The Friend

by Joakim Zander

  He pushes Klara into the back seat and gets in on the other side. She hears shouting from outside just as Bronzelius pulls the door closed again, maybe one of the two people in civilian clothes. Without having to say a word, the car starts driving across the parking lot. Klara turns around and looks out the back window, her heart pounding.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ she asks. ‘Are you kidnapping me?’

  ‘I guess you could call it that,’ Bronzelius says.

  Klara turns to him and looks at his grey face, at his blue, straightforward eyes. There’s something in his eyes, something in that naive calm that makes something suddenly quite clear to her.

  ‘You have no idea what this is about,’ she says. ‘Not when you arrested Gabi. Not now.’

  He looks at her without changing his expression. ‘For someone whose life I just saved you sure aren’t very thankful,’ he says.

  Now she looks at him, quite composed again. ‘You’re just a cop. A good cop. But you don’t understand what this is about. Do you?’

  She knows she should be grateful. Without Bronzelius she’d be dead now. But she can’t resist the feeling that if it weren’t for him she and Gabi wouldn’t have landed in this mess either.

  She turns around and sees one of the vans from the parking lot following them. They’re driving fast now, up the on-ramp to the highway. She knows that she shouldn’t give in to the impulse, but it is growing like a balloon inside her. ‘You got played. You all got played,’ she says. She shakes her head. ‘The Russians tricked you into arresting Gabriella. Did you seriously believe she was involved in a fucking terrorist attack? I thought Säpo’s job was to protect us from Russian spies. Not do their bidding.’

  He looks calmly at her. ‘It was good that you called,’ he says. ‘For everyone’s sake.’

  The anger she feels is mixed with something else, the feeling that she too doesn’t really know what’s going on.

  ‘Who’s after us?’ she asks, and feels her anxiety come back with full force. ‘Where are my friends?’

  25 November

  Bromma Airport

  They’ve been driving for about half an hour when the car finally slows. Yassim is lying on Jacob’s lap and his feverish, damp forehead shines whenever the occasional headlight flashes through the high, latticed window. Yassim wavers on the edge of consciousness and Jacob’s panic feels ever tighter in his chest. George somehow succeeds in getting up onto his feet, and he starts kicking and pounding on the wall to the cab. But the wall is solid, and it’s clear that nobody will hear them.

  ‘He’ll soon lose consciousness completely,’ Jacob whispers. ‘What the hell should we do then? They can’t just let him die.’

  Jacob can see Yassim’s lips moving, and he leans over him. Yassim’s voice is so weak, Jacob can barely make out what he’s saying. But at the very moment the van stops and the door slides open again, he hears: ‘Tell them nothing.’

  When the door opens, Jacob sees a pair of dark and familiar eyes.

  ‘Looky here,’ Myriam Awad says. ‘Have you missed me?’

  *

  There are probably five or six other people. They’re all burly and bearded, wearing flak jackets and black guns in the holsters over their jeans.

  ‘Up and out,’ says one of them. ‘Get outta the van.’

  ‘This man is injured,’ George says. ‘He’s lost consciousness and needs help immediately.’

  The bearded men look at him with disinterest. ‘He’s a terrorist,’ says one of them. ‘That’s the price he pays.’

  Two of them step into the bus and lift Yassim roughly, carry him out together. Jacob stands up, but his hands are bound behind him, and he can’t do a thing.

  ‘Help him!’ Jacob screams at the top of his lungs. ‘He needs help!’

  Myriam stands in front of him and slaps him across the face.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ she says.

  Then someone pulls a hood over his head, and everything goes black.

  *

  Jacob blinks under intense fluorescent lights when the hood is pulled off. He’s sitting in a cell or interrogation room. Perhaps it’s just a storage closet. Concrete floors and brick walls. Hands cuffed to a stainless steel table. There is no window, only a steel door, and Myriam is standing in front of it, staring at him impassively. There’s something close to pity in her eyes.

  ‘I’ll take it from here,’ she says to the man in a Kevlar vest who’s just jerked Jacob’s hood off.

