Into a Raging Blaze (30 page)

34

Brussels, Friday, October 7

Some kind of monitoring, a form of hostile activity, was being directed against them. SSI's leadership team was sitting around Bente in her office, listening to Rodriguez. There was no doubt that she and Mikael had been followed on the way to Florian Klause's apartment after they had left the café. The question was whether SSI was the primary target or whether they had gotten caught up in a reconnaissance operation against Klause, or someone else. They had discovered three men and a woman following her and Mikael after they had left the café, said Rodriguez. It was standard procedure to reconnoiter before the Head of SSI had scheduled meetings. The café at Rue Vifquin had been deemed secure; there had been nothing there to raise suspicion. It was when she and Mikael had left the café that they had noticed something was wrong. A man had followed them.

Bente couldn't remember anyone following, but Rodriguez was certain. During the walk to Klause's apartment, they had spotted four people—there were probably more. They were, without doubt, professionals; based on their patterns of movement and the way in which they were coordinated, these people were probably well trained in intelligence work. It had all gone so fast, Rodriguez hadn't had time to contact her or Mikael before they reached the apartment. She hadn't answered her phone either, said Rodriguez with a tired expression. The pursuers had positioned themselves in the area surrounding Klause's apartment. They had probably noticed that the Section had discovered them and chose to abort.

“Did we intercept any radio traffic?” She turned to the Head of Signals Intelligence.

There hadn't been time to locate them. It had all gone so quickly; they were gone before they had managed to contact the cell team to search frequencies, let alone crack encryptions.

“But we have photographs.”

Rodriguez brought up around thirty photos on his laptop. They were taken from the surveillance team's van using a telephoto lens. In one picture, she could see herself and Mikael on the street. Twenty meters behind them was a man in a hoodie. Then another series of pictures of a woman buying a newspaper at a street kiosk that Bente remembered had been opposite the main door to Florian Klause's building. She was thin, dark-haired, wearing a polo shirt and leather jacket. She was standing so that her face was visible in profile. No one that Bente knew, of course. Then photos of a young guy in a denim jacket, wearing headphones, walking along the pavement, presumably on the other side of the street from where Bente and Mikael had been. He was turning his head, as if casting a glance across the street.

“Try to identify them,” said Bente and nodded at the screen. “I want to know who is watching us. Name, employer—whatever we can find. Check with other services. The French. Interpol.”

Mikael nodded and made a note.

They discussed the level of threat against SSI. According to their signals intelligence, there had been nothing to previously suggest that the Section was a target. The physical plant was intact: no tampering with code locks or doors, no intrusions recorded, no unauthorized persons had been into the Section. The premises had been swept just a month ago—no microphones or other hostile equipment had been found in the building or in their server room to the south of the city—and no hostile code in the computer equipment either. No members of staff had shown any signs that could be deemed threatening. It was terrible even to contemplate that someone in the Section might be in pay of another power; Bente knew how loyal everyone was. But she was in charge and the security of
SSI was her top priority. She ordered Mikael to run security checks on all personnel—their e-mails, their phone calls and meetings for the last three months. A tense atmosphere filled the room.

“Do we need to evacuate the office?” She looked at them.

Rodriguez was certain that they had managed to disrupt whatever operation was currently being undertaken against them. The hostile monitoring was also unlikely to have traced them back to the office. No one had followed when they had driven back toward the Section after evacuating from Florian Klause's. She nodded. They had driven at breakneck speed through the city, following a route that Rodriguez had designated for rapid extractions. Three fast car changes, for safety's sake, then back to SSI the long way around. Their address had not been revealed.

But some form of monitoring
had
been ongoing against SSI—or against her, to be more specific. It was entirely possible she had been under surveillance since landing at Brussels airport in the morning. It was entirely possible that they had been waiting for her at the airport and then shadowed her from there, followed her taxi home and then to meet Mikael. The question was—who? She had her suspicions, but said nothing.

Signals Intelligence was going to send the photos to Stockholm and run them through the FRA's databases. Perhaps they might get a hit on something. Apart from that, Bente wanted all staff to minimize their movements. No meetings around the city for the next forty-eight hours unless there were crucial operational reasons to do so. No movements on foot. Contact by cell with family members and other outsiders was forbidden as of now, for two days. Then they would conduct a review. With regard to radio communications, they were to be kept to a minimum: no more talk on the Section's wavelengths than was absolutely necessary. An additional security check of the premises would be carried out. She turned to the Head of Liaison and asked him to contact the Belgian police to try to secure surveillance footage and other material where the hostile operatives might have been caught. She also instructed him to see whether Belgium's security service had any hits on the people
photographed by Rodriguez. As they went through the motions, she began to feel calm. They were safe, for now.

The meeting broke up. Mikael stayed behind while the others left the room. Once they were alone, he got out the rumpled envelope and put it on her desk. She sat quietly for a while and thought. So someone was watching them. That poor young apprentice probably needed police protection, it occurred to her. But that couldn't be helped; they couldn't look after him. She looked slowly through the pictures Rodriguez had left.

“I think we've been very naïve, Mikael.”

She told him how she had begun to have a clear sense that things were not right while she was in Stockholm, and that feeling had only grown. She explained, without being certain whether Mikael believed her. It didn't matter right now. She needed to say what she was thinking to someone she trusted, needed to get the thoughts out, hear the words so that they became real, and then get Mikael's assessment.

Fact one: the British knew about Jean Bernier. They knew about him from the start. He was a problem for them, just like Klause said. He was a cog in the machinery, pulling the wrong way, and over time had come to pose a real problem for them. Jean Bernier contacted Carina Dymek, by methods unknown, and they met.

