Thomas had taken the children to nursery school, and she reached down to the floor for her cell phone to see what the time was. 10:46. She’d been asleep three and a half hours.
The dream followed her like an uncomfortable shadow as she showered and got dressed. She skipped breakfast, calling Berit and arranging to have an early lunch with her instead.
More snow had fallen during the morning, muffling all sound. The number 62 bus glided up to the stop, shapeless and soundless. The driver didn’t look at her as she got on, showing her season ticket. The indefinable sense of unease from the dream followed her down the central aisle of the bus, breathing on her neck as she passed the other passengers, all gray and shadowy, none of them paying her any attention.
I don’t exist, she thought. I’m invisible, and I’ve gotten on a ghost-bus to hell.
Twelve minutes later she got off outside the Russian Embassy. Berit had remembered to bring her lunch vouchers with her, and Annika guiltily borrowed yet another one.
“I’ll pay you back soon …”
Her colleague waved aside her assurances and made her way to the salad bar with the latest editions tucked under her arm.
They picked at their food as they read.
There were the victims: the prizewinner, the chair of the Nobel Committee, and the three guards. The information about these last three was sketchy; their full names hadn’t been known until the early hours, so no one had had time to contact their families yet.
“We’ll have to divide that between us this afternoon,” Berit said, and Annika made a note on the edge of the page.
The prizewinner had been moved from the intensive care unit to a normal ward.
“I don’t suppose he’ll be sharing a room with Dodgy Hip Helga,” Annika said, turning the page.
“He’s got half of Mossad guarding him,” Berit said, eating the last bit of a Wasa low-fat crispbread. “They’re having a hell of a time explaining how the hell he came to be shot. They knew there were loads of threats against him.”
Aaron Wiesel and Charles Watson were stem-cell researchers, and vocal advocates of therapeutic cloning. The decision to award them the Nobel Prize for Medicine had been controversial. It had unleashed a wave of protests from Catholic and radical Protestant groups.
“Did you follow the debate when the prize was announced?” Berit asked.
“I can’t say that I did,” Annika said, taking a bite of a stuffed cabbage leaf. “They want to grow embryos for their stem cells?”
“Yes, they want to transplant cell nuclei in their research, and that’s a way of producing embryos purely for experimentation. Bush tried to stop this sort of research in the US with every means at his disposal. In Europe it contravenes both the EU convention of 1997 and the recommendations of an EU committee last year. So far it’s only allowed in Britain, Belgium, and here in Sweden, actually.”
“And the religious nuts in the US are saying that the intention is to create some sort of Frankenstein’s monster, and that the scientists are trying to play at being God?”
“Not just the nuts, a lot of people share that view but express it in slightly milder terms. These aren’t easy questions.”
Annika tapped her fork against her plate.
“So what have they done with Watson, the other prizewinner?”
“He was flown out to the US in a private plane last night. I think they’ll be flying Wiesel out too as soon as he can be moved.”
Caroline von Behring’s life and career had been quickly summarized during the night by a reporter they had never heard of before.
“Must be someone on the online edition,” Annika said.
The article was flat and badly written. It revealed that the chair of the Nobel Committee was fifty-four years old when she died. She was related to the first winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, “the German military physician Emil Adolf von Behring from Germany.”
Emil Adolf von Behring was the man behind the theory of immunization, and discovered modern vaccination in the form of a serum against diphtheria. For this he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1901.
Young Caroline followed in her ancestor’s footsteps and became an expert in immunology. She made her breakthrough at a young age, and went on to have a prestigious career at the Karolinska Institute. She became a professor at the age of thirty-eight, when she was also voted onto the Nobel Assembly. Three years later she became an Associate Member of the Nobel Committee, the body that makes the final decision on the allocation of the Medicine Prize, with only six members. At the age of fifty-two she was appointed Chair of the Committee, a position she held for the following three years.
She was married to her second husband, and had no children.
The Palace had conveyed the royal couple’s condolences, which was probably all the media would get from that quarter now.
“There’s practically no private information about the Israeli,” Annika said. “What do we know about him?”
“Single, childless, works in Brussels together with the American. Fairly secular, if you ask me.”
“Gay?” Annika asked, wiping a piece of bread round her plate to mop up the last of the dressing.
“Probably. I think he and Watson are a couple. They look quite cute together.”
A large part of the paper was taken up with the unsuccessful police hunt for the killer. There were pictures of police officers on bridges, police officers in tunnels, police officers beside various stretches of water. The photofit was on both the front page and a whole page inside the paper. The caption stated that the picture was produced with the help of “witnesses at the crime scene,” no mention of Annika. Practically every article about the police hunt was written by the reporter Patrik Nilsson, who, together with Berit, now made up the whole of the crime desk.
“Have you seen the competition?” Berit asked.
Annika picked up the other paper and quickly leafed through it.
They had roughly the same selection of articles and pictures, with one exception: Bosse’s article.
