Instead she chose a small dirt road to the left. It came to an end by a broken gate and a rusty harvester. Linda climbed out of the car. There was a stronger wind down here by the sea. She looked around for her father’s black knit watch cap. When she pulled it over her head, she felt as if it made her invisible. She wondered if she should try to call again, but when she saw that her phone’s battery was running low she put it in her pocket without calling and started walking back the way she had come. It was only a few hundred meters back to the other road. She walked so fast that she broke into a sweat. The road was dark. She stopped and listened, but only heard the wind and the roar of the sea.
She searched among the houses scattered over the area for about forty-five minutes and had almost given up when she suddenly spotted the dark blue car parked between some trees. There was no house nearby. She listened, but everything was quiet. She shielded the flashlight with her hand to hide the light, then shone it into the car. There were a scarf and some earplugs in the backseat where Anna had been. Then she directed the beam of light onto the ground. There were paths leading in several directions, but one had a multitude of footprints.
Linda thought again about calling her dad but changed her mind when she reminded herself about the battery being low. Instead she sent him a text message: With Anna. Will call later. She turned off the light and started following the sandy path. She was surprised that she wasn’t scared even though she was breaking the golden rule often repeated during her schooling: Never work alone, never go into the field alone. She stopped, hesitating. Perhaps she should turn back. I’m just like Dad, she thought, and inside she felt a gnawing suspicion that this was about showing him she was good enough.
Suddenly she caught sight of a light between the trees and the sand dunes up ahead. She listened. There were still only the sounds of the wind and the sea. She took a few steps in the direction of the light. There were several lit windows. It was a house set off from others, without neighbors. There was a fence and a gate. She turned off her flashlight when she was close enough that the light from the house illuminated the ground in front of her. The garden was large, and she knew the sea must be close by, although she couldn’t see it. She wondered who had such a large house near the shore and what Anna was doing there, if that’s where she was. Then her phone rang. She was startled and dropped the flashlight, but answered it quickly. It was one of her fellow students from the academy, Hans Rosquist, who now worked in Eskilstuna. They hadn’t talked since the graduation ball.
“Is this is a bad time?” he said.
Linda could hear music, the clinking of glasses and bottles in the background.
“Sort of,” she said. “Call me tomorrow. I’m working.”
“You can’t talk even for a few minutes?”
“No. Let’s chat tomorrow.”
She hung up and kept a finger on the off button in case he called again. When she had waited for two minutes without anything happening, she tucked the phone back into her pocket. Cautiously she climbed over the fence. There were more cars parked in front of the house, and there were also a few tents on the lawn.
Someone opened a window close to where she was. She flinched and crouched down. There was a shadow behind a curtain and the sound of voices. She waited. Then she noiselessly made her way up to the window. The voices had stopped. The feeling that there were eyes out here in the darkness was very strong. I should run away from this place, she thought, her heart pounding. I shouldn’t be here, at least not alone. A door opened, she couldn’t see exactly where, but she saw the long patch of light it cast onto the grass. Linda held her breath. Now she caught the whiff of tobacco smoke on the wind. Someone is standing in the doorway, smoking, she thought. At the same time, the voices through the window started up again.
The patch of light on the grass disappeared and the unseen door closed. The voices became clearer. It took a few minutes for her to realize that there was actually only one speaker, a man. But the pitch of his voice varied so much that she had at first thought it was several speakers. He spoke in short sentences, paused, and then continued. She strained to hear what language he was using. It was English.
At first she didn’t understand what he was talking about, it was simply an incoherent jumble of words. He was giving the names of people, of cities: Luleå, Västerås, Karlstad. It was part of a briefing, she realized. Something was set to happen in these places. A time and a date were repeated over and over. Linda made the calculation in her head. Whatever it was, it would happen in twenty-six hours. The voice spoke methodically and slowly and could occasionally become sharp, almost shrill, and then drop down to a mild tone again.
Linda tried to imagine what the man looked like. She was very tempted to stand up on tiptoe and try to peek into the room, but she stayed in her uncomfortable position crouched next to the wall. Suddenly the voice inside started to talk about God. Linda felt her stomach contract.
Linda didn’t have to think about what the alternatives were. She knew she should make her way back and contact the station. Perhaps they were even wondering where she had gone. But she also felt she couldn’t leave just yet, not while the voice was talking about God and the thing that was to happen in twenty-six hours. What was the message between the lines of what he was saying? He talked about a special grace that awaited the martyrs. Martyrs? What was he talking about? There were too many questions and not enough room in her head. What was going on, and why was his voice so mild?
How long did she listen until she grasped what he was saying? It might have been half an hour or just a few minutes. The terrifying truth slowly dawned on her and she started to sweat, even though it was cold. Here in a house in Sandhammaren a group of people were preparing a terrible attack — no, thirteen attacks, and a few of those who would set the catastrophe in motion had already left.
She heard a few repeated phrases: located by the altars and towers. Also: the explosives, and at the corners of the structures. Linda was suddenly reminded of her father’s irritation when someone tried to inform him of an unusually large dynamite theft. Could there be a connection to what she was hearing through the window? The man inside started to talk about how important it was to attack the foremost symbols of the false prophets, and that that was why he had chosen the thirteen cathedrals as targets.
Linda was sweating, but she was also cold. Her legs were stiff, her knees ached, and she realized she had to get away immediately. What she had heard, what she now knew was true, was so terrifying that she couldn’t really get it into her head. This isn’t really happening, she thought. These kinds of things happen far away.
She carefully straightened her back. It was quiet inside. He started to talk again just as she was about to leave. She stiffened. The man who was speaking now said all is ready, only that: all is ready. But he wasn’t speaking a true Swedish, it was as if she were hearing a voice inside herself and on the tape that had disappeared from the police call-center archive. She shivered and waited for Torgeir Langaas to say something else, but the room was quiet. Linda carefully felt her way over to the fence and climbed over. She didn’t dare turn on her flashlight. She walked into branches and stumbled over rocks.