Anger Mode

by Stefan Tegenfalk

  “It’s the same thing,” Jonna argued.

  “Perhaps a grey area,” Walter said. “Like breaking the law to prevent other crimes from being committed.”

  “But that applies when the laws are not good laws,” Jonna said.

  “Laws are only theory. The challenge is their practical implementation. A law can prohibit an action that another law depends on to prevent crime.”

  “A catch-22 situation.”

  “Exactly,” Walter said emphatically. “Some legislators seem to have a distorted view of reality and of the laws that already exist. I could give you dozens of examples …”

  Jonna interrupted Walter. They seemed to have become permanently sidetracked. She suggested that they continue the discussion over a glass of wine when Walter was discharged from the hospital.

  The grief tore at his heart.

  His memories transported him to a place where he was lying on his back with a blue sky above and endless fields that disappeared over the horizon. A warm summer breeze washed over him.

  “Daddy?” she asked and lay down beside him. She was out of breath after running up the hill. “Is Grandma in heaven now?”

  He looked at his daughter. Her inquisitive eyes.

  “That’s what the priest said,” she added anxiously when he did not answer.

  He smiled and put his arm around her. “Grandma is in heaven,” he said, even though he knew there was no such thing.

  “Can she see us now?” she asked and pointed at the sky.

  “I’m sure she can,” he lied, taking her hand. Faith was the last hope of mankind. Something that made it possible to endure the fear of death and the final destination.

  “Can she hear us too?” Cecilia asked, but suddenly realized that might not be such a good thing. Then Grandma could hear her say bad words.

  “Perhaps,” he replied, although he knew the truth. It was they, he and his colleagues, who were God. Heaven was on earth and the body kept the soul alive. They had the answers, the truth that would deliver mankind from its ignorance.

  He was jolted back into the room with the windows facing the garden. Raindrops from the bluish-grey cloud spattered against the window-ledge. The time had come for the fourth one. Everything was prepared and he felt no remorse.

  THE GNESTA INCIDENT caused the highest officers within the Security Service to call an emergency meeting the next morning. The head of the Counter-Terrorism Unit, Thomas Kokk, described in brief terms the events of the night. The head of the Security Service, Agency Director Anders Holmberg, looked troubled and a little irritated where he sat, hunched in the meeting room together with the others from the organization’s executive. He was upset that one of his agents had been killed in action, in what was the first casualty in the history of the Security Service organization. He was also irritated that he had been pulled out of bed at five in the morning and therefore had not been able to sober up from last night’s drinking session with the Jägermeister club.

  To summon the executive for a matter involving an operational incident was a rare occurrence. It had not happened since the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme. The executive was responsible, first and foremost, for the administration of the organization, such as the yearly budget expenditure and other such matters, and for ensuring that designated targets were achieved. They were directly accountable to the government, Parliament and the National Police Board. But the incident was of such a nature that even the executive had to be informed of the situation. That had to be done by the Agency Director himself, together with the head of the operational unit involved.

  Agency Director Anders Holmberg still felt drunk even though he had drunk three cups of coffee, one after the other, as soon as he had arrived at the police headquarters in Kungsholmen. His stomach was in turmoil and a throbbing headache had enveloped him.

  This was not one of his better days.

  “This is the first time in the history of the Swedish Security Service that an agent has been killed during a police operation,” Holmberg said in a tense voice, after Thomas Kokk had finished his initial briefing. He massaged his temples with his fingers, hoping to ease his growing migraine.

  An uneasy silence surrounded the table. All that could be heard was the wheezing from Chief Inspector Sten Gullviksson’s chronically obstructed airways.

  That it had to happen during my time as Agency Director is so typical, Holmberg thought. He hated being associated with failure – it was one of the reasons that Holmberg’s career had been so successful. His previous work as the director of the Fortifications Authority had been an unprecedented success story. He had transformed the old-fashioned, traditional institution into a modern and profitable organization and he intended to reform the Security Service in the same way.

  There was no room for failure.

  “So, what do we do now?” Holmberg said, waving his arms. The sudden movement made his head flash with pain.

  Thomas Kokk raised a finger. “We need a new leader for the Chief Prosecutor’s terrorism investigation. Martin Borg is responsible for the investigation, but he’s currently receiving medical attention for his injuries and is, according to the preliminary evaluation by our psychologists, not mentally fit to carry out his duties. Effective immediately, he’s also removed from active duty until Internal Affairs have finished with their investigation into the Gnesta incident. I have informed Chief Prosecutor Åsa Julén about the change in operational leadership.”

  “I see,” Holmberg replied. “Who’s the new operational leader?”

  “I’m thinking of taking over myself and taking charge of both surveillance and investigative personnel.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Holmberg said. He had great confidence in Thomas Kokk. It was he, using contacts outside the sphere of the agency, who had pushed for the promotion of Kokk from section leader to head of the Counter-Terrorism Unit last year. Kokk was, like himself, an academic with a legal background. And people like him should be promoted within the institution. There were still far too many spy hunters left who seriously believed that there still was a Russian threat and therefore were still trying to take the biggest chunk of the Security Service’s funding.

