Chain of Events Read online

And at last, Franquin cleared his throat. He took his eyes off the wall, looked at William, firmly and unflinching. When he answered, there was a deep note of worry in his voice.

  ‘Sandberg? We don’t have very much time.’

  And then:

  ‘We need you to code a reply.’

  8

  As Christina entered the warm café on Rörstrandsgatan, her eyes searching for Palmgren, she found him standing up, his arms already stretched out to greet her.

  He’d seen her through the window, hurrying across the street outside the thin, outdated curtains that covered the windows, the kind that he himself had discarded decades ago but that had travelled full circle around the fashion carousel and become state-of-the-art hipster decor. He knew she would come in wearing the same hard-set expression she’d had the last couple of times they’d met. But he also knew that she was still a tangle of emotions on the inside.

  She let him hug her before even saying hello. Pulled back out of his arms just a little too fast, knowing that if she didn’t she would end up crying, and she really didn’t want that. She avoided his eyes, muttered a brief hello.

  ‘You having anything?’ he asked, mostly to give her the chance to talk about something else. To let her feelings subside before they got down to business.

  She shook her head. Hung her suede coat across the back of the ragged armchair, sat down across from him. Waited for him to begin the conversation.

  ‘You were right, of course. But you already know that.’

  She nodded. Lars-Erik Palmgren had been a friend of the family for as long as she could remember, and after the separation he’d carried on as before – a neutral point of support for them both, the only one of their mutual friends who hadn’t taken sides. Perhaps it was a learned behaviour, a part of the diplomacy picked up from all his years with Armed Forces Headquarters. Or perhaps it was simply the person he was. It obviously didn’t matter – regardless of why, he’d been a sober voice of support for both her and William long after they had gone their separate ways. She still felt a sting of guilt for not keeping in touch with him. But she’d had to leave her old life behind to be able to move on, and she had a feeling that he understood, too. In many ways, he was the most sensible person she knew.

  ‘Did you know he was planning to do it?’ she asked after a long silence.

  He shook his head. ‘And neither did you,’ he said. The tone was emphatic and serious, as if she’d implied that she should have. ‘You have worried about it before, over and over again, and up until now you haven’t been right once. Correct? Just because you’re scared that something’s going to happen, it doesn’t mean it’s your job to predict it if it actually does.’

  She shrugged. Whatever Palmgren might say wouldn’t help her, and he knew it as well as she did. Her guilt for not having been able to stop her former husband in time was very real, rational or not, and nobody would be able to talk it away.

  ‘Whatever you think,’ Palmgren said, as if trying to lead her from her thoughts, ‘whatever you say, neither of you could have predicted – this.’

  He held out his hands to illustrate what he meant by this: she’d explained it all over the phone, William’s disappearance, the missing computers, the files and the notes and the reference books. And he’d instantly known that she was right.

  William Sandberg wouldn’t just follow up on an impulse to leave. William Sandberg wasn’t the kind of man who had impulses, full stop.

  ‘So what do you say?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve thought about it,’ said Palmgren. ‘But I can’t make sense of it.’

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘First, let’s bear in mind that there may be things I don’t know about. I’m retired. If there’s been some major development within the last few years I wouldn’t know about it.’

  ‘And you don’t think the press would have found out?’

  He smiled. ‘With all due respect, you don’t know everything.’

  Fair enough. She smiled back, gestured for him to carry on.

  ‘But no, I don’t believe the security situation has changed very dramatically. I don’t see who would have a reason – or even the resources – to kidnap a retired cryptologist. However big their needs might be. A state?’ He shook his head in answer to his own question. ‘That’s not what today’s political situation looks like. Nations work together. If a foreign power needed some Swedish cryptographic skills they’d simply call us and ask.’

  ‘An organisation then?’ she asked.

  ‘Terrorists?’ he asked back.

  ‘For example.’

  He considered it for a moment. ‘What can I say? Maybe.’

  ‘But why choose William? Why not someone who’s active, someone still working? Someone who isn’t so self-absorbed that they think the solution to all problems is to lie down in a bathtub and die?’

  He gave her a sad look. She didn’t mean that, and he knew it too.

  ‘Because William is the best there is.’

  ‘You know that, and I know that,’ she said. ‘But who else does? Unless they had inside knowledge from the Swedish military. And who would have, apart from another military organisation?’

  They sat in silence. Avoided the looks from the dyed-haired waitress as she cleared the table next to them, casting lingering glances towards the empty table in front of Christina, trying to communicate that this was a café and not a public waiting room and that she was expected to order something.

  When they were alone again Christina leaned forward.

  ‘What sort of contacts do you have nowadays?’

  ‘What are you getting at?’ he asked.

  ‘The things William did. Before he retired. Who’s doing them now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But someone is, right?’

  ‘I assume so.’

