Ola straightened his back and let the computer work its way through these hidden folders and files. “Statistics 2012” said one of them. Ola opened that and checked a comparative diagram showing the number of refugees in 2011 and 2012. One table showed the fifteen countries from which most of the refugees came. During the first months of the year, the largest number of residence permits had been granted to people from Somalia. After that came Afghanistan and Syria.
Ola opened a folder with information material and standard forms. He went through reports that dealt with special themes such as Athletics and Migration, the European Refugee Fund, and Labor Immigration. He quickly checked folders with conference material and government instructions for the board’s activities, reports and fact sheets, laws and legal information. Three of the folders on the hard drive were unnamed. It was in one of these that he found a key document.
It apparently had been deleted on Sunday at 18:35. He clicked on the file to open it, and the page that appeared was a surprise. It was completely blank except for a few lines with capital letters and numbers.
There were ten lines in all:
VPXO410009
CPCU106130
BXCU820339
TCIU450648
GVTU800041
HELU200020
CCGU205644
DNCU080592
CTXU501102
CXUO241177
Ola S?derstr?m wondered what these letters and numbers were.
He copied the top line and pasted it into the search field, but it didn’t match any document. He repeated the procedure with each of the other lines, but met with the same result for all of them. He tried writing just the letters, but that led to similar dead ends. His first guess was that each line was a sort of code. A personal code perhaps. Could it mean something else? Names, perhaps? Were they the first numbers in a personal ID? Year, month and day representing birth date? He dismissed that idea too, and felt stuck.
It was almost midnight by now, but the mystery remained unsolved as he worked through the night.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
THE SWEAT DROPPED from her brow.
The girl fought as hard as she could.
Right fist forward, duck, left fist forward, kick, kick, kick. The man with the ugly scar pointed at his eyes, his throat and his crotch.
“Eye, throat, crotch!” he shouted.
She shouted after him:
“Eye, throat, crotch!”
Right fist forward, duck, left fist forward, kick, kick, KICK!
“Attack alert!”
The girl froze in her movement. The man disappeared from her field of vision.
No, she thought. Not a surprise attack! She hated them. She had no problem with close combat; she was really good at it. She had good instinct and a well-developed ability to react. Especially with a knife. She knew where to put her weight to get the blade as close to her attacker’s throat as possible. It was a question of first getting her challenger off balance and then down onto the ground. It often worked with just a few well-directed kicks to the knees. If that didn’t suffice, or if she met with hard opposition, she elbowed or kneed her challenger in the head several times.
Against Danilo, or Hades, as it was carved on his neck, she usually used direct blows and clenched her fist just before her hand reached his throat. When he bent forward from the pain, she would get hold of his head and knee him in his face until he fell down. But he could often outwit her and get her down on the ground first, and there he would sit astride her on her chest with his hands around her throat. Sometimes she would black out, but that was a part of the training. She was meant to be hurt. She had to learn never to give in, not even when it got dark.
She had become physically stronger, and more and more often she escaped from such a position and herself gained the advantage. With a well-directed knee into Hades’s back or kidneys, she could get loose. If she then managed to get a kick in his face, she might even win the fight.
The kicks were important in close combat. She had practiced getting the right movement of her hip so as to get more power in her leg. Rotating movements demanded balance and she had practiced with particular attention to finding the center of gravity in every position. She knew that it was a matter of life and death that she master the techniques to perfection, and when she was falling asleep in the evening, she would often rehearse them in her head. Back leg forward, raise knee, rotate, kick.
The endurance exercises weren’t so bad either. She had learned to ignore the pain of the cold snow that she had to crawl naked in. Running or doing interval training up a hill wasn’t so bad either. What she disliked most was performing the attacks because of the surprise element. She had, of course, trained attack and defense many times before. She had trained standing, sitting and lying down. Even against weapons and against several opponents in the dark, in confined spaces and in stressful situations. But she still couldn’t get used to the sudden pounce.
Now she focused her gaze on a point on the wall and listened for the slightest sound. She would probably have to stand there a long time. That was also a part of the training. Once she had been forced to stand at the ready for seven hours before she was attacked. Her arms and legs had been shaking on and off, and she had felt dehydrated. But by then she had turned off all emotions, didn’t feel the pain any longer. She was Ker after all. Goddess of Death. The one who never gave up.
Then she suddenly heard the sound of a small stone crunching, as if somebody were creeping up. And she was right. Somebody was approaching her. From behind.
She tensed her muscles and, with an aggressive roar, jerked around. The man with the ugly scar was close, and the girl saw the knife leave his hand at high speed. She watched it, lifted her hand and caught the knife by the handle in a swift movement. She squeezed the handle hard in her hand as she met the man’s eye. He crouched, then pounced. Quick as a flash, she shifted her weight and used all her strength to get her heel up and direct a kick at him. It hit the mark perfectly.
The man collapsed onto the floor and she was there in an instant. She put one foot on his chest and leaned over him with the knife against his brow. Her dark eyes burned. Then she raised the knife a little and threw it to the ground. It landed two centimeters from the man’s head.
“Good,” he said, and gave her an encouraging look.
She knew that she had to say it.
But she found it hard.
“Thank you, Papa!”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Thursday, April 19
HER RUNNING SHOES drummed against the asphalt. Jana Berzelius veered off toward J?rnbrogatan and exchanged the hard surface for the gravel footpath next to the waterway. She had done stretches at home and then had gone out for a refreshing run. She still hadn’t really warmed up, and she felt how the chill pierced her black leggings. She was lightly dressed, but after a kilometer she knew she would start sweating.
All winter she had enjoyed jogging and running outdoors. Her will to train had not been dampened by snow, slush and cold winds. She ran the same round in all weather, following Sandgatan to the town park, on to Himmelstalund and then back. She preferred an urban setting to a hilly landscape; she didn’t want to have to drive out of town just to be able to run on a special path. It was a waste of time, driving. When she exercised she wanted to get going directly.
And going to a gym wasn’t an alternative for her either; no way was she going to join an aerobics group. She liked to be on her own, and so for her running was the optimal exercise.
Bodybuilding didn’t require visits to a gym. In her apartment she had her own equipment and always finished her ten-kilometer run with push-ups and sit-ups. And before showering she usually stood in front of her chin-up bar and did lifts. She liked how she had full control of her body when she did that, and counted to twenty before she would sink down to the floor, exhausted.
It was now 06:57, with plenty of time left in the morning. She checked her pulse. When it had come down to normal range, she got up and pulled off her clothes.