“Hi, Boss.”
They had noticed him. Gitte straightened up and looked at him inquisitively, which gave him a brief and very irritating sense of being in the way. As if they were just waiting politely for their aging boss to clear off so they could once again immerse themselves in the details of their report on the training exercise. You could see the easy intimacy between them in the way they moved—Mikael, leaning back casually in his chair, Gitte with her hand still on his shoulder. Søren felt a ridiculous pang of jealousy. When had he last felt that kind of camaraderie with any of his colleagues? When had he last worked side by side with someone who had also seen him drunk? None of his supervisors ever leaned over his shoulder with bright eyes and eager voices, that was for sure.
“Hi,” Søren grunted in response.
He raised his hand halfheartedly and continued into his own office, set the charred coffee down on the desk, and turned on his computer. He stared at the dark screen as the machine slowly whirred through its security protocol. His own face was reflected back at him dimly behind the blinking gray lines of text, looking rather more geriatric than usual. It was the lack of sleep, he told himself firmly, as if attempting to banish the specter of age by willpower alone. Normally, all he saw was himself—broad forehead, receding hairline, and the narrow, hooked nose which, along with his black hair, had earned him the nickname “Kemosabe” at the police academy. As far as he knew no one called him that anymore. Admittedly, the black hair had grayed a bit since then, and his promotion to inspector had probably put the kibosh on that type of linguistic creativity.
At least he was in good shape. He worked out in the gym in the basement every Monday and Wednesday morning before heading for his desk, and he ran two or three times a week, usually ten kilometers or more, and even though he didn’t time himself, he knew he was still creditably fast. The physical that stopped any number of aspiring cadets every year because of excessive cigarettes and chronic puppy fat would still be no hindrance to him. No, there was nothing wrong with his physique, and he didn’t feel old. But to everyone else, to the “younger people,” he had already crossed the line into old-man territory. The most ambitious exercise program in the world couldn’t change that.
Ding.
The computer had finally plodded its way through the startup process and automatically opened the most recently updated daily report. Leaning forward a little, Søren scrolled down the screen. It appeared that some wiretap equipment had been deployed the previous night without any hitches. He hadn’t expected otherwise. The man they were supposed to be watching had gone to the derelict farmhouse he owned in Sweden. His mobile phone signal hadn’t budged for three days, so everything indicated that he was standing thigh-deep in some river, happily catching salmon, while the tech boys were sneaking into his downtown apartment here in Copenhagen. At any rate, they had accomplished what they were supposed to. Aside from that, all seemed quiet on the home front. A couple of messages had come in from Hungary, Belgium, and Turkey. They had all been vetted by Communication, and none of them were priority matters. The Hungarian message had been tagged “Attn. Kirkegaard,” though, so something in there must require his personal attention.
He printed the e-mail. He still preferred to read on paper—possibly another sign of age, he admitted grudgingly, but years of poring over typed reports had left him in the habit of doing his thinking with a pencil in his hand. It seemed a little late to change those spots.
He quickly circled the most important points of the mail. His colleagues from the Hungarian intelligence service, NBH, had a couple of websites under observation because they suspected these sites of trading in the arms, ammunition, and other military “surplus products” that poured over Eastern European borders in a steady stream. A neat flow chart showed that web traffic from a number of relatively legitimate forums and sites was being directed to a more hardcore inner circle of dedicated arms sites that in turn led to the object of primary interest to Hungarian Intelligence: the apparently innocent-looking hospitalequip.org, which served, according to the NBH, as a coded hub of exchange for customers looking to buy or sell arms, chemicals, and other dangerous substances.
Brave new World Wide Web. There were times when Søren felt sure there had to be a devil somewhere, gleefully contemplating the effects of his latest attack on humanity. In the past, people with shady, bizarre, or downright disgusting interests had had a much harder time locating each other. These days, even the most loathsome proclivities could find affirmation from likeminded nutters via the Internet, easily and more or less anonymously. And no matter what they wanted, it was out there—stolen antiquities, endangered species, illegal World War II souvenirs, pornography in all shapes and forms, weird drugs, and, yes, also arms, explosives, and dangerous chemicals.
“Fresh coffee, my liege?” asked Gitte, who was on her way to the kitchenette, and Søren nodded gratefully as he typed hospitalequip.org into his browser window. The page appeared, bland, pale green, a simple layout with a menu bar completely devoid of any graphic interest or stylish Flash animations. There were currently five chat rooms open. The discussion in one of them was apparently about “aggressive treatments for infections,” while another was simply about “equipment.” He could see which users were online—or, at least, he could see the pithy little aliases they were hiding behind. In the last three chat rooms, Søren couldn’t tell what the topic of conversation was or who was participating. When he tried hitting the Enter Chat button, he was asked to enter his PIN. He typed in four random numbers, and a few seconds later an automated message popped up: access denied. Please contact moderator.
He gave up trying to gain access. This was NBH’s ball game, and they hadn’t asked him to play. Besides, he could easily guess what was hiding behind the access codes—hospitalequip.org was by no means unique. Like other similar websites, it functioned as a marketplace where buyers and sellers could find each other and make that first contact. They announced what they had for sale or what they were interested in buying, anonymously of course, and then the hospitalequip people took care of the rest. NBH believed they were marketing their own stolen goods this way as well as earning a hefty sum by steering customers into interest-specific chat rooms that were set up and taken down so fast that it was hard for the intelligence service to keep up. The money flow was also hard to follow—the hospitalequip people made creative use of gold-based Internet currencies like e-bullion and e-gold.
What was interesting from a Danish perspective was that a group of Danes appeared to have been poking around on the site. At least one of them had made a connection and then subsequently dropped out of the chat to continue the discussion more discretely via mobile phone. The trail petered out at that point because the telephone number obtainable from the chat records had only been used briefly, presumably to exchange more secure numbers that the NBH had not been able to trace.
The Hungarian end of the contact was an IP address associated with the university in Budapest. The Hungarian colleague who had written the e-mail, a man by the name of Károly Gábor, reported that in addition to hospitalequip.org the Hungarian user had also visited a number of other suspicious pages, including the Islamic hizbuttahrir.org. Thus, NBH were hereby giving due notification, according to instructions, etc., etc., etc.…