Into a Raging Blaze

by Andreas Norman

  The technician pointed at the screen. They had discovered something that was possibly of interest. About a week ago, she had visited various websites for hotels in Cairo.

  Cairo.

  It might just be a holiday. A desk officer spending an hour at work organizing their vacation was no crime.

  Two investigators from Counterespionage had interviewed Dymek’s line manager, Anders Wahlund. According to him, Dymek appeared not to have understood why she was being suspended. So what was Carina Dymek up to? All Bente could see was the blank and uninteresting image of a proficient civil servant doing nothing other than her job. She didn’t believe in coincidences—there were always intentions and motives behind even the most seemingly coincidental events. Why had someone like Carina Dymek made such a rudimentary error as handling unauthorized classified material? How could she have messed up so badly that she was suspended? Either she was misguided, which didn’t seem very likely—Dymek had been well appraised and described as an analytical person—or, more worryingly, she was being driven by a conviction that she was right. An ideology. But what ideology, in her case? Nothing in Dymek’s profile suggested she was the extreme type. Engaged, certainly, but not a person with extreme views. Nothing in her history suggested criminality. Green had called her a “clean skin,” beyond all suspicion, but that of being in the service of a foreign power. An anomaly; a hidden threat. Several of the investigators at Counterespionage believed the same thing. But it seemed far-fetched that Dymek would work for a foreign power. Then again, who knew? Perhaps she was living a double life. People had a tremendous ability to hide things.

  Dymek had told of a contact in Brussels, but it had not yet been possible to verify the story. It could be an outright lie, or at least a distortion of what had really happened in Brussels. Sticking close to the truth was a common way to lie convincingly. But why would Dymek lie? She thought about Green and his concerns about the leak, and was once against reminded that, of all people, London had decided to send Roger Wilson. Why send Wilson? He was a bulldozer . . .

  Something in the overall picture didn’t make sense. But Bente couldn’t grasp what it was that was disturbing her; like a vague itch, it was impossible to pinpoint where the problem lay. She called Kempell and left a message on his cell. They needed to bring Dymek in for a chat. Then she called Mikael; he was still at the office.

  “We need to find the man in Brussels,” she said. “The one who was in contact with Dymek.”

  14

  Stockholm, Friday, September 30

  A hesitant drizzle was falling on Stockholm when Bente hurried out of the gateway from her temporary, protected address, close to Karlaplan. She was normally accommodated here on her longer visits to Stockholm. She had stayed with the technicians until midnight and needed coffee. On the drive to the Security Service headquarters, she pulled up at a convenience store on Karlavägen and bought a cappuccino and bagel.

  It was early on a Friday morning and the streets were still deserted. The day would start soon, but right now there was not a soul to be seen. The bars down on Stureplan had closed just a few hours ago and had turned the square into an empty, gaping hole. The odd taxi rolled slowly past the pedestrian crossings.

  Stockholm was her home city, but nowadays she felt more at home in Brussels. Stockholm didn’t have the same finesse or elegance as the Belgian capital. Not to mention Vienna. She loved Vienna. That was truly a city of style and good taste. Her time there as liaison officer had been wonderful.

  She drove up Kungsgatan, past the dark shops and bars, and continued to Kungsholmen and the looming police building with its somewhat suburban style that she always thought looked so very ugly.

  Kempell and his team were waiting for her on the eighth floor.

  “Is he here?” Bente asked.

  “He’s arriving at nine twenty. Traveling under the name of Oliver Hollington.”

  Roger Wilson was on the morning flight via Copenhagen. She hadn’t expected him to come so soon, but it was just as well. The earlier, the better. That Wilson was traveling under the name of Hollington was a good sign. Hollington was one of his aliases that they were familiar with. That meant he wanted them to discover him. London had even notified them, earlier in the morning, of the flight on which he was arriving. The Brits were coming to cooperate.

