Into a Raging Blaze

by Andreas Norman

  On the other hand, Dymek had spoken to Alexandra Gustavsson and knew there had been arrests. Maybe she thought she was being looked for. Maybe she was afraid to be seen. In that case, she would keep a low profile, hanging around in the shops or hiding in some remote part of the terminal until just before departure, and then she would go right to the gate.

  Bente began to walk toward the main concourse; she hurried past a large group of recently arrived passengers, who filled the passageway with their travel baggage and shopping bags, and upped her pace. After ten minutes, she was in the main part of the terminal building, where the shops and restaurants were. She got out her cell and brought up the picture: Carina Dymek. She studied the photo and memorized her facial features, her hair, her eyes, and then continued on, peered between the tables in a number of fast food joints, crossed two large tax-free stores, and wandered through some of the smaller shops. People everywhere, but no Dymek. She took the escalator down to the floor below and watched the crowds before hurrying back to the main concourse again.

  Terminal 1, with its three stories, was large enough to house around one hundred shops and restaurants: far too wide an area for her to have time to search it on foot. She stopped and swore at herself for almost losing her temper. Forty minutes until departure.

  Before Bente had left Brussels, the Section had arranged a ticket for a flight departing from the gate next to Dymek’s, so she could follow Dymek through security, if necessary. She would be able to pass through security and stand by her gate, but if Dymek wasn’t there then Bente would have no choice but to wait until she turned up to make contact with her. She needed at least ten minutes in private with Carina. To stop her from getting on the plane was pointless—it would draw too much attention. Dymek was probably dead set on catching her flight and wouldn’t let anything get in her way. There would be an argument, and Bente couldn’t draw the attention of the security personnel.

  For safety’s sake, she quickly looked in three or four other clothing stores and checked the changing rooms. In a luggage store, she waved away an assistant and tried to gather her thoughts.

  Dymek had been in British captivity and had then ended up in Cairo, where she had gotten up in the middle of the night to catch her flight. She missed home. She was probably exhausted, frightened, possibly in shock, and paranoid that she was being pursued. In that state, it could be assumed that she didn’t want to be surrounded by large crowds; she would prefer to be left alone.

  Bente called Mikael. “I need you now.”

  “We’re almost in. Hang in there.”

  She looked at the time. Twenty-five minutes.

  Mikael called her back. They had stopped trying to access the airport’s servers, he said; the security was too high. However, the technicians had found weaknesses in a system belonging to a security company, passing over an external server. “We have some surveillance cameras. About ten shops and restaurants . . .” he interrupted himself to issue rapid orders to someone in the background. “Run her face,” she heard him tell someone. Facial recognition. Bente left the shop and stood in the middle of the main concourse where she could see everyone coming up the escalators and streaming in from the different gate areas.

  “We’re looking,” said Mikael in a low voice.

  Bente gritted her teeth. She could almost feel the minutes ticking away like a physical sensation. She wanted to scream. She was forced to control herself, to stand still and wait beneath the high ceiling of the terminal building, following the herds of passengers with her gaze.

  “There!” shouted Mikael. “Asian restaurant. Coa—Cuisine of Asia. Where are you?”

  “Area A, floor two, by the escalators.”

  Mikael stopped for a second; he seemed to be reading from a screen. Then: “Two hundred meters to your right, opposite side of the concourse, where the shops are, near security for the A gates. She’s leaving the restaurant now.”

  Bente had already begun to run. The concourse was a wide thoroughfare right through the airport, with rows of shops on both sides. She zigzagged through a straggling flock of travelers on the way to their gates and squeezed past a tour group, oblivious to everything around them as they walked along the line of shops, pushing laden carts in front of them. She reached the end of the concourse and, on the left, separated from the shops, was a cluster of restaurants. She saw the sign: COA—CUISINE OF ASIA. She looked around, breathless.

  The face—she was trying to spot it in the crowd.

  Dymek was nowhere to be seen. But she couldn’t be more than a minute away. Bente hurried toward the gates, still jogging, peering at the rows of seats by the counters. It was still deserted down by gate A16—the only person there was a woman from Lufthansa. A few passengers were sat there waiting, but Dymek was not one of them.

  She swore. There wasn’t long left now—fifteen minutes until boarding. Where could Dymek have gone? It shouldn’t have been difficult to catch sight of her out here by the gates. Bente couldn’t have missed her. She got out her cell and began to call Mikael.

  Then it hit her: Dymek was flying first class. A first-class ticket.

  She ran back along the gates toward security. She was right: there was the glass door. Lufthansa First-Class Lounge.

  Steps inside the substantial door led up to a reception desk where a man in a dark suit looked up and greeted her with a professional, welcoming smile. No, she said at once, she didn’t have a first-class ticket. The man made an attempt to explain with an apologetic smile that this was a lounge solely for Lufthansa’s first-class passengers, but she interrupted him and held up her Security Service ID. The man took it and examined it in silence with a frown. Wordlessly, he handed the card back and nodded.

