Into a Raging Blaze

by Andreas Norman

  She turned to Mikael. She only needed a look, an imperceptible nod, anything that revealed he understood what she was about to do and that he supported her. But Mikael was looking down at his papers.

  “Okay,” she heard herself say. “You can have Badawi.”

  43

  Brussels, Sunday, October 9

  A bright light streamed into the small cell. After the dense darkness, the fluorescent lighting of the corridor was sharp and hurt her eyes. Carina shaded her face with her hand. Two men were in the doorway. One of them came in and stood by the wall, without looking at her; the other put down a bucket, a plastic bowl and a bottle of water on the floor. Then, wordlessly, they left the cell. The door closed and, for a moment, the total darkness was back. She crept over the floor, feeling her way forward, and found the tray. The bowl contained rice and beans. She ate with her hands and drank large gulps from the bottle, before lying down on the floor.

  She must have fallen asleep because she awoke with a start and opened her eyes. But it was just as dark as before. It might only have been a minute, or a day. She had no idea.

  She sat by one of the walls with her legs pulled up to her chest. She felt calmer; hunger was no longer tearing at her stomach. Her thoughts meandered. At some point, she got angry about something; it was as if she had opened a door and let something warm and raging rush out of her body. Her pulse beat harder and faster; it pounded against her temples; she felt a huge rush of adrenaline; rage swept her along. She had begun to think about work at the Security Policy Department and her office on the fifth floor. She had tried to remember what it looked like, tying her thoughts to that mental picture. But then it had struck her that it was probably no longer her office. Maybe they had gotten some boxes and gathered her things together; maybe there was someone else in there now, a complete stranger in her room, and that thought made her so angry. She fantasized for a long time about how she would return to the floor and walk down the corridor toward her office, and how some other bastard would be in there, a young arrogant guy who had never even once had to fight for anything in his life, and how she would ask him, ice cold, what he was doing there. She would stand there and make the guy sitting in her office cry, then force him out of the room, make him return the keys and, as he sobbed, he would beg her for forgiveness. And everyone would be standing around in the corridor agreeing with her—agreeing with her. Then her thoughts wandered on to the morning when she had been called into the Head of Department’s office and how they had questioned and humiliated her. She saw the department head and Anders Wahlund in front of her, how they told her that she had made an error, that she was injudicious. She thought about this for a long while. She had just let it happen. She had just sat there on the sofa and barely said a thing, had let them be right, and now she couldn’t understand how she had just taken all that shit. The more she thought about it and all the patronizing things they had said, the more agitated she became. The rage tensed all her muscles until her body was stiff. She replayed the scene over and over and, each time, she just got angrier and finally she began to see herself getting up and standing in front of the department head and saying what she had wanted to say for so long. She gave him proper comebacks; she spoke to him directly as an equal. He was an idiot. He should be damn careful what he said. She saw how he shrank back in the face of her ice-cold rage and transformed into the little, oppressive shit that he was. Now she knew exactly what she should have said to them, not like then, when it had actually happened and she had just given lame answers, or sat in silence. She should have defended herself better. She saw how she got up and interrupted the department head and Wahlund with a few choice words to put them in their place, once and for all. She thought it all through very slowly, formed the words carefully using her hatred, honing the sentences until they were razor sharp.

  Then the fury was gone. She was back in the darkness and the rage that had been rushing around inside her like a demon was gone, as if blown away on a gust of wind. What did it matter? she thought. Wahlund meant nothing to her life, and now, sitting in the dark, she knew that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also meant nothing to her. She couldn’t explain it, but it felt dispensable. Everything that she had believed was important, everything she had thought was the core of her existence—being one of the best people at the Security Policy Department at the MFA and an integral part of the Swedish diplomatic core—that all appeared completely pointless. She thought for a long time about why she felt like that. It was an important job. Everyone around her was always so impressed that she worked in foreign policy and she had been proud to work there. But, when she thought about the Ministry, all she could feel was an indifference that surprised her; it was like looking at a dazzling machine, a kind of gray, glittering system of corridors; there were just scattered images; she could barely even remember what she had been doing there and it wasn’t even a feeling, more a kind of emptiness that occurred when she tried to gather her thoughts. She had been completely dispensable. She had thought she was part of a community where she was allowed to be the committed, professional diplomat that she had always dreamed of becoming. She had thought that what she was doing meant something because it was her doing it. But, in reality, she had just been working as part of a machine that needed her labor, and she had been replaceable, at a moment’s notice, as soon as any of her bosses decided it should be so. Someone else would come after her and take her place. She had been pushed away and, without understanding how it had happened, she had ended up here. She would never be able to go back to the MFA; there was nothing for her to return to.

  Maybe she imagined it, but she thought she heard laughter: men laughing loudly. Another time she woke in the darkness to a drawn-out scream.