  In Counterespionage, they did a quick rundown of what they knew. The flight time had been confirmed with Arlanda airport and they had confirmed that Wilson had checked in. He wasn’t traveling alone—a further two people were reported to be accompanying him.

  “What do we know about their intentions?”

  The investigator, whom everyone simply called Joakim and who seemed to be the one managing contact with London, fidgeted. The British objectives for the meeting were no clearer now than they had been twenty-four hours previously. They probably wanted to cooperate, he said feebly.

  Kempell muttered into his coffee cup. “Probably?” He needed facts, not supposition.

  He was in a bad mood, and Bente could understand why. Wilson wasn’t coming to Stockholm to listen to them. He was coming to Stockholm because the British security services were on to something, and a visit to Stockholm was one stage in an operation being controlled from London. They couldn’t do anything except sit nicely and wait until Her Majesty’s envoy deigned to meet them. The Brits were in charge. That annoyed her, too.

  Of course the Brits were directing their attention at Stockholm. The FRA had received a request from the British to conduct signals intelligence on Swedish networks. Perhaps London had discovered something.

  Government Communications Headquarters in Britain was the leader in signals intelligence. They had the ability to search the global flow of information in a way that only the Americans could match. GCHQ often worked closely with British foreign intelligence, MI6, and with the British security service, MI5, particularly in counterterrorism matters. The Brits had a wealth of experience in filtering through massive quantities of data as part of their operations. It produced results. They had the capacity to follow thousands of jihadists around the globe like a shadow; they could make millions of simultaneous intrusions; they could process data from surveillance footage, cells and cable traffic from millions of sources so quickly that action could be taken within mere hours of the initial discovery of a watched individual at a border control, on the subway, in a café.

  “They want to listen in on Sweden.”

  “Are they looking for targets?” Joakim asked.

  “I recommend everyone to take a sensitive approach to Wilson. And also listen to what he doesn’t say,” said Kempell, as if he hadn’t heard the question. He looked at the time. “They’ll be here in two hours.”

  The meeting dispersed; everyone disappeared into the corridors. Bente accompanied Kempell in the elevator to the top floor. They exited on to the roof through a fire door.

  From here, there was an expansive view stretching for miles across the treetops of Kronobergsparken. It had stopped raining but there was a cold breeze. High cumulus clouds were racing across the Stockholm sky.

  “I’m looking forward to meeting him,” she said.

  Kempell was silent and lit a cigarette. The ventilation ducts around them hummed quietly. To him, Wilson was just a concern, but for her he was an equal, one who went unseen. Wilson was one of the truly hidden operatives in this industry, one of MI6’s special resources.

  The Brits were good at masking their agents—it had taken Swedish Counterespionage several years to ascertain who Wilson actually was. He had turned up four years earlier, in Denmark, as a consultant to the Danish International Development Agency. That was where he first crossed their radar. PET, the Danish security service, had tipped them off about the Brit. But then he had disappeared and it had been around a year before they had another chance to study him at close quarters, this time in Hamburg, a few years after the Madison Garden bomber. Wilson followed a trail that led to a logistical cell with connections to al-Qa
ida in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. For the first time, they understood what he was. In hindsight, they also came to realize that MI6 had let them understand who he was. London had let them in on a small secret because it suited them, because they wanted to involve their Scandinavian siblings.

  Roger Wilson was a man hunter. He worked globally, and was one of the toughest out there. As far as she knew, he had previously had a key role in domestic counterterrorism at MI5, as part of Operation Kratos, in which operations used lethal force. There were unconfirmed reports that Wilson and his team were responsible for the botched operation that ended with the Brazilian, Menezes, having his head blown off on the London underground in 2005—an operation that SO19 had taken the blame for. The rest of his background was unclear. Welsh descent. Military background in the Special Air Service. Spent four years in Peshawar and completed several tours of duty in southern Afghanistan as the coordinator for British counterterrorism. Before that, Indonesia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, the Falklands.

