Into a Raging Blaze

by Andreas Norman

  “Come in. Come in,” he said in English with a strong German accent.

  They were admitted to a small attic apartment with a sloping ceiling and a window that had a panoramic view across all of Brussels. It looked like he had just moved in, which couldn’t be the case; he was probably just one of those young civil servants who mainly ate, slept, and worked. The only furniture was a small bed, an ugly sofa, and an enormous flat-screen TV. Piles of books were stacked along a wall; lots of law and study books, she noted. Typical bachelor pad. In the tiny kitchen, clean dishes were still dripping. He must have been cleaning for their visit.

  “Do you want something to drink? Water, tea . . . ?”

  She shook her head. Mikael sat down on the sofa.

  Their presence clearly made him nervous. He stared at them, cleared his throat and didn’t seem to have a clue how to handle the situation. He stood, rubbing his hands, as if trying to rub something off, before pulling a chair up to the coffee table and sitting down.

  On the table there was a brown envelope. She recognized the type—for secret correspondence, with a black lining on the inside to prevent any transparency. She stopped an impulse to pick it up.

  “It’s great that you could meet with us,” said Mikael.

  “Of course.” Florian Klause smiled stiffly and fell silent. Then he burst out, “I know that you must be wondering how this all happened. And, of course, I’ll tell you. I just want to say that I’m terribly sorry about what has happened.”

  The words came tumbling out of the young man, as if they had been stuck somewhere inside before gushing from his mouth in an irregular torrent. His face was very tense. He looked eagerly at Mikael, then at Bente. She adjusted her expression to a warm smile—the motherly smile. She didn’t understand a word of his little outburst, but was careful not to show that. There was no point in pushing this boy; he was upset. A vein had begun to throb in his forehead underneath his blond locks.

  “I know that I shouldn’t have taken this.” He sighed and looked at the envelope.

  “Is this what you wanted to give the police?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It was so stupid of me. But I didn’t know what to do. I should have given it to the Head of Department, or you. But when Jean died . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I . . .” He shrugged his shoulders dejectedly. “It went wrong,” he mumbled.

  Mikael glanced at her. He seemed just as unsure as she was about what the young man was actually talking about.

  “You should have given this to your boss,” said Mikael.

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. I didn’t.” He sighed deeply.

  “You took it home instead.”

  “Yes.”

  With a small movement he pulled off his glasses and hid his head in his hands. She could hear him whispering to himself: “Mein Gott.” Neither of them moved or said a word. Silence reigned in the apartment.

  “I made a mistake,” he said, finally, with a thick voice.

  They waited for him to pull himself together. Cumbersomely, he put his glasses back on. His eyes were red rimmed. He pointed at the envelope as if it was an enemy.

  “I know it was completely crazy. These documents—they’re top secret. I know it was wrong to take them home. It’s completely against the rules. I would never normally have done something like this. I shouldn’t have accepted them. I know it’s a crime; you don’t have to tell me. I understand if you’ll need to take . . . certain measures.” He looked glumly at them.

  “But why did you keep them?” she said. “Why didn’t you give them to your boss?”

  “Jean asked me not to.”

  “He asked you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Florian Klause sighed and stared into space. “He didn’t trust anyone at the Directorate General. Everyone was against him, you know? But I worked with Jean”—he quickly corrected himself—“with Monsieur Bernier. I know what he was like. He was a good person.”

  They said nothing.

  Bente’s cell rang. The sound made Florian Klause shudder. She swore, got out her phone, and quickly turned it to silent. It was Rodriguez calling.

  Klause continued: “Monsieur Bernier was reviewing a proposal concerning a new organization within the EU—an intelligence organization.” He looked at them carefully. “I was helping him with research and so on. I really liked working for him. He used to give me legal texts or extracts from the EIS report and say things like, ‘Florian, read this and tell me what you think.’ You could discuss things with him. I mean, he was the sharpest lawyer in the department. But I know a lot of people didn’t like him.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He paused to think. “There was a conflict with the primary authors of the proposal. They hated him, actually—couldn’t stand him. But they were wrong.” He smiled.

  “What do you mean—that he was right?”

  “His criticism was justified. The proposal was poorly written.”

  “So they were arguing about that. Him and your colleagues.”

  He nodded.

  “Then what happened, more precisely?”

  “Things escalated, you might say. Some people at the department accused him of being biased, unprofessional, and wanting to destroy the work. They spread rumors, sent e-mails that said terrible things about him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that he was sick, that he had started to lose his sense of judgment because of illness. They claimed he posed a risk to security. Things like that.”

  “Didn’t he?”

  “No!” He stared at them. “Never. It was all lies. They wanted to get rid of him. You have to understand this, Monsieur Bernier was quite well—and totally devoted to his work. All he cared about was the law.”

  They nodded.

  “After that, it was open war at the department. That was back in the spring. It was as if there were two teams: those who agreed with Bernier and those who thought he was ruining everything. Finally, the case was brought up with Manservisi, our director general. And apparently Bernier was a problem, in his eyes. I remember that some external people came in and had several chats with Bernier. I guess they were trying to make him change his mind. But he refused. Then they took him off the job.”

