The Swimmer

by Joakim Zander

  George checked his watch: 8:07 a.m. According to his calculations, he had thirteen minutes left. Better hurry up. He removed an oblong piece of metal with a small hook on one end from his briefcase. Without hesitating, he put it into the lock on Klara’s door to hold part of the bolt in place and then inserted the thin blade of the electrical picklock beside it. He pressed the power button again and started moving the picklock over the pins in the lock.

  It didn’t take even twenty seconds for him to pick his first lock. His heart was pounding in his chest. Holding his breath, he pushed down on the handle and opened the door to Klara’s office. He stepped in and locked the door behind him. If someone showed up, he’d have time to sneak into Boman’s office through the connecting door. Klara’s office looked just like any other assistant’s office in Parliament. George had seen his fair share during his years in Brussels. This one was somewhat better because it was situated high up and in the corner. The view was amazing. But he really didn’t have time to admire it right now.

  Klara’s thin, aluminum-colored laptop was sitting on the desk. Bingo. It was in standby mode. He lifted the screen to wake it up. Ten minutes left. As soon as the computer woke up, George inserted the USB stick into the port and clicked on the icon that popped up on the screen. He dragged the application onto the desktop. The program took care of the rest on its own. Josh had shown him what to do probably ten times last night. It would take about a minute. While he was waiting, he attached a small plastic capsule on the far underside of Klara’s desk. It had some type of adhesive on top and stuck easily. He repeated the maneuver in Boman’s office and went back into Klara’s to see if the program had finished loading.

  Just as he was sitting down in front of Klara’s computer to remove the thumb drive, he heard a key being put into the lock. How the hell was that possible? Assistants never came in this early. He tore the stick out of the dock. Slammed the screen shut to put it into standby mode again. In one long stride he was back inside Boman’s office. As he was closing the door, he saw the door to Klara’s office open and smelled a faint odor of perfume. Why hadn’t he heard her coming down the hall? Wall-to-wall carpets, of course. His legs were shaking. He could hear Klara moving around in the other room through the thin wall. Her cell phone rang.

  ‘Hello, Eva-Karin,’ he heard her say. ‘Yes, I’m here now. Sure, I can print them out. Okay, I’ll see you in a few minutes.’

  Fuck, Boman was on her way. George knew he should sneak silently over to the door to the hallway, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He stood rooted to the wall, trying to regain control over his body. Finally he mustered the courage and glided slowly across the floor to the door. Gently, gently, he turned the lock. It clicked when it opened. George thought it sounded like a gunshot. But he had no time to lose. Thank God everything here was new, and none of the doors creaked. He pushed the door open just enough to slip out. There was no way to lock it behind him. Hopefully they’d think that the cleaners forgot it last night. He jogged to the end of the corridor, expecting the whole time to hear Klara’s door opening behind him. But nothing happened. Finally he reached the elevators and pushed the button frantically. The elevator on the end dinged and the doors opened. In his eagerness to get in, he ran straight into Eva-Karin Boman.

  ‘Sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he muttered, averting his face. Eva-Karin didn’t seem to notice him at all.

  Three minutes later George was sitting on the steps outside the main entrance with his head between his knees, trying to breathe normally again. What am I doing? he thought. What the hell am I doing? His left hand dug into his pocket for the bag of cocaine. If he didn’t deserve a line after this morning, what did he have to do to deserve one?

  28

  December 20, 2013

  Stockholm, Sweden

  Gabriella Seichelman hurried across the reception hall of the Stockholm Administrative Law building on Tegelsuddgatan. Her eyes sought the screens indicating what room her hearing would be in. There was still twenty-five minutes left until it began, and she’d been prepping her client, Joseph Mbila, until six o’clock yesterday evening. It should be fine.

