‘Where are the boys?’
She replies that Rasmus is at a friend’s house. Daniel is with his girlfriend. Fredrik has been given strict instructions to stay out of the way. He is at Petra and Mats’s house.
Jonathan Green should feel like he is talking to them as an equal, Gustav is specific about that point. Gustav will make Green the offer: the documents in return for him working for them. If he accepts, they will have a long phase of interviews and cautious meetings, then an initial assignment. Possibly providing them with a report about Syria. Nothing big to begin with. A test to see whether he is cooperating and able to adjust to his new situation. And as a way of getting him dirty. Then the assignments will gradually increase, deepening the treachery. But she is uncertain whether Green will take the bait. If he doesn’t cooperate, the leak will probably destroy his career and reputation, which he probably couldn’t stand. But treason . . .
The doorbell rings.
The two-tone bell sounds fateful to her ears. Gustav gets up and nods. He is here. Wasn’t he just at the British Embassy?
She adopts the calm, neutral expression she intends to maintain throughout the meeting, even if she hates the man who is now waiting outside her door. She will open the door and receive him. Gustav will wait in the living room, and they take their positions.
She goes to the door just as it rings for a second time, more impatiently now.
Then she hears the rattling sound of a key being put in the lock. Then a familiar, broken voice.
Rasmus is standing in the hall.
‘Sweetheart, what are you doing back home?’
He flings off his jacket.
‘I don’t want to be at Sven’s,’ he mutters. ‘All he wants to do is watch a film I’ve already seen.’ He kicks off his shoes. ‘Sven is such an idiot.’
She turns around. Gustav is standing in the middle of the living room merely shaking his head vigorously. She takes a step closer to her youngest and says calmly:
‘But Rasmus, we agreed you would spend the evening at Sven’s.’
Her tone isn’t calm enough, because Rasmus glowers at her. He doesn’t want to be at Sven’s, he repeats with a slightly sharper, coarser voice and she knows exactly what the small step change means and what could happen if she doesn’t stay very calm and gentle. They don’t have time for this, but there is no other way.
‘We agreed, didn’t we?’ she says.
‘But I don’t want to,’ he exclaims. ‘I want to be at home.’
Naturally, he doesn’t understand. How could he? He is so absorbed in his own confusing life. A boy who has gone home without knowing that what he calls home has this evening been transformed into a secret meeting place, a platform for a kind of person he will hopefully never need in his life.
Rasmus has caught sight of Gustav.
‘What’s he doing here?’
She suddenly loses patience; she can’t let an entire operation fail just because he wants to be at home playing computer games.
‘You can’t be here right now, Rasmus,’ she says harshly. ‘We need to be alone here.’
But, of course, that doesn’t work. The boy is immediately affected by the aggressive underlying tone and his voice gets louder, shouting.
‘Why can’t I be at home? I live here too.’
She reaches out an arm to stop him, subdue him. She is on the verge of shouting back, but with a deep sigh manages to stop herself. With strained softness she explains that they are about to receive a visitor.
The boy glares at her, ready for battle, but at least he is listening.
‘It’s a man who is very . . . careful,’ she says slowly. ‘He wants to meet me and this man, Gustav. But only if no one else sees him. It’s important that we meet him, Rasmus. We just need a little while. Do you think we can have a meeting with him on our own?’
‘But I don’t want to be at Sven’s.’
‘Perhaps you could go to someone else’s house,’ she suggests with a bright, encouraging voice.
‘Can’t I just go upstairs to my room?’
‘No, sweetheart. Not tonight.’
Rasmus shakes his head. He is hurt; he can’t understand his mother.
Every second moves them closer to catastrophe. But Rasmus remains resolutely where he is.
‘Rasmus, leave now,’ she says sharply.
The boy’s face falls. Then something happens that she rarely sees these days: his eyes fill with tears. A sob trembles around his mouth.
‘But I don’t want to. Aren’t you listening?’
Facing his unhappy rage, she is at a loss; no one seems to be accepting her words any more, and anyway what right does she really have to tell him that? It is his home, after all. She has promised the children that they should always feel safe there.
Rasmus tries to push past her into his home. She grabs hold of his arm, but he is strong and shakes himself loose.
‘I live here too,’ he shouts through his tears.
Then he is past her. He stomps up the stairs.
‘You bitch,’ he shouts from upstairs, and perhaps he is right, perhaps she is a bitch who doesn’t care one bit about him. The door to his room slams.
‘He’s coming,’ says Gustav sharply from the living room.
She hurries up the stairs. ‘Rasmus,’ she says. ‘Please, Rasmus.’ But the only thing audible from within is a moaning cry. She knocks.
‘Rasmus, darling.’
She leans her forehead against the door. Is she a mother? Right now she is mostly part of the Security Service using the part of herself that is a mother to influence the boy inside that door, and she is disgusted at herself. She is letting them down. And this makes her hate the man who will soon be arriving. The hate is a hard, tensed muscle. She wouldn’t have had to do this if it hadn’t been for him, she thinks to herself.