  Still, Kokk had, unlike Holmberg, also been to the police academy and had done his time on the streets as a patrolling policeman before he was recruited to special police operations. His background as a real cop had given him some degree of acceptance from the veteran spy hunters, even though he was an academic.

  A perfect compromise and a smart first move by the ex-director of Fortifications, Holmberg had reasoned, when he received news that the promotion had finally passed through the needle eye of the promotions board and was approved.

  “But,” Holmberg continued, drawing out the word after some thought. “What do we really have on that Islamist group other than the financial transactions from that terrorist prince and the probable link to … was it called Drug-X?”

  “To be frank, nothing at this moment,” Kokk said, almost apologetically.

  “As you know, the house search only resulted in a few construction drawings and an awful media storm. We’re currently analyzing the drawings. None of the interrogations have given us anything either.”

  “And you’re sure that the detainee – Hakim, or whatever his name was – died of a heart attack?”

  “Before the post-mortem has been done, we assume that is the case.”

  “We’ll have problems over him,” Holmberg said. “When people die in Swedish cells, there’s usually a hysterical debate in the media – especially since he belongs to an ethnic minority.”

  Troubled, Kokk agreed.

  “You didn’t get anything from the informant in Gnesta?” Holmberg continued.

  “No,” Kokk answered. “We don’t know what the hot tip was since the informant is probably dead. We’re assuming that he and one of the perpetrators and Ove Jernberg were trapped in the burning building. According to Martin Borg, the CI had information that he wanted
to give to Jernberg – but only face to face.”

  “I see,” Holmberg said.

  “The identification process is fully under way. We hope to have preliminary results later today.”

  Holmberg nodded, reflectively. “Have you received any results from the laboratory in England on Drug-X?”

  “No, not yet,” Kokk answered.

  “Can we speed things up?”

  “I wouldn’t think so, but I’ll check with SKL immediately after the meeting.”

  “Good.” Holmberg could hear his head pounding.

  “Human Resources will handle Jernberg’s family. If that’s of interest to anybody,” Gullviksson hoarsely interjected. “They and our psychologists are, at this moment, visiting his wife and their two sons.”

  “A terrible tragedy,” Holmberg sighed.

  Once again, the room fell silent for a few seconds.

  “Well, then,” Holmberg concluded and stood up. “If no one has anything further to contribute, then my press secretary and I will go and face the media. I don’t want them to try to link the Gnesta incident and the death of the detainee as retaliation from our side. That could be the start of a political crisis and it has to be avoided at all costs.”

  CHAPTER 24

  THE VISIT TO Jörgen’s mother took more time than anticipated, since the seventy-three-year-old lady insisted on offering coffee and small almond biscuits called Finnish Sticks. Forty minutes after their arrival, Jörgen had managed to retrieve his key from under the sink.

  Their visits to the banks went without incident. Before Jörgen handed over the small memory stick with the record of his and Folke Uddestad’s intimate rendezvous, he proposed that he should now be allowed to publish parts of what they already knew.

  Jonna looked at the journalist as if he was joking. Then her eyes darkened, and she tore the memory stick from Jörgen’s hand. It was a lame attempt and he should have known better than to ask her.

  At ten minutes to four that afternoon, Jonna and Jörgen rang the doorbell at the flat of Serge Wolinsky.

  “Let’s rock and roll,” Serge said, making space for Jonna in front of one of the computers. He himself sat at another computer and was fully occupied with hacking into the District Court database.

  “Am I logged into the criminal records database now?” she asked, sitting in the chair.

  Serge nodded.

  “Were you already logged into the database before I arrived?” she asked. The microrouter had been connected to the network for about six hours, which raised the suspicion that Serge had already been in and poked around in the police database. She bit her lip and thought, I should have waited until I left the police station before connecting the router. The problem was that she had taken sick leave. It would not have been feasible to wait any longer, given the trips to the bank in that short period of time.

  Serge shook his head.

  “Are you lying to me?” Jonna asked.

  Serge shrugged, not understanding why she asked.

  The bastard, she thought irritatedly, and was surprised at her ill temper. She had not had time to eat lunch, which meant that her blood sugar was at an all-time low for this year. If Serge had done any serious tampering in the database, she was responsible. Unofficially, of course, as no one would know that it was she who had made it possible to hack the database, if it was even detected. She was, at any rate, unable to verify if he was telling the truth. She might as well let go of the suspicion.

  As Jonna suspected, her searches in the criminal records databases yielded meagre pickings.

  That neither Lennart Ekwall, nor Karin Sjöstrand, nor Bror Lantz had a criminal record, she already knew. Also known was that Sjöstrand’s daughter and the taxi driver Ojo Maduekwe had clean sheets. The only one that had a conviction was Ekwall’s wife. She had been arrested for driving under the influence by a police patrol outside the Museum of Natural History seven months earlier. That information was not much help.

