High Risk

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  And the biggest question mark of all: What exactly happened in Chad last summer?

  Ambra continued to twist and turn the facts. Tom had organized the rescue of a Swedish woman. In all likelihood, an armed rescue. Could it be the field doctor she’d read about? Isobel De la Grip, the superwoman. She was a Swedish citizen, she had been in Chad, and she had a connection to Tom—through her brother-in-law, David Hammar. Was that logical or was it nothing but a long shot?

  Ambra Googled Isobel De la Grip and managed to find a cell phone number for her. She sat there with the number on the screen. She was about to cross the line. If she called Isobel and Tom found out . . . That would be the end of the phone calls and the flirting. But she was a journalist in heart and soul—she couldn’t not do it. She dialed the number.

  “Hello, this is Isobel.”

  “Hi, my name is Ambra Vinter, I’m a reporter at Aftonbladet. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s about your work in Chad.”

  “Yes?”

  “Could you confirm that there was an incident there last summer?”

  Long pause.

  “I thought you wanted to talk about my work as a doctor. I’m not interested in talking about all that.”

  “All that? What happened? Were you held prisoner in Chad?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t have this conversation. Bye.”

  And with that, the line went dead.

  Ambra sighed. Yup, that was a success.

  * * *

  She ate lunch alone, eavesdropping on stories about people’s New Year’s Eves. Afterward she loaded her plate into the dishwasher, poured herself a coffee, and headed back to her desk. She really should be working, but she couldn’t quite drop the whole Tom story. She would have to straighten things out. She opened the image of him she had saved, the one of him providing security for that board meeting. She couldn’t deny that he turned her on. But her job was to influence politicians and opinion, to work against the antidemocratic forces in society. It was a role she took seriously. If Tom was responsible for killing civilians in some kind of illegal operation, she couldn’t be his friend. She was sure of that. They would end up on different sides.

  These increasingly serious thoughts were interrupted by her phone ringing. It was an unlisted number. She didn’t like to answer anonymous calls. Nine times out of ten they were made by crazy people. After a moment’s hesitation she rejected it. She didn’t have the energy to hear any rambling or conspiracy theories right now.

  * * *

  At around three, she went back to Karsten. This time he was slumped forward over his desk with his head in his arms, and there were open packs of painkillers and Resorb on his desk. He had a glass of water, a soluble tablet fizzing away in it.

  “Feels so reassuring to know that you’re responsible for reporting on the security of the nation on a day like this,” Ambra greeted him.

  Karsten looked up at her and grimaced. His face was gray. “By all means, sit down,” he muttered. He forced himself into an upright position, grabbed a pen, and used it to stir his glass. He sipped the liquid and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Ugh, this stuff’s disgusting.”

  “I was completely sober yesterday,” Ambra said helpfully.

  Karsten grabbed his forehead and swallowed a few times. “Don’t you have anything to do over on Breaking News?”

  “Nah, it’s quiet. People are pissed—there’s basically no exciting angle on the fact that New Year’s Eve was unusually quiet.”

  “So what do you want now?”

  “Have you heard about anything that happened in Chad? Anything that could be linked to Swedes?”

  “Like what?”

  She deliberated with herself. “A kidnapping. A rescue mission. Conflict.”

  “When?”

  “This summer.”

  “I can check, but it might take a while. I have a friend with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. There are a few other channels I can check, too. But first I need to use the bathroom,” he said, abruptly getting to his feet and disappearing.

  Deep in thought, Ambra returned to her own desk. Her cell phone was ringing, a private number again. After a moment’s hesitation, she answered: “Ambra, Aftonbladet.”

  “Hi, this is Lotta, you were trying to get hold of me?”

  “I was?” The name Lotta didn’t ring a bell.

  “I work for social services in Kiruna. I had several messages from an Ambra Vinter. Is that you?”

  Ambra stopped mid-movement. “Lotta? As in Anne-Charlotte Jansson?”

  “Yes. I’m actually still on vacation right now, but it sounded urgent.”

  Ambra rushed to start making notes. “Thanks so much for calling back. I’m a reporter with Aftonbladet, and I wanted to ask you about some foster home placements your department has arranged, with one family in particular.”

  “I can’t give out that kind of information just like that.”

  No, she knew that, but she tried anyway. “The Sventin family. Do you know of them?”

  “As I said, technically I’m still on vacation. I just wanted to get back to you.” Her voice sounded much cooler now. Or was Ambra imagining it?

  “I’m grateful you called,” Ambra said, trying to sound as trustworthy as she could.

  “We never talk about cases over the phone. Or by e-mail.”

  Ambra noted that she had left an opening. This Lotta might be willing to talk face-to-face. “I understand. When are you back to work?”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll be in my office.”

  Ambra thanked her again and they said good-bye.

  She glanced at her watch. In a few hours’ time, her working day would be over. Once today’s shift finished, she had five days’ vacation. She twisted and turned the options, but she had already made up her mind.

  She was going back to Kiruna.

