Hostage

by Kristina Ohlsson

  But no one had paid a higher price than Peder’s brother, Jimmy.

  Alex knew he shouldn’t brood on the case that had cost him so much. Following Peder’s sudden departure from the team, things had gone downhill fast. Fredrika Bergman, the only member of the team who hadn’t been handpicked by Alex, had lost her spark, and when she then became pregnant with her second child, it seemed to Alex that she somehow disappeared from active duty.

  He was the first to admit that he hadn’t liked her initially. Fredrika was an academic, a civilian investigator with no real aptitude or interest in the job. For a long time, Alex had tried to circumvent her, giving her the simplest tasks he could find. Until one day he realised that he was wrong. In fact, she had a considerable aptitude for the job. However, her lack of interest was still a problem. Alex could see that she wasn’t happy within the organisation, and there wasn’t a great deal he could do to change things. The impetus had to come from her, and one day she turned a corner. When the case of Rebecca Trolle’s dismembered body landed on Alex’s desk, Fredrika came back early from her maternity leave. The team had reached its zenith that spring. They had never been better.

  Alex picked up his coffee cup and went along to the kitchen for a top-up. He had a new job with the National Bureau of Investigation. A good job in a good team. Interesting cases related to serious organised crime. However, he couldn’t help missing the life he used to have. Before everything fell apart. Lunch with Fredrika had merely served to remind him of everything he had lost.

  He wasn’t stupid; he realised that Fredrika had applied for the post with the Justice Department because she wanted to get away. It was hard to criticise her for making that choice. She was a conscientious and hardworking individual, and people like that always get restless. Alex wasn’t sure what her actual role was within the department; he knew that she had a certain amount of contact with the Security Service, but he hadn’t delved any further.

  He had other things to think about.

  People he had lost, in different ways.

  ‘You can’t keep going over it all like this,’ Diana had said only the day before. ‘You’ve got to put what has happened behind you.’

  Diana Trolle.

  He would have been lost without her. She knew just as well as he did what real grief felt like, how painful it could be. Sometimes he wasn’t sure whether they would have fallen in love if they hadn’t been united by a sense of despair.

  Grief.

  Loss.

  Pain.

  He had known that they existed, that they had to be taken into account. Being crushed was just part of life. Or was it? He felt a fresh wave of irritation when he thought about Peder. Why the hell couldn’t he just pull himself together? Why couldn’t he deal with the trauma in a different way, rather than making himself unhappy all the time?

  If only Peder had handled things better, he could have kept his job and carried on working with Alex and Fredrika. Because when it came down to it, that was what Alex found so upsetting: he had lost a close colleague, someone he had enjoyed working with. And even though he knew it wasn’t fair, he found that very hard to forgive.

  Alex’s train of thought was interrupted as his boss stuck his head around the door.

  ‘Bomb threat,’ he said. ‘Came in just now.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ Alex said, getting to his feet.

  A bomb threat. Buildings destroyed, human beings blown to pieces. An evil act in its purest form.

  A short while later, he was fully up to speed. Not one but four bomb threats, targeting different places in Stockholm. Including Rosenbad, the government building.

  Alex couldn’t understand it.

  Four bombs. What the hell was this about?

  3

  12:32

  Where did all this anger come from?

  Eden Lundell had no idea. As the head of the Security Service’s counter-terrorism unit, she was expected to have a clear grasp of every case that passed through her hands, but she often found it extremely difficult to follow the thought processes that lay behind the actions of certain individuals.

  Right now there were a number of issues that merited closer attention, and Eden had to prioritise. Resources were limited, and she wanted to see results. Patience was a quality she had lacked all her life, and things hadn’t improved since she came to work for Säpo.

  If only they understood the origins, the source of this rage. The rage that made young people turn their backs on respect for life, and resort to violence in order to bring about the changes they thought were necessary. To commit acts of terrorism. Eden had asked herself many times what could possibly make her cross that line, make her take up arms and fight against people living in the same country as her, with no evidence of antipathy.

  What would drive me to commit the worst sin of all?

  She had reached the conclusion that the love she felt for her family might be just such a trigger. If they were threatened or affected by misfortune in some way.

  God forbid that such a thing should ever happen, because then I will lay waste the castle of my enemy.

  But the anger that Eden encountered through her work didn’t seem to have a personal background. The hatred took root within young people for a completely different reason. It was impossible to point to one single factor that could explain the whole phenomenon, however hard they looked for it.

  Eden was systematically going through the latest pile of material in one of the cases on her desk. It was depressingly thin. The original information was unequivocal: the suspects were financing acts of terrorism in Colombia. But this source could not be used in court and, therefore, Säpo had to get hold of their own information in order to confirm what they already knew and, hopefully, lead to a successful prosecution.