  But this wasn’t how things usually went before she appeared in court. She always made sure she had at least a half hour by herself in an available meeting room with a cup of tea and her papers. That was her routine, her lucky charm. She usually knew the case more or less by heart by the time of the actual hearing. But that half hour was her way of focusing. Her way of tuning everything else out, of staying sharp. Not having that whole half hour… that wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

  Gabriella was a master at tuning out the world. She knew that of all the workaholics at the prestigious law firm of Lindblad and Wiman, she was the one who worked the hardest. No one was more devoted to her clients. No one stayed up later. No one got up earlier. There had been a lot of envious looks when she became a member of the Swedish Bar Association before any of her older colleagues. She was on the fast track leading straight up.

  And she had begun to hate it. Slowly, at first almost imperceptibly, she’d started to become the kind of girl she and Klara used to despise in law school. A careerist. A climber with no interests beyond her job. How long ago had it been since she’d taken a vacation? How long since she stayed out all night partying? How long since she’d made out with someone? How long since she’d felt anything except the nagging anxiety that she wasn’t reading enough, not arguing clearly enough, not putting enough hours into rescuing her client? How long since she’d listened to one of the albums that used to mean everything to her, but were now accumulating dust in the back of her closet, under the piles of papers that just kept growing?

  She had been feeling it more and more lately. The walls were closing in around her. The emptiness, the thoughts hidden behind thick walls of work. The unfathomable futility of it all.

  She was scared witless by it, which sent her diving headlong into the next goal, the next client, the next eighty-hour workweek. She persuaded herself that it was necessary. That her clients needed her. That once she became a partner in the firm, everything would calm down.

  A red poinsettia and a white electric candlestick were placed inside the receptionist’s glass cage. Tuesday was Christmas eve. My God, the only memories Gabriella had from this fall were from courtrooms, police stations, and government agencies. And from her office. Most of all from her office. Just before she reached the reception desk, she heard a voice call out behind her.

  ‘Gabriella Seichelman?’

  She stopped, turning around a bit too quickly, and slipped on the gray stone slabs of the lobby. A hand reached out and steadied her.

  ‘Wow, you move quickly, I’ll give you that,’ said the voice attached to the hand.

  Gabriella twisted her head up and gave a strained smile. Blushing, despite herself. The voice belonged to a man in his fifties. Short gray hair under a black cap, scruffy jeans worn a little too high, a cheap-looking dress shirt and a broken-in, short leather jacket. A plainclothes police officer. No doubt about it. If there was anything Gabriella could spot, it was a plainclothes police officer.

  Before she could say anything, he flashed her his badge.

  ‘My name is Anton Bronzelius,’ he said. ‘I work with the Security Service.’

  ‘Okay?’ Gabriella said, starting to feel nervous.

  She didn’t have time for this. Not at all.

  ‘Do you have a second?’ Bronzelius said. ‘Or rather, I know you have…’

  He turned his wrist to look at his plastic watch.

  ‘I know you’ve got twenty-one minutes before your hearing begins. And I’ve taken the liberty of booking us a conference room.’

  Gabriella played with her cell phone. Checked the time. Nineteen minutes until the hearing began. Sure, Joseph was prepared. He didn’t expect her for another fifteen minutes. Her legs twitched under the table. She played with her phone. Damnit, this was not the way it was supposed be.

  At least Bronzelius
didn’t waste any time. They’d barely entered the room before he threw two tabloids onto the white table between them. All of these rooms were white. Gabriella felt as if she spent more time in this kind of room than in her own white-walled apartment.

  The headlines were almost identical. Different versions of swede wanted for murder in brussels. Expressen chose to add the word ‘terrorist’. Aftonbladet went for ‘elite soldier’. What a bunch of idiots at Expressen, thought Gabriella. ‘Elite soldier’ would sell much better than yet another terrorist story.

  ‘Have you heard about this?’ began Bronzelius.

  ‘Well, I read the papers,’ Gabriella said. ‘So yes, I’ve heard about it. But I’ve only seen the headlines online this morning. Nothing more.’

