Eko left Gotland and returned to the studio reporter. Air-traffic controllers were threatening industrial action; negotiations were going on and the deadline for the union representatives' response to the employer's latest offer was 7 P.M. A young woman had been found dead in Kronoberg Park in central Stockholm. The minister pricked up his ears and turned up the volume. There wasn't much information, but signs indicated the woman had been murdered.
Eko continued with a short piece on the former Social Democratic Party secretary who had written an op-ed article on the old IB affair in one of the broadsheets. There had been a scandal involving a clandestine intelligence outfit, the Information Bureau, in the service of the ruling Social Democratic Party. The minister got annoyed. Stupid old man! He should keep his mouth shut- they were in the middle of the election campaign.
"We did it for the sake of democracy," he heard the old party secretary say floridly over the radio. "We were all that stood between Sweden and the Marxist-Leninists."
The weather report followed. The high-pressure system would stay over Scandinavia for the coming five days. By now the water table was below normal in the whole country, and the risk of forest fires was high. The ban on the lighting of fires remained. The minister sighed.
The studio reporter concluded the news bulletin just as the minister drove past the Rotebro Interchange and a hypermarket flashed by to the right. The minister waited for the howling electric-guitar signature tune of the current affairs program Studio 69, but to his surprise it didn't come on. Instead they announced yet another program with hysterically shouting youths for hosts. Shit, it was Saturday. Studio 69 was only on Monday to Friday. Annoyed, he switched off the radio. The moment he did, his cell phone rang. Judging by the signal, it was somewhere deep inside a bag on the backseat. He cursed out loud and threw his right arm back. Swerving within his lane, he pulled the suitcase onto the floor and fished out the small overnight bag. A late-model, silver Mercedes beeped at him angrily as it drove past.
"Capitalist swine," the minister muttered.
He turned the overnight bag upside down on the backseat and fished out the cell phone.
"Yes?"
"It's Karina. Hi." His press secretary. "Where are you?"
"What do you want?" he countered brusquely.
"Svenska Dagbladet wants to know whether the new crisis in the Middle East peace talks will threaten the consignment of JAS fighter aircraft to Israel."
"That's a trick question. We haven't signed any contract for JAS deliveries to Israel."
"That's not the question," the press secretary said. "The question was whether the negotiations are threatened."
"The government won't comment on potential negotiations with potential buyers of Swedish munitions or Swedish fighter aircraft. Lengthy negotiations with prospective buyers take place all the time and relatively seldom lead to any big purchases. In this case, there is no threat to any consignment, as there won't be any- at least not to my knowledge."
The press secretary took down his words in silence.
"Okay," she then said. "Have I got this right? 'The answer is no. No consignments are threatened, as no contract has been signed.'"
The minister passed his hand over his tired brow. "No, no, Karina. That's not at all what I said. I didn't answer no. It's an unanswerable question. Since there are no planned consignments, they can't be threatened. Answering no to the question would mean that the consignments will be made."
Karina breathed quietly down the phone. "Maybe you should talk to the reporter yourself."
Goddamn it, he had to fire this woman. She was brain-dead. "No, Karina. It's your job to formulate this in the appropriate manner so that my intention is conveyed with an accurate quotation. What do you think you're being paid forty thousand kronor a month to do?"
He switched off before she had time to reply. To be on the safe side, he turned off the phone and threw it into the bag.
The silence was oppressive. Slowly, the sounds of the vehicle increased inside the car: the whining of the seal, the asphalt, the wheezing of the fan. Exasperated, he tore open his top two shirt buttons and turned on the radio again. He couldn't stand the prank phone calls on P3 so he pressed a station at random and got Radio Rix. Some old hit rolled out of the speakers; one he recognized from his youth. He had some kind of memory related to this tune but couldn't place it. Some girl, probably. He resisted an impulse to switch the radio off- anything was better than the racket the car was making.
It was going to be a long night.
The subediting crowd tumbled in just before seven, noisy as ever. Their chief, Jansson, parked himself opposite Spike at the desk. Annika and Berit had just returned from the canteen- known as the Seven Rats- both having eaten beef stew.
The food sat heavily with Annika and gave her a stomachache. The boisterous subs weren't helping. She wasn't getting anywhere with her calls. She couldn't get hold of the tipster. The police press officer was kind and had the patience of a saint, but he didn't know anything. She'd spoken to him three times during the afternoon. He didn't know who the woman was, when or how she had died, or when he would find out. It all made Annika nervous and probably contributed to the stomachache.
She had to find out something about the woman for the front page, or her name wouldn't be getting on it either.
"Take it easy," Berit advised her. "We'll get there. And tomorrow is another day. If we don't get hold of the name, no one else will either."
Of course, TV2's Rapport at 7:30 P.M. led with the Middle East crisis and the U.S. president's appeal to resume the peace talks. The story lasted forever and was interspersed with questions to the Washington correspondent via satellite. Lengthy narratives in officialese were spread over agency footage from the intifada.
Next came the Gotland forest fire, with exactly the same news assessment Eko had made. The aerial footage was undeniably stunning. First, they interviewed the director of the emergency-and-rescue services, a chief fire officer from Visby. Then they showed an impromptu press conference, and Annika smiled when she spotted Anne Snapphane jostling at the front with her tape recorder in the air. Last, they interviewed a worried farmer; Annika thought she recognized his voice from Eko.
After the fire, there wasn't much in the way of news. There was a labored piece on the election campaign's making a false start. Annika thought they could have run this about six months ago. The Social Democratic prime minister, hand in hand with his new wife, was walking across the square in his Södermanland hometown. Annika smiled when she saw the sign of her old workplace in the background. The prime minister gave a brief comment to the former party secretary's article about the IB affair.
"It's not an issue we want to drag with us into the twenty-first century," he said wearily. "We're going to get to the bottom of this matter. If the need arises, we shall order a review."
Then they'd dug out a feature they must have had on file. The public service network, Sveriges Television, had sent their masterly Russia correspondent to the Caucasus to report on the long and bloody conflict in one of the old Soviet republics there. This is the advantage of the silly season, Annika thought. They show things on the news programs that you'd never get to see normally.
The aging president of the republic was interviewed. He surprised the reporter by answering the questions in Swedish.
"I was posted in the Soviet embassy in Stockholm from 1970 to 1973," he said with a strong accent.
"Amazing," Annika said.
The president was deeply concerned. Russia was supplying the rebels with arms and ammunition, whereas he suffered under the international weapons embargo imposed on his country by a UN decree. He had been the target of repeated assassination attempts, and on top of all this he had a heart condition.