  All too often, the intelligence said one thing and the evidence another, always with the same result. The prosecution would lose in court, or even before the case got there. The authorities would end up looking weak and incompetent, and as if they were constantly persecuting innocent individuals who had done nothing whatsoever to deserve the attentions of the security service.

  Eden couldn’t understand why there was always the same fuss. Her years with the National Bureau of Investigation hadn’t exactly been a catalogue of successful investigations, but that kind of thing aroused far less interest from the public and the media. However, since the terrorist attack in Stockholm, Eden felt that a great deal had changed. Expectations were higher. If they hadn’t won the latest case in the crown court, their everyday working lives would have been much more challenging.

  There was a knock on Eden’s door, and Sebastian, the unit’s head of analysis, walked in. Eden pushed the papers on her desk across to him.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Exactly what I’ve been saying for the last few weeks. We’re not going to come up with anything else on these guys. Let it go.’

  Eden nodded thoughtfully. ‘And what about the money we know they’re sending to terrorist organisations in South America?’

  Sebastian shrugged. ‘We can’t win ’em all.’

  Eden tossed the papers into the cupboard and slammed the door shut. The case was history as soon as it disappeared from view. She would focus on Zakaria Khelifi instead – the man who had been freed by the court, while his friends were sent down.

  ‘When are we due at the Justice Department?’

  ‘In half an hour. I thought we could walk.’

  That sounded like a good idea. Eden could have a cigarette on the way and think about what she could say to make the Minister for Justice realise that the government must expel the Algerian Zakaria Khelifi from the country.

  Given all the information they had, and the fact that the Immigration Court of Appeal had gone along with their view, it shouldn’t be particularly difficult. And once Khelifi had left the country, they could finally draw a line under Operation Paradise.

  The meeting was held in one of the department’s more di
screet rooms. The Minister for Justice was present, along with the Secretary of State, a political expert and a handful of civil servants who were involved. Fredrika Bergman was part of this latter group. Säpo had come to Rosenbad to put forward what they referred to as a security issue. They wanted a foreign citizen’s residence permit revoked, on the grounds that the man could become a serious threat to national security. The case had gone from the Immigration Board to the Immigration Court of Appeal, and now it had ended up with the government.

  Fredrika couldn’t help reflecting on the way they were seated at the table: the Justice Department on one side, Säpo on the other. All the representatives from Säpo had introduced themselves with some kind of title underlining their authority: head of department, head of analysis, and Eden Lundell, head of the counter-terrorism unit. She smelled of cigarette smoke; she must be around six feet tall, and her hair was a shade of honey blonde that Fredrika refused to believe was her natural colour. The smell of smoke was surprising; Eden looked too fresh to be a smoker.

  ‘Let’s make a start,’ the Minister said. ‘We’ve got half an hour.’

  The head of analysis placed a laptop on the table and started it up. Eden reached over and attached the computer to a cable.

  ‘Could you switch on the projector?’ she said to Fredrika.

  Her voice was husky, and she spoke with an accent that Fredrika couldn’t quite place. She had long, slender fingers with short, unvarnished nails. If she had let them grow and painted them red, she could have picked up any man she wanted in a bar. Fredrika noticed a ring on Eden’s left hand. She was either married or engaged. That was just as much of a surprise as the cigarette smoke.

  ‘Of course,’ Fredrika said, starting up the projector on the ceiling with two clicks.

  The head of analysis began his presentation. The first image appeared on the screen. Blue background, Säpo’s logo on the right. Small white dots in different formations. The heading was straightforward: THE CASE OF ZAKARIA KHELIFI.

  Next image. BACKGROUND.

  Eden took over.

  ‘As you all know, Zakaria Khelifi was the subject of a case in which the court ruled last week. The prosecutor was aiming for a conviction on the grounds of preparing to commit an act of terrorism, but Khelifi was acquitted and released.’

  The head of department, who was sitting next to Eden and was obviously her boss, coughed discreetly. Eden went on, ‘However, in the case involving Khelifi, we did manage to secure convictions on the same charge for two other North African nationals. We were able to prove that they had spent the months before their arrest preparing a major attack which was to be directed at the Swedish parliament. We found an explosive device that was virtually complete, and the means to make at least two more. We believe that the attack was to be carried out during the key debate on immigration and integration, which has been talked about for such a long time but has not yet taken place.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ the Minister said. ‘It’s scheduled for tomorrow morning.’

  Fredrika went cold all over whenever the immigration-and-integration debate was mentioned. It was something that no one really wanted, apart from those who were racists. Had the debate been the target of the two men who had just been convicted? If that was the case, then they must have been ready and waiting for the most perfect and most spectacular opportunity to strike, because the debate had only been under discussion for a few weeks.

  ‘We think the two men were acting alone. All of our intelligence points in that direction, and we see no reason to revise that assessment. Therefore, we have not raised the question of increased security in the parliament building; that includes tomorrow’s debate. Apart from what had been planned already, of course. We have liaised with our colleagues in the police, and they have put rigorous security measures in place in order to ensure that the debate can proceed peacefully.’