Annika felt herself blushing as she skimmed through his text. It covered three whole pages and described the course of events in the Golden Hall from a personal perspective, and it was both unnerving and very focused. He evidently hadn’t seen the killer, nor noticed when the pair who had been shot fell, nor seen the killer leave the hall. Even so he managed to pull it together: the hall and all the lights, the dancing, the heat, the blood, and the screaming.
And she’s dancing with me, we’re dancing in the Golden Hall beneath the gaze of the Queen of the Mälaren, she’s so light in my arms and I want to be here forever …
Annika read that sentence three times and felt her pulse quicken.
“Do you want coffee?”
Annika nodded.
They moved to the sofas at the far end of the room with their mugs and papers.
“What was security on the entrance like?” Berit asked, putting her mug down on a white napkin. “Metal detectors? Bags through a scanner? Pat-downs?”
Annika folded the other paper with a snort.
“Nothing like that at all. Everyone went in through the main entrance, you know, the gateway on Hantverkargatan, then over the courtyard and up to the doors that lead straight into the Blue Hall. We had to queue there for a couple of minutes and show our invitations, and then we were in.”
“Really?” Berit said skeptically. “Please tell me that the invitation had some sort of electronic tag?”
Annika took a sip of her coffee and shook her head.
“Printed black type on cream-colored card. You know, I still don’t think that’s right,” she said, examining the photofit picture on the front of the paper. “But I can’t work out what’s wrong with it.”
“You must have got a good look at her.”
“For about two seconds,” Annika said. “To start with I didn’t think I remembered anything, but the police officer in the profiling unit was pretty good. He dragged ou
t pictures from deep inside here that I didn’t know were there.”
She knocked on her head.
“It must have been a very unnerving experience,” Berit said.
Annika slumped a little in the sofa, staring blindly at a large tapestry hanging on the wall.
“To begin with I almost had to laugh,” she said, her voice sounding suddenly weaker. “It looked so funny, the old bloke tumbling over like that—I thought he was drunk. Then there was a scream, sort of off to the right, and it just got worse until everyone was screaming and the orchestra stopped playing. Then the screaming carried into all the other rooms, sort of like a big wave …”
Berit waited for a few seconds after Annika had stopped talking.
“What were the security people doing?”
The gray suits with wires on their heads.
“During dinner they were spaced out across the balcony outside the Golden Hall and along the pillared walkway down toward the courtyard. When the dancing started they spread out, there were a lot of them in the Prince’s Gallery with the royal couple. There were more down by the entrance, I suppose. There were hardly any by the dance floor. But once Caroline had fallen as well they came running from all directions, getting hold of those of us who had been standing closest. We weren’t allowed to leave until we’d been questioned.”
“So you saw when the man was shot—did you see her get hit as well?”
Annika ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I was looking at her when she realized she’d been shot. Blood was jetting out from her chest, like this …”
She demonstrated with her hand.
“And then I fell over—someone knocked me and I ended up on the floor right next to Caroline. There was a man next to her with his hands over her heart and blood was bubbling up between his fingers, sort of bright-red, with bubbles of air in it …”
She put her hands over her eyes for a moment to block out the sight.
“God, how horrible,” Berit said. “Don’t you think you ought to talk to someone about this?”
“What, like group therapy?” Annika said, straightening up. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not? A lot of people find it helpful.”
“Not me,” Annika said, and a moment later her cell phone rang.
It was Spike, the head of news.
“Were you thinking of coming in today, or are you on vacation?”
“I’m sitting here working,” Annika said.
“Good. Then you already know what’s happened?”
Annika went completely cold.
“What?”
“The terrorist group Neue Jihad have claimed responsibility for the Nobel killings.”
The newsroom was almost empty. Annika Bengtzon and Berit Hamrin came running in from the staff cafeteria, clutching their bags and coats. Patrik Nilsson was sitting reading telegrams at the main news desk; Spike was talking animatedly on the phone as he gestured simultaneously to Picture Pelle over at the picture desk.
Anders Schyman was brushing some snow from his shoulders, then he pulled off his duffel coat and tossed it onto an empty office chair.
“Shall we go through all of this one more time?” he said, hearing how tired he sounded. “This attack is a type of crime we haven’t seen in Sweden before. Which means that we have to be extremely conscious of where the ethical boundaries lie, and very careful to see that Swedish law is upheld.”
He glanced quickly across the open-plan office. None of his colleagues had slept more than a couple of hours, so he was hardly in a position to complain.
This is a new age, he thought, sitting down heavily on the sofa.
Spike slammed the phone down and grabbed at a pile of printouts.
“Neue Jihad,” he said. “A Muslim terrorist group based in Germany. The security police have been waiting for something like this. Half an hour ago the terrorists released a statement through a server in Berlin in which they claimed responsibility for ‘the murder of the Jewish fascist and Zionist Aaron Wiesel, an infidel who deserved to die.’ They seem to be a fairly creative bunch, and considering what they’ve managed to do so far they’ll probably be a force to reckon with in the future. Patrik’s been in touch with Ranstorp, the terrorism expert; we’re trying to put together an outline of the group’s previous attacks, and see if they can be linked to al Qaeda.”