  Christina placed her hands on the table. Looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘If there is somebody out there, a group, or an organisation, or – I don’t know – a nation or a political fraction or a conspiracy theorist in a house in the woods. Whoever it may be. If there’s anyone out there who’d be interested in William’s skills…?’

  She let the rest of the sentence hang in the air between them. And Palmgren gazed back at her, already aware where she was going.

  ‘If there is,’ he said, nodding, ‘then yes. William’s replacement would know who.’

  She said no more. Just waited. Waited for him to say the only thing left to say.

  ‘Yes. I’ll try to contact them.’

  From out of nowhere, a flush of gratitude rushed through her body and made her turn her eyes away, swallow hard. She silently wished she’d bought a coffee after all. Something to focus on, to hold in her hands, anything to avoid having to look at Palmgren right now.

  He pushed his hands across the café table. Took her palms in his. Leaned forward, as if trying to enter her field of vision even though she wanted to keep him out.

  ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ he said. ‘I promise you.’

  The warmth from his hands around hers broke the barrier. And as she felt the surface tension give way at the corner of her eye, she realised that this was the first time she’d allowed herself to cry since William had disappeared.

  It took her a minute, and then she looked up. Smiled at him. A smile of gratitude.

  And even if they both knew that he was in no position to promise anything, neither of them said it out loud.

  For the second time that day, William was led through the castle’s seemingly endless corridors of neatly stacked stones. This time Connors didn’t talk. He left William to his own thoughts, gave him space to digest what he’d learned, both of them knowing there was too much for him to process to be able to concentrate on the geography.

  They kept walking in silence until they passed the room where he had woken up that same morning. Further down the narrow hallway there was another door, and Connors turned to open it –
no lock here either, William noted – and showed him into the room on the other side.

  ‘Your office. Just tell me if you need anything.’

  William looked around. As offices went, this wasn’t bad. It ran along the same outer wall as his bedroom, and the view was equally breathtaking from there. Four large windows opened out on to the lake, along the side wall stood a long desk with monitors and computer towers and even a supply of stationery, and next to it all there was an office chair that actually looked as if it might bear sitting on.

  It was like coming into a new office for the first day on the job.

  And, to be honest, what an office.

  ‘Feel at home?’ Connors said.

  Huh? The question was absurd, and William looked at him, only to see the shadow of a smile in Connors’ face. And as the smile refused to go away, William slowly turned his focus back into the room again.

  It took a moment before he realised he actually did feel at home.

  And then another couple of seconds before he understood why.

  The computers were his own.

  They were set up and arranged in exactly the same configuration as in his apartment.

  Monitors and processing units and modified machines with processors he’d once designed himself and ordered in utmost secrecy. And on a shelf above the monitors sat his own books, his files and everything else he’d had in his study back in Stockholm, and – very convenient – just about everything he would need to carry out his task here.

  It wasn’t until he let his gaze wander across the desk for the third time that he realised something was out of place. He took one step forward, closer to the table, up towards a thick steel box in a greyish green. It was almost cube-shaped, perched on the far edge of the desk, alongside all the other equipment.

  It couldn’t be what he thought it was. It was impossible.

  He placed his hand on it. Felt the casing, ran his hands over the cold surface. Turned it over, exposing the maze of terminals and circuit breakers drilled and soldered on to the plain metal sheet at the back. It looked like a DIY job from the eighties.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he said.

  ‘We got hold of it.’

  ‘“Got hold”?’

  William looked at Connors. This wasn’t an item anyone could just walk in and buy in a shop. It wasn’t even something you could break in somewhere and steal. This was something you couldn’t find at all, and if you did it would be surrounded by security measures, alarms and thick concrete walls that wouldn’t be penetrated without endless amounts of official signatures on endless amounts of paper.

  That much was a cast-iron certainty.

  He should know: he was the one who built it.

  He had started construction in the spring of 1992 and refined it in stages for almost two years. It was the key element in a top-secret research project, and it had seen seven years of use before it was mothballed and stowed away in a bunker as an extremely well-kept secret. And even though each individual component inside was probably more or less antiquated, the machine itself was designed for one single purpose, and probably still remained one of the world’s most powerful tools for decoding encrypted information.

  It was called Sara. Named after another Sara he knew.

  ‘We know some people,’ Connors said, answering his question.

  ‘So I gather,’ William replied. ‘So I gather, for sure.’

  He tried to bat away his emotions, but it was too late. They were just machines, he tried to tell himself, but he knew that on the other hand they were parts of his life. They were parts of a past he’d done his best to forget and shut off, or at least to look back on with disdain, and now they were here, reminding him of it all, unexpectedly and out of nowhere and with overpowering force.

  He looked up at Connors with a nod.

  Thank you, it said.

  Doing its best not to reveal how deeply he meant it.

  Connors stayed in the room for another couple of minutes, watched as William dived in behind the computers, checking sockets and connections and making certain everything was in place. Eventually, feeling superfluous to requirements, Connors decided to leave and turned towards the door.