  Of course, Fredrika thought. Even when you were using the fabric of democracy in order to try to abolish it, you had the support of the forces of law and order.

  The head of department interrupted Eden’s presentation.

  ‘The successful outcome in court with regard to the two men was very welcome, as far as we are concerned. It was important for Säpo to be able to avert a terrorist attack. We are told all too often that we do too little or too much, too early or too late.’

  Fredrika understood what he was talking about. When Säpo took a case to court but failed to secure a conviction, they were often heavily criticised, particularly in those instances when an arrest didn’t even lead to prosecution. She had often reflected on the delicate balancing act the Swedish security services had to maintain, and she had wondered whether she herself would have been able to carry out such a thankless task.

  Then came Drottninggatan, and the wind changed. Those same journalists who had often claimed that the security services sometimes overstepped the mark now thought that far too little was being done. The man who blew himself up on Drottninggatan had been on Facebook, for God’s sake, so why hadn’t Säpo known about him?

  Who wants a society where Säpo monitors everyone on Facebook? Fredrika had asked herself. Quite a lot of people, apparently.

  Eden carried on talking. Fredrika wondered what the head of analysis was there for. To carry the laptop around, perhaps?

  ‘The two perpetrators who were convicted last week were acting alone, but we have identified several collaborators close to them,’ Eden said. ‘Zakaria Khelifi is one of those collaborators.’

  She pointed to the picture of Zakaria on the screen.

  ‘He was the only one on whom we had sufficient evidence for an arrest and prosecution.’

  The Minister for Justice tilted his head to one side.

  ‘I think we should regard it as a positive point that it takes a considerable amount of evidence to secure a conviction, in other crimes as well as terrorism.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Silence.

  ‘Zakaria Khelifi,’ Eden said. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

  Everyone was listening.

  4

  13:12

  ‘Zakaria Khelifi came to Sweden from Algeria in 2008. He was an asylum seeker, and claimed that he was being persecuted by a notorious family because he had been seeing the daughter of the family, and had happened to get her pregnant before they married. According to Zakaria, his wife had been murdered by her own relatives.

  ‘During the spring, we received several indications suggesting that further groups were planning terrorist attacks on targets in Sweden, and that these attacks were connected with similar cases in other European countries. We felt that it was possible to take this information seriously in only one of the Swedish cases.’

  New image: three small photographs of men whom Fredrika recognised from the media – the two men who had been convicted in court, and Zakaria Khelifi who had been acquitted.

  ‘To begin with, there was no sign of Zakaria Khelifi in our investigation, but then he started to be seen more and more often in the company of the main suspects. On one occasion, thanks to telephone surveillance, we heard one of the men say, “You can go and pick up the item we talked about yesterday,” at which point, Khelifi went and collected a package containing substances that we were later able to establish were part of the explosive device constructed by the main suspects.’

  ‘Zakaria Khelifi said in court that he didn’t know what the package contained,’ the Secretary of State added.

  ‘Indeed he did, but, in the surveillance footage, he seemed very nervous when he went into the shop to collect it. He looked around several times while he was carrying it to his car, and he was dripping with sweat by the time he got in and drove away. We should also mention that, under interrogation, one of the main suspects named Khelifi as one of their collaborators.’

  ‘A statement which Ellis later retracted, I believe?’ the Minister for Justice said.

  ‘Yes, and that surprised us. Before the trial began, he had been ver
y clear in his description of Khelifi’s role, insisting that Khelifi had been a great help. We have no idea why Ellis backtracked when the prosecutor questioned him, to be honest. We’ve tried to find out whether he was threatened in some way, but he refuses to answer our questions. He just keeps saying that he mixed up different names and different people and, unfortunately, said the wrong thing. But none of us believes that. Ellis was telling the truth during the interrogation, and he lied in court.’

  The Minister listened in silence as Eden carried on talking.

  ‘It turns out that this wasn’t the first time Khelifi had been associated with individuals suspected of terrorist crimes. We have subsequently discovered that he came up during a preliminary investigation back in 2009, the year he was given a residence permit. We were following up on a number of people that we suspected of financing terrorist activity overseas but, unfortunately, we had to drop the case as we were unable to prove that a crime had been committed.’

  New image.

  Fredrika and the others looked at it attentively.

  ‘We found Khelifi’s contact details through secret phone surveillance – mapping phone traffic. There were several numbers that we were unable to identify, but one of them later turned out to belong to Khelifi. We then noticed that Khelifi’s number also cropped up in connection with another operation that we had launched after the terrorist threats in France earlier this year.’

  The Minister for Justice looked troubled. ‘He was involved in those as well?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure. But we do know that before the attack, he had been in contact with one of the perpetrators who was convicted in the French courts last spring. Although, at that time, we had yet to realise who the phone number belonged to, as I said.’