  “Which external people—do you remember?”

  He creased his forehead in concentration and thought. “They were from the British delegation to the EU.”

  “The British?”

  “Yes, the British were involved in the proposal from an early stage. We often received messages from them with drafts for parts of the report. They were the ones who brought the annex.”

  She was a fraction of a second away from asking what annex he was talking about, but stopped herself at the last moment; she cleared her throat instead.

  He pointed at the envelope. “They wrote the annex,” the apprentice continued. “They demanded that it be added to the report. That was the final straw for Bernier. He refused to approve it. He was furious. They were crazy, he said. Barbarians destroying the EU. Things like that.”

  “And then he gave you this document?”

  “Yes.” He fell silent; his gaze wavered.

  Bente’s cell rang again. It buzzed in her inside pocked. She got it out and glanced at it. Rodriguez again.

  “It’s a very secret document, I guess.”

  Klause nodded. “Yes. Red level.” He blushed fiercely and looked down at his lap.

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “Why did he give it to you? You don’t have the necessary clearance.”

  He sighed. “He trusted me, I suppose. He said he couldn’t keep it himself. I know that only a few people at the department knew of its existence. Apparently it wasn’t going to be shown to the EU parliament, or any politicians. They were completely in the dark. I never got to read it, but Monsieur Bernier had read it, of course. He refused to accept it. One
day, he came to me and said he was going away. He asked if I could look after it. He said I couldn’t give it to the boss or anyone else. I didn’t want to refuse. I liked him, and, to be quite honest, I think they treated him unfairly. So I took it.”

  “You looked after the document. How long had he planned for you to do so?”

  “He asked me to distribute it.” He sniffed.

  “Distribute?”

  “Yes. Send it to all EU embassies in Brussels if he didn’t contact me before the summit.”

  If he didn’t get in touch. She stopped for a second. Mikael pulled a pack of tissues out of his jacket pocket and passed it over to the apprentice, who was sitting quietly, tears running down his cheeks.

  “Does the name Carina Dymek mean anything to you?” Bente said after a while.

  Klause turned his bloated face toward her and looked at her quizzically, shaking his head.

  “A Swedish diplomat.”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve never heard the name.” He blew his nose loudly, staring at her and then Mikael. The worry shone in his eyes.

  She leaned forward, plucked the envelope from the table without any apparent urgency and gave it to Mikael. Without even stopping to reflect, she slid into her role.

  “We’ll have to report what’s happened. But,” she added quickly when she saw the unhappy grimace that covered his face, “given the unusual circumstances and the fact that you contacted the police about this, and that you’ve helped us to establish the facts of the matter, you don’t have to worry. We’ll recommend that you remain in your post.”

  “Thank you,” he said, dabbing his face. “Thank you. I’m so sorry about all of this. It’s my first year at the Commission; I didn’t know it would be like this. It won’t happen again, I promise.” He looked at them, teary eyed.

  She leaned forward and patted him on the shoulder.

  “It’ll be all right, Florian.”

  One of the guys from the cell team was in the stairwell. He appeared to have been waiting outside the door. When he caught sight of them, he angled his head toward the microphone wire and called to them in a low voice.

  “What is it?”

  “We’ve got company.”

  They began to run down the stairs, silently. On the first floor they paused, waited a few seconds until they heard an all-clear signal through his earpiece, and continued running all the way to the ground floor.

  Bente was panting heavily; it was a long time since she had needed to move like this. They passed through a fire door into the basement, went down a narrow corridor, back up some stairs, and into a messy inner courtyard, filled with humming fans. Rodriguez was there.

  “I called. Why didn’t you answer?”

  They had a problem. At least three people had followed them on the way to Klause’s apartment. They hadn’t managed to discover them in time. Presumably there were more of them nearby.

  Another member of the cell team came out of the rusty fire door at the other end of the yard and waved. She and Mikael ran after Rodriguez, stumbling down some dark stairs into a boiler room and hurrying through a doorway into a small basement corridor that ended by a narrow stairway twisting up toward gray daylight. She caught a glimpse of yet another member of the cell team, his automatic weapon drawn, following them.

  If they had been found . . .

  The thought flashed through her head. She swore silently. All their security arrangements to hide the Section, protect the identities of operatives, the networks of sources and informants, to cover up the traces of their electronic intrusions and tracking, all of it was vulnerable. They were all in danger. Her stomach dropped when she thought about Fredrik and the kids.

  They crossed yet another inner courtyard, continued through a wooden door and into another stairwell, where Rodriguez abruptly stopped, holding up his hand, signaling to them to stay by the wall. They waited, panting, while he listened in concentration with his index finger against his earpiece.

  “Now.”