  Chapter 28

  Mattias Ceder had been working hard all week, ever since he got home from Kiruna, and the long hours were starting to take their toll. Today was Saturday, supposedly his day off, but it made no difference what day it was, the nation was always under attack. And as a result, Mattias was always working. Despite that, the weekend pace at HQ on Lidingövägen was slower than during the week. The majority of the military leadership worked normal office hours, and everyone there today was like him: workaholics and/or trying to keep up with the never-ending external threats to the country. Terrorists, aggressive nations, and hackers paid no attention to Swedish laws about forty-hour weeks and overtime.

  So far, Mattias had managed to write an analysis of the terror threat linked to a state visit, a report on a suspected foreign spy, and an A4 sheet on modern interrogation techniques that would be sent to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs later that week. It was time for the first of the day’s two interviews. Recruitment often took place on the weekend, and it suited him perfectly.

  He got up and went to greet the woman waiting outside his room.

  “Filippa,” she introduced herself with a firm, dry handshake. She was thin and pale, completely unremarkable, with light brown hair, pale eyes, a knitted sweater, jeans, and a battered old purse.

  “Thanks for coming in on a Saturday,” he said, showing her into the room.

  Filippa was a hacker Mattias had heard of through his contacts at the Royal Institute of Technology. It was Sweden’s elite education center, and a hotbed for computer geniuses. As well as a breeding ground for possible intelligence agents. She sat down opposite him. With her cautious body language and soft voice, she gave the impression of being young and insecure, but Mattias knew better. Fil-lipa was young, just twenty-two, but she already had a degree in computer science and, according to Mattias’s source, there wasn’t a computer system in the world that the young hacker couldn’t get into. All he needed to do was recruit her before someone else did.

  “Okay to start?”

  Filippa nodded, and
Mattias began the interview with the usual, general questions, to sound her out a little. Shyness didn’t necessarily have to be a problem, but nor could it be paralyzing. In his new super team, every member would need to be able to hold their own among other experts. They talked about moral judgments, and Mattias skirted around the subject, asked questions in different ways, wanted to get a sense of what she really thought about right and wrong, life and death, war and peace. Political orientation wasn’t so important—Mattias was a firm believer in mixed groups—but those with prejudices were always impossible to work with. They couldn’t take in the facts but just viewed everything through their black-and-white filters. Dangerous people.

  “Why do you want to work for us?” he asked.

  She flashed him a quick smile. “I like hacking,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s an intellectual challenge. And I’d be able to do it legally here.”

  The interview lasted forty-five minutes, mostly a chance for him to gain a first impression. But Mattias had a good feeling about her.

  “We’ll be in touch about a second interview,” he said as they parted.

  * * *

  He went down to the cafeteria and bought a salad, which he ate back up in his office. He worked another hour and then welcomed the day’s second prospect: a retired cryptologist. At sixty-seven, the man was on the verge of being too old, but Mattias wanted a mixed team. It was true that young people had an intellectual flexibility that older people often lacked. Plus, the young had an innate understanding of how social media worked, which was invaluable in this day and age, when so many threats were made using the Internet and terrorists kept in touch via Facebook groups. But a mixed-age group also resulted in unexpected viewpoints, and a good cryptologist often took many years to form.

  After the interview, Mattias decided to put the sixty-seven-year-old on his maybe list. It would have been great to discuss the two interviews with Tom, he thought, not for the first time that week. Tom was an incredible sounding board. He saw beyond the obvious; he was calm and methodical and could make creative associations and analyses like no one else.

  Mattias moved over to his tiny window. This was his official office. In his other room, the unofficial one, there was no window at all.

  It was dark out, but the courtyard was lit by spotlights. There were a number of discreet guards stationed out there. He still didn’t know what to do about Tom. The trip to Kiruna had always been a long shot, but it did feel like a victory that they’d talked about what happened. The fact was that Tom still hadn’t forgiven him, much less started to trust him. And he was damaged, both physically and mentally, that was also obvious. They hadn’t spoken since he’d left Kiruna. Mattias scratched the bridge of his nose. Maybe he should give up? There were other people he could try. But no one like Tom Lexington. Tom was the best, and Mattias wanted the best. He stared out at the snowy courtyard.

  It was here, at HQ, that he’d betrayed Tom all those years ago. Even today, he could remember the expression on Tom’s face, dreamed about it sometimes, how he had frozen when the extent of his betrayal sank in. Mattias had been so nervous that day that he could barely talk when he got up and uttered the words that protected the unit but ruined his friendship with Tom. In an abrupt voice, he said the words he had been practicing all night:

  “Captain Lexington wasn’t himself even before we left for Afghanistan. He overreacted then, and he’s overreacting now. He hasn’t been himself for a while. We can’t rule out that the perpetrator was armed,” he said.

  Tom stared at him furiously after he spoke. It wasn’t often that Tom got angry, but when he did it was a terrible sight. Like the devil himself had his eyes trained on you. “The perpetrator?” he barked, his voice echoing across the room and the medal-clad men. “There was no fucking perpetrator, it was an unarmed child.”

