And even worse: that was how they’d found Lindman. He sat on the floor of the bathroom, the transmitter still in his hand. He’d led the Americans, or whoever they were, right to Lindman. It didn’t matter how many evasive maneuvers he’d made. The thought made him sick. Lindman’s death was his mistake, his fault. How could he have been so naive? But he hadn’t been taking it completely seriously. Even though he’d seen indications that he was being followed, he hadn’t totally believed it. But he couldn’t allow himself to be overcome by remorse and anxiety now. Maybe the time would come for that. But that time was certainly not now.
With effort he got up and gathered his things. He threw both of the phones and batteries into the small bin next to the toilet. For a moment he considered throwing the transmitter in there too, but he changed his mind and put it into his pocket. The rest of the things—the book and underwear, passports and wallets—he shoved back into the backpack.
On his way through the train station, he wondered how they’d managed to get the transmitter into his bag. He hadn’t checked it on the plane, and he’d never let it out of his sight. Except when he’d dropped it at the station at the airport. The hot girl with the blond ponytail and blue eyes. Could it be possible? Why not? Why would a good-looking girl be a more unlikely culprit than anyone else? He shook his head. What a careless idiot he’d been.
Mahmoud followed the signs to a bus stop and jumped quickly through the doors of the first one to come by. He sat down on an empty seat next to the rear doors. Using his left hand, he stuck the GPS transmitter under the seat. The tape still held. When he was sure it was secure, he jumped off the bus before the doors could close. He had no idea where the bus was going, but at least it would keep his pursuers occupied for a while. And as for him, it was time he started taking the initiative.
Brussels, Belgium
No one could enter the European Parliament without a specific invitation or without a special card, a
badge
in Brussels lingo. All EU officials had badges, as did some lobbyists who had special, permanent cards. George’s lobbyist badge allowed him access to Parliament on weekdays between 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
At two minutes to eight, George was standing in line for a mandatory security screening, waiting for his briefcase to be X-rayed. He was pale. Covered in a cold sweat. He had dark circles under his eyes that made him look like he’d been on the losing side of a boxing match. Which was how he felt too. He hadn’t slept a wink since coming home from Reiper’s last night. He lay in bed, wide-awake, turning the situation over and over again in his mind, without finding a way out. Refusing to do what Reiper wanted would mean his life was over. Prison. Definitely fired from Merchant & Taylor.
That wasn’t an option.
On the other hand, if he did what Reiper asked he’d be an accomplice to more crimes. Reiper would have even more of a hold on him. That certainly wasn’t an appealing thought. Where would this end? He had to face the facts: Digital Solutions, whoever they really were, owned him.
At five-thirty he finally gave up, got out of bed, showered, and dressed. It seemed like the only chance he’d get to execute this assignment would be if he broke into Klara’s office before she arrived. Josh had given him some kind of electrical universal lock pick that would apparently open the office doors of the Parliament swiftly without destroying the lock.
‘You can’t go wrong, buddy. It’s a piece of cake,’ he said, forcing a high five and flashing that chalk white jock’s smile of his, which was as encouraging as it was derisive.
Of course, like all boys, George had fantasized about being a spy when he was little. He’d daydreamed about breaking into locked offices, gaining access to secret information, all while charming gorgeous girls. Secret handovers in dark parks. Shadowing and being shadowed. But this just seemed sickening. He felt like a common thief. Besides, he was completely terrified. What would he do if Klara were there? If she caught him inside her office? Or worse, what would Reiper do if he found out George had failed to carry out the mission?
It was rare for an assistant to be at work before eight-thirty. Meetings and phone calls at the Parliament usually didn’t get going until after nine. If he could be out of Klara’s office before eight-twenty, he should be safe. He hoped. The armpits of his shirt were stained with semicircles of sweat. Gross.
Before leaving home, he’d carefully studied the map on the European Parliament website to find the exact location of Klara’s and Boman’s offices. He knew from experience that each office had an entrance from the outside hallway, and a door that connected it to the adjacent office.
