Into a Raging Blaze (23 page)

25

Stockholm, Monday, October 3

A few hours had passed and everyone at Counterterrorism now knew that Dymek was gone. People without training rarely managed to disappear like this, but Dymek was out of sight. It was surprising, and ominous. It probably meant that she had help, that there were individuals around her who were trained to handle this kind of situation.

“Hi, Bente.” Hamrén came up to her. “Come with us. We're going for coffee.”

They went to a coffee machine. Despite being in the middle of an operation, the floor was in an evening lull. Only the people working on the Ahwa case, as it was now being called, were still working at their desks.

The team had searched the city center, swept the large thoroughfares, but even after just an hour it was clear they wouldn't find her. They decided to stop. Dymek was gone; it was better to quickly change tactics.

Bente pressed the button for a black coffee. A weak headache had begun to pulse above her right eyebrow. She needed caffeine.

“We lost Dymek,” she said. “A shame.”

Hamrén glanced at her, as if he thought she was trying to point the finger at him for a failed operation. He was on his guard. “We'll find her.”

They needed Dymek. Dymek was their way in to Jamal Badawi. She was probably the only one who could give them a better understanding of the Ahwa group and the connection to Badawi. And
a better understanding of herself, for that matter. Islamist groups were closed environments; it took a long time to get into them and win the trust of such people. As a non-Muslim, it was almost impossible. But Dymek was already there; she probably already had their trust. At the very least, she knew more than Counterterrorism did about Jamal Badawi.

“I don't like to ask you for this,” Hamrén said.

“You mean you don't like using the Section's resources?”

“Yes, yes. The Section.”

He was tense. She understood why: letting SSI into the investigation was acknowledging that his own branch couldn't manage the situation alone. But he had no choice. The Security Service had no right to request signals intelligence against Swedish targets. Signals intelligence was managed by the military and directed at external threats, abroad. That deficiency was the reason for the SSI's existence—to be a silent resource shared by the Security Service and the FRA, which made it possible for Säpo to listen in to Swedish data traffic.

She smiled at him. “Of course.”

“Good. Good.”

Hamrén nodded toward a chubby young technician who was sat spinning on his office chair while writing at his computer. She could talk to that guy over there; he would help her with the practical stuff. Hamrén downed his coffee and returned to the office area.

The Head of the Section's signals intelligence unit was at home. Bente could hear the noise of the TV in the background, then the abrupt silence as he hurried into an adjoining room. She explained the situation in brief. They needed targeted searches against Carina Dymek. “And Jamal Badawi,” she added. “There will be data coming in from Stockholm, and possibly London. I don't quite know what, but names, technical parameters. Feed in everything you get. This is top priority, so call in as many people as you need.”

When she had hung up, she sent a text message to Mikael giving him a three-sentence situation report, then refilled her coffee
cup and approached the technician that Hamrén had pointed at. He was in deep concentration as he dissected Dymek's hard drive, and didn't notice Bente until she was right beside him. When he found out who she was, he quickly began to tell her which measures were currently being taken: IP numbers were being found, MAC addresses, routing tables, and hundreds of other technical parameters connected to Dymek's residential address, her work computer, and private Internet subscription. They had the work computer, but unfortunately not Dymek's private machine. The technician shook his head. A real shame. They had submitted requests to all the large telecoms operators to be notified if a new customer called Dymek turned up. They were already tracking her bank card. Similar measures were in place against Jamal Badawi.

“We're expecting a lot of information during the next twenty-four hours . . .”

“Excellent.” Bente gave him a look to tell him that was fine for now. The technician nodded and looked at her uncertainly.

She handed over the contact number for the Head of Signals Intelligence at the Section. The technician looked at the number, taking it in carefully, as if it was an advanced algorithm. The Section was something different, something you hoped to become a part of but for which few were sufficiently qualified. It would be a pleasure, he said. He lifted the phone and made a brief call, instructed some colleagues and hung up. They were ready to begin.

He pushed a chair toward her. She sat down and watched in silence while he began to enter new selectors. There were special templates that were used to enter search terms in the databases for signals intelligence collection. They were stored there, together with millions upon millions of names of people, places, numbers, technical codes, and specifications that were, for various reasons, of interest to the military or the Security Service and were used to filter the flood of information that was sucked into the servers of the Armed Forces twenty-four seven. You could also search the digital and analog traffic flowing through cables across continents. Somewhere they would find a hit, it was just a matter of time.

When she got up from her seat, it was almost midnight. A group of technicians and analysts were still working at top speed on formulating selectors that they would then feed into the Section. She had spent a few hours reading the British intelligence reports, pointing out names and words that were relevant to the surveillance, but her presence was soon superfluous. Signals intelligence was heavy on the technology, and she was no technician. She knew nothing about software in cells or computers, had no idea how you created secret doors to enter other people's e-mail accounts or how you tracked a website log-in via cookies. Her speciality was the motivation and behavior of people.