‘Bente,’ Gustav calls from downstairs, and she knows it is too late.
She steps away from the door. Perhaps this can work. If he stays in there all the time, if Jonathan doesn’t notice anything.
‘Stay in there, Rasmus,’ she calls through the door. ‘And be quiet. Promise me?’
Strictly speaking, it is nothing more than an ordinary unforeseen event, a change to the situation, she thinks to herself valiantly in an attempt to shake off the quivering sensation that she has hurt her son, and will continue hurting him.
The doorbell rings.
Jonathan Green is standing in the evening darkness outside. He looks surprisingly worn out. There had been an aggressive tension to him in the hubbub of the Swedish reception – typical Green. But the man standing at her door is hollow-eyed, has wrinkles and dark bags under his eyes. But the pale-blue, sharp eyes that almost never blink remain the same.
‘Welcome,’ she says, letting him in.
She takes his coat. He is wearing a jacket and a pair of jeans, as if he had been invited round to hers like an ordinary guest. Yes, who knows, perhaps in another life with different constellations they might have been friends.
‘So this is where I live,’ she says, and he nods, emitting an awkward hum.
Gustav emerges from the living room, and for a moment she can see the Brit is startled, as if he hadn’t counted on the Swedish Head of Counter-Espionage being present. But then he greets him with sincere warmth.
‘Gustav,’ he says. ‘It’s been a long time.’
‘Would you like something to drink?’ she asks as they go into the living room.
He shakes his head and looks around the room. Then he asks them to take their mobile phones apart. She and Gustav get their handsets out and remove the batteries and SIM cards and place them on the coffee table.
‘You know why I’m here.’
Gustav nods. ‘Yes, naturally.’
‘We’re glad you want to meet with us.’
Jonathan says nothing, waiting.
‘Recent events have done none of us any good,’ says Gustav quickly, and a little drily. ‘We need to deal with this and move on – isn’t that right, Bente?’
Jonathan watches her.
‘We’re concerned that we’ve ended up in conflict with you,’ says Gustav. ‘To be honest, I just want to see you as a partner.’
‘What do you want?’ Jonathan asks sharply.
‘We can help you.’
‘Good,’ he answers brusquely. ‘Please hand over the documents.’
Gustav grimaces, his expression affected.
‘That’s the problem. We can’t just give you the documents and pretend nothing happened. It would make it look like we were able to accept the . . . methods described in the documents. The fact of the matter is that we’re surprised that your government has approved what you refer to as the House.’
‘That was a long time ago,’ Jonathan says sharply.
‘But the site is still in use, isn’t it?’
Jonathan looks unhappy. Before he has time to reply, the old spy hunter begins to slowly reel in his quarry:
‘We’ll have to raise the matter at a political level.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We have to let our Ministers discuss the issue.’
Jonathan’s lips purse, his pupils dilate. Gustav seems to have correctly guessed that the House has not been approved at the highest political level. She smiles to herself. In that case they have their fish on the hook.
Gustav says:
‘We would like a more in-depth cooperation with you.’
Jonathan gives a low chuckle, and nods.
‘Your career is over if you can’t save it. You’ll be dragged through the mud – you know that. But it doesn’t have to be like that.’
Jonathan gives them a cold smile.
‘You want me to betray my country.’
He looks at them calmly, as if he wants to double check he has understood correctly.
‘So what did you have in mind?’ he says.
Gustav starts to lay out their offer in a friendly tone of voice. They will hand back all material they hold, all the documents, and enter into a series of confidence-building meetings with London to repair the partnership. This process will help to bolster London’s trust in Jonathan.
Jonathan listens with interest.
‘If you cooperate,’ Gustav concludes.
‘And what form would this cooperation take?’
‘We will need certain information.’
He looks at them and nods.
‘You want to blackmail me. But our Minister is aware of the House and how we use it,’ says Jonathan as if talking pleasantly to two children. ‘We can deal with the leak simply through you giving me the documents and never mentioning the matter again.’
Gustav turns around. She too has noticed the muffled, familiar sound of car doors closing. It came from the street, just outside the house. She excuses herself and goes to the window to look out.
In the dark her own face appears in the windowpane, but she catches sight of two men crossing the street and walking towards her house. Then she hears crunching from the drive.
Jonathan looks at her seriously. And she knows – it is an immediate and desperately simple realisation – that they have underestimated their enemy.
‘Gustav,’ she says in Swedish, and she can hear the fear in her voice. ‘We need to abort.’
Jonathan doesn’t understand what she has just said, but the way he watches her as she hurries up the stairs tells her she is right.
‘Rasmus,’ she shouts. ‘You need to get out.’
She tugs at the door. It is still locked, so she thumps it.
‘Rasmus, listen to me. You need to get out.’
A familiar sound sings through the silence. The doorbell. She turns on her heel, a sinking sensation in her stomach.
‘Gustav,’ she shouts down the stairs. ‘Don’t open it.’
