Firewall (36 page)

"Were there any police during the Bronze Age?" Hansson said.

"Very likely," Wallander said. "But I doubt if there was a justice department breathing down their necks."

"They played horns," Martinsson said. "I was at a concert recently at the Ales Stenar. They tried to re-create prehistoric music. It sounded like foghorns."

"Let's focus on the situation at hand. The Bronze Age will have to wait," Wallander said. "Modin receives a threat on his computer and he takes off. He has been gone for six and a half hours. Somewhere out here is a person looking for him, but we may assume that this person is after me too. And that naturally extends to all of you also." He looked around at them. "We need to ask ourselves why, and I can only find one reasonable explanation. He, or someone, is worried that we know something. And even worse, this person or these persons worry that we are in a position to prevent something from occurring. I am convinced that everything that has happened has been a consequence of Falk's death, and has to do with whatever is in his computer."

He paused and looked at Martinsson. "How is Alfredsson getting on?"

"I spoke to him last more than 2 hours ago. At that point he could only tell us what Modin had told us, that there is some kind of a ticking time bomb built into the program. Something is going to happen. He was going to apply various probability calculations and reduction programs to see if he could isolate a pattern. He is also in contact with Interpol computer specialists to see if any other countries have experience with this kind of thing. To my mind, he's thorough and he knows what he's doing."

"Then we'll leave it in his hands," Wallander said.

"But what if something is really going to happen on the 20th? That's on Monday. It's less than 34 hours away," Höglund said.

"Quite honestly, I don't know what to tell you," Wallander said. "But we know it's important to these people who are prepared to commit murder to protect its secret."

"Surely it has to be an act of terrorism?" Hansson said. "Shouldn't we have contacted the National Guard a long time ago?"

Hansson's suggestion was greeted with hearty laughter. Neither Wallander nor any of his colleagues had the slightest confidence in the Swedish National Guard. But Hansson was right, and Wallander should have thought of it since he was leading the investigation. His was the head on the block, and it would roll if a situation developed which the National Guard could have played a role in preventing.

"Call them," Wallander told Hansson. "If they stay open for business during the weekend."

"What about the blackout?" Martinsson said. "It seems that whoever is behind this has developed a sophisticated knowledge of power stations. Could there be a plan to knock out the power grid?"

"We can't rule out anything," Wallander said. "But that reminds me: the blueprint we found in Falk's office – have we found out how it got there?"

"According to Sydkraft, the original was in Falk's office and a copy had been left in its place in their files," Höglund said. "They gave me a list of people who would have had access to these files. I gave it to Martinsson."

Martinsson made an embarrassed gesture. "I haven't had time," he said. "I'll feed it through our records as soon as I get a chance."

"That is now a priority," Wallander said. "It could give us something."

A soft wind had started blowing cold air across the fields. They talked about the priorities at hand, then Wallander delegated them. Martinsson was the first to leave. He was going to take Modin's computers to the station, as well as cross-check the names that Sydkraft had sent them. Wallander put Hansson in charge of the search for Modin. Wallander felt the need to talk through the situation with someone, in this case Höglund. Ordinarily he would have chosen Martinsson, but now that was unthinkable.

Wallander and Höglund started back towards the car park together.

"Have you talked to him yet?" she said.

"No. It's more important to concentrate on finding Modin and the cause of all this."

"You've just been shot at for the second time this week. I don't understand how you can take it so well."

Wallander stopped and looked at her. "Who says I'm taking it well?"

"You give that impression."

"Well, it is false."

They kept walking.

"Tell me how you see the case now. Take your time. How would you describe it to someone? What can we expect next?"

She swept her coat tightly around her. She was freezing.

"I can't tell you any more than you already know."

"But you'll tell me in your way. And if I hear your voice at least I won't be hearing my own thoughts for a while."

"Hökberg was definitely raped," she said. "I see no other reason for what she did. If we were to keep digging into her life, we would find a young woman consumed by hatred. But she is not the stone that is thrown into the water, she is one of the outer rings. I think perhaps timing is the most important factor in her case."