  ‘Connors?’

  William was standing now, next to one of the computer towers, a gravity in his look that Connors hadn’t seen before. And for the first time, Connors realised in full that he was standing across the room from a man who tried to take his own life only the day before.

  The blunt scornfulness was gone from William’s face. Instead, Connors looked straight into something else, a bottomless pit of humanity that he hadn’t expected even though he probably should have, and for a short moment he had to fight the impulse to walk up to him, put his hand on William’s shoulder and tell him that everything was going to be fine.

  But if there was one thing Connors wasn’t sure of, it was that. Instead, he signalled at him to ask away.

  ‘I can see one single reason as to why the UN should establish a secret paramilitary organisation under its own direction.’

  Very well. Connors waited for him to continue.

  ‘If there was an actual, tangible, all-consuming threat, one that wasn’t directed at any particular country. If something was about to happen that affected us all, and if there was a fear that it couldn’t be avoided. If that were the case. And if there was a fear of what the consequences would be, should the public find out. Then. Then, perhaps.’

  If there had been a warmth to Connors’ face as he turned to listen to William, that warmth was gone now. He stood perfectly still, his eyes deeply serious, motionless and staring straight into William’s.

  He said nothing, and his answer couldn’t have been clearer.

  And then Connors turned angd left the room.

  The clock was showing long after midnight when Christina arrived back at the editorial desk. In her hand she had a scrunched 7–Eleven bag with colourless takeaway pasta in an equally colourless paper box, not because she was hungry but because she knew that she probably ought to be. She would reheat it in the office microwave, trying not to think about how many times this particular pasta had been reheated before, and then she would eat a few mouthfuls and let the rest sit on the desk until the cleaners arrived to remove it in the small hours along with her waste bin. Hopefully, she would be at home in bed by then.

  Coming into the office at night always evoked a particular sensation. The tempo was lower, and those who were working did it in silence. The perpetual clamour of ringing phones that blended together into a disharmonious concert had rung out, replaced by the whizz and hum of fans, computers and fluorescent lights. For anyone who wanted to avoid going home and seeing themselves in the mirror, the office was a perfect retreat. You were not alone, but the only social interaction required would be to throw a tired nod at a passing colleague. And as far as Christina was concerned, that was exactly what she needed.

  Or, at least, that’s how things usually were.

  But on the desk at the other side of her glass office wall, one of the lamps cast its warm glow over a turned-on computer and a baseball hat resting on a notepad beside it.

  Leo was still there. And before she had even started to look for him, the sound of a toppling coffee mug from the kitchen interrupted the sleepy hum of the office and drew her attention in his direction.

  He was standing by the long work surface in the middle of the kitchenette area, intently focused on spreading out a huge heap of paper tissue before the light-brown puddle of equal parts milk and coffee reached the edges of the bench and cascaded down on to the floor. She watched him silently as she walked towards the kitchen, unsure whether she should allow herself to smile or worry over the fact that this was the person she had to assist her at the moment.

  ‘You’re still here?’ she asked.

  Leo glanced up. He hadn’t heard her approach. Held out his hands as a mute way of saying that yes, he was.

  Lowering his arms again he toppled t
he coffee mug back on its side, swearing under his breath before returning to the tissue roll, pulling out a fresh ream and commencing a new attempt to prevent the trickles of fluid from reaching the precipice.

  ‘Okay then,’ she said after a short pause. ‘Since we’re both here anyway.’

  She popped the carton of pasta from her desk into the microwave and set it whirring away. Then she leaned against the row of cabinets to give him a brief summary of her meeting with Palmgren, their mutual thoughts about who and why, and his promise to try to establish whether the army had any idea what was actually going on.

  There wasn’t all that much to say, and she was done long before the microwave pinged. She glanced at Leo, indicating that it was his turn to talk. But instead, he just nodded. Took a breath as if he was about to speak, but couldn’t find the right words and turned to the coffee machine to refill his empty cup.

  She realised she’d have to draw it out of him.

  ‘So what did you find?’

  ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘I spoke with the removal company, and no, they say they haven’t even been near the place. Place, being, you know, William’s. But the neighbours are one hundred per cent certain it was that removal company’s name on the men’s shirts.’

  ‘What time were they there?’

  ‘Nobody really wants to admit how closely they monitor their neighbours. First they don’t know, then they try to be unspecific. But probably sometime around lunch.’

  ‘And when did he disappear from the hospital?’

  ‘The last time they saw him was at eleven. More than that, they can’t say.’ He paused for a second. ‘The police have the files from the surveillance cameras. But nobody expects to find anything. You know. Hospitals. Integrity and all that. There aren’t a whole lot of cameras up to begin with, and if you know where they are you can move just about anywhere without getting caught. On, you know. Tape.’

  The thing he said next was not at all what she expected.

  ‘I tried it myself. After a few rounds I knew exactly what routes to take. It wasn’t even hard.’