The Bomber

'No, really. Could they have been having a relationship?'

They chewed on their lettuce leaves and thought about it.

'Why not,' Annika said. 'Helena Starke said she knew Christina best of all.'

'Doesn't mean they slept together.'

'True,' Annika said. 'But it could mean that.'

One of the busboys approached their table.

'Excuse me, but is either of you Annika Bengtzon?'

'I am,' Annika said.

'They want you in the newsroom. They're saying the Bomber has struck again.'

* * *

They were already sitting in the editor's office when Annika returned. No one looked up as she entered, with some corn still wedged between her teeth and her bag slung over her shoulder. The men were planning a strategy to squeeze as much as possible out of the terrorist angle.

'We're lagging hopelessly behind,' Spike said louder than called for. Annika still got it. She had heard fragments of what had happened on her way up from the canteen. She sat down at the far corner of the table, the chair making a clattering noise when she wedged in her legs.

'Sorry,' she said, and the word hung in the air. She'd be apologizing for more than scraping her chair. She'd have to eat some. An hour before she'd sat at this very table and insisted that the Bomber was after Christina Furhage personally, that there was no connection to the Olympics at all, and then bang! Another blast, at another Olympic facility.

'Do we have anyone there?'

'Patrik Nilsson has gone over,' Spike said with authority. 'He should be at Satra Hall in ten minutes.'

'Satra Hall?' Annika said in surprise. 'I thought an Olympic arena had been blown up.'

Spike gave her a supercilious look.

'Satra Hall is an Olympic arena.'

'For what? A training room for the shot-putters?'

Spike averted his gaze.

'They're holding some events there. Don't know what.'

'The question is how we should proceed,' Anders Schyman interspersed. 'We'll have to recap what other media have been doing on the terrorist angle. Make it sound like we've been in on it all along. Who'll do that?'

'Janet Ullman has the night shift. We can call her in early,' Ingvar Johansson said.

Annika felt a giddiness grip her and pull her down to the floor and up the wall. Nightmare, nightmare. How could she have been so wrong? Had the police really been lying to her all along? She had staked her entire professional reputation on the paper covering the story along her lines. Could she really stay on as a chief after this?

'We have to go around and check security at all the other facilities,'

Spike said. 'We'll need to call in some extras, the second night team, the second evening team…'

The men turned their chests toward each other and their backs against Annika where she was sitting in the corner. The voices dissolved in a cacophony; she leaned back and struggled to get air. She was finished, she knew she was finished. How the hell could she stay at the paper after this?

The meeting was brief and to the point; everyone was in total agreement. They all wanted to get to work and deal with the terrorist attack. Only Annika remained in the corner. She didn't know how she could leave it without falling to pieces. She had a lump the size of a brick in her throat.

Anders Schyman went to his desk and made a call. Annika could hear his voice rising and falling. Then he came over and sat down next to her.

'Annika,' he said, trying to catch her eyes. 'Don't worry, okay? It's all right.'

She turned away and blinked away the tears.

'Everybody can be wrong,' the editor continued in a low voice. 'That's the oldest truth of them all. I was wrong, too. I reasoned just like you. Now we have to rethink. We just have to make the best of it, right? We need you here for that. Annika…'

She drew a deep breath and stared down at her lap.

'Yes, of course, you're right,' she said. 'But I feel like such an idiot. I was so sure I was right…'

'Well, maybe you are,' Schyman said circumspectly. 'It does seem improbable, I admit, but Christina Furhage could have a personal connection with Satra Hall.'

Annika couldn't help laughing. 'Hardly,' she said and smiled.

The editor put his hand on her shoulder and stood up.

'Don't let it get you down. You've been right about everything else on this.'

She pulled a face and got to her feet, too.

'How did we find out about the explosion? Did Leif call it in?'

'Yes, he or Smidig in Norrkoping. One of them.'

Schyman sat down with a heavy sigh on the chair behind his desk.

'Will you go out there tonight?' he asked.

Annika pushed the chair in and shook her head.

'There's no point. Patrik and Janet will have to deal with it tonight. I'll get started on it tomorrow instead.'

'When all this blows over, I think you should take a holiday. This weekend you must have collected more than a week off in overtime.'

Annika smiled wanly. 'Yes, thank you, I think I will.'

'Go home and get some sleep.'

The editor picked up the phone. Their talk was over. She picked up her bag and left the room.

The newsroom was on the boil, the way it always was when something really big had happened. Everything seemed calm enough on the surface, but you could see the tension in the watchful eyes of the senior editors and in the straight backs of the sub-editors. The words flying in the air were clipped and concise, reporters and photographers were purposefully moving to the phones or toward the exits. Even the receptionists were pulled into the flow, their tone of voice deepening and the fingers dancing more resolutely over the switchboard. Annika usually enjoyed the feeling, but now she felt uncomfortable crossing the floor.

Berit came to her rescue.

'Annika! Come and listen to this!'

Berit had brought her salad with her from the canteen and was sitting in the radio room, the booth next door to the crime desk, which had access to all the Stockholm police channels and one of the national channels. One of the walls was covered with loudspeakers and their respective switches and volume controls. Berit had switched on the ones for the South Stockholm and City police districts, those dealing with the explosion at Satra Hall.

Annika could only hear crackling noise and blips. 'What?' she said. 'What's happened?'

'I'm not quite sure. The police arrived there about a minute ago. They started calling to the control room for a scrambled channel.'

At that moment, the babbling resumed. The Stockholm police had two secure channels that were scrambled. You could hear that someone was talking, but the words were completely unintelligible. It sounded like Donald Duck talking backwards. These scrambled channels were rarely used, and then mainly by the drugs squad. The County Police Division might sometimes use them during big operations where they suspected that the criminals had access to police radio. A third reason for using them was when the information was so sensitive that they wanted it kept secret.

'Can't we get a descrambler?' Annika said. 'We could miss out on big stuff this way.'

The chatter died out while the blips and noise from the other channels continued. Annika's eyes traveled along the loudspeakers. The eight police districts in Stockholm County used two different radio systems, System 70 and System 80.

System 70 had channels from 70 megahertz and upwards, and System 80 was called that because it came into use in the 1980s. They were supposed to have transferred over to System 80 already ten years ago, but they hadn't managed it yet.