He grabbed his thin briefcase off the conveyer belt and started walking toward the elevators that led up to the Swedish Social Democratic delegation’s small domain, at the end of a corridor on the sixteenth floor.
The corridor was deserted, just as George had hoped it would be. His muffled footsteps on the light blue carpet were the only sound. Klara’s and Boman’s offices were located at the very end of the corridor. Anxiously looking around, he put his hand into his pocket and took out the electrical device Josh had given him. It looked like a small electric razor. He attached a long, thin piece of metal to one end of the device and quickly pushed the power button. It started buzzing, just as Josh had shown him last night. He released the button and the device went silent.
His hands were shaking. His shirt was stuck to his back. He cast another glance over his shoulder and took a small plastic bag of cocaine out of his pocket. Just one tiny line. Just to keep it together.
Sure, it was pretty disgusting to get high in the morning, but this was an emergency. Not exactly part of the plan. If it weren’t for Reiper and this shitstorm, he’d never do a line in the morning. Never. Not a chance. But under these circumstances? No doubt about it, this was an exception. He shook a small pile of pure white powder onto his platinum American Express card. He didn’t bother shaping it into a line, just plugged his left nostril and sucked up the whole mound in one go. He felt his synapses respond immediately. His body came to life. He could see more clearly. Became focused, controlled. He closed his eyes and shook his head before wiping his nostril clean with his thumb and forefinger. Maybe there was a way to fix this after all.
George checked his watch: 8:07 a.m. According to his calculations, he had thirteen minutes left. Better hurry up. He removed an oblong piece of metal with a small hook on one end from his briefcase. Without hesitating, he put it into the lock on Klara’s door to hold part of the bolt in place and then inserted the thin blade of the electrical picklock beside it. He pressed the power button again and started moving the picklock over the pins in the lock.
It didn’t take even twenty seconds for him to pick his first lock. His heart was pounding in his chest. Holding his breath, he pushed down on the handle and opened the door to Klara’s office. He stepped in and locked the door behind him. If someone showed up, he’d have time to sneak into Boman’s office through the connecting door. Klara’s office looked just like any other assistant’s office in Parliament. George had seen his fair share during his years in Brussels. This one was somewhat better because it was situated high up and in the corner. The view was amazing. But he really didn’t have time to admire it right now.
Klara’s thin, aluminum-colored laptop was sitting on the desk. Bingo. It was in standby mode. He lifted the screen to wake it up. Ten minutes left. As soon as the computer woke up, George inserted the USB stick into the port and clicked on the icon that popped up on the screen. He dragged the application onto the desktop. The program took care of the rest on its own. Josh had shown him what to do probably ten times last night. It would take about a minute. While he was waiting, he attached a small plastic capsule on the far underside of Klara’s desk. It had some type of adhesive on top and stuck easily. He repeated the maneuver in Boman’s office and went back into Klara’s to see if the program had finished loading.
Just as he was sitting down in front of Klara’s computer to remove the thumb drive, he heard a key being put into the lock. How the hell was that possible? Assistants never came in this early. He tore the stick out of the dock. Slammed the screen shut to put it into standby mode again. In one long stride he was back inside Boman’s office. As he was closing the door, he saw the door to Klara’s office open and smelled a faint odor of perfume. Why hadn’t he heard her coming down the hall? Wall-to-wall carpets, of course. His legs were shaking. He could hear Klara moving around in the other room through the thin wall. Her cell phone rang.
‘Hello, Eva-Karin,’ he heard her say. ‘Yes, I’m here now. Sure, I can print them out. Okay, I’ll see you in a few minutes.’