  Bronzelius nodded calmly. There was something about this man. Something honest and sincere. Something safe and policelike. Gabriella felt calmer.

  ‘What I’m about to say needs to stay between us. It needs to be kept in complete secrecy. You’re a lawyer. You know what that means.’

  ‘Yes, I understand the concept of confidentiality.’

  She smiled a little warily. Bronzelius looked serious.

  ‘The terrorist—or elite soldier, depending on which newspaper you read—is Mahmoud Shammosh,’ he said.

  29

  December 20, 2013

  Brussels, Belgium

  Klara leaned back in her chair and spun around from her desk to look out at the stunning view of Brussels from the window of her sixteenth-floor office. Away from her buzzing computer. Away from her notes from the meeting with Eva-Karin. The morning was ice-cold with clear blue skies. Smoke hovered, quiet and white, over the chimneys of houses. As if it had frozen on its way up toward all that blue. The sunshine was so intense, Klara had to turn her eyes back to her office.

  She couldn’t stand looking at it. Couldn’t stand the reflections flashing off the European Union buildings; their contours were suddenly so sharp they made her eyes hurt. Today was one of those days when it felt like everything was happening for the first time. As if the earth had rotated a few degrees on its axis, as if the universe had expanded or contracted. As if she had woken up in a different body, filled with experiences she had no memories of. Her teenage years had been filled with days like that. Maybe everyone’s teens were filled with days like that. She closed her eyes and wiped what might have been a tear from the corner of her eye.

  After she’d turned the frame over, she’d sat staring into Cyril’s stark white wall for a long time. Taking deep breaths. Thinking about what Grandpa used to say: ‘Rock and salt. That’s what we’re made of out here in the archipelago.’

  Rock and salt.

  Slowly, she’d lowered her gaze to look at the black-and-white photo.

  They were beautiful. All three of them were beautiful. The little girl was probably three years old. She looked so happy on Cyril’s shoulders. Her long, thick hair mixed with his wavy, vacation-ruffled curls as she bent over him. Her large, dark eyes looked straight into the camera. Cyril was shirtless and leaning outward and upward to kiss her on the cheek. Beside him, with her long, smooth arm draped naturally around Cyril’s waist was a woman who looked so perfectly healthy and relaxed that Klara almost couldn’t breathe. With her tiny freckles, her pretty little nose, her salt-splashed hair, her casual shirtdress and her obviously tanned legs, she could have been a model. Maybe she was. A beach stretched out behind them, and beyond that waves and sea. It was the quintessential picture of a happy French family.

  How long had she sat there with that picture, wrestling with the urge to throw it against the wall so hard the simple frame would crack and the glass would spread out across the parquet floor like mercury? Finally she calmly put it back into the drawer where she’d found it. Stood up and got dressed. Put her phone in her bag and went to work.

  Rock and salt.

  When the phone on her desk rang, she first considered not picking it up. She didn’t want to talk, couldn’t stand the thought of sucking up to Eva-Karin. But on the sixth ring, she decided that anything was better than what she was feeling right now.

  ‘Yes?’ she said into the phone.

  ‘A Mr Moody for you, Mademoiselle Walldéen,’ a receptionist said in French on the other end of the line.

  Klara gasped. It was as if the composition of the air itself had suddenly changed, as if she had to work harder to get oxygen to her blood.

  ‘Klara,’ said a voice on the phone. ‘Are you there?’

  His voice was shriller than she remembered it. Pinched—the words somehow compressed. She tried to breathe normally, but it was impossible.

  ‘Moody,’ she whispered.

  Then nothing. It took several seconds for Klara to finally break the silence.

  ‘It’s been a long time.’

  She could hear him breathing on the other end. It had been so long. Still, she knew something wasn’t right.

  ‘I have to see you,’ Mahmoud said.