Dymek was in flight. Perhaps she would stay still for the next forty-eight hours. Logistics were crucial in these situations. An individual with somewhere to hide and someone to arrange food, clothing, protection, perhaps even a new identity, had a far greater chance of getting away. Something told her that Dymek hadn't left the country. They would have known if she had tried.

It was sad, an intelligent young woman ruining her prospects like this. And Jamal Badawi, employed at the Ministry of Justice—diligent, good reports, no complaints. What made a young man like that fall in with a crowd of terrorists? There were models for understanding profiles like that, yet there was still something fundamentally incomprehensible about people, who had all the best opportunities, rejecting them, turning their backs on society, and throwing away their lives.

Bente passed a row of civil servants, all sitting at their computers, unmoving, and she couldn't help but stop. Different, grainy sequences of film flickered on their screens. Counterterrorism and parts of the National Bureau of Investigation were processing a mass of surveillance footage from central Stockholm. If Dymek had been caught on film, they would find her before morning. Stockholm wasn't big.

The fresh, humid air grabbed hold of her coat as she came out of the office. She took a deep breath. The October darkness lay tightly between the buildings. At the crossing outside the Security Service
building, the traffic lights were blinking yellow. Only on a cold autumn night in Stockholm could city streets be this deserted.

Dymek was gone. But a person on the run was forced to hide every day, every hour and minute; the person hunting her only needed one moment to find her.

They needed so little: one word in a phone call, a transaction, a card payment, a brief visit to one of the web pages now being watched. It was time for the machines to do their work.

All that remained for Bente to do was one of the key occupations of her profession, which it had taken her a long time to master but which she had begun to appreciate more and more over time. She had to wait.

The ability to be still, in anticipation, waiting for the right moment and then knowing it was time to act—that was an art. It required calm, distance, and an ability to see the big picture. It required patience and an ability to endure uncertainty. But she was used to it. When the right moment came, she would know—and be ready.

26

Stockholm, Monday, October 3

The apartment thronged with people she didn't know. The loud music enveloped her in her chosen spot by one of the speakers. She looked around, sipping the beer someone had handed her. Greger had vanished. The last time she had glimpsed him, he had been in the kitchen, talking about something to do with computers to a guy with a clean-shaven head who was as fat as a Buddha.

She hadn't even met Alex, the host of the party. She and her friends were old hackers, Greger had told her on the way over in the taxi. They were different, lived an existence far from the nine-to-five of everyday life. Alex had done completely wild things. Greger had excitedly begun to tell her about when they had tried to get into NASA's systems. Carina had refrained from asking questions; she didn't want know.

In the middle of the floor, several people had begun to dance to the music. A heavy bass pulsed between the walls in the small apartment. There was an unbelievable crowd; the entire living room was a mass of bodies moving in the darkness. She watched them while she finished her beer, before forcing her way into the kitchen, getting a new one, and then changing her mind and pouring a large whiskey from one of the bottles on the counter. She still had no job to go to in the morning and might as well get a little drunk. Tomorrow, when she had slept and things looked clearer, she would call Jamal.

Around her in the small kitchen, people were pressed together, talking animatedly. She sat down at the kitchen table. The whiskey stung her throat. It was good, smoky. She got another.

“I'll have one, too, please.”

She looked up. A guy with long blond bangs was standing next to her.

“There aren't enough girls who drink hard liquor. Girls should drink more hard liquor in general. Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

“What's your name?”

“Carina.”

“Martin.”

“Hi, Martin.”

He swayed but regained his balance by leaning against a cupboard door. “How do you know Alex?”

“I don't know her. I came with Greger.”

“Ah, Greger. I know him. We do stuff together.” He grinned. “It's cool that so many of us are here, isn't it?”

“What?”

“Don't you know about Alex's site?” he burst out. “It's sick. I thought everyone knew about it.”

“What's it about then?”

“Different projects. We build game environments. Things like that.”

Alex, he explained, worked at EA but did fantastic things with open source code as well. EA? Yes, Electronic Arts. They made computer games. He looked at her in amusement. “You've no idea what I'm talking about, do you?”

“No.”

He smiled.

“No, I know nothing about computers.”

“But you drink whiskey; that's a good start.” He reached for the bottle and sploshed a little more into his glass and then hers.

She ought to say no, but part of her wanted to get hammered. She held out her glass. It felt good to talk about something completely different; for a short time, she had gotten away from all the thoughts whirring in her head. For the first time in years, she had no idea what she should do and, right now, she didn't have the strength to think about it.

“What do you do, then?”

“I work at the MFA.”

“Cool.”

It just slipped out, an old habit. It wasn't even true any longer, she thought bitterly. Like so many others, he reacted with a mixture of curiosity and reverent distance, as if, in his eyes, she had been transformed into some other, alien being. The worst sort were the ones who began to ask her about current foreign affairs, as if she was a mouthpiece for the government, but he didn't seem to be one of them.

