The Bomber

Evert Danielsson closed his door to shut out the noise of some reporter shouting into his phone in the corridor. In an hour, the board of directors would meet, the operational, active board of experts that Christina had called 'her orchestra.' The board was the real board, as opposed to the Honorary Board, or the Host Committee, as it was also called, which mostly posed for the camera. All decisions were officially made by the Honorary Board, but that was just a formality. The big guns there could be compared with the members of parliament in a one-party state, while the board was the executive committee of the ruling party.

The director was nervous. He was well aware of the series of mistakes he'd made since the bombing. He should have convened the board of directors yesterday, for one. Now the chairman of the board had done that instead, one day late, and that was a major slip. Instead of convening the board, he'd gone ahead and briefed the media on a number of issues that he really had no authority to talk about. On one hand, the talk of terrorist acts; on the other, the details about the reconstruction of the North Stand. He knew that question should have been discussed by the board first. There had been a brief strategy meeting the day before, a meeting which with hindsight had taken on an increasingly panicky appearance. The informal management group had decided to seize the initiative and not to hesitate, nor attempt a coverup. They would grasp the nettle immediately. Awaiting Christina's reappearance, they'd decided to use Danielsson as a spokesman, instead of the press people, to lend weight to the message.

But the management group had no executive powers. Only the board could make any real decisions. That's where you found the real heavyweights: the government representative being the Minister for Trade and Industry; a leading councillor of the Stockholm City Council; the managing directors of the various firms involved; an IOC expert; two representatives of the sponsors; and a lawyer specializing in international law. The chairman of the board was also a government man, Hans Bjallra, the Stockholm County Governor. The management group might be fast and efficient, but its importance was pitiful compared with the board of directors. The group was composed of a core of people who were responsible for the day-to-day administration of the project: the financial manager; himself and Christina; Helena Starke and the communications director; a couple of the deputy managing directors; and finally Doris from the budget department. Between them they dealt with practical matters swiftly and easily. Christina saw to it that the board endorsed their decisions after the event. It could be anything from money and budget matters to policymaking on various environmental issues, infrastructure, the design of arenas, legal obstacles, and all sorts of campaigns.

The difference now was that Christina wasn't there to sweep up after them. He knew he wouldn't be let off the hook. The director of the Secretariat put his elbows on the desk and rested his head in his hands. He couldn't stop a deep sob from traveling the whole length of his body. Damn! Damn! He had worked so hard these past few years! He really didn't deserve this. The tears fell in drips between his fingers and onto the papers on his desk, forming transparent little globules that blurred the writing and graphs. He didn't care.

* * *

Annika turned on her computer and sat down to write. She began with the information gleaned from her police source. The things she learned from her unofficial channels, her 'deep throats,' she kept strictly to her self. She never recorded these conversations- there was always a risk that the tape would be left in the machine and someone else would find it. Instead she took notes, and then immediately typed them out, saving her text on a disk. These disks she kept under lock and key in a drawer of her desk. The handwritten notes she tore up and threw away. She never imparted any part of these conversations to people in handovers or at news conferences. The only one who, if necessary, got to hear her confidential information was the editor-in-chief, Anders Schyman.

She had no illusions about why this information was given to her especially. It wasn't because she was better or more important than any other reporter. She was dependable, and that together with her clout at Kvallspressen's news conferences made her the right person to give information the police wanted publicized. There were a lot of reasons to leak information like this, but for the police, as for all other organizations, one thing was paramount: They wanted their version of events to be presented by the mass media. Especially when it came to the dramatic kind of events the police were usually concerned with, TV and newspapers had a tendency to rush ahead and jump to conclusions. A controlled leak gave the police a chance to stop at least the worst blunders.

In some journalistic circles, it was considered unethical not to report everything you knew at all times. You were always a reporter, first and foremost a reporter, nothing else but a reporter. This meant that you didn't hesitate to expose your neighbors, friends of your children, or your mother-in-law. Santa Claus himself if you got something on him. Talking to a police officer or a politician off the record just wasn't an option. Annika thought this was bullshit. She was first and foremost a human being, then a mother, then a wife, and after that an employee of Kvallspressen. She didn't at all feel she was a reporter in the sense of being a special correspondent of God or some other higher power. Her experience had also taught her that the reporters with the loftiest and noblest principles were the biggest bastards. That was why she was happy to let people speculate on her sources and be sniffy about her working methods. As for herself, she felt her work was important and that was good enough for her.

Once she had locked the disk away in her drawer, she wrote a short piece about her visit to Bertil Milander's house. She kept it to the point and made it dignified, stressing that Milander himself had invited the paper, and she included his praise of his wife. She didn't mention the daughter at all. She filed her copy into the list of stories held on the newsroom server.

She got to her feet and restlessly stretched her legs in her glass cage. Her office lay between two newsroom landscapes, news and sports, with glass walls either side. The only daylight came in indirectly from beyond the two offices. To make it feel less like a fish tank and to shut out people's stares, her predecessor had put up blue curtains of some obscure material. It must have been at least five years since anyone had washed, aired, or paid any attention to these pieces of fabric. They may once have looked stylish, but now they were simply sad. Annika wished someone would do something about them. One thing she knew for certain, it wouldn't be her.

She went out to Eva-Britt Qvist's desk, which was right outside her office. The crime-desk secretary had obviously gone home and she hadn't told her. The research material lay in piles on the desk, marked with yellow Post-it notes. Annika perched herself on the desk and started browsing through the material at random, full of curiosity. Christ, so much had been written about the woman. She picked up the printout that lay on top of the pile marked 'Outlines' and started reading. It was a long interview from one of the main Sunday broadsheets, a warm and intelligent piece that actually gave a taste of the person Christina Furhage was. The questions were sharp and to the point, and Furhage's answers clever and succinct. The conversation, however, exclusively turned on the relatively impersonal subjects of Olympic economics and organization theory; femininity and career opportunities; and the importance of sport for the national identity. Annika skimmed the text. Christina Furhage consistently managed to avoid saying anything that was the least bit personal.

But then this was taken from one of the broadsheets. They didn't care much for the personal, only the public. They only touched on that which was masculine, politically correct, and clean, avoiding anything that was emotional, interesting, or feminine. She put the printout to the side and leafed through the pile to look for an interview from the tabloid supplements. Sure enough, they were there, with the obligatory fact box on the person: Name: Christina Furhage; family: husband and one child; residence: house in Tyreso; income: high; smokes: no; drinks: yes, wine and coffee; best personal quality: that's for others to judge; worst personal quality: for others to judge… Annika leafed on. The answers in the boxes were the same for the four years since she was put off the records. Never any mention of her husband's or child's name, and she always said she lived in the house in Tyreso. She found a six-year-old article in a Sunday supplement where she gave Bertil and Lena as her family. So that was the name of the daughter. Her surname was probably Milander.

She left the pile of profiles and started on the thinnest pile, marked 'Conflicts.' There didn't seem to have been many of these. The first piece was about a dispute over a sponsor that had backed out. It had nothing to do with Christina Furhage; her name was mentioned in one place, thus the 'hit' in the computer search. The next article was about a demonstration against the effects of the building of the Olympic stadium on the environment. Annika was getting annoyed. This had nothing to do with Christina Furhage personally. Eva-Britt had done a lousy job. She was supposed to weed out stuff like this. That was the whole point of having a research assistant on the crime desk. She was supposed to compile background material to save time for the reporters in tight situations. Annika