  His voice was tense, as if buzzing with electricity. Klara started to feel guilty. She hadn’t responded to his e-mail. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Now?’ she said. ‘Do you want to meet now? Are you in Brussels?’

  ‘Can you leave the office?’

  ‘What is it, Moody? Has something happened?’

  ‘I can’t tell you now. Not like this. Can I see you?’

  Klara thought it over for a moment. She got the distinct feeling that she was at an important crossroads.

  ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘No problem. Where should we meet?’

  30

  Spring 1994

  CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, USA

  We’re all suspects; more than that. Guilty until proven innocent. We move like shadows through the hallways. Shadows that are the shadows of shadows. The daring ones exchange knowing glances over mounds of shredded documents, whirring computers. Talks at the watercooler are quiet, intense, full of disbelief and carefully calibrated. Those already under formal investigation wear their stress like a bell around their necks, like a yellow Star of David. In the canteen, they sit alone with their trays and their thoughts of retirement, their children’s college funds evaporating with each new interrogation, with each more or less explicit suspicion. Nobody is talking about it. Everybody is talking about it.

  It’s only been a few weeks since they took Aldrich Ames. Vertefeuille and her stubborn task force of old ladies and retirees on the second floor. A mole in Langley. Our very own Philby. Is it worse to betray your country for money than for ideology? The prevailing view at the watercooler is yes.

  And now the building is full of FBI. Uncomplicated policemen in dark suits. They might as well be uniformed here, where khakis and dress shirts are the rule. They know nothing about us, nothing about our work. It’s a joke. Lie detectors don’t work on someone who can’t tell the difference between truth and lies. They’re irrelevant to those of us who don’t even care which is which.

  I’m not surprised when I hear the footsteps on the carpet outside my office, and I barely look up when they open my door without knocking. Their tactics are obvious, old-fashioned, as familiar as a pair of well-worn boots. A tired man around my age enters. He needs a haircut and to lose twenty-five pounds if he’s going to avoid the heart attack he probably already feels panting in his chest. A rookie with high cheekbones wearing a new suit, struggling to keep the testosterone inside his shirt collar, follows him in.

  ‘If you just tell us right away it’ll make it easier for everyone,’ says the rookie, fastening his just-out-of-the-academy eyes at me. ‘We already know most of it, so you just need to fill in the gaps for us.’

  The older man sits down in one of the threadbare steel chairs in front of my desk and turns his eyes up toward the soundproof tiles in the ceiling. It’s the oldest trick in the book. Fire off an accusation, throw your object off balance, see how he reacts. It might work on a junkie in the Bronx, in a Wall
Street office on some sweaty stockbroker already starting to get cold feet about that insider deal.

  But that’s not going to work here. Not in Langley. Not on the people who invented that method, who are infinitely better at lying than at telling the truth. Not on those who, for once, have nothing to hide.

  Fourteen hours later I’m sitting with electrodes attached to my body in front of a tired, old technician who seems all too aware of the futility of this task. It’s a charade. We play our roles the best we can.

  We go through the formalities, the control questions. Where I live, where I was stationed, my divorce, how much I drink.

  ‘Is this the first time you’ve been under investigation?’ he says at last, and glances at the controls in front of him.

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘I was under investigation between 1980 and 1981. Suspended one month, then released, but they kept me here at Langley until 1985.’

  ‘Do you know why you were under investigation?’

  ‘Yes, there were circumstances in my private life that compromised an operation when I was deep undercover abroad.’

  ‘What circumstances?’

  He looks up and meets my gaze with his gray, hangdog eyes.

  ‘I don’t know if you have high enough clearance for me to tell you that,’ I say.

  ‘You can assume that I have clearance,’ he says.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t want to screw things up for either of us, but I can’t just assume anything. My superiors would have to declassify it, and until you have a document to that effect, I can’t say any more than that.’

  I make an effort to sound friendly. He’s just an instrument, a speaker for the questions someone else has written.