“On the 22nd of September, here in Brussels,” Mikael interrupted.

“Yes. And I think Dymek is telling the truth. Jean Bernier gave her the EIS report.”

“And she shared it with a few people in the Ministry of Justice,” said Mikael promptly. “With her partner, among others, who has been shown to have close links to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“Yes. So they say.”

He looked sharply at her. “What do you mean?”

“Mikael, how do you know that?”

“What? How do I know what?” he said in hard tone of voice, as if he didn't really want to continue this conversation. He was close to switching off, ceasing to listen to her.

She said lightly, “How do you know it's true?”

He flinched and looked at her with an austere expression around his mouth. “Well, among other things, thanks to the British intelligence we've received—”

“Not among other things,” she interrupted him. “
Only
thanks to the British intelligence. Do we have any other source that points in the same direction? Even one? Have the Germans or the Danes got any information like that? Have the French? We don't actually know anything except what the Brits have told us.”

“But . . . why would . . .” He stared at her, open-mouthed. “MI6 are reliable. We've evaluated their information.”

“Mikael, listen to me.”

She explained that, when they had found the IRC channel, MI6 had said they didn't know anything about Jean Bernier—didn't know who he was. When it turned out he was a civil servant at the Commission, directly involved in the work on the EIS report, she had become suspicious. She had begun to wonder. The Brits were deeply involved in the EIS proposal; they knew every single official at the EU Commission who was working on the proposal, and naturally they must have known who Jean Bernier was—so why had they claimed they didn't?

“He was problem for them,” she said. “Klause confirmed that. And yet the Brits said that Bernier was unknown to them. Then, just after we found the IRC channel, they used that to suggest Jean Bernier was a target for terrorists. Convenient, don't you think? But odd at the same time. Why just him—a normal civil servant at the Commission? Why would he be a target for terrorism? And why did we find out that he was a target, precisely when we did?”

“Because they didn't know before.”

“No. Because they hadn't had to invent it before then.”

“So you're saying they're lying—the British are lying?”

“I don't believe their intelligence.”

Mikael looked at her as if she were crazy. His slightly condescending, slightly amused expression irritated her and made her want to hurt him.

“Do you remember when we found out that Dymek had leaked the report? I met Green that day,” she said, with a sense of cruel satisfaction as she saw Mikael's surprised expression, which he quickly tried to hide. He didn't know about the meeting.

“Oh?”

“Green was angry—or more like pissed off—and he said nothing about terrorist threats. He was pissed off about the
leak
, Mikael. He wanted us to stop it, as fast as we fucking could.”

“The leak was a problem—we thought that too,” said Mikael with a shrug of his shoulders.

“That's not the point,” she said and wished for a second that she didn't have to say another word, that she didn't have to explain, that she could just transfer the contents of her brain to him, wordlessly, through some kind of telepathy. “They were worried about the leak, because the leak was the real problem. And still is.”

Mikael looked at her. She had his attention now.

“Green was worried about the leak—genuinely concerned. Then Wilson turns up in Stockholm and suddenly we have a terrorist threat on our hands. I think . . .” she said and stopped herself. What she was about to say surprised even her.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that the Brits began to invent a story after my meeting with Green. They were worried about the report. Bernier was a vocal opponent of EIS and the entire report prepared by the Commission. He gave it to Dymek. Then something happened, something that forced them to change tactics. So they began inventing. You know they're the masters of deceptive operations, Mikael. They can do disinformation—they're almost as good as the Russians at it. And a rule of thumb is that, once you've begun to make up a lie, you have to stick to it. The Brits invented something and now they have to keep going with it. Think, Mikael,” she said with emphasis. “Apart from the letter from Akim Badawi, what intelligence do we actually have about this mythical movement within the Muslim Brotherhood? What do we actually have that we didn't hear from the British first?”

“We've got lots of data,” Mikael burst out. “I don't understand what you're talking about.”

“But apart from the letter?” she said calmly. “Do we have
anything
that stands up by itself, without the Brits?”

Mikael made an attempt to protest. His face was tense; he was staring out of the window, as if he was looking for something to say that would fob her off. She knew he appreciated the British and the mere thought that they had provided them with intelligence that had been fabricated was humiliating. They were SSI; they ought to be in control. No one wanted to feel cheated. She knew Mikael—he hated losing.

“I just meant the British are controlling our analysis,” she continued. “I don't trust them. They're holding things back.”

“So does everyone.”

“They're lying to us.”

“How do we know?” he exclaimed. “Their intelligence makes sense.”

“You know it doesn't, Mikael.”

“It's plausible . . .”

“We only have what the British have told us. Nothing else,” she hissed. “We don't have a chance of checking whether what they have said is actually true.”

He raised his hands in a gesture: I give up.

“Listen,” she said. “Our entire case is built on British intelligence. We're being drip-fed, constantly. And we acknowledge that they're running the investigation. We had a case together with Kempell. A leak—a job for Counterespionage. But then Wilson turned up, gave us the letter, gave us an elegant analysis and directed the investigation to Counterterrorism. Then we found Bernier, and—abracadabra—they suddenly declare that Bernier, about whom they had initially told us they knew nothing, must be a target for a terrorist attack. The IRC channel is linked to the Ahwa group—a link which no one else can confirm. It comes at a convenient moment and explains everything. They're filling in our horizon, Mikael. They don't want us to see anything.”

“Yes, but what would that be?” he burst out. “What?”

“I don't know. It's normally you who is the skeptic. They're lying about Jean Bernier. And I wonder which other facts they have adjusted. It's something you should be asking too.”