Into a Raging Blaze (26 page)

“I can check with the Brits.”

“No,” she said. “Hold off on that.”

“Okay.”

Mikael fell silent.

“What does the EU Commission say?”

“They were shocked and so on. But one of our sources in their HR department checked the records for us. Bernier had been disconnected from his work for the last few months—signed off on sick leave several times.” Mikael leafed through some papers at his desk in Brussels. “And he had received warnings. There's a note here that says he was going to be reassigned.”

“Good. Carry on looking into his background. See if you can find a colleague willing to talk.”

Mikael was quick. That was why she liked him—for his ability to read situations, to see potential ways to access new information. He had already let one of the signals intelligence operatives at the Section discreetly hack into the EU Commission's server to search Bernier's e-mail account. There was probably a colleague, someone Bernier had worked with a lot. But it would take a little time. They
had tried to build a timeline of Jean Bernier's last week alive, but it was slow work. The Belgian police were suspicious of organizations like SSI. Mikael would get in touch when he had more.

Dead for two weeks. She went inside to pay for her gas and bought a coffee that was so hot she could barely keep hold of the paper cup as she came back out to the car. A heavy raindrop hit the windshield with a loud, hollow thud as she got behind the wheel. Then another a second later.

The rain hammered on the car roof, ran down the windows. The windshield wipers didn't have time to shovel aside all the water. She got stuck in a jam a few hundred meters from the Security Service building. While she slowly crept closer, the downpour got worse and rattled furiously against the window. Water ran across the pavements in wide rivers and formed huge pools at the congested crossroads. All traffic was at a standstill; all people had turned into crouching, hurrying figures.

Bente leaned against the steering wheel. She knew there was no point getting worked up by the traffic; it was, just like the weather, a power over which no one could prevail. She had called Hamrén on his cell but he hadn't answered. The nauseating anxiety was back, stronger now. The car crept through the traffic. Jean Bernier was dead, so why was he a target for a planned terror attack? Why was he being mentioned at all in the chatter? Once again, she was blind.

The office was deserted. Tables everywhere were empty, desks tidied. It occurred to her that the department was going to have a big meeting this afternoon: a complete review of the situation. Presumably they were all behind the closed double doors at the other end of the floor. Counterterrorism was preparing for a major operation against Dymek and Badawi, she knew that. During the last twenty-four hours they had identified the Swedish network of people with connections to the Brotherhood. They were on high alert. All physical addresses were established; the targets were under surveillance; Counterterrorism was ready to strike. Ironically enough, the only
thing missing was Dymek. Neither Hamrén's people nor the Brits had managed to locate her since she had disappeared.

Bente crossed the floor and stopped in front of the door. Voices were audible as a subdued murmur. She ought to be there, but it couldn't be helped. The meeting had already begun. It would look wrong. It would be stupid to provoke Hamrén again by entering now, when she wasn't welcome, anyway. Better to keep a low profile. For a second, she missed Brussels, her colleagues at the Section.

It probably benefited Hamrén and Counterterrorism to keep her and all the others outside, so that they could take all the credit for the collaboration with the British and show the top bosses that they mattered, that they needed more resources next year too. Counterterrorism had almost quadrupled in size in the last few years. Hamrén was an ambitious bastard, but a skillful one too. He would probably go far.

She sat down at a computer, logged in and brought up the files, quickly searching through the file structure: Dymek, Brussels, Ahwa. Somewhere, there had to be more about Bernier. The only thing related to Bernier was a British intelligence report and the MFA's record of their conversation with Dymek when they suspended her. Bente flicked through the documents; the Ministry paper she had read, but the British intelligence report was new. She printed them, gathered together her papers and left the silent floor without having been seen by anyone.

The guest apartment was absorbed in darkness. She still hadn't had time to unpack. Her suitcase was lying open in the middle of the floor, a curious-looking beast in the darkness. She turned on the lights and put down the papers on the coffee table. It was still raining. Water ran down the tall panes of glass, gushing in sloping vertical lines from a hazy, gray sky. There were around thirty meters between where she stood at the window and the building opposite. No one was visible in any of the windows. The Section's temporary apartment looked good, but was sparsely furnished. It was better than staying at a hotel, and safer—safe connections, all rooms swept for
microphones and other hostile installations—but you couldn't be too careful with your conversations; there were other apartments surrounding it and the walls hadn't been reinforced. This was no place to receive visitors or talk about things of a sensitive nature. It was an apartment for eating and sleeping in, for being alone in.