  She thought about Jamal and missed him so much that tears came to her eyes. She wondered whether he missed her. Maybe he was also being held captive. Maybe they had already caught him and taken him away and tried to make him say things. No, she thought. No. Not Jamal. These thoughts overwhelmed her; the darkness around her pushed itself on to her and made her gasp for breath. Please, don’t let them hurt him, she prayed silently. Please, she thought. Not Jamal. She had to believe that things would sort themselves out and that she would soon see him; just the possibility that it wouldn’t happen was so unbearable that she quickly pushed it away. It couldn’t be right. It wasn’t allowed to be right because that would be the end—she might as well give up and die.

  She closed her eyes and tried to see the apartment in Hammarby Sjöstad. It was hard to see him in front of her; the darkness was so enormous that it consumed everything. “Jamal,” she said, “don’t go. Jamal, my love, don’t go.” She wanted to be with him forever, to hold him, to wrap her arms around him and never let go, and for a second the feeling was so strong that she stretched out her arms in front of her and hugged the darkness. Then she opened her eyes. There were voices outside the door.

  44

  Brussels, Monday, October 10

  Bente Jensen was alone in the conference room. It was almost nine and, behind the closed door to the open-plan office, another working day at the Section was beginning. The on-duty officers had reported earlier in the morning: surveillance against five Nordic followers of al-Shabaab was continuing; two Swedish-Moroccans who had traveled to Karachi had been under surveillance by the Pakistani security service as of twelve hours ago—it was thought they were on their way to a training camp; the Section was managing the signals intelligence against the neo-Nazi who had arranged a right-wing extremist conference in southern Sweden; then a string of other, smaller requests from Stockholm. Just a normal working day.

  After the morning meeting, she got a cup of coffee and shut herself in the conference room. The coffee was hot and black, just as coffee in the morning should be, but she didn’t drink any of it. She fingered the remote control.

  Counterterrorism had sent a link to the recording early that morning. She had already watched it with Mikael and the leadership team, but
now she needed to watch it again. She didn’t want to, but she had to, for her own sake, to be completely certain. She looked at the time: five to nine. An hour or so, then it would be on the news.

  The arrest had taken place at half past four on Saturday morning. They had found him at home in his apartment, sleeping. Everything had apparently been completely undramatic; he hadn’t resisted. The first interview had taken place right away and Hamrén had shared a recording with the Section, management and a few other parts of the Security Service.

  She turned on the wall-mounted TV screen. A black-and-white buzz, then the picture appeared. The camera was in the corner of a room, at the side, so that the person being interviewed was seen diagonally from the front, but wasn’t tempted to look into the lens. It was one of the small, light interview rooms at the police station where Badawi was being held in custody. It was sparingly and anonymously furnished with an IKEA table, a few chairs with tubular steel legs, and a sober office light. In an attempt to give the room an air of normality, curtains had been hung in front of the square, bulletproof windows.

  Jamal Badawi was sitting at the table, immobile, with his hands in his lap. Opposite him was the lead interrogator from Counterterrorism, one of the more experienced police chief inspectors. Next to the policeman was the female MI6 agent, Sarah. Badawi was wearing a white T-shirt and sweatpants, which he had presumably been given in custody. The operation had been fast; they probably hadn’t let him get dressed when he was arrested.

  Badawi looked tense and pale. He had the expression of surprise, of jitteriness that everyone but the toughest showed after an arrest. The lead interrogator asked if he wanted water. He shook his head and looked around the room as if he didn’t really understand that this was happening to him.

  “Can you state your full name, please.”

  “Jamal Abdulwaham Badawi.”

  The interview began with the lead interrogator asking Badawi to describe his duties at work for the Ministry of Justice. Badawi glanced furtively at the chief inspector and the MI6 agent. Dark, wandering eyes. He was very tense and didn’t seem to understand the situation.

  “Why am I here?”

  They looked at him. No one replied.

  “I really don’t understand. This is completely sick.”

  He fell silent. They waited.

  Finally, the lead interrogator said, “I want to you tell us where you were on Friday the 23rd of September.”

  “Friday the 23rd of September?” Jamal repeated. The firm question made him focus a little. He looked at the ceiling. Maybe he was playing for time; maybe he was gathering his thoughts. “I was at work,” he said eventually. “And then I met my girlfriend—in the evening.”

  “What’s your girlfriend named?”

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  “I want to know what your girlfriend is named.”

  “Carina Dymek,” he said sullenly.

  “Describe what you did that evening.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “We met—at my place. Had dinner. Talked.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “All sorts of things. Why?”

  “Your girlfriend had been in Brussels the day before.”

  “She was at a meeting. For work.”

  “And came to your place in the evening?”

  Badawi nodded.