  Mattias cleared the expression from his face. If Tom would just calm down, maybe he could save them both. “It was dark, it was chaotic. We can’t rule out that he posed a threat,” he said in a convincing tone, trying to make Tom realize that saving the unit was their first priority. What had happened was unfortunate, but there was no point dragging it out. For everyone’s sake.

  But Tom just stared at him, and then he turned to the medal-wearing men who would decide his fate. “We killed a defenseless child. I don’t give a shit about this fucking demonstration of power. What we did was wrong, and you’re so afraid for your own asses that you should be ashamed.” The thing was, he was right. But it made no difference. After that meeting, Tom’s career in the military was over.

  What he had done was necessary, Mattias thought, following a lone conscript with his eyes. But if he was faced with the same dilemma again today, he didn’t know whether he would make the same decision. What he did know was that the nation needed Tom. Somehow, he had to get him onboard.

  * * *

  Mattias read through a few more applications and put those he wanted to interview into a separate pile. He would call them personally on Monday. He opened Twitter, scrolled through his feed, and immediately noticed a troll attack, a fake article by someone paid to spread disinformation by a foreign power. It was well written, seemed perfectly genuine at first glance, and it was spreading fast—even disseminated by so-called Swedish patriots. He scrolled through the discussion and wrote down a few points, made a note of several names he wanted to look into more closely. The sooner the new group came into being, the better. He moved on to Facebook, checked a few of the accounts he had on his radar. So many of the threats to their open society and democracy were made on social media these days. People actively spreading lies and misinformation with the aim of causing damage, stirring up hate and worry. An increasingly large part of his job was devoted to keeping an eye on them, these people who deliberately and systematically undermined the country. This information war went on twenty-four hours a day. The enemy mapped people out, spread articles that caused divisions, played people against one another. It was a classic divide-and-rule strategy, and it worked depressingly well.

  He left the tabs open and paused for a moment with his fingers poised above the keyboard. Eventually, he typed in the address of Jill’s Instagram page. Strictly speaking, there was very little information war going on there, but he couldn’t help it. There was just something about Jill Lopez that fascinated him. She was the polar opposite of the women he usually dated in every respect. Jill was extravagant, almost vulgar at times, uneducated, and extremely visible on social media, about as far from the discreet academics he was most comfortable with as you could get. And yet he couldn’t stop himself from going back to her Instagram page time and time again. Every day, in fact, since he got home from Kiruna.

  He studied her latest posts. She’d performed at Skansen on New Year’s Eve, and now she was in Copenhagen. She really did seem to be constantly on the move. Judging by her pictures, she had performed for the Danish Crown Prince Couple yesterday and been on a shopping trip in the capital today. Most of the images were of her, in different poses and locations, and if it hadn’t been for the amusing, slightly sarcastic captions, he would have found the whole thing incredibly self-obsessed. But during their dinner in Kiruna, she’d explained that it was a way of building her brand, constantly uploading pictures of herself, that it was what her fans and record label demanded.

  Other than the fact that Jill was incredibly attractive, he couldn’t decide what it was he found so fascinating about her. He’d never been particularly interested in beautiful, attention-seeking divas. And that was probably the answer to his question. Because Jill was more than that. She had a kind, self-deprecating side. It was partly visible in her own comments beneath the images, but he’d noticed it back in Kiruna, too. And she had a vulnerability that showed itself from time to time. She wasn’t just some spoiled, glamorous star. She talked easily about the orphanage in Colombia where she spent the first few years of her life, but afterward she had looked away. While they drank expe
nsive champagne, she returned to the unhappy adoption as an amusing anecdote, but then he had seen the looks she exchanged with Ambra, seen the pain the two women shared and probably avoided talking about, even with one another. And on the couch, in front of the roaring fire, she had talked about the online hate she experienced, giving the impression that she took it all in her stride, but no one could be completely unaffected by what she went through.

  Mattias scanned through the comments on her latest uploads. Below some images, there were nearly a thousand. On the most recent selfie from Copenhagen, she had 112 comments and three thousand likes. Most of them were kind, full of hearts and various emojis, but some were also incredibly hostile.

  Your tits are starting to sag.

  You really think you’re something, don’t you, bitch?

  Everyone can tell exactly what she wants.

  He assumed Jill’s team reported the worst of them, but new comments were constantly appearing, so she had no real way of protecting herself. He clicked on one of the worst users, but it was a private account. Of course. Bullies and trolls were cowards, always hiding behind anonymity.

  He frowned. Thought for a moment and then dialed Filippa’s number, told himself it was a good chance to test her abilities on a real-life situation.

  “Could you get into a private Instagram account? A locked one?”

  “Send it over and I’ll do it,” she said.

  Mattias opened three of the worst and sent the links to her. He went to fetch a coffee and an apple, talked to a plainclothes colleague, and by the time he got back Filippa had sent him all the information. Fantastic, he would make sure he looked into it further.