She went back into the hallway and found an umbrella by the coat stand. It was time to work, but first she needed something to eat—she was starving. She was dreaming of a glass of wine—a glass of red, and the chance to see some normal people. She needed to get out, let some air into her head.

A few blocks from the apartment, close to Östermalmstorg, she remembered that there was an Italian restaurant. Just as she was opening the door and about to move into the stairwell, she heard someone coming up the stairs and quickly closed the door. She didn't want to be seen here; the apartment couldn't be connected to a face. She waited until the steps had faded away and she heard the rattle of a door being opened and closed a few stories higher in the building, before opening the door again.

The rain bounced against the pavement and the empty street was transformed into a glittering, hazy surface of splashing water. She jogged, but got wet anyway, in spite of the umbrella. The restaurant was unexpectedly busy. Sitting around circular tables with flickering candles, there were families eating and watching the rain; children ran between the tables and got in the way of the servers hurrying to and fro with large pizzas between the kitchen and the various parties. Behind her, a young couple tumbled through the door, tittering with laughter, their hair dripping with rainwater. Bente had really only intended to buy a pizza to take out, meaning to eat it in the apartment, but the restaurant was pleasant and lively, and she decided to stay. Sometimes it was better to take a break from work and come back to it later, when thoughts had had time to rest.

After a short time, a waiter spotted her and secured one of the last tables for her. Perhaps it was a risk, eating dinner like this, so close to the secure apartment. She couldn't help but think like that, but couldn't say why it would be risky. She was just so used to
thinking in that way. She constantly tried not to be noticed, not to leave traces in the consciousness of others—even eating dinner in a pizza restaurant set off a small alarm somewhere inside her. Regulations said that one should avoid habits that made it easy to recognize and track employees of the Section. But she knew she was unnecessarily cautious. Presumably, no one would notice her here. She ordered a glass of red and a
quattro stagioni
, then sat nibbling on the grissini sticks left by the server in a small basket, while she amused herself by observing those around her. A young couple. Some businessmen. At the table furthest from the door, a family.

The young couple in their early twenties were celebrating something, judging by the expensive sparkling wine they had ordered and the way in which they clinked glasses. The man was in high spirits and talked constantly while the woman listened with small smiles and nods. The businessmen weren't as interesting; they seemed mostly to be conducting polite conversation while cautiously eating their pasta. The family comprised a couple in their forties, their three children romping around the room and an older couple who looked like maternal grandparents. The grandfather was happily joking with the grandchildren, which made his daughter, who was trying to get the children to calm down, annoyed. Bente couldn't help but observe people like this, at a distance. It was one of the reasons she had started out at Counterterrorism almost twenty years ago. There was rest to be had in watching others without having to get involved. People's behavior revealed their inner selves. For a long period, she silently followed what was going on around her in the restaurant, and was so engrossed that she almost jumped when the server discreetly placed her pizza before her.

While she ate, she went through the Dymek case. Even if she accepted that Badawi really had recruited Dymek, there was still this business with Jean Bernier. If Jean Bernier had been dead for two weeks, it meant that the time of death had been around the end of September. They had found him at his cottage that he and his wife had rented for many years. That his death was being written off
as natural causes meant nothing. There were a number of ways to make death appear natural.

Back in the apartment, she sat down with the papers again and leafed through the MFA's notes from the last conversation they had held with Dymek, rereading it. At the end of the short memo, she found a chronology of events:
September 22nd—desk officer Dymek participates in the COSEC council working-group meeting
.

That was the day that she said she had met a person who had given her the report. Dymek claimed not to know who the man was—that she didn't even know his surname—just that a man called Jean had given her the EIS report. Bente stopped herself: Jean. Dymek had been very certain that he had been called Jean, which was all she had really been able to say about the man she said had given her the report. Jean Bernier. Naturally, it was him; it made sense. He “just appeared” after the meeting. He had given her a report.

