Chapter 28
Mattias Ceder had been working hard all week, ever since he got home from Kiruna, and the long hours were starting to take their toll. Today was Saturday, supposedly his day off, but it made no difference what day it was, the nation was always under attack. And as a result, Mattias was always working. Despite that, the weekend pace at HQ on Lidingövägen was slower than during the week. The majority of the military leadership worked normal office hours, and everyone there today was like him: workaholics and/or trying to keep up with the never-ending external threats to the country. Terrorists, aggressive nations, and hackers paid no attention to Swedish laws about forty-hour weeks and overtime.
So far, Mattias had managed to write an analysis of the terror threat linked to a state visit, a report on a suspected foreign spy, and an A4 sheet on modern interrogation techniques that would be sent to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs later that week. It was time for the first of the day’s two interviews. Recruitment often took place on the weekend, and it suited him perfectly.
He got up and went to greet the woman waiting outside his room.
“Filippa,” she introduced herself with a firm, dry handshake. She was thin and pale, completely unremarkable, with light brown hair, pale eyes, a knitted sweater, jeans, and a battered old purse.
“Thanks for coming in on a Saturday,” he said, showing her into the room.
Filippa was a hacker Mattias had heard of through his contacts at the Royal Institute of Technology. It was Sweden’s elite education center, and a hotbed for computer geniuses. As well as a breeding ground for possible intelligence agents. She sat down opposite him. With her cautious body language and soft voice, she gave the impression of being young and insecure, but Mattias knew better. Fil-lipa was young, just twenty-two, but she already had a degree in computer science and, according to Mattias’s source, there wasn’t a computer system in the world that the young hacker couldn’t get into. All he needed to do was recruit her before someone else did.
“Okay to start?”
Filippa nodded, and Mattias began the interview with the usual, general questions, to sound her out a little. Shyness didn’t necessarily have to be a problem, but nor could it be paralyzing. In his new super team, every member would need to be able to hold their own among other experts. They talked about moral judgments, and Mattias skirted around the subject, asked questions in different ways, wanted to get a sense of what she really thought about right and wrong, life and death, war and peace. Political orientation wasn’t so important—Mattias was a firm believer in mixed groups—but those with prejudices were always impossible to work with. They couldn’t take in the facts but just viewed everything through their black-and-white filters. Dangerous people.
“Why do you want to work for us?” he asked.
She flashed him a quick smile. “I like hacking,” she said.
“Why?”
“It’s an intellectual challenge. And I’d be able to do it legally here.”
The interview lasted forty-five minutes, mostly a chance for him to gain a first impression. But Mattias had a good feeling about her.
“We’ll be in touch about a second interview,” he said as they parted.
* * *
He went down to the cafeteria and bought a salad, which he ate back up in his office. He worked another hour and then welcomed the day’s second prospect: a retired cryptologist. At sixty-seven, the man was on the verge of being too old, but Mattias wanted a mixed team. It was true that young people had an intellectual flexibility that older people often lacked. Plus, the young had an innate understanding of how social media worked, which was invaluable in this day and age, when so many threats were made using the Internet and terrorists kept in touch via Facebook groups. But a mixed-age group also resulted in unexpected viewpoints, and a good cryptologist often took many years to form.
After the interview, Mattias decided to put the sixty-seven-year-old on his maybe list. It would have been great to discuss the two interviews with Tom, he thought, not for the first time that week. Tom was an incredible sounding board. He saw beyond the obvious; he was calm and methodical and could make creative associations and analyses like no one else.
Mattias moved over to his tiny window. This was his official office. In his other room, the unofficial one, there was no window at all.
It was dark out, but the courtyard was lit by spotlights. There were a number of discreet guards stationed out there. He still didn’t know what to do about Tom. The trip to Kiruna had always been a long shot, but it did feel like a victory that they’d talked about what happened. The fact was that Tom still hadn’t forgiven him, much less started to trust him. And he was damaged, both physically and mentally, that was also obvious. They hadn’t spoken since he’d left Kiruna. Mattias scratched the bridge of his nose. Maybe he should give up? There were other people he could try. But no one like Tom Lexington. Tom was the best, and Mattias wanted the best. He stared out at the snowy courtyard.