"What do you mean by that?"

"What would have happened if Falk had not died so close to the time she was arrested? Let's say a few weeks had gone by, and say it wasn't so close to October 20."

Wallander nodded. So far her thinking was right on track. "The fact that it is close to some important event in time leads to hasty and unplanned actions. Is that what you mean?"

"The perpetrators have no margins for error. Hökberg is being held by the police. Someone is afraid of what she can tell us. Specifically, something she may have heard from her friends, first and foremost Jonas Landahl, who is later also killed. All of these events are part of an attempt to keep secret something that is inside a computer. The nocturnals, as Modin apparently called them, want to keep doing their work in the dark. If one disregards some loose details, I think this about sums it up. It then also makes sense that Modin was threatened. And that you were attacked."

"Why me? Why not any other police officer?"

"You were in the flat when they came the first time. You have all the time been out in front leading this investigation."

They kept walking in silence. The wind was gusting now. Höglund hunched her shoulders against it.

"There's one more thing," she said, "that we know, but that they don't know."

"What's that?"

"That Hökberg never told us anything. In that sense she died a pointless death."

Wallander nodded. She was right.

"I keep wondering what could be in that computer," he said after a while. "The only thing that Martinsson and I have come up with is that it has something to do with money."

"Perhaps there's a big bug in the works? Isn't that the way it's done nowadays? A bank computer goes haywire and starts transferring money into the wrong account."

"Maybe. We just don't know."

They had reached the car park. Höglund opened her mouth to say something when they both saw Hansson running towards them.

"We've found him!" Hansson shouted.

"Modin or the man who shot at me?"

"Modin. He's in Ystad. One of the patrol cars spotted him as they were driving back to change shifts."

"Where was he?"

"Parked at the corner of Surbrunnsvägen and Aulingatan. By the People's Park."

"Where is he now?"

"At the station."

Wallander saw the relief in Hansson's face.

"He's OK," Hansson said. "We got to him first."

"Yes, it seems like it."

It was 3.55 p.m.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The call that Carter had been waiting for came at 5 p.m. It was a bad connection and it was difficult to understand Cheng's broken English. Carter thought that it was like being transported back to the 1980s when communications between Africa and the rest of the world were still very poor. He remembered a time when it was a challenge to do something as simple as send or receive a fax.

But in spite of the static Carter had managed to hear Cheng's message. When the call was over, Carter had walked into the garden to think. He had difficulty controlling his irritation. Cheng had not lived up to expectations, and nothing infuriated him more than people not being able to handle the tasks that he had given them. This latest report was unsettling and he knew he had to make an important decision.

The heat after he left the air-conditioned house was oppressive. Lizards ran to and fro under his feet. The sweat was already trickling down inside his shirt, but it was not from the heat. It was from the anxiety he felt inside. Carter had to think clearly and calmly. Cheng had failed him, but his female watchdog was doing a better job. Nonetheless, she had her limits. He knew he had no choice now, and it was not too late. There was a plane leaving for Lisbon at 11 p.m. That was in six hours. I can't take any more chances, he thought. Therefore I have to go.

The decision was made. He went back inside and sent the necessary e-mails. Then he called the airport to book his flight.

He ate the dinner that Celine had prepared. Then he showered and packed. He shivered at the thought of having to travel to the cold.

At 11.10 p.m. the TAP plane for Lisbon took off from Luanda airport. It was only ten minutes late.

Modin had been set up in Svedberg's old office. It was now mainly used by officers on temporary assignments. He was drinking a cup of coffee when Wallander came in. Modin smiled uncertainly when he saw Wallander, but Wallander could still see the fear underneath.

"Let's go into my office," he said.

Modin took his cup of coffee and followed him. When he sat down in the chair across from Wallander's desk the armrest fell off. He jumped.

"That happens all the time," Wallander said. "Leave it."

He sat down himself and cleared all the paperwork from the middle of his desk.