Bente got out her diary. She belonged to the shrinking number of people who still didn't use digital calendars. At the Section, they were careful about things like that. Digital notes were vulnerable to hacking; old paper diaries just needed to be locked in a safe. The 22nd of September was a Thursday. Jean Bernier had, in that case, still been alive at lunchtime.

If Carina Dymek had told the truth. If there really had been a Jean, and if he had really been Jean Bernier. She tested the idea. Until now, she hadn't deemed Dymek to be believable, but there was something in the way she expressed herself, so naïvely and stubbornly, that wasn't rational if she was truly hiding something. On the other hand, people who withheld the truth often tried to protect themselves by telling the part of the truth they couldn't deny, while denying all else till blue in the face, lying if necessary. But Dymek didn't give that impression. She hadn't been afraid, hadn't tried to humor her bosses. She could have dodged questions and explained things away. But she hadn't changed her story, even when she found out she was being suspended. If Dymek had told the truth, she had met Jean Bernier that Thursday, the 22nd, after the meeting in Brussels. She received the report, whereupon they went their separate ways.
Perhaps Jean Bernier had gone to his cottage afterward, on the same day, possibly, or a day or so later, and died there shortly afterward. Had Dymek accompanied him there? Could Dymek be his killer? No, nothing suggested that was the case. She had caught a flight home to Stockholm on Thursday evening, just two hours after the meeting. There were even minutes from the meeting that clearly showed Sweden had made several contributions to discussions during the afternoon session. Dymek hadn't left the meeting. She wouldn't have had time to get to the cottage in northern Belgium and then back to Brussels in time to catch her flight, even if she had gone straight there and back, stopping for no more than a minute or two. Mikael had texted a link to a map of where Bernier had been found, in the middle of a nature reserve north of Ghent.

She got up and wandered around the apartment, before coming to a stop in front of the window. If Dymek was telling the truth, then Jean Bernier was completely unknown to her, someone who had appeared completely unexpectedly—a stranger.

She reached for the British intelligence reports and slowly read through the one about the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ahwa group again. Here they were, talking about an Islamist network within the Brotherhood, its structure and its key persons. The British intelligence services had clearly had them under observation for some time, since they suspected they posed a threat to Europe. The report was long—over fifty pages—and described, among other things, persons in the Badawi family living in Cairo and London, which made it clear they had used wiretaps, e-mail intercepts. The Brits had carefully documented regular contact between people in the circle surrounding Jamal Badawi's uncle and Jamal Badawi himself. According to the report, there were e-mails that they considered to be coded messages. Jamal Badawi, said the report, had worked systematically for a long time to get inside the Swedish administration, into the Government Offices and the Ministry of Justice, in order to wait, like a sleeper agent, until the right moment. Carina Dymek, stated the report, had been that opportunity.

It said it there, in black and white. According to the report, Badawi had contacted Carina Dymek and started a relationship in conjunction with beginning to plan an attack against a summit meeting. MI6 noted in the report that Dymek was probably well suited for the needs of the Ahwa group. She was tied to Badawi, the nephew of a well-respected figure in the Ahwa group, by their relationship. Her name was clean, no one knew who she was: she was the perfect
clean skin
. Badawi had won Dymek through courting her. He had then built up a close relationship with her through sexual contact and, in that way, kept Dymek close to him. The relationship had been built over a longer period of time, following the Russian method, said the report. Ensuring she was compromised by asking her to leak classified material was a step toward making her dependent on Jamal Badawi and therefore more useful to the group in Cairo. Getting her to become an accomplice to the planning of the attack was also not difficult, as her bond to Jamal Badawi had grown strong. She was probably unaware of the Ahwa group's ultimate plans. The report suggested that Dymek had probably been chosen carefully by the group in Cairo. The British had, in some unfathomable way, managed to find out that she had strong opinions about EU policies toward Europe's southern neighbors. At several EU meetings she had voiced strong criticism of “the EU's colonial overtones in relation to the Arab nations.” An anonymous source in Brussels was cited.