‘I can’t bear it.’
He whispered the words, but she heard him. ‘I understand.’
There was a cup of coffee on her desk, and she wrapped one hand around it. She had large hands for a woman.
‘But we can’t make a unilateral decision to contact Karim. We have to speak to our American colleagues first.’
‘Your,’ Alex said.
‘Sorry?’
‘You said we have to speak to our American colleagues. But I don’t have any American colleagues; that applies only to Säpo.’
Eden took a sip of her coffee, then put down the cup. It was blue, with white characters painted on it. Hebrew, Alex thought.
‘I bought it in Israel,’ Eden said.
Alex didn’t respond; he couldn’t give a fuck where she’d bought the damned thing.
‘Your wife died about a year ago, didn’t she?’
There was a warmth in Eden’s voice that he hadn’t heard before, a warmth he hadn’t thought she possessed, to be honest. It disarmed him, made it possible to answer the question.
‘Yes. Cancer.’
‘And now you’re afraid you’ll lose Erik as well?’
He couldn’t speak, and merely nodded instead.
‘There isn’t a cat in hell’s chance that I will allow that to happen,’ Eden said. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? Erik will get through this.’
Alex stared at Eden, completely taken aback. The warmth was gone, her expression hard. Her voice and posture were utterly uncompromising.
‘Nor will I allow you, Erik’s father, to fall apart in the middle of all this. You can do that later if you have any reason to do so. Is that clear?’
He felt a flash of pure rage.
‘Crystal clear – do you think I’d abandon the attempt to save my own son?’
A faint glimmer appeared in Eden’s eyes.
‘No. Just checking.’
Alex wanted nothing more than to believe what Eden had said, but he couldn’t understand how it was going to work, how he was going to get Erik back. Alex thought back to when it had all started. They had had a plan then. They would try to find out who was behind the hijacking, save the hostages in that way. But that was before they realised Karim Sassi was involved. Now it didn’t make any difference what they found out; if they couldn’t get to Karim, both the battle and the war would be lost.
Fredrika and Sebastian appeared in the doorway. Eden waved them in, and Fredrika closed the door behind her.
Alex couldn’t understand why someone like Fredrika wanted to sit in some government office, rotting away. He watched her as she pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. Like everyone else, becoming a parent had changed her. The lines around her eyes gave away the fact that she probably did more than half of the household chores at the end of the working day. He had somewhat reluctantly accepted his children’s view that it was unreasonable to expect women to work full-time both outside and inside the home.
Fredrika lived with a man who was older than Alex. A man of retirement age, who was looking after two small children. Obviously, he wasn’t going to have as much energy as Fredrika; he couldn’t be expected to provide as much help and support as she needed.
The differences between Eden and Fredrika were striking. There was so little on Eden’s desk, in terms of both personal and professional items, that it looked as if she had only just started working there. Anyone who walked into her office would leave without having learned a single thing about her. He saw the glint of a wedding ring on her left hand, and suspected that things were very different in her household. Whoever her husband might be, Alex thought he probably put in as much effort as Fredrika did in order to make things work.
‘We think that Adam Mortaji, who used to own Zakaria’s phone, knows or is somehow linked to his sister,’ Fredrika said before going on to explain what they had found out from talking to Maria.
Alex listened, his anxiety as intense as a physical sensation.
They were talking too much, both to each other and to witnesses. None of this was going to help bring down the plane safely – they could do all this afterwards.
Eden was listening too as she looked at the list of calls Sebastian had given her.
‘I agree, the sister is interesting,’ she said. ‘But I find it difficult to see exactly how she fits in. Do we know anything about her relationship with Zakaria? Are they close? Could she be involved in the hijacking in order to secure her brother’s release?’
Every case had its own phantom; Alex had realised that at an early stage in his career. There was always one individual who was impossible to pin down, who for some reason drifted around those parts of an investigation that lay in the shadows.
‘We’ve been wondering about that too,’ Fredrika said.
‘Have we eliminated the girlfriend?’ Alex asked.
‘We did that a while ago,’ Eden replied. ‘We just don’t believe she’s capable of carrying out an operation like this. Admittedly, she might have a minor role to play, but she couldn’t be the person behind it.’
‘This all comes back to Zakaria,’ Fredrika said. ‘Even if his sister is mixed up in the hijacking, I’m certain there’s someone else who’s involved, someone Zakaria is protecting.’
‘Adam Mortaji, for example?’
‘Exactly.’
Alex thought for a moment.
‘So the idea that Zakaria is keeping quiet about information that could secure his release – couldn’t that also be an indication that he actually is involved? Even if we’re now tending to think that he isn’t, do we have enough evidence for such a definitive conclusion?’
They had to get out of this Säpo framework within which every discussion so far had been conducted. Alex was sick of it. Villains were villains, whether they were bank robbers or terrorists.
The difficulties with Säpo’s role were painfully obvious, and Alex thanked his lucky stars that he didn’t work there. He would have gone crazy.
Eden broke the silence that followed Alex’s question.
‘No,’ she said. ‘In spite of intense investigative work, we can’t be certain of anything at all.’
Right from the start, Alex had felt that Zakaria was the protagonist in this drama, in spite of the fact that it had begun before he was told that he would have to leave Sweden. So far, Alex hadn’t wasted much energy on the issue of Zakaria’s guilt, but now he was starting to wonder.
What if Zakaria himself was involved in the hijacking?
Fredrika glanced at her watch. It was just after ten o’clock in the evening, but it might as well have been three in the afternoon. She was firing on all cylinders now, and her body was not aware of either tiredness or hunger. They were on the home straight. In less than two hours, it would all be over. That thought brought her neither peace of mind nor relief, so she pushed it firmly aside.
Dennis, the head of the investigation unit, knocked on the door and yanked it open. He looked surprised when he saw how many of them were sitting there.
‘I just wanted to let you know that Karim’s wife called a few minutes ago. She’ll be landing in Stockholm in an hour.’
‘She’s coming back from Copenhagen?’
‘Yes. She’s left the children with her parents.’
‘Tell her we might want to see her.’
‘Already done.’
He turned to leave, but hesitated.
‘Has anything new come up? Is that what you’re discussing?’ he said.
‘I’ll be with you in two minutes,’ Eden assured him.
He disappeared as quickly as he had arrived, closing the door behind him. Eden turned to Sebastian.
‘I want you to come with me to a meeting with the CIA shortly.’
‘First the CIA – then what?’ Alex asked.
‘Zakaria,’ Eden said. ‘Then Karim’s wife.’
Fredrika swallowed. She needed to update the government, but she had no idea what she was going to say.
At that moment, Eden’s phone rang and she answered: ‘Eden Lundell.’