Annika turned around and looked into the gloom. "Where?" she said, bewildered.
Beata smiled. "We didn't exactly put up a large sign," she said. "If we had, the public could have found it. Over there in the corner. Come on, I'll show you."
They walked further in under the roof, Annika blinking to get accustomed to the darkness.
"Here it is," Beata said.
Annika stood in front of a gray iron door, hardly noticeable in the gloom. A large iron bar lay across the door. It looked like it would be a door to a refuse room or something similar. Next to the iron door was a small box, which Beata opened. Annika saw her take out a card from her coat pocket and pull it through a swipe machine.
"Do you have an entry card to this place?" Annika said with surprise.
"Everyone does," Beata said and removed the bar.
"What are you doing?" Annika asked.
"Opening the door," Beata said and pulled the iron door open. The hinges didn't make a sound. Inside the darkness was complete.
"But can you do that, aren't the alarms primed?" Annika said, feeling an uneasiness creep up on her.
"No, the alarms won't go off during the day. They're hard at it upstairs, repairing the arena. Come inside, and I'll show you something strange. Hang on, I'll just switch on the light."
Beata turned a big switch next to the exit and a row of fluorescents flickered on. The passage had concrete walls, and the floor was covered with yellow linoleum. The ceiling height was around seven feet. The passage stretched straight ahead for about twenty yards and then veered to the left and disappeared up toward the Olympic stadium. Annika took a deep breath and started walking. She turned around and saw Beata pull the door to.
"Regulations say it mustn't be left open," Beata said and smiled again.
Annika returned the smile, turned around, and continued walking down the passage. Should she be doing this?
"Is it up here?" she asked.
"Yes, just around the bend."
Annika felt her blood pumping. In spite of herself, she thought this was exciting. She walked quickly and heard the echo of her heels in the tunnel. Further along, around the bend a pile of trash appeared.
"There's something there!" she said and turned around to Beata.
"That's what I wanted to show you. It's really curious."
Annika secured her bag on her shoulder and jogged up to the pile. It was a mattress, two simple garden stools, a folding table, and a cooler. Annika walked up to the things and studied them.
"Someone's been sleeping here," she said, and just then she spotted the box with the dynamite. It was small and white and the name "Minex" was printed on the side. She gasped, and at the same instant felt something being thrown around her neck. Her hands flew up to her neck, but she couldn't grab hold of the rope. She tried screaming, but the noose was already too tight. She started pulling and tugging, tried to run. She fell to the floor, desperately trying to crawl out of the noose, but that only caused it to be pulled even tighter.
The last thing she saw before everything went black was Beata fading in and out of focus, the rope in her hands, hovering over her, the concrete ceiling above her head.
* * *
The evacuation of the newspaper offices was comparatively fast and smooth. The fire alarm was turned on and in nine minutes the whole building was vacated. The last man to leave was the news editor, Ingvar Johansson, who said he had more important things to do than practice the fire drill. Only when the editor-in-chief had bawled at him down the phone did he leave his post, under protest.
The staff was relatively calm. They knew nothing of the bomb being targeted at one of their colleagues and were treated to coffee and sandwiches in the canteen of an adjoining office block. Meanwhile, the police bomb squad searched all the areas belonging to the paper. Anders Schyman suddenly realized that his migraine had disappeared, the blood vessels had contracted, and the pain was gone. He was sitting with his secretary and the chief telephone operator in an office behind the kitchen in the adjacent building. Getting hold of Annika's husband had turned out to be easier said than done. The switchboard at the Association of Local Authorities had closed at one o'clock and no one at the paper had Thomas's direct number. Nor did they have his cellphone number. None of the services, neither Telia, Comviq, nor Europolitan had the right Thomas Samuelsson among their subscribers. Nor did Anders Schyman know which daycare center they had their children in. His secretary was phoning around to all the daycare centers in District 3 on Kungsholmen, asking for the Bengtzon children. What she didn't know was that the daycare center didn't give out information about Annika's children to anyone. They weren't even on the telephone lists that were handed out among the other parents. After the articles on the Paradise foundation, Annika had received death threats, and since then both she and Thomas were careful to whom they handed out their address. The daycare staff were in agreement, so when Schyman's secretary called, they calmly said that Annika's children weren't in their group. Immediately, the manager called Annika on her cellphone, but there was no reply.
Anders Schyman had the metallic taste of fear in his mouth. He told the chief telephone operator to phone all possible extensions at the Association of Local Authorities. First the number to the switchboard, and then -01, -02, and so on until she got hold of someone who could reach Thomas. The police already had a patrol waiting outside Annika's house. After that the editor didn't know what to do next but went out to the detectives to hear how things were progressing.
"So far we haven't found anything. We'll be done in half an hour," the officer in charge announced.
Anders Schyman went back to help his secretary phone daycare centers on Kungsholmen.
* * *
Annika slowly came to. She heard someone groaning loudly and eventually realized it was herself. When she opened her eyes, she was immediately gripped by uncontrollable panic. She'd gone blind. She screamed like a madwoman, opening her eyes as wide as she could in the darkness. Her terror increased when all she heard was a high piping croak. Then she noticed that the torn noise echoed in the dark, bouncing and returning like horror-stricken birds against a window, and remembered the underground tunnel beneath the Olympic stadium. She stopped screaming and listened to her own panicky breathing for a minute. She had to be in the tunnel. She focused on feeling her own body, making sure all the parts were still there and functioning. She first lifted her head. It hurt, but it wasn't damaged. She realized she was lying on something relatively soft, probably the mattress she had seen before…
"Beata…," she whispered.