  Kempell inhaled deeply. “I don’t understand what his business is here.”

  Just before eleven, a loud voice could be heard in the corridor. Kempell and the two investigators from Counterespionage, Joakim and Lars, who were sitting and talking with Bente in low voices, fell silent and stood up. The security doors clicked open and Roger Wilson marched into the conference room, followed by a young woman with her blond hair held up in a French twist. She was new; perhaps she was an operative.

  “Good morning, madam!” he burst out and threw his arms wide open. “Great to see you again.”

  “Good morning, Roger.” Bente introduced him to Kempell, who looked like a piece of dry driftwood next to the full-bodied Brit.

  She had forgotten how enormous he was. Not particularly tall, but wide-shouldered and thickset like a bull, with a broad, fairly handsome face and a powerful jaw that looked like it could bite through a saucepan. He was wearing a moss-green oilskin coat with a corduroy collar, chinos, and sturdy shoes; he looked like he had come to Sweden to go walking in the wilderness. In another life, he might have become a certified forester. He shrugged off his coat and threw it on to a chair.

  “Welcome to Stockholm,” Bente said and she offered them something to drink—tea, coffee, water.

  An assistant poured coffee for everyone. The new woman merely nodded at them and sat down on a chair, waiting. She had an unmoving, tough face. Wilson briefly introduced her as Sarah, and the woman, whose name was almost certainly not Sarah, flashed a smile at them.

  Wilson was far more exuberant. He greeted everyone with brisk, hearty handshakes. Lovely to be in Stockholm. Yes, thanks, the flight had been fine. He laughed, as if someone had said something funny.

  “You really do have some fancy digs here,” said Wilson, straightening his ill-fitting blazer and looking around with a wide smile while stirring his coffee. The Security Service headquarters on Kungsholmen had been refurbished the month before, at the same time as undergoing a security upgrade. The Brits probably knew that.

  Bente nodded and agreed. “Once again, welcome,” she said once everyone was seated. “It’s good that we can meet.”

  “Wasn’t the last time in Hamburg?” interrupted Wilson cheerfully.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And now Stockholm.”

  Everyone waited. Wilson stroked his chin and observed the Swedes surrounding him with an empty smile.

  Wilson was no office worker. He wore the jacket like a foreign object. He was tanned and his hands, which lay quite still on the table, were rough and had thick nails. It was easy to imagine him in the rugged mountains of northern Pakistan in khaki camouflage fatigues, an assault rifle slung over his shoulder, surrounded by Pashto-speaking guides and fellow commandos.

  “Okay. You probably know why I’m here,” he said, almost apologetically.

  “Due to the incident: the leak,” said Bente.

  “Leak?”

  For a long moment dead silence fell on the room. Everyone around the table stopped what they were doing. Wilson was sitting opposite them with his eyebrows raised in surprise; he didn’t seem to have understood what she meant. The woman introduced as Sarah stopped taking notes. Wilson turned to Kempell and said, with a smile, “I don’t understand . . .”

  “Well . . .” For a fraction of a second, Kempell lost his thread completely, before quickly regaining his composure. “The report concerning EIS that the Commission was working on, which has now leaked to one of our diplomats,” he said.

  “Yes, yes! Of course,” Wilson exclaimed and nodded forcefully. “That story. I assume you have started to look more closely at . . .” He stopped and looked down at his papers. “Dymek. Carina Dymek. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” said Kempell. “We’re investigating her.”

  “Good, good.” Wilson smiled.

  Something wasn’t right. Wilson was too restless. He seemed strangely distanced, as if he simply didn’t care what they were talking about.

  “Are you looking into anyone else as part of this?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “I understand.”

  Everyone now looked at Wilson, who was nodding slowly to himself.

  “It’s a good idea to deal with the leak, naturally,” he said languidly. “But let’s leave it at that for a while. That diplomat, Dymek—she isn’t the real problem. She’s just a girl who’s fallen in with the wrong crowd.”