  They hit the street at the same time as one of the Section’s black BMW SUVs came out of a side street and slammed on its brakes in the middle of the road. The passenger side doors were flung open.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  Rodriguez pushed them in front of him. They hurried across the pavement. Some passersby stopped in surprise and watched them. Bente narrowly avoided rushing straight into a woman pushing a stroller, before squeezing between the parked cars and into the SUV. With a hard jolt, the car made a flying start.

  33

  Brussels, Friday, October 7

  The thick cloud cover opened up without warning just before they landed. Carina managed to catch sight of the gray Belgian suburbs spread out below like dark fields—industrial areas, tower blocks, villas—all sweeping by, and, for a moment, she saw the freeway to Brussels, like a scar across the landscape. At the scheduled time, a few minutes before ten, the Scandinavian Airlines morning flight descended into Zaventem.

  When she had been in the early morning hustle and bustle at Arlanda, she had almost hoped that they would stop her at security, take her to one side, and that it would all be over. But no one had stopped her. She had checked in, the same as usual, handed over her bag, and the uniformed clerk had even wished her a pleasant trip. Then she had passed through security, along with all the other sleepy business travelers, and no one had reacted when they checked her passport and boarding pass, or when she was lining up at the gate. She knew almost nothing about how the police worked, and even less about how Säpo worked, but she knew enough to know that, if you were able to fly out of Arlanda without being stopped, then you weren’t on a wanted list. Perhaps the woman who had called her from Säpo had actually meant it when she said she just wanted to talk. For a second, she regretted not going to the meeting at Säpo; perhaps it would have solved everything. But it wasn’t that simple, she knew that.

  A few minutes left until they landed. Everything was so familiar. How many times had she flown into Brussels? Hundreds, probably. She watched the business travelers around her: two of them were talking cheerfully to each other across the aisle, a gray-haired man closed his laptop in preparation for landing. She hadn’t had time to think about the MFA, but here, surrounded by the people who would have been her traveling companions on a normal trip to Brussels, it struck her how far away from the Ministry and her normal job she was. While the plane rushed toward the airport, she realized that she might never be able to return to her normal life. If it had been an ordinary working day, she would have been on the way to a council meeting by now. She would have been going through the Swedish positions and preparing for the usual race through the arrivals hall to get to a taxi first, to get to Justus Lipsius in time for the meeting. She pressed her forehead against the cold pane of glass in the small oval window. It vibrated against her temples. The ground was rapidly getting closer beneath her, taking shape and becoming more detailed.

  “Are you all right, madame?” A stewardess leaned forward.

  Carina nodded.

  “Please return your seat to the upright position.” The stewardess gave her a friendly, professional smile and said in quite another tone, as if a friend, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Once off the plane, she felt calm and safe again. The oblong arrivals gate was packed with people. She joined the flock of businessmen hurrying away with their briefcases and travel bags, and already felt better when she reached the baggage conveyor belt. She really knew this airport—she could find her way around it with more ease than she could central Stockholm—the air-conditioned halls, echoing announcements, advertisements; the well-known Brussels feeling of hurrying out through the arrivals gate.

  Planes from Paris, Munich, and Moscow had arrived at the same time; out by the taxis, there was a long, snaking queue. She did what she usually did: went up one floor and caught a taxi before it headed down the ramp to join the taxi rank.
The success of her old trick put her in a good mood. The rush-hour traffic, the chatter of the radio, and the driver’s way of changing lanes on the freeway at the risk of life and limb cheered her up. She was in Brussels. This was her hunting ground.

  While in the taxi, she booked a room at the Radisson Blu on Rue d’Idalie. Maybe she ought to be careful and stay at a smaller bed and breakfast in case the police were looking for her. The thought flashed through her mind in a flutter of anxiety. She waved it to one side. Säpo, she reasoned, only operated on Swedish territory. For them to have contacted the Belgian police when they hadn’t even put an alert out on her at Arlanda seemed unlikely. She concluded that she was in Brussels, one of thousands of morning travelers who had just arrived, one of the masses, and she had no reason to worry. The Radisson Blu was really a little too expensive, but she was only going to stay for a few days. She might as well do what she wanted, and the prospect of staying at the Radisson Blu lifted her spirits. She always stayed there when she went to Brussels with work. Some weeks she had spent as many nights there as she had at home in her apartment. It was part of her Brussels.

  The hotel was as it always was: the same minimalist lobby with a restaurant and bar with subdued lighting just inside the entrance. She couldn’t help but smile at the sensation that she was home.

  At the reception, the same man always checked her in: an older, very proper gentleman of Indian appearance with a well-groomed, gray mustache. He was behind the counter and greeted her exuberantly when he caught sight of her, as if he had actually been waiting for just her to appear.

  “Voilà, madame.”

  In the hotel room, she threw off her coat and unpacked her small notebook. It was a good room, peaceful and quiet, with a large TV and a soft bed with extra pillows. She picked up her oilcloth notebook, the same one she always used at the MFA. The covers were black with a red border, and it was the right size to fit in a handbag or an inside jacket pocket. Everyone in the Ministry used them. Her notes from the last COSEC meeting were still there. But she wasn’t representing Sweden now; she didn’t represent anyone at all.