She lay still, breathing in the darkness. Beata had put her here, had done something to her, that's how it was. Beata had thrown a rope around her neck, and now she had left. Did Beata think she was dead?
Annika noticed that one of her arms hurt, the one that was wedged in underneath her. When she tried lifting it, she realized she couldn't move it. Her arms were tied. She was lying on her side with her arms tied behind her back. She tried lifting her legs: same thing. They were tied up, and not only to each other, but they were fastened to the wall next to her. When she moved her legs, she noticed something else: While she'd been unconscious, her bladder and bowel had emptied. The urine was cold and the excrement was sticky. She started to cry. What had she done? Why was this happening to her? She cried so hard she was shaking, the tunnel was cold, her crying seeped through the chill and into the darkness. She was rocking slowly on the mattress, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
I don't want to, she thought. Don't want to, don't want to, don't want to…
* * *
Anders Schyman was back in his office, staring out at the dark facade of the Russian Embassy. They hadn't found any bombs at the newspaper offices. The sun had set behind the former tsardom's flag, leaving the sky a glowing red for a few, short minutes. The staff were back in their seats, and still no one but himself, his secretary, and the telephone operator knew that the bomb had been addressed to Annika. Anders Schyman had been quickly briefed. All the police knew so far was that the Bomber was a ruthless bungler.
The letter containing the explosive charge had arrived at the Stockholm Klara sorting office at 18:50 on Wednesday evening. It had been sent as a registered letter from Stockholm 17, the post office in Rosenlundsgatan on South Island, at 16:53. Since the letter was sent registered, it didn't go with the regular mail but was sent in a separate shipment that would leave the terminal a bit later.
The brown padded envelope hadn't attracted any particular attention. Stockholm Klara is Sweden's largest sorting office, situated on Klarabergsviadukten in central Stockholm. The terminal building is eight floors high and occupies a whole block between the City Bus Terminal, City Hall, and the Central Station. One and a half million letters and parcels pass through there every day.
Having arrived at one of the terminal's four loading platforms, the envelope had ended up at the Special Delivery Section on the fourth floor. The staff working with various kinds of valuable items have received special security training. Since
Kvällspressen
has its own postcode, the receipt was sent out to the paper's ordinary postbox. This postbox is emptied several times a day and its contents delivered at the newsroom in Marieberg. At the terminal, the paper has several letters giving power of attorney, enabling the various porters to collect registered letters and parcels on behalf of other employees. Whatever registered and insured items there are, they would usually be picked up once a day, early in the afternoon.
On Thursday morning, there had been a number of registered letters in the morning delivery, since it was the time of year for Christmas gifts. The receipt for the letter addressed to Annika Bengtzon therefore ended up in a pile of other receipts in the porters' folder.
The explosion had occurred when Tore Brand was standing in the sorting office reception, waiting to pick up these special deliveries. One of the employees at the Special Delivery Section had slipped and dropped the letter. The envelope didn't fall more than half a meter, back into the same crate where it had been lying overnight, but it was enough for the device to go off. Four people were hurt, three seriously. The person who had been standing the closest, the man who dropped the envelope, was in a critical condition.
Anders Schyman bit his nail. There was a knock on his door, and one of the detectives entered without waiting for a reply.
"We can't get hold of Thomas Samuelsson either," the detective said. "We've been to his office. He wasn't there. They thought he might have gone somewhere for the day, some meeting with a local politician. We've tried his cellphone, but there's no reply."
"Have you found Annika or the car?" Schyman asked.
The detective shook his head.
The editor turned around and stared out at the embassy roof. Dear God, don't let her be dead.
* * *
Suddenly her sight returned. The light came on with a clicking sound, the lamps flickering to life. Annika was dazzled and for a moment couldn't see anything. She heard the clatter of heels in the passage and rolled up into a ball, shutting her eyes tight. The steps came closer, stopping right next to her ear.
"Are you awake?" a voice above her said.
Annika opened her eyes and blinked. She saw the floor and the tip of a pair of leather boots.
"Good. We've got work to do."
Someone pulled at her so she ended up with her back against the concrete wall and her legs pulled up, bent at the knees and jutting out to the side. It was very uncomfortable.
Beata Ekesjö leaned over her and smelled the air.
"Did you shit yourself? That's disgusting!"
Annika didn't respond. She just stared into the opposite wall and whimpered.
"Let's get you sorted out," Beata said, grabbing Annika by the armpits. Pushing and lifting, she forced Annika to sit tilted forward with her head by her knees.
"It worked all right the last time," Beata said. "It's good when you get used to doing something, don't you think?"
Annika didn't hear what the woman was saying. She was lost in a deep pit of fear, which killed off any brain activity. She didn't even notice the stench from her own shit. She cried quietly while Beata was busying herself with something next to her, humming some old popular song. Annika tried to sing but was unable to.
"Don't try to talk yet," Beata said. "The rope squashed your vocal cords a bit. Here we go!"
Beata stood up next to Annika. She was holding a roll of masking tape in one hand and what looked like a pack of red candles in the other.
"This is Minex. Twenty paper-wrapped cartridges, 22 x 200mm, at 100 grams each. Two kilos. That's enough, I noticed with Stefan. He broke in two."
Annika understood what the woman was saying. She realized what was about to happen and leaned over to throw up. She vomited so hard her whole body was shaking and bile was coming up.