  Dead silence fell on the room. He didn’t want to talk about Dymek? A scurrying sensation ran across Bente’s back. They had missed something.

  Wilson leafed through his papers and then said in a businesslike tone, “What do you have on Jamal Badawi?”

  “Badawi?” Bente looked at Kempell, then back to Wilson. “He’s Dymek’s boyfriend. Works for the Ministry of Justice.” She hadn’t expected questions about the boyfriend.

  “Yes, that’s one side of him.”

  The investigators from Counterespionage glanced anxiously at her and Kempell. Wilson turned to the woman beside him, who had sat silently throughout so far, and nodded. She opened a file and read rapidly from the document.

  “This is Jamal Badawi.” She placed an enlarged passport photo of him on the table. “Jamal Badawi: thirty-two years old; Swedish citizen of Egyptian origin. Left Egypt at ten years old and was granted asylum in Sweden together with his parents. Lives in Stockholm and currently employed at your Ministry of Justice. All of this you are aware of.”

  Wilson interjected with a smile. “We almost missed him too, at first. But we wanted to be sure there was no Islamist connection. I mean, he is an Arab. It’s standard procedure. But what we discovered was far more than we had imagined.”

  The woman from MI6 resumed her presentation. “Jamal Badawi’s family were part of the opposition to Hosni Mubarak. His father and uncle had close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood for decades. It’s worth mentioning that the father, who was a lawyer, represented several of the best-known critics of the regime in various trials in the years before the family left Cairo and Egypt. He and Jamal Badawi’s uncle were close friends with key persons in the Muslim Brotherhood—for example, Aboul-Fotouh and Mahdi Akef—people at the top of the organization. For many years, Badawi’s uncle was even a contact for Hezbollah. Then the Badawi family fled—all of them, except the uncle, Akim Badawi, who stayed in Cairo. After the Badawi family arrived in Sweden, the father died. But Jamal Badawi stayed in touch with his uncle Akim.”

  She produced a new photograph and put it on the table next to the one of Jamal Badawi. Akim Badawi was a fat man with a small, well-groomed beard around his chin.

  “At the same time as Jamal Badawi came to Sweden, Akim Badawi was appointed as the trustee of a number of foundations. The Brotherhood has hundreds of foundations that receive funds through donations, collections, and certain property deals in Europe and North America. As you know, it’s difficult to tell which of these are for entirely legitimate purposes and which provide funds for terrorism. Transactions in c
ases like these often occur through a long chain of middlemen, companies, temporary offices, or in cash. We have been able to trace funds from several of the foundations that Akim Badawi looked after to groups in the UK—Luton; Birmingham. The money also appears to have been used for training camps. It was through our financial analysis of the Brotherhood that our attention was drawn to Akim Badawi.”

  “Appears to have?” said Bente.

  The woman looked up from her papers and gazed at her coolly. “We have evidence to suggest that. The contacts Akim Badawi had were all people from groups on watch lists—contacts he continues to maintain to this day.”

  “Excuse me,” interrupted Kempell. “Is this not a matter for Counterterrorism?” He looked around at Bente and the British visitors. “So far I haven’t heard anything that directly affects the operations I am responsible for, anything to do with Counterespionage.”

  Wilson nodded and spread out his hands. “I’m sorry. I got the impression that London had already spoken to you. Mea culpa, I guess. But I hope that you will pass on the relevant information to your colleagues working in the fight against terror?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Kempell looked around in annoyance. Lars stood up and left the room to call someone in from the Counterterrorism branch.

  For a while there was a tense silence during which no one seemed to know whether the meeting should continue. This was an unexpected and embarrassing turn of events. Kempell had no right to deal with the case alone. In the new division of responsibilities in the Security Service, he was obligated to coordinate with Counterterrorism and hand over jurisdiction to them if an investigation took the direction that this one appeared to be taking.