"I'm going to present you with a hypothesis. I think that when we weren't looking you copied some material from Falk's computer and transferred it to your own. What do you think of that?"

"I want to speak to a lawyer," Modin said firmly.

"We don't need lawyers," Wallander said. "You haven't actually broken any laws. At least, not as far as I know. But I need to know exactly what you did."

Modin didn't believe him.

"You're here now so that we can protect you," Wallander said. "Not for any other reason. You are not being held here on charges. We don't suspect you of anything."

Modin seemed still to be weighing Wallander's words. "Can I have that in writing?" he said, at last.

Wallander stretched out for a pad of paper and wrote a guarantee for him. He signed it and wrote the date.

"I don't have a stamp," he said. "But this ought to work."

"It's not good enough," Modin said.

"It will have to do," Wallander said. "This is between you and me. I would accept it, if I were you. If you don't, there's always the chance I'm going to change my mind."

Modin realised he meant business.

"Tell me what happened," Wallander said. "You received a threatening e-mail on your computer. I've read it myself. Then you looked up and saw that there was a vehicle parked on that little road that goes between the fields behind your house. Is that right?"

Modin looked at him in astonishment. "How can you know all that?"

"I just know," Wallander said. "You were frightened and you left. The question is: why were you so frightened."

"They had traced me."

"So you weren't careful enough at crossing out your every step? Did you make the same mistake as last time?"

"They're very good."

"But so are you."

Modin shrugged.

"The problem is that you started taking chances, isn't that so? You copied material from Falk's computer on to your own and something happened. The temptation was too great. You kept working on the material through the night, and somehow they caught on to you while you weren't looking."

"I don't know why you keep asking if you already know everything."

Wallander decided to make his point. "You have to understand how serious this is."

"Of course I do. Why would I have tried to get away otherwise? I don't even have a driving licence."

"Then we see eye to eye on this much. You realise you're involved in a very dangerous business. From now on you need to do as I say. By the way, has anyone brought you any food?" he asked. "I know you have unusual food preferences."

"A tofu pie would be nice," Modin said. "And some carrot juice."

Wallander called Irene. "Could you get us a tofu pie and a carrot juice, please?"

"Can you repeat that?"

Ebba would not have asked any questions, Wallander thought. "Tofu pie."

"What on God's earth is that?"

"Food. It's vegetarian. Please try to get it as quickly as you can."

He hung up before Irene had a chance to ask anything else.

"Let's start by talking about what you saw from your window," Wallander said. "At some point you discovered a car out there."

"There are never any cars on that road."

"You took out your binoculars for a closer look."

"Everything I did you already know."

"No," Wallander said. "I know part of it. What did you see?"

"A dark blue car."

"Was it a Mercedes?"

"I don't know the first thing about cars."

"Was it big? Did it look like a van?"

"Yes."

"And there was someone standing next to the car?"

"That was what scared me. When I looked through the binoculars I saw a man who was looking at me with some binoculars of his own."

"Could you see his face?"

"I was pretty scared."

"I know. What about his face?"

"He had dark hair."

"What was he wearing?"

"A darkish raincoat. I think."

"Did you see anything else? Had you ever seen him before?"

"No. And I don't remember noticing anything else."

"You left. Could you tell if he followed you?"

"I don't think he did. There's a tiny road just a little bit past our house. I don't think he saw it."

"Then what did you do?"

"I had sent you the e-mail, but I didn't feel I could go to Runnerströms Torg. I didn't know what to do. At first I was planning to go to Copenhagen. But I didn't feel up to driving down to Malmö. I'm not a driver. Something could have happened."

"So you simply drove into Ystad. What did you do then?"

"Nothing."

"You stayed in the car until some policemen found you?"

"Yes."

Wallander tried to think about where they should go from here. He wanted Martinsson to be present, as well as Alfredsson. He got up and left the room. Irene was at her desk. She shook her head when she saw him.

"How is the food coming on?" he asked sternly.

"Sometimes I think all of you are nuts."