“So, what . . . ? You're an ambassador?”

She laughed. “No, no. I've been fired.”

It was a silly thing to say and she regretted it immediately. The guy looked at her somewhat vacantly, unsure whether she was joking. He drained his whiskey.

“Oh. Fuck. What a drag.”

She nodded and said it was all right. She asked what he did, in an attempt to change the subject. He was a developer at a company. Developed systems for logistics. He shrugged his shoulders and looked around; for a brief moment they hovered in a strained silence, surrounded by the roaring party.

She was grateful when a girl, who had been mixing a drink, leaned forward and said, “Are you Carina?”

“Yes.”

“Hi. I'm Alex.” She proffered a hand. “Join me; I'm going out for a smoke.”

It felt good to get out on to the balcony. The tempo of the party had increased; the music was beating against the windows of the apartment. Sooner or later, someone would be knocking on the door to complain, she thought.

It was chilly outside. From the balcony, it was possible to see the center of the suburb of Fruängen, the darkened shops, and the subway station: a pale, neon installation with platforms that curved into the darkness. In the abrupt silence, she could hear the humming of a train in the station.

“Thanks for having me.”

“Of course. Friends are always welcome.”

Alex was a girl you took notice of. Short and toned, she was dressed in baggy jeans and a large gray T-shirt with a skull embroidered across the chest. She had a kind of serenity about her that Carina almost envied, a low-key assurance that demanded to be taken seriously. Alex dragged on the cigarette, moved her thick, dark hair to one side with an indolent head movement, and looked at Carina.

“So you want to find a dude in Brussels?”

“Yes. I need to meet him.”

“What's so special about him?”

“He gave me a document,” she said and stopped, unsure how she should summarize the last few days. What she'd experienced had been so unexpected that even now she occasionally felt like it had happened to someone else. “I had problems afterward. I need to find him and sort them out.”

Alex nodded. “Greger said you'd been fired.” She puffed on the cigarette. “I normally run a tight ship on my site. But he asked me, and I thought it sounded . . . interesting.”

She began to thank Alex for her help, but Alex made a small, impatient gesture, brushing away the words.

“It's not entirely legal, but I'm sure you know that.” Alex looked at her sternly, then laughed. “Not that I'm bothered. Just so you know.”

“I understand.”

She shivered; it was cold outside. Alex didn't seem affected by the chill.

“You really want to get hold of this guy.”

“It's my only chance. They threw me out of my job, and this afternoon the police came to my house. But I haven't done anything. Only he can tell me what the hell is going on and explain to the people at the MFA that I haven't done anything wrong.”

“We'll find him.”

She met Alex's gaze; it was hard and clear.

“Politicians don't give a damn about normal people,” Alex said. “Not really. I was part of the campaign against the FRA legislation and it was disgusting how much the politicians lied. They said that they cared about citizens' privacy and that was why they were voting for the FRA legislation. Do you understand? These people lie; it's their job. That report you got, the EU proposal, is just an example of how they try to control everything. So, no, if you're wondering—I don't have any problem helping you.”

Alex stubbed out her cigarette against the balcony rail.

A tall, skinny girl danced up to them when they came back inside. She hugged Alex and said something Carina didn't hear through the music. It was past midnight; the party had begun in earnest.

“There you are.”

Greger plodded across the room. “What's up?” He looked cheerfully at them.

“We're planning a world revolution.”

“That's good.” He laughed. “How are you? Do you feel better?”

She smiled, nodded. She did feel better. Something about the way Alex spoke had made her feel calm. She wasn't alone. She felt like things would be resolved, even if she didn't know how. She finished her whiskey.

Somewhere during the evening, a gap in time appeared. Carina clearly remembered standing and talking to Alex and Greger. Then she was offered another glass of whiskey, and spent a long time in the kitchen talking to three guys, but she couldn't remember what they looked like or what they had talked about. For the first time in several days, she forgot about the Ministry, the report, everything to do with her life. She danced for hours. Time disappeared. She didn't remember when everyone left; rather, she only noticed they had gone when the apartment was so empty that Alex was wandering around picking up empties, while a few guests lingered, talking. Greger was there, and a big guy with piercings. Carina was lying on the sofa and could hear their low voices while the apartment flew
around above her in a slow spiral. She was so drunk. It was nice to lie there and close her eyes.

At some point—it must have been early morning—she awoke with her heart pounding and a feeling of desperation coursing through her body. The room was empty and dark. Around her, empty bottles and cans glimmered. Someone had thoughtfully put a blanket over her. When she tried to get up, the apartment capsized and threatened to overturn her, so she lay back down. She had shooting pains in her legs. What was the time? That thought and the thought of how she would feel the next day then appeared like small, sobering glimpses before everything vanished into a roaring, wordless blackout.