He stared at her, his eyes burning with anger. His hair was loose for once, long and dark, falling to his shoulders. His hair had been utterly fantastic when Eden first met him: a priest, over six feet tall, with long hair and a beard. His confirmation students called him Jesus, which Eden thought was a very appropriate nickname.
‘Please, Mikael,’ she said, reaching out and placing a hand on his chest, pleading for understanding in a way that was unusual for her.
‘Is there really no one else who can go?’ he said.
He was beginning to crumble; he hated arguments.
‘Not on this particular trip, no. I’m the only one who can do what needs to be done.’
All of a sudden she felt fragile. She couldn’t cope with a row, not right now. It was too hard, too exhausting. What bothered her most was the fact that he was right, of course. It wasn’t fair to mess up a weekend with a trip to London. So Eden did something that was even more rare than pleading. She offered a compromise.
‘I’ve been thinking about that holiday you mentioned. In March?’
A spark appeared in Mikael’s eyes, but was immediately extinguished by doubt. Justifiably so. She tried again.
‘You were right and I was wrong. If we settle on a date now, of course I can prioritise and book some time off.’
‘Seriously? You’ve thought about the holiday, and you can take some time off?’
The first part was a lie – she hadn’t thought about the holiday at all. But the second part was true; of course she could take some time off, if she wanted to.
‘Yep. Where would you like to go?’
Mikael didn’t react as she had expected at all. Instead he placed his big hands on her cheeks, and in his eyes she could see nothing but fear.
‘Eden, you have to tell me what’s happened.’
Shaken by his reaction, she backed away. He stepped forward.
‘Nothing,’ she whispered. ‘Nothing’s happened.’
That was one of the reasons why she was so keen to go. Because the fact that nothing had happened was not enough. It was equally important to ensure that nothing was going to happen.
She knew who she was going to see: a man who had been involved in the sensitive operation which MI5 must have carried out against her when they realised she was in an intimate relationship with a Mossad agent. A man who had to tell her everything he knew, so that she would have sufficient knowledge to free herself from Efraim Kiel once and for all.
If she didn’t win this final battle against Efraim, she would pay the highest price of all.
The film was called Katinka’s Party; images of something that Efraim Kiel assumed was supposed to be a Swedish idyll flickered on the cinema screen. All the actors were speaking Swedish. Efraim didn’t understand a word, which amused him.
He had made a point of leaving the hotel by the main entrance so that his Säpo shadows couldn’t possibly miss him. They had caught a tram to Sergels torg, then walked to Hötorget. Efraim grinned to himself, wondering what the Swedish security service would make of the fact that he had gone to the cinema to watch a Swedish film.
He sank down in the soft seat and allowed his thoughts to run free. It was still early; he would call Peder Rydh as soon as the film was over. He wanted to know if anything new had come up; something that might explain how that paper bag had turned up at the Solomon school.
He hadn’t received any more messages, but that gave him no peace of mind. There was something frantic about his pursuer, something that suggested a lack of patience, and for that reason Efraim had been expecting further attempts to contact him. The silence frightened him. It would be unfortunate if this was the preliminary to an escalation; as long as Efraim didn’t know who was after him, he was at a disadvantage. And that was never a good thing.
His superiors in Israel had raised no objections when he said he was staying on in Sweden for a few more days. Complications with the recruitment process, he had told them. Peder Rydh needed to be supervised for a little while, assessed. They bought his explanation lock, stock and barrel back in Jerusalem; Efraim was a trusted colleague who was allowed to plan his own overseas trips as he saw fit.
He was shaken by the turn his visit to Stockholm had taken. It had sounded so simple, so uncomplicated. It had seemed like a welcome break from the usual intensity of his work, which mainly consisted of recruiting new sources and double agents for the Israeli military security service.
Eden had been a failure. The project had taken two years, and had produced nothing. Two years, two attempts. The first had been broken off for the simple reason that Eden had told him she was pregnant when Efraim first seduced her. He had made sure that she was well and truly hooked before he brought the first attempt to an end. And then, when she was back at work after her maternity leave, he had reappeared. It had gone well. Very well, in fact. But not well enough.
No one within the organisation had blamed him. Sometimes you succeeded, sometimes you didn’t. Efraim had many assets, and was still regarded as one of their most skilful agents. Eden Lundell had been a high risk project, they had known that from the start. And they had lost.
Eden most of all.
The film was indescribably boring. Efraim didn’t think he would have liked it even if he had been able to understand what they were saying. When it came to an end at long last, he had to make a real effort to stop himself running out of the cinema.
It had finally stopped snowing as he set off back to the hotel. The sky was dark and clear, studded with stars. It was a quarter to nine, and the inner city had a pulse that Efraim hadn’t noticed before. A Friday night phenomenon, no doubt. There were people everywhere, even though it was so cold. In a country where it was apparently impossible to motivate men and women to train to bear arms, people were clearly happy to freeze to death for a couple of beers.
It would have been easy to dump his Säpo shadows in the crowd, but Efraim let them stay with him. They were between fifteen and twenty metres behind him, all wearing black boots and woolly hats. If he had been their boss he would have turned around and asked them what the hell they were doing.
The soles of his shoes were too thin to keep out the cold, so he increased his speed and went past the theatre and the attractive little shops along the first section of Strandvägen. By the time he reached the warmth of the hotel, his cheeks and ears were glowing.
He went up to his room, using the stairs rather than the lift. There were no messages outside his door. Or inside. He opened up his laptop and plugged in the micro-camera that he had installed above the bathroom door in order to check whether anyone was coming into his room. No one had been there since he left.
He took off his coat and picked up his mobile. He had got rid of the first pay-as-you-go card he had bought when he came to Sweden; he was trying to make himself as invisible as possible. Traceability equalled vulnerability.
Peder Rydh answered almost immediately. When he realised who was calling, there was a brief silence.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ Efraim said.
‘No, not at all. How can I help?’
You would have needed only half of Efraim’s experience to hear that Peder’s tone of voice had changed since they last spoke. It was strained, almost stressed. Possibly with a hint of fear and nervous anxiety. A clear indication that he wasn’t comfortable speaking to Efraim.
‘Have you spoken to the police?’ Efraim said.
‘What? No, absolutely not, of course not, why would I do that?’
The words came pouring out. With a certain amount of surprise Efraim realised that he had been given more information than he had expected: Peder had definitely spoken to the police.
About Efraim.
‘Why would you do that,’ Efraim said rhetorically. ‘Perhaps because I asked you to?’