  A large, airy room opened up beyond the reception area. An entire wall made of glass offered panoramic views of the runways. The sun shone through pale panel curtains; there was a calm light across the room. Here and there, well-dressed men and women sat in the generous sofa suites, talking to each other, hunching over laptops, or leaning back and reading newspapers.

  There.

  A little apart from the other travelers, in a sofa by the glass wall: Carina Dymek.

  Bente stopped, struggling to slow her breathing while pretending to select a newspaper from a nearby table. For a moment, she was unsure; Dymek looked so haggard. She was forced to double-check on her cell that it actually was her.

  In no hurry, she meandered across the lounge and sat down next to Dymek.

  Dymek was lost in thought and didn’t take the slightest notice of her, just continued to stare emptily at the view. Bente could observe her slyly in peace and quiet.

  Her face was taut, her eyes red-rimmed, as if she was sleep deprived—or as if she had been crying. There were ugly marks on her neck, Bente noted, and a yellowing bruise on her temple that she had tried to hide by wearing her hair down. She looked resolute, dogged. This wasn’t a broken person, just a different one from the person smiling out at the world on the Government Offices ID card.

  She followed Dymek’s gaze, looking at an Airbus slowly lowering its vast body to the ground.

  “It’ll be good to get back to Sweden,” she said slowly, “won’t it?”

  Dymek came to life and looked at her for the first time, surprised to have been addressed in Swedish.

  “Bente Jensen.” She reached across with her hand.

  Dymek reluctantly took the hand, as a reflex. “Carina.”

  “I know. We’ve spoken before.”

  “Have we?” Dymek straightened up and looked at her intently, with a skeptical frown.

  She held up her identification. Dymek lowered her eyes. She could see Dymek’s breathing speed up as she read what it said on the small piece of plastic.

  “I know you have a plane to catch. But I need a few minutes of your time.”

  Dymek didn’t answer. Her gaze darkened and she turned away. At this moment, anything could happen. The worst-case scenario was that Dymek would try to escape or begin
screaming and making a scene. That couldn’t happen.

  “We know that you leaked the EU Commission’s report about the EIS. And a number of Swedish documents,” Bente said calmly. “What you’ve done will cause a lot of damage to Sweden. And lots of other countries.”

  Dymek said nothing. She sat, staring at the runways with an austere, stony face.

  “Your plane leaves in about half an hour. You’re a wanted criminal in Sweden. You’ll be arrested as soon as you arrive at Arlanda, and I think your chances of exoneration are pretty small. Do you understand?”

  Dymek continued to look at the runways. Two planes were approaching the airport, one about to land, and the other still in the air. Sunlight glittered on their fusiform bodies.

  She didn’t have much time. It was important to quickly get Dymek to recognize the facts and remove the possibility of her denying the situation. It was just as likely that a trial would be dismissed, but she needed to exert pressure on Dymek, to force her to a point where she could only select the option offered by Bente. She could use threats, flattery—whatever it took to get there—so long as she didn’t deprive her of hope, at least not too soon, especially not the hope that she could save herself. One of mankind’s greatest driving forces was the desire to save himself.

  “You’re risking several years in prison,” Bente continued. “Records that will follow you for the rest of your life. Believe me when I say—”

  “Leave me alone.” Dymek continued to stare straight ahead.

  “I’m here to offer you an alternative.”

  Dymek turned around and cut her off. “Go to hell.”

  This kind of aggressive rejection was to be expected. Dymek was off balance, and struck out with the weapon of the powerless: the demand to be left alone.

  “Do you have any other documents?” she said calmly. “Apart from the ones that the Guardian has?”

  Dymek shook her head and muttered no.

  “Sorry?”

  “No,” said Dymek loudly.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Do I look uncertain?”

  Bente looked at her for a second and then smiled. “No.” The woman sitting next to her was worn out and exhausted—scruffy, but not uncertain. Not with that harsh look. Bente recognized herself in her: the confidence in her own abilities, the unbending determination not to let herself down. She wouldn’t get Dymek where she wanted her unless she at least pretended to lay her cards on the table.

  “Let me be completely honest with you,” she said. “We have no interest in charges being brought against you.”

  She waited. Carina was sat with her back to her, but seemed to be listening.

  “Leaking those documents was very stupid. We don’t want to have to deal with any other incidents like that; do you understand? All we ask is that you never breathe another word about the EIS for the rest of your life. Or about anything that has happened.”

  “You want to silence me.” Carina laughed. “Isn’t it a bit late for that?”

  “That’s not for you to decide. If you say as much as a word about something to do with the EIS, I can promise you that we’ll do everything we can to stop you.”

  Dymek shuddered. She tried to hide it, but it was clear in the way she tensed her shoulders and back.

  Bente leaned forward and adopted a more conciliatory tone: “On the other hand, if you keep up your end, we should be able to arrange for you to return to work at the MFA.”

  “The MFA?” Carina looked up. Her face was contorted with rage. “You think I want to go back there? They told me to leave and I’ve no intention of going back.”