But it is too late: she can hear his steps at the end of the hallway, she can even hear the soft click of the door opening. The familiar noise sounds like the threatening ratchet of a weapon, a machine of death. Then voices: Gustav and another. She hears thuds, the muffled sounds of tumult. Shortly afterwards, there is a brief, juddery shout. It is Gustav; he is screaming.
She is quickly filled with fear, and parts of her are acting independently. Following a sequence committed to her muscle memory, she moves back and violently kicks the door just beside the handle. The door bursts open with a crash.
‘You need to get out of the house now.’
Rasmus is curled up on his bed with his device and stares at her in fright.
‘Darling,’ she says. ‘Climb out of the window.’
Through the window? He grimaces anxiously.
Good God, remember he’s just a child! she thinks to herself. She has to make him understand.
‘Do as I say. Hurry up.’
He meets her gaze and he understands – a primordial power has awoken within his mother, a sense of decisiveness so strong that he falls silent and gets up from the bed.
Quick steps move through the hall, up the stairs. He won’t make it, she thinks to herself.
‘Wait,’ she says. ‘Under the bed.’
Fear makes him move lightning-fast: she has never seen him move like that; he practically falls onto his face, and crawls quickly under the bed.
The phone; she needs to call the emergency number.
‘Give me your phone,’ she says, and he digs out his mobile from his pocket and slides it across the floor.
Her hands tremble as she dials the number. It rings once.
She rushes onto the landing towards the safe where she keeps her weapon. She is barely thinking, driven on by violent impulse.
All she notices is the panting sound behind her before the stranger hits her. She falls headlong into a wall. He is on top of her. She manages to twist around, but she is helplessly weak when the man forces her arms, locking them down, forcing them behind her back so that she can feel her tendons and bones stretching to breaking point. He hits her on the back, two rapid, hard blows against one of her kidneys, and it is impossible to offer resistance to such pain, to the body’s own defeat when faced with the skill of the man’s silent violence.
He pulls her off the floor, and she sees another man coming up the stairs. It is so unreal and disgusting to see the men in checked shirts and chinos with their military-style haircuts here, in her home.
They drag her rapidly downstairs. This is how her operatives have moved through unknown houses and apartments, and she has always seen it as necessary, acceptable, but now this is such a level of violence that she doesn’t want to believe it is happening to her.
Don’t resist, not before it is possible, she thinks to herself.
Checked shirt, small tattoo on the right arm, hair colour, aftershave, the bodily odour of someone who wants to hurt you – she commits the details to memory.
Gustav is lying on the living-room floor on the thick rug by the coffee table. Jonathan Green is standing next to him with a pistol in his hand.
The men put on latex gloves. One of them lets go of her and grabs hold of Gustav, picking him up like a package and putting him on a chair, pulling out a roll of duct tape and with a ripping sound pulling off a long piece and wrapping it around the lower half of Gustav’s face. Gustav begins to gasp, his breathing through his nose is weak.
‘Bente,’ says Jonathan. ‘Where are the documents?’
She doesn’t answer.
The man behind him pulls out the roll of tape again, and puts a large piece of tape straight over Gustav’s nose and around his head. He tries to writhe away, opening his eyes and throwing himself about in his chair while he can’t breathe.
‘Stop it!’ she shouts. ‘Stop it.’
Jonathan nods at the man, who slightly loosens the tape. Gustav draws breath with a hissing sound through his nostrils. His eyes are watering, he stares silently.
Jonathan looks at her furiously.
‘Can you see what you’ve done, woman? This is your fault. Now we’re going to retrieve the documents. Where are they?’
‘Upstairs. In a safe.’
‘Give me the code.’
‘There’s a code and fingerprint scanner.’
She is certain that he knows she is lying. Perhaps Heather has told him how the safe works, perhaps he has been here before, they have been watching her for months . . . but she can’t see any other way, she needs to buy time – enough for the others to get here.
Jonathan nods, pointing at the stairs.
She feels the men release their grip on her and they walk towards the stairs. He stops outside Rasmus’s room.
Then he crouches, his weapon still aimed at her, and peers into the room.
‘Come out,’ he says. ‘Come out from under the bed.’
He shouts loudly down the stairs that there is another person here, and that they need dealing with. The two men in checked shirts hurry up the stairs with heavy steps. The only thing she can think about is protecting Rasmus; she forgets that Jonathan is armed and tries to push past.
He immediately turns the muzzle towards her.
‘Don’t hurt him,’ she says.
They pull Rasmus out and get him to his feet. He stares at her, scared out of his mind, and then is past her and heading downstairs. They are dragging his gangly body between them and it looks awful, their broad backs and cast-iron hands grasping her son’s thin upper arms. He offers no resistance; they lift him like a rag doll, and he is silent, and it is heart-breaking because he ought to start shouting if anyone touches him like that but he says nothing. Something cracks inside her; this is her fault.
‘Rasmus, darling,’ she shouts after him. ‘Try to stay calm . . .’
The study is cramped, he stands close to her, and she blocks his view of the safe, shielding it with her body so that he can’t see that it is a completely ordinary safe without a biometric reader.
The Silent War Page 24
