The pressure on my group is considerable and I have practically unlimited resources. If there is anything we can do to assist you, Wägner and his liaison team are at your disposal at all hours of the day.”

  Morell stood up and walked to the whiteboard. He thanked Jonna for her presentation. “Currently, County CID is leading the manhunt for Brageler and the Security Service are responsible for locating Drug-X,” he began. “Chief Prosecutor Åsa Julén heads both investigations and that is probably not the best solution for a number of reasons. The National Police Board is currently in talks with the Prosecutor-General about transferring both investigations to the National Bureau of Investigation. By doing this, we’ll have direct channels to both Europol and Interpol. We’ll also get extra resources for those direct channels. As I said, however, this is not yet finalized.”

  Eschenbach nodded approvingly. “To recap,” he said, “we will lend you all our resources. Brageler may be the key to many doors.”

  Morell looked pleased. Cederberg and Lilja were not quite as positive and Martin Borg seemed to be in a trance. As soon as the meeting with the Germans was over, Jonna decided to make a short visit to her former boss at RSU, Johan Hildebrandt. She would even get an unscheduled meeting with Åsa Julén. If Walter had known what was going on in Jonna’s head, he would probably have had a heart attack.

  Chapter 14

  Twenty minutes after the old man’s arrival, the man with the accent entered the room. Leo saw he was carrying a padded envelope. Alice McDaniel had fulfilled her task. Yet the envelope looked unfamiliar. The colour was not as he remembered and there were no seals. Leo was confused.

  The old man opened the envelope and took out a stack of documents. The man with the accent started up his laptop and put the CD from the envelope into the drive. After browsing through the stack of papers, the old man threw everything on the floor.

  His eyes darkened and when Mozart started
to stream from the laptop speakers, he threw it against the wall in fury. Bits of plastic flew all over the floor. “Are you making fun of us?” he snarled, bending down over Leo.

  Leo looked at the man, puzzled. “You have the wrong envelope.”

  “The wrong envelope?”

  “You’ll have to ask Alice McDaniel again,” Leo said and tried to stand up. He felt a stabbing blow to his solar plexus and once again tasted blood in his mouth.

  The old man looked into Leo’s eyes as if he was trying to see if he was telling the truth. Then he took out his mobile phone and pressed a number.

  “Make sure she puts the correct envelope in the locker this time,” he ordered, handing the phone to Leo.

  Leo took the phone and heard it ringing. Finally, Alice McDaniel answered. “I must have the real envelope,” Leo began.

  “Must?” she asked.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “You could say that,” she replied.

  “Is it about money?”

  “No. How did you find out my ex-directory home number?”

  Leo did not know how to answer her. “Mutual contacts,” he lied.

  “Which ones?” she asked.

  “I can’t divulge that information.”

  A short pause.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  “A friend helped me,” Leo answered, meeting the dark eyes of the old man.

  “Until I get an honest response, I’m keeping your property. You have exactly sixteen hours before my flight departs tomorrow. Otherwise, you’re welcome to come to my law firm’s office again. Just don’t forget to bring an explanation with you that I can corroborate.”

  She hung up before Leo could reply.

  He handed back the mobile phone.

  “What is it now?” the old man asked.

  “She wants an explanation of how I got hold of her ex-directory number before she will hand over the envelope,” Leo said, “and she wants to be able to confirm it herself.”

  “Bollocks,” the old man shouted. “Why does everything have to be so messy? Not even the English solicitor can stick to the script. We’ll have to do this the hard way, even if it means taking risks.”