Fuck, Boman was on her way. George knew he should sneak silently over to the door to the hallway, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He stood rooted to the wall, trying to regain control over his body. Finally he mustered the courage and glided slowly across the floor to the door. Gently, gently, he turned the lock. It clicked when it opened. George thought it sounded like a gunshot. But he had no time to lose. Thank God everything here was new, and none of the doors creaked. He pushed the door open just enough to slip out. There was no way to lock it behind him. Hopefully they’d think that the cleaners forgot it last night. He jogged to the end of the corridor, expecting the whole time to hear Klara’s door opening behind him. But nothing happened. Finally he reached the elevators and pushed the button frantically. The elevator on the end dinged and the doors opened. In his eagerness to get in, he ran straight into Eva-Karin Boman.
‘Sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he muttered, averting his face. Eva-Karin didn’t seem to notice him at all.
Three minutes later George was sitting on the steps outside the main entrance with his head between his knees, trying to breathe normally again. What am I doing? he thought. What the hell am I doing? His left hand dug into his pocket for the bag of cocaine. If he didn’t deserve a line after this morning, what did he have to do to deserve one?
Stockholm, Sweden
Gabriella Seichelman hurried across the reception hall of the Stockholm Administrative Law building on Tegelsuddgatan. Her eyes sought the screens indicating what room her hearing would be in. There was still twenty-five minutes left until it began, and she’d been prepping her client, Joseph Mbila, until six o’clock yesterday evening. It should be fine.
But this wasn’t how things usually went before she appeared in court. She always made sure she had at least a half hour by herself in an available meeting room with a cup of tea and her papers. That was her routine, her lucky charm. She usually knew the case more or less by heart by the time of the actual hearing. But that half hour was her way of focusing. Her way of tuning everything else out, of staying sharp. Not having that whole half hour… that wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
Gabriella was a master at tuning out the world. She knew that of all the workaholics at the prestigious law firm of Lindblad and Wiman, she was the one who worked the hardest. No one was more devoted to her clients. No one stayed up later. No one got up earlier. There had been a lot of envious looks when she became a member of the Swedish Bar Association before any of her older colleagues. She was on the fast track leading straight up.
And she had begun to hate it. Slowly, at first almost imperceptibly, she’d started to become the kind of girl she and Klara used to despise in law school. A careerist. A climber with no interests beyond her job. How long ago had it been since she’d taken a vacation? How long since she stayed out all night partying? How long since she’d made out with someone? How long since she’d felt anything except the nagging anxiety that she wasn’t reading enough, not arguing clearly enough, not putting enough hours into rescuing her client? How long since she’d listened to one of the albums that used to mean everything to her, but were now accumulating dust in the back of her closet, under the piles of papers that just kept growing?
She had been feeling it more and more lately. The walls were closing in around her. The emptiness, the thoughts hidden behind thick walls of work. The unfathomable futility of it all.
She was scared witless by it, which sent her diving headlong into the next goal, the next client, the next eighty-hour workweek. She persuaded herself that it was necessary. That her clients needed her. That once she became a partner in the firm, everything would calm down.
A red poinsettia and a white electric candlestick were placed inside the receptionist’s glass cage. Tuesday was Christmas eve. My God, the only memories Gabriella had from this fall were from courtrooms, police stations, and government agencies. And from her office. Most of all from her office. Just before she reached the reception desk, she heard a voice call out behind her.
‘Gabriella Seichelman?’
She stopped, turning around a bit too quickly, and slipped on the gray stone slabs of the lobby. A hand reached out and steadied her.
‘Wow, you move quickly, I’ll give you that,’ said the voice attached to the hand.
Gabriella twisted her head up and gave a strained smile. Blushing, despite herself. The voice belonged to a man in his fifties. Short gray hair under a black cap, scruffy jeans worn a little too high, a cheap-looking dress shirt and a broken-in, short leather jacket. A plainclothes police officer. No doubt about it. If there was anything Gabriella could spot, it was a plainclothes police officer.
Before she could say anything, he flashed her his badge.
‘My name is Anton Bronzelius,’ he said. ‘I work with the Security Service.’
‘Okay?’ Gabriella said, starting to feel nervous.
She didn’t have time for this. Not at all.
‘Do you have a second?’ Bronzelius said. ‘Or rather, I know you have…’
He turned his wrist to look at his plastic watch.