  The man exits and Jacob can hear the door being locked behind him. The room is so cold he shivers, and it looks like smoke coming out of his mouth whenever he takes a quick, terrified breath.

  ‘Yassim,’ he says. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘You think Yassim is some kind of Snowden,’ she says. ‘He gathered information about some unnamed war crimes. And helping him makes you a hero.’

  Jacob blinks, doing all he can not to give anything else away. Could it really be possible that’s all she knows?

  ‘But you’re swimming in some deep fucking water,’ she continues. ‘And there’s no going back for you now, Jacob.’

  Somewhere outside his cell, he hears engines. Enormous engines revving up, and then becoming ever more distant. He recognizes that sound – it’s an airplane lifting off.

  Why are they at an airport? Myriam also hears the sound of the plane, doesn’t speak until it’s gone. Then she sits down in front of him.

  ‘You have one chance,’ she says. ‘One chance to save yourself and your beloved Yassim now. Tell me where that chip is.’

  ‘I want a lawyer,’ Jacob says.

  Why did he say that? Because he’s seen it in movies. Because he can’t stand to be alone in this room with her.

  Myriam just looks at him as if he’s speaking in some incomprehensible language. ‘Excuse me?’ she says. ‘Do you think you’ve been arrested?’

  She leans forward, staring at him, her eyes completely cold now.

  ‘We aren’t the police, you little pussy,’ she says. ‘This is an intelligence operation. We’re in the shadows now. There are no courts or lawyers here. Nobody knows where you are, nobody knows where you’re heading.’

  She squats down next to him. Hopelessness burns inside him.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ he whispers. ‘There are rules, there are processes…’

  But Myriam just shakes her head. ‘Jacob,’ she begins. ‘I don’t think you understand how deeply mixed up in this you are now. Why didn’t you just listen to me in Beirut?’ She points over her shoulder, to the wall and whatever’s behind it. ‘In twenty minutes, I’m putting Yassim on a plane to Egypt,’ she says quietly. ‘He’ll be handed over to their intelligence service, and he’ll have to answer their questions. We know he has knowledge of a very large terrorist attack taking place in Europe in the very near future. It’s up to you if you and your friend George end up on that plane or not. The Egyptians are adept at making people talk. Unfortunately, they’re not as good at keeping people alive.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ Jacob whispers.

  ‘Am I threatening you?’ she says. ‘Yes, Jacob. Yes I am.’

  25 November

  Bromma Airport

  They’re on the highway headed towards Stockholm when Bronzelius’s phone rings. His answers are short, and he asks no questions: ‘I understand… Yes… That’s understood.’

  After he hangs up he turns to Klara and meets her eyes.

  ‘That was my boss,’ he says. ‘MUST, military intelligence, wants you in Bromma. My guess is that your friends are already there.’

  ‘But you’re not going to do what he says,’ Klara says. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Maybe I’m tired of being a good cop?’ he says. ‘Maybe I’m tired of sneaking around and letting the wrong people end up hurt.’

  ‘Like last summer,’ Klara says.

  ‘Do you know who you were talking to on the soccer field?’ he asks.

  Klara shakes her head. ‘A Russian?’ s
he says. ‘We’ve had them after us this whole time. I suspect they’re behind the evidence against Gabriella.’

  ‘Gregorij Korolov is his name,’ Bronzelius says. ‘He arrived in Sweden this afternoon. I know because he’s a major player. The kind Säpo keeps an eye on whenever he’s around. But he’s a professional so he managed to evade our surveillance team almost immediately. And because he has a diplomatic passport, there’s nothing we can do other than throw him out. But I would love to know what this is about, why you were standing on a soccer field in Bergort with a well-known Russian spy. Why did military intelligence take an embassy intern to Bromma Airport? Why do they want you there?’

  Klara can’t make head or tail of him or his motives. This summer he threatened her and allowed ruthless Russian interests to foment riots in the suburbs of Stockholm just to gain some advantage in an endless spy war. Now he says he’s willing to help her.