“There’s one thing wrong, though,” Annika Bengtzon said.
Annika and Berit Hamrin had put their coats on top of his wet duffel coat and had sat down in a couple of free chairs at the end of the news desk.
“What?” Patrik said.
“Wiesel didn’t die,” Berit said.
Spike lost his train of thought and looked at them with a mixture of surprise and resentment.
“Yes, but for God’s sake,” he said, “that’s just details.”
“Not for Wiesel,” Annika said, “I can guarantee you that.”
Schyman was watching them from the corner of his eye, and decided not to get involved.
Spike made a sweeping gesture.
“What do I know? Maybe they wrote the message before the attack took place, then couldn’t change it. And they did actually manage to carry out their plan, to get in and shoot him during the Nobel banquet itself.”
“Before,” Berit said. “‘Before the attack took place?’”
Spike looked smug.
“Precisely. The police are holding a press conference at 2:00 PM, I thought Patrik could take it, if you’re not doing anything else, Patrik?”
Patrik Nilsson clicked to close the news agency website and yawned loudly.
“Well,” he said, “I was going to concentrate on Ranstorp, and check my sources at the National Defence College.”
“Okay, Annika, you take the press conference,” Spike said, getting ready to move on.
“Well,” Annika mimicked, “I was going to concentrate on von Behring, and check my sources at the Karolinska Institute.”
Berit started to giggle, and Anders Schyman felt himself getting annoyed.
“Are we going to cover the press conference or not?” he said, slightly too loudly.
“I can take it,” Berit said, swallowing her laughter.
“Are we going to talk to the family?” Schyman asked. “Caroline von Behring must have some sort of background? Husband, children, parents?”
“I haven’t had any answer yet,” Patrik said.
Spike did his best to share out the rest of the work, but as usual it was the reporters themselves who decided what they were going to do.
This newspaper needs a bit more discipline, Anders Schyman thought. The organization doesn’t work anymore, it needs an overhaul. Nothing’s going to be the same in the future.
“Think of the online edition when you’re out in the field,” he said as his colleagues were getting ready to go. “There are no deadlines anymore, just continual updates. This is about teamwork, remember! Annika, can I have a word?”
The reporter stopped, her arms full of clothes and papers and notes.
“What?” she said.
He walked up close to her so the others wouldn’t hear.
“Do you still maintain that you can’t write about what you saw?”
She was pale, with dark rings under her eyes.
“I’m not the one maintaining anything,” she said, “the paper’s lawyer is. He seems to think that Swedish law is worth upholding.”
She turned her back on him and headed off toward her corner room, a mess of uncombed hair down her slender back.
Annoyance rose from his gut and burned in his throat. The thought ran through his brain before he had time to stop it:
I’ve got to get rid of her.
Annika shut the door of her glass office with a soft thud. Schyman had become unbearable. Last night he had seemed unbalanced, and now he was handing over all responsibility to Spike, the man with the worst judgement in Sweden. Thank
God Spike was so easy to manipulate.
I’ve got to keep out of this, she thought, switching on her computer.
Berit took the press conference in police headquarters, and was going to go on to visit the wounded security guard in the hospital. He’d regained consciousness and was keen to tell his story.
Another wannabe celebrity, Annika thought, then felt mean for thinking it.
The families of the other two guards had declined to cooperate with the paper. Berit had already taken flowers and passed on their condolences, but neither of them had been interested. The paper’s medical correspondent was going to try to track down Wiesel, who was still in a pretty poor way. Sjölander in the US was looking into the right-wing Christian nuts, and Patrik and a couple of the web-edition staff were keeping in touch with the police and the investigating team.
She went into the paper’s archive, then onto the net, looking for information about Caroline von Behring.
Considering she was such an influential woman, she was extremely anonymous, Annika thought.
She’d never worked anywhere apart from the Karolinska Institute. Never appeared in the media except in connection with her work. Short reports about promotions, little quotes whenever the winners of the medicine prize were announced.
Only in the past few weeks had her name been linked to any form of controversy: the fact that Wiesel and Watson had been awarded that year’s prize.
She quickly looked up some of the contributions to the debate about W&W’s stem-cell research.
Some suggested that the Karolinska Institute was the very devil’s work, corrupt and biased and completely immoral. On one American site she found a caricature of von Behring with horns and a tail, and on another Alfred Nobel appeared as Frankenstein’s monster with the caption: Is this what the Committee wants?
There were also impassioned articles defending the decision from other researchers, self-proclaimed heroes who were fighting to wipe out all human disease.
The question was whether it was acceptable to use eggs left over from artificial insemination, to adapt their stem cells and use them for research. That was the technique, known as therapeutic cloning, that scientists had used to come up with Dolly the Sheep.
The most famous advocate for stem-cell research in the US was the now-deceased film star Christopher Reeve, Superman, who had broken his neck in a riding accident. Together with seven scientists he had sued President George W. Bush for putting a stop to stem-cell research. Right up to the end, Reeve had hoped that the new technique could help him walk again.
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