"That's probably true, but I have a boy back there who doesn't eat hamburgers. I guess there are people like that. And he needs food."

"I called Ebba," Irene said. "She said she would take care of it."

That put him in a better mood. If she had talked to Ebba then everything would be taken care of.

"I'd like to speak to Martinsson and Alfredsson as soon as possible," he said. "Please get hold of them."

At that moment Holgersson hurried in through the front doors.

"More shooting?" she said. "That's what I heard. What happened?"

Briefing Holgersson right now was the last thing he needed, but Wallander knew he had no choice. He rapidly filled her in on the day's events.

"Have you sent out an alert to the neighbouring districts?"

"It's been taken care of."

"When can we have a meeting about this?"

"As soon as everyone comes back in."

"It feels to me as if this investigation is getting out of hand."

"We're not quite at that point," Wallander said, and didn't bother to hide his annoyance. "But feel free to relieve me of my responsibilities if you like. Hansson is the one who's been in charge of the search operation."

She had a few more questions, but Wallander had already turned his back and started walking away.

Martinsson and Alfredsson came in at 5 p.m. Wallander and Modin sat down with them in one of the smaller conference rooms. Hansson had called to say there was still no sign of the man who had vanished into the fog. No-one knew where Höglund had got to. Wallander barricaded the door. Modin's computers were up and running.

"We're going to go through everything from the beginning," Wallander said.

"I'm not sure we can do that yet," Alfredsson said. "There are too many things we can't see clearly yet."

Wallander turned to Modin. "You said you had thought of something new," he said.

"It's hard to explain," Modin said. "And I'm very hungry."

Wallander felt irritated with him for the first time. Modin might be a computer whizz, but he was far from satisfactory in other respects.

"The food is on its way," Wallander said. "If you need something right now we have good old Swedish rusks, and some leftover pizza. Take your pick."

Modin got up and sat down in front of his computers. The others gathered behind him.

"It took me a while to work this all out," he began. "At first I was convinced that the number 20 which kept turning up had something to do with the year 2000. We already know that Y2K will cause a number of problems in many computer systems. But I never found the missing zeroes, and I also noticed that the countdown looked as if it was set to go off much sooner than the end of the year. Whatever it involves. But I concluded that it had to do with October 20 instead."

Alfredsson shook his head and seemed to want to protest, but Wallander held him back.

"Go on."

"I started looking for the other pieces of the puzzle. We know something here proceeds from the left to the right. There is an end point and that's how we deduce that something is going to happen. But we don't know what. I decided to surf the Web for information about the financial institutions we had already identified. The National Bank of Indonesia, the World Bank, the stockbroker in Seoul. I tried to see if they had anything in common, the point one is always searching for."

"What point would that be?"

"The point of weakness. The one spot where someone could enter the system without anyone noticing."

"But there's a lot of awareness about hackers these days," Martinsson said. "And the business world is getting faster at responding to computer viruses when they emerge."

"The United States already has the capacity to conduct computer wars," Alfredsson said. "Earlier the talk has been about computer-programmed missiles, or 'smart' bombs. But soon that will be as antiquated as cavalry. Now the objective is to dismantle the enemy's networks and knock out their missiles. Or better yet, to direct the enemy's missiles against himself."

"Is this really true?" Wallander said, sceptically.

"It is definitely in the works," Alfredsson said. "But we should also be honest about the fact that there are many things we just don't know. Weapons systems are complicated."

"Let's get back to Falk's computer," Wallander said. "Did you find those weak points?"

"I'm not sure," Modin said hesitantly. "But I think there is a way to see a connection between all of these institutions. They do have one thing in common."

"And what is that?"

"They make up the cornerstones of the global financial network. If you compromised them enough you would be able to set in motion a crisis that could derail all of the world's financial systems. The stock markets would crash. There would be panic. Everyone would rush to take out their money. Currency exchanges would fluctuate wildly until no-one could be sure what the rates should be."

"And who would be interested in causing anything of this nature?"