  ‘I don’t trust you,’ she says. ‘It must have felt good to arrest Gabi.’

  He looks at her neutrally. ‘I arrested Gabriella because we have convincing evidence she was connected to Jacob Seger and through him, a terrorist organization in Syria. But that I would think for a moment that either of you were terrorists is laughable. I was annoyed at you this summer. You ended up in the middle of one of our operations, which despite everything did end up successful. I would much rather you’d kept quiet, no doubt. But that’s just how the game is played. I’m not driven by revenge, Klara. Quite the opposite.’

  She turns away and stares out into the darkness. She knows it’s true – that’s why she called him, because she knew somehow he’d do the right thing, despite what happened.

  ‘If I tell you,’ she says. ‘Will you promise to let us go? Do you promise to let Gabriella go?’

  She thinks of the terrorist attacks barely a day away. She can’t let them happen. But she has to save her friends too.

  ‘Turn your back to me,’ he says.

  Klara does, and he uncuffs her.

  ‘I promise,’ he says, stretching out a hand. ‘Same team?’

  ‘Same team,’ Klara says, taking his hand.

  *

  They take a detour through the expensive neighbourhoods of Bromma with their 19th-century wooden houses and apple trees, while Klara tells Bronzelius everything. All she knows. About Jacob and Yassim. The journey from Brussels, the rest stop in Germany, and that Yassim showed up in Malmö.

  Here, Bronzelius nods. ‘Quite a scene at the central station there this afternoon. Shots fired. But what the hell, it’s Malmö. What I don’t understand is the Russian involvement.’

  He falls silent and looks out the window at the idyllic neighbourhood around them, then he turns back to Klara again.

  ‘And you’re right about Gabriella,’ he says. ‘Someone was listening to her, but it wasn’t us. Can’t imagine it was MUST or FRA either – they don’t have the resources, and a Swedish lawyer wouldn’t be interesting to us or them, no matter how irritating she might be.’

  ‘The Russians,’ Klara says with a shiver.

  The thought of Gabi being bugged all through the autumn, maybe even since this summer, is genuinely unnerving.

  ‘It was the Russians who really lost out after what you all did this summer,’ Bronzelius says. ‘Their whole apparatus was destroyed when you discovered what they were up to. It’s not unthinkable that they might want to fight back, mainly against Gabriella because she’s been the public face. They’ve gotten a hell of a lot more aggressive lately.’

  ‘So when Jacob called her from Beirut, they picked up the trail,’ Klara says. ‘Maybe they’re trying to stop a terrorist attack, just like us?’

  Bronzelius shrugs. ‘Maybe. But I’m pretty sure there’s more to it than that.’

  The car has stopped at the small hill in front of the airport, just behind the taxis and the gates.

  ‘They’re at hangar four,’ Bronzelius says.

  Klara turns towards him. ‘Well then,’ she says. ‘Time to finish this. But there’s one thing I’d like to show you first.’

  25 November

  Bromma Airport

  A new sound is audible just outside the cell Jacob is sitting in. The rumble of engines.

  ‘Your plane,’ says Myriam serenely. ‘That’s what you’re hearing out there. We’ve arrived at your last chance now.’

  Jacob has laid his head on the table, too exhausted to even sit upright, but he straightens now and looks at Myriam. She’s moved over by the door, her eyes still on him.

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ he says. ‘You can’t send a Swedish citizen to Egypt.’

  ‘Is your experience with me thus far that I bluff?’

  His head is spinning now. ‘I don’t have the chip,’ he says. ‘But I know where the terror attacks are going to take place. And I know when.’

  He can’t sacrifice Yassim or risk himself.

  ‘I’ll tell you if you promise to hand us over to the police instead of sending us away,’ he whispers.

  Myriam walks slowly over to the table, sits down opposite him. ‘It’s a start,’ she says. ‘You can stay if you tell me.’

  He tells her everything he knows about the attacks against the Opera House in Stockholm, Gare du Midi in Brussels, the airport in Rome and Harrods in London. It’s not much. Just the places and time, 19:00 on 26 November, tomorrow. That’s all Klara wrote in her text when they were on their way to Stockholm.

