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 unequivocaclass="underline" 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 discreet 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.