It was here, at HQ, that he’d betrayed Tom all those years ago. Even today, he could remember the expression on Tom’s face, dreamed about it sometimes, how he had frozen when the extent of his betrayal sank in. Mattias had been so nervous that day that he could barely talk when he got up and uttered the words that protected the unit but ruined his friendship with Tom. In an abrupt voice, he said the words he had been practicing all night:
“Captain Lexington wasn’t himself even before we left for Afghanistan. He overreacted then, and he’s overreacting now. He hasn’t been himself for a while. We can’t rule out that the perpetrator was armed,” he said.
Tom stared at him furiously after he spoke. It wasn’t often that Tom got angry, but when he did it was a terrible sight. Like the devil himself had his eyes trained on you. “The perpetrator?” he barked, his voice echoing across the room and the medal-clad men. “There was no fucking perpetrator, it was an unarmed child.”
Mattias cleared the expression from his face. If Tom would just calm down, maybe he could save them both. “It was dark, it was chaotic. We can’t rule out that he posed a threat,” he said in a convincing tone, trying to make Tom realize that saving the unit was their first priority. What had happened was unfortunate, but there was no point dragging it out. For everyone’s sake.
But Tom just stared at him, and then he turned to the medal-wearing men who would decide his fate. “We killed a defenseless child. I don’t give a shit about this fucking demonstration of power. What we did was wrong, and you’re so afraid for your own asses that you should be ashamed.” The thing was, he was right. But it made no difference. After that meeting, Tom’s career in the military was over.
What he had done was necessary, Mattias thought, following a lone conscript with his eyes. But if he was faced with the same dilemma again today, he didn’t know whether he would make the same decision. What he did know was that the nation needed Tom. Somehow, he had to get him onboard.
* * *
Mattias read through a few more applications and put those he wanted to interview into a separate pile. He would call them personally on Monday. He opened Twitter, scrolled through his feed, and immediately noticed a troll attack, a fake article by someone paid to spread disinformation by a foreign power. It was well written, seemed perfectly genuine at first glance, and it was spreading fast—even disseminated by so-called Swedish patriots. He scrolled through the discussion and wrote down a few points, made a note of several names he wanted to look into more closely. The sooner the new group came into being, the better. He moved on to Facebook, checked a few of the accounts he had on his radar. So many of the threats to their open society and democracy were made on social media these days. People actively spreading lies and misinformation with the aim of causing damage, stirring up hate and worry. An increasingly large part of his job was devoted to keeping an eye on them, these people who deliberately and systematically undermined the country. This information war went on twenty-four hours a day. The enemy mapped people out, spread articles that caused divisions, played people against one another. It was a classic divide-and-rule strategy, and it worked depressingly well.
He left the tabs open and paused for a moment with his fingers poised above the keyboard. Eventually, he typed in the address of Jill’s Instagram page. Strictly speaking, there was very little information war going on there, but he couldn’t help it. There was just something about Jill Lopez that fascinated him. She was the polar opposite of the women he usually dated in every respect. Jill was extravagant, almost vulgar at times, uneducated, and extremely visible on social media, about as far from the discreet academics he was most comfortable with as you could get. And yet he couldn’t stop himself from going back to her Instagram page time and time again. Every day, in fact, since he got home from Kiruna.
He studied her latest posts. She’d performed at Skansen on New Year’s Eve, and now she was in Copenhagen. She really did seem to be constantly on the move. Judging by her pictures, she had performed for the Danish Crown Prince Couple yesterday and been on a shopping trip in the capital today. Most of the images were of her, in different poses and locations, and if it hadn’t been for the amusing, slightly sarcastic captions, he would have found the whole thing incredibly self-obsessed. But during their dinner in Kiruna, she’d explained that it was a way of building her brand, constantly uploading pictures of herself, that it was what her fans and record label demanded.