  Bente had actually thought this would be sufficient bait to secure Carina.

  “So you don’t want to go back to the Ministry?”

  “Never,” said Carina sullenly. “I accepted the report and passed it on to my bosses. I did what any civil servant would have done. I didn’t do anything wrong. They threw me out just because it suited them. And now they want me to come back nice and quietly—is that it? They can go to hell.”

  Carina wasn’t anywhere near as broken as she had expected. Bente couldn’t help but feel a certain tenderness for the furious young woman sitting there on the sofa.

  “But do we have an agreement, Carina?”

  “This isn’t even about the EIS, is it?” Carina looked calmly at her, with a hard stare. “This is about Jean Bernier. It was you people that killed him, wasn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “It was you.”

  “No, Carina,” she said quickly. “You’re wrong, and I have no intention of discussing this with you. I’m sure you understand that.”

  “Because then you’ll have to shoot me too, is that it?”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” She needed to bring this idiotic conversation to an end. It was so annoying how Carina, somehow, had managed to turn the tables and make her sit there defending herself. There was so little time; she needed to get them back on topic.

  “What kind of people are you?” Carina asked.

  “Just like you. Normal people.”

  “I don’t believe that.” She looked up as if a thought had just struck her. “It was you that called me in Brussels.”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you trying to rescue me?”

  She hesitated. Rescue? “Yes. You could say that.”

  “You were trying to rescue me, but killed Jean Bernier. How can you live with yourself?”

  “I’m doing my job.”

  “Your job.” Carina shook her head with a smile. “Jean Bernier is dead. People like you killed him.”

  “Carina . . .”

  But she wouldn’t be interrupted. “He said I had a conscience. And I actually think he was right. I have a conscience. But you . . .” Dymek looked at her in disgust. “You’re just empty.”

  “That’s enough,” said Bente sternly. She didn’t want to hear anymore. “I’ve asked you a question and you still haven’t given me an answer.”

  “I don’t care about your questions.”

  “Maybe not,” she said slowly. “But you do care about Jamal. We have his name connected to the three Swedish documents the Guardian received.”

  She waited; let the words do their work. She could see them taking hold. Carina stared at her; her eyes glazed over. Bente had guessed right. Carina would never betray Jamal. It was endearing, and useful.

  “Leave him alone.”

  “That depends on you.”

  She met Carina’s gaze.

  “On me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how do I know you’re not lying?”

  “You’ll have to trust me,” Bente said lightly.

  Carina snorted and looked out of the window. Then she got up, wordlessly. It was time to go to her gate. Bente followed silently as she left the lounge.

  The noisy airport enveloped them. Droning announcements about different impending departures soared above the clamor and clatter of thousands of feet and bags. The last call for boarding to Stockholm had been made; all remaining passengers were requested to go to the gate immediately.

  “I’ll keep quiet,” Carina said harshly. “If you release Jamal. You have to let him go, and leave him alone. Forever. If he doesn’t call me when I get to Arlanda, then—”

  “Okay.” Bente met the raging eyes of Carina. “He’ll call you.”

  “And you have to exonerate him; you have to leave him alone. Forever. Get it?”

  She nodded. Carina was, without a doubt, serious. She had already inflicted serious damage upon Swedish and European intelligence operations and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again if they didn’t keep up their side of the bargain. Right after this conversation, Bente would call Kempell and get Badawi released from custody.

  Carina glared at her as if she was going to say something so scathing that it would cut into the deepest, most secret parts of Bente. But she seemed to change her mind, merely shook her head and wordlessly set off
down the ramp toward the gates. Bente watched her go. She felt sympathy for Carina Dymek, a kind of warmth that aroused an impulse to catch up with her and continue the conversation. She knew the impulse was a weakness that occurred when suspects managed to transfer their world view to an investigator. She didn’t grab hold of the feeling and it slowly faded away, just like the tickle of an unfulfilled sneeze.

  Dymek was no longer visible in the crowd. Slowly, Bente began to walk to her own gate. She was in no hurry; the flight to Brussels wasn’t for another hour. They had now buried a truth. That didn’t bother her; secrets were necessary and good things. They were the matter that made up her work—that filled her life. Modern existence would never function so well, so smoothly, if it didn’t—to a large extent—consist of secrets.

  She lifted the phone to her ear. It rang. After their conversation, Kempell was going to contact Counterterrorism and then the prison, and within a few hours Badawi would be driven to Arlanda and released, thus contributing to a small, heartwarming reunion, written and directed by the Security Service. They would conduct limited monitoring of the couple for a few months, until Counterespionage was convinced they would maintain their silence. In time, the media would also let go of the story, in accordance with the inexorable logic of the news hunters that even the biggest scoop ended up with the same number of column inches as an obituary. Then Carina Dymek would be on her way into obscurity. Dymek, someone would remind themselves. Oh, her, yes. She had to go. A shame. She was good, but she made a mistake—so they would say in the corridors of the Ministry. But eventually no one would remember what that mistake had been, and no one would be able to say what had actually happened.