  Bente fast-forwarded. Ten minutes later: Jamal Badawi had admitted he knew about the report. Now the lead interrogator was going through exactly how it had been handled, whom he had passed the report on to, when and how. Solid facts. Badawi was tense, cleared his throat—was close to breaking. The lead interrogator took Badawi through the questions carefully. Now they had an admission, they would get more out of him. Badawi resisted, as if he understood he was being led into an abyss. He was anxious. The lead interrogator tried to calm him, breaking down all the sensitive questions into small, technical, administrative details: a name, a phone number. The lead interrogator spoke calmly to Badawi, like a father to his son, a manager to a civil servant. The approach seemed to work. Badawi, used to talking to persons of authority, became more factual in his replies. The shrill, defensive, confused tone slowly began to dissipate.

  “What did you say to her when she showed you the report?” the lead interrogator wanted to know.

  “I said . . .” Badawi began to cry. “She shouldn’t have accepted it,” he burst out. “I knew it was dangerous.”

  “Why do you think she accepted it?”

  “I don’t know. She wanted to make a difference.”

  “She wanted to make a difference. Okay.”

  “Yes. Fight for something greater. Or something.” Dymek had shown it to him, he said. He had told her to pass it on to others on Monday. “She wasn’t in the wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was just given the report. I think it was mostly chance. She didn’t do anything wrong, but no one listened to her. They were against her at the MFA—suspended her for no reason. I told her to be careful, but she was so stupid.” He shook his head. “She thought she could go against her bosses.”

  “Okay. So you tried to persuade her to be careful.”

  “Yes, but she didn’t listen. She didn’t understand.”

  The lead interrogator fell silent. There was a pause—it was conscious; they wanted to let him catch his breath before they continued. Badawi’s description tallied with the information about how the report had been spread. But she could see that the chief inspector wasn’t really interested in the report. He didn’t believe Badawi. He was waiting for the right moment to ask the questions that would lead them to the terrorist threat.

  The lead interrogator poured a glass of water for Badawi. He drank it slowly.

  “I want to talk a bit more about your relation to Carina Dymek,” said the lead interrogator when Badawi had drunk a second glass of water. “Can you describe your relationship?”

  Jamal sat quietly for a long time and looked straight ahead. Then he said in a low voice, “I love her.”

  The lead interrogator said nothing.

  Badawi seemed to be fighting back tears and merely shook his head. “Where’s Carina?”

  The lead interrogator still said nothing.

  “I want to know where she is,” Badawi repeated. “I haven’t heard from her in several days. Where is she?”

  “There, there,” the lead interrogator said drily.

  Badawi stared at him and fell silent.

  “Can you tell us how you met Carina?”

  “We met four, five months ago. It was completely by chance. I was out with a few guys from work for a beer, and she was there with some people from the Ministry.”

  “Where was that?”

  “At Pickwick’s—a pub close to work.”

  “Okay. So you were there and met her there. Do you remember when that was?”

  “It was a Friday—in May. The first Friday in May. I had never met her before; she was at the MFA and worked on completely different stuff. We got talking. We had fun. She was tough and warm at the same time.” He smiled briefly.

  The lead interrogator said nothing, waiting.

  “I got her cell number and we saw each other a few days later. I remember calling her right away on the Monday because I had been thinking about her so much. And I noticed that she had been thinking about me. Then we saw each other again. And I knew right away that she was the one.”

  “What do you mean by ‘she was the one’?”

  “I thought about her all the time. And something happened when we saw each other; it was special. I told her things I’ve never told anyone else. And I don’t really know why. I trusted her. I loved her right away.”

  “What things did you tell her?”

  “Well, about my family.” He stopped. “There are so many people in Sweden who don’t comprehend that there is anything else in the world except their own little lives, keeping up with the Svenssons. They’re not interested. And if you’re
an Arab like I am then they’re always stunned that you’ve been to college, and they never understand how a Muslim can be a Swedish lawyer working for the Ministry of Justice.” He laughed—it was a dry sound.

  “So you feel misunderstood,” said the lead interrogator.

  Bente fast-forwarded thirty minutes through the interview. She knew what happened next: the lead interrogator continued drilling down into Badawi’s relationship with Dymek to try and find out exactly how he related to her. Both Stockholm and London were still convinced that he had recruited Dymek to bring in the report, to work against Brussels and the EIS. Badawi answered, but didn’t seem to understand what they wanted. An hour into the interview, Badawi was asked about people he knew. The lead interrogator got him to name friends, work contacts, and asked questions about the IRC channel, although not in as many words. Badawi was shown pictures of people who had been identified as members of the IRC channel. He didn’t recognize any of them, he said. Didn’t know who any of them were.

  It was at this point that Sarah from MI6 took over. The conversation switched to English.

  “I’m interested in your relations with some of your relatives in Cairo,” said Sarah in a tone that made it sound like all she wanted to know was how he felt. “Can you describe your relationship with Akim Badawi?”