  Myriam writes it down in her notebook and looks at him when he falls silent.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asks. ‘Is that really all you have? No names or details? Nothing more?’

  ‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘I swear that’s all I have now. I can get you the rest, I promise. But surely that has to be enough for you to prevent it, put in extra guards, keep people away from those places, whatever you have to do?’

  She looks at him indifferently. Then she stands up, walks around the table, unlocks his handcuffs before pulling him onto his feet and fastening his hands behind his back.

  ‘Time to go,’ she says, pulling him through the steel door to a big hangar where a small, white aircraft is waiting with its engines running.

  One of the bearded men comes towards her. ‘Not a sound,’ he says, shouting over the noise of the engines. ‘He’s a clam. Also, barely conscious. That George Lööw won’t say anything either, just keeps demanding a lawyer and shit like that. I don’t think he really understands the situation.’

  ‘Get them on board,’ Myriam says. ‘I have what we need right now, the rest we can figure out.’

  The man nods hesitantly. ‘You sure?’ he says.

  She narrows her eyes at him. ‘Do I look unsure?’

  He shakes his head, takes a small radio off his belt. ‘Get them on board,’ he says calmly.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Jacob screams, trying to tear himself out of her grip. ‘You swore you wouldn’t send us away! That was the only reason—’

  Myriam punches him hard in the solar plexus, and he collapses onto his haunches, silenced, still with his hands behind his back. She leans over him.

  ‘You smuggled terrorist plans,’ she says. ‘Together with your terrorist boyfriend. These are the consequences for that. Why didn’t you listen to me in Beirut if you didn’t want to play this game?’

  Jacob lifts his eyes and sees two of Myriam’s men leading Yassim out of a room and further into the hangar. He has handcuffs on and a black hood over his head; it takes two men to support him.

  ‘Yassim!’ he screams. ‘Yassim!’

  From the corner of his eye, he sees a man heading in through the open hangar doors, a small automatic weapon bouncing at his hip. Jacob turns instinctively towards him.

  ‘We have a problem,’ the man shouts. ‘A big fucking problem.’

  In the next second, Jacob can hear sirens blaring somewhere, and they’re getting closer and closer. Suddenly, the hangar is full of blinking blue lights and police officers with weapons drawn and ambulances.

  He fa
lls down onto the concrete floor, completely still, completely exhausted.

  25 November

  Bromma Airport

  Klara and Bronzelius are sitting in the car outside the terminal, and she takes out the computer and shows him what’s on it. He turns pale.

  ‘Can we get an interpreter here now?’ he screams to a uniformed police officer, who immediately runs off.

  They finally find a young police officer fluent in Arabic, and he squeezes into the back seat next to Klara. Not exactly an interpreter, but at least someone who can confirm what Klara already knows. The officer’s eyes widen as he takes in what’s in front of him, and he summarizes it quickly for Bronzelius. Translates the information in the documents, the coordinated terrorist attacks on four European cities.

  Bronzelius leans back in his seat and stares straight up at the ceiling. ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he says. ‘It’s insane.’

  ‘What should we do?’ Klara says.

  Bronzelius turns to her and stares straight into her eyes. ‘I’m gonna have to take care of this gigantic mess.’

  Then he gets out his phone, and it seems to take only a couple of minutes before an armada of police vehicles appear around them.

  A police officer in civilian clothes opens Klara’s door and tears the computer from her hands. Another police officer tries to force her out of the car.

  ‘No,’ Bronzelius says. ‘She’s riding with me, and she should in no way be considered a suspect in connection with this.’

  Then he jumps out of the car and confers with the uniformed police officers. All she hears is something about a ‘kidnapping’ and ‘possible hostage situation’, and then they leave.

  ‘I didn’t mention to my colleagues that we are probably chasing rogue government officials here,’ he tells Klara when he gets back into the car. ‘Better to have this sorted out before my bosses get any other instructions or understand what’s going on. People with a higher pay grade than me can figure out the legal details later. No time to lose.’