Other than the fact that Jill was incredibly attractive, he couldn’t decide what it was he found so fascinating about her. He’d never been particularly interested in beautiful, attention-seeking divas. And that was probably the answer to his question. Because Jill was more than that. She had a kind, self-deprecating side. It was partly visible in her own comments beneath the images, but he’d noticed it back in Kiruna, too. And she had a vulnerability that showed itself from time to time. She wasn’t just some spoiled, glamorous star. She talked easily about the orphanage in Colombia where she spent the first few years of her life, but afterward she had looked away. While they drank expensive champagne, she returned to the unhappy adoption as an amusing anecdote, but then he had seen the looks she exchanged with Ambra, seen the pain the two women shared and probably avoided talking about, even with one another. And on the couch, in front of the roaring fire, she had talked about the online hate she experienced, giving the impression that she took it all in her stride, but no one could be completely unaffected by what she went through.
Mattias scanned through the comments on her latest uploads. Below some images, there were nearly a thousand. On the most recent selfie from Copenhagen, she had 112 comments and three thousand likes. Most of them were kind, full of hearts and various emojis, but some were also incredibly hostile.
Your tits are starting to sag.
You really think you’re something, don’t you, bitch?
Everyone can tell exactly what she wants.
He assumed Jill’s team reported the worst of them, but new comments were constantly appearing, so she had no real way of protecting herself. He clicked on one of the worst users, but it was a private account. Of course. Bullies and trolls were cowards, always hiding behind anonymity.
He frowned. Thought for a moment and then dialed Filippa’s number, told himself it was a good chance to test her abilities on a real-life situation.
“Could you get into a private Instagram account? A locked one?”
“Send it over and I’ll do it,” she said.
Mattias opened three of the worst and sent the links to her. He went to fetch a coffee and an apple, talked to a plainclothes colleague, and by the time he got back Filippa had sent him all the information. Fantastic, he would make sure he looked into it further.
He closed the lid of his computer. It would be a terrible idea to call Jill, of course. They had nothing in common, and she was a walking security risk. But she had also been on his mind all week, and one phone call surely wasn’t the end of the world. He debated with himself for half a minute or so, until his common sense lost out and he dialed her number, the private one.
“Hello?”
He heard her deep, husky voice after the very first ring. Somehow, he hadn’t expected her to answer, even though he was calling her cell phone. It was Saturday night. Shouldn’t someone like Jill be out at a gala, on a red carpet somewhere?
“This is Mattias Ceder,” he said.
Long pause. “Who?” she asked.
A smile tugged at his lips. He’d been able to see straight though people ever since he enrolled at the Interpreter Academy; he was one of the military’s best interview leaders, and he knew a lie when he heard one.
“We met in Kiruna, at Tom Lexington’s place,” he said politely.
“Aha. The consultant. How are you?”
“Good, good. How are you?”
“Fine. I’m in Copenhagen. Nice city. If you like Danes.”
He laughed. It sounded as if she’d had enough of them. “I bought your CDs.”
“CDs, how very twentieth century. Which, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“All of them.”
He heard her deep laugh again.
“So have you listened to them?” she asked.
He had spent every night listening to the CDs, allowing her pure voice to fill his apartment. “Yep. And I wanted to take you out to dinner to talk about them. When are you next in Stockholm?”
“What makes you think I want to see you again?” Her tone was light and flirty.
He could play games, if that was what Jill Lopez needed. Some might even say it was what he did best. Playing the game. “Do you?” he asked.
“Maybe. I’m back in Stockholm on January sixth.”
That was four days’ time. “I’ll book a table for the seventh.”
“I do need to eat.”
“Yeah, you do. I’ll make a reservation and see you then, Jill Lopez.”
She hung up without another word. Mattias shook his head, equally happy and concerned that he had called.