  Using the database and Walter’s recollections, she was, however, able to identify the two villains who had made the violent home visit to Jörgen: they were Tor Hedman and Jerry Salminen. Both had long criminal records with countless visits to the prison system. Tor Hedman’s record was a never-ending story. He had started his criminal career in his early years and had stuck with it. At age fifty, he was still very active.

  Salminen was a native of Finland, which, however, had not stopped him causing problems for the Swedish justice system over the last ten years. He had been convicted of an impressive number of crimes given the short period he had been in Sweden. There was no mention in the databases of whether he had a criminal record in Finland.

  Jonna concluded that neither of them had a known address. They had been released from Kumla prison ten months earlier. If Walter did not know where to find the two stooges, which was unlikely, it would be impossible for her to find them.

  The searches in the police databases were not going to give her any more relevant information.

  “How are we doing?” Jonna asked, turning towards Serge.

  Serge nodded encouragingly. “The microrouter is at least connected to the correct network.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I’m already inside the Unix kernel and I can see the processer calls to the French database,” he answered dryly.

  “How much time will it take to hack into the French database?” Jörgen asked, a little sheepishly, stretching sideways to get a better view of the screen. What he saw did not, however, make him any the wiser. Lots of small command windows covered the screen with text and numbers scrolling upwards randomly. The text was totally incomprehensible, as were the numbers.

  Serge took no notice of Jörgen. He was focused on what the screen was displaying and his small piano-player fingers danced quickly over the keyboard as he hopped between the different command windows. One of the windows did catch Jörgen’s eye. It looked as if Serge was chatting with someone.

  Short, cryptic messages were being exchanged all the time. Three different chat names popped up regularly: Typhoon, Alphaville and Beest.

  Just as Jörgen was about to point out the chat, Jonna came and stood behind Serge. She watched, fascinated, as Serge’s tapping fingertips flew over the keys. She also noticed the small chat window in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.

  “Who are you chatting with?” she asked, pointing at the chat window.

  “Some members of the Von Dy group are helping me,” Serge answered, distracted.

  “What do you mean by ‘helping’?”

  “To get in,” he mumbled.

  “To the District Court network?” Jonna said. Her eyes narrowed.

  Serge sighed resignedly. “We have split the intrusion into four parts. Each one of us focuses on different processes. Since we are already inside the Unix kernel, which was the easy part of the operation due to the open bug, the most difficult part remains. To figure out how the APIs work so that we can make FAPI function calls to the database.”

  “FAPI?” Jonna said, puzzled.

  “The software interface between two applications. F means fake. So fake calls.”

  Jonna suddenly realized how little she knew about how the hacker elite worked, despite her years at MIT.

  “Nobody gave you permission to involve a bunch of hackers in this.”

  “I had no choice,” Serge defended himself.

  “Why not? I was under the impression that you were a real computer genius.”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Understand that accessing the police databases doesn’t impress me at all. Considering that you had back doors, all you had to do was walk straight in. And the microrouters are not rocket science. Any proficient hardware engineer could design and build them. They’re built with standard components. The District Court database is a completely different challenge and requires a very special kind of competence.”

  “Agreed, that’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you,”
Serge said and threw up his hands in frustration.

  “That you need help from other hackers?”

  “Precisely. Even if I’m good, it’s a tough nut to crack. Bloody difficult, like I told you.”

  “But why didn’t you inform me first? This is not a hacker convention where anyone’s invited to participate just because you can’t handle your side of the deal.”

  “I thought it was more important to get the job done as quickly as possible than to waste time on red tape by calling you.”

  “Red tape?”

  “Yes, and also these individuals are not just anybody,” Serge said in a bitter tone. “They’re almost as good as me and are all members of Von Dy. Nor do they know anything about the purpose of what I am trying to hack, except that it’s a database. They don’t have access to the network.”

  Jonna turned it over in her mind for a while.

  “If you’re lying, I guarantee that a couple of thugs in leather waistcoats will be standing outside your door within a few hours,” she lied, glaring at him intensely.

  Serge tried to feign indifference.

  Jonna took this as a sign that he was not lying. Serge showed her samples from the chat that seemed to back up his claim. Jonna knew that he could fake the chat log if he wanted to, but chose to believe him. In the circumstances, she did not really have any alternative.

  It was five to six in the evening when the first breakthrough came.

  Serge yelled so loudly that the half-asleep Jörgen almost fell off his chair.

  “We can communicate with some of the APIs now,” Serge said, excited.

  Jonna went to Serge. “What does that actually mean?”

  “That we more or less know how the APIs are built,” Serge said, pointing to a program window that once again displayed lots of incomprehensible text. “We have run some automatic programs that continuously test the function calls of the database and, by doing so, learn how the APIs behave. With that information, the programs use a probability algorithm to calculate the probable structure of the APIs. Like the way you attempt to reverse-engineer a binary file to its source code. We’ve succeeded in getting a really good picture of their structure now.”