"Be quiet now, both of you!" Annika said, raising her voice. "You're waking Daddy up."
As she entered the room with the boy, Ellen's clenched fist was in the air to hit her brother. Annika caught it before it landed, feeling her patience giving out.
"Stop it now!" she shouted. "Stop it, both of you!"
"What's the row?" Thomas was standing in the bedroom doorway. "Christ, can't I have one single morning of sleep?"
"See, you've woken Daddy up," Annika shouted.
"You're louder than the two of them together," Thomas said and slammed the door shut.
Annika felt the tears well up again. Damn, damn, damn. Why didn't she ever learn? She sank to the floor, heavy as a rock.
"Mommy. Are you sad, Mommy?"
"No, I'm not sad. I'm just a bit out of sorts. It's because I worked so late yesterday." She forced a smile and reached out for the two of them. Kalle looked at her earnestly.
"You mustn't work so much," he said. "You get too tired."
She gave him a hug. "You're so wise," she said. "Shall we look for that drawing now?"
It had fallen behind the radiator. Annika blew away the dust and expressed her admiration gushingly. Ellen beamed with delight.
"I'll put it up on the wall in the bedroom. But Daddy has to wake up before I do that."
The kettle was boiling away in the kitchen; half of it was steam on the windows. She put more water in and opened the window slightly to get rid of the mist.
"Do you want more breakfast?"
They did, and now they had toasted rye bread with butter. Their twitter rose and fell while Annika ploughed through the morning papers and listened to the radio news. There was nothing new in the papers, but the radio quoted both of the tabloids: her report about the death threat against Furhage, as well as the competition's interview with IOC president Samaranch. Oh well, Annika thought to herself, they beat us with Lausanne. Too bad, but that was not her headache.
She had another piece of rye bread.
* * *
Helena Starke unlocked the door and switched off the alarm. Occasionally, when she got to the Olympic Secretariat the alarm was disarmed: The careless bastard who had left last the evening before would have forgotten to switch it on. This time she knew it had been done properly. She was last to leave the night before, or rather, early this morning.
She went straight to Christina's door and unlocked it. The voicemail indicator was flashing; Helena felt her pulse quicken. Someone had called during the night. She quickly lifted the receiver and dialed Christina's password. There were two messages, one from each of the two tabloids. She swore and threw the phone down. Damn those hyenas! They must have figured out Christina's direct number. With a sigh, she sank into her boss's executive chair, swiveling back and forth. She still hadn't quite recovered from the hangover— there was a bitter taste in her mouth and her head was buzzing. If only she could remember what Christina had said the night before last. Her memory had cleared enough for her to remember that Christina had been with her in the apartment. She had been quite angry, hadn't she? Helena shuddered and got up from the chair.
When she heard someone entering through the front door, she quickly pushed the chair in and walked around to the other side of the desk.
It was Evert Danielsson. He had dark rings round his eyes and a tense line around his mouth.
"Have you heard anything?" he asked.
Helena shrugged. "About what? They haven't caught the Bomber, Christina hasn't been in touch, and you've certainly succeeded in planting the terrorist theory everywhere. I assume you've seen the morning papers?"
The line round Danielsson's mouth tightened. I see, it's his own big mouth he's worried about, Helena thought, feeling contempt rise within her. It wasn't the incident itself and its consequences that worried him but his own skin. How selfish, and how sad.
"The board is meeting today at 4 P.M.," she said and left the room. "You'll HAVE TO GIVE A FULL REPORT on the situation before we can make a decision on what to do after this…"
"Since when are you on the board?" Evert Danielsson said coolly.
Helena Starke froze, stopping short for a moment, but then pretended she hadn't heard his comment.
"And I suppose it's time to summon the big guns. If nothing else, they have to be informed. They'll be pissed if we don't, and we need them now more than ever before."
Evert Danielsson watched the woman while she locked Christina's door. She was right about the big guns. The captains of industry, the royalty, the church, and others on the representative Honorary Board had to be summoned as soon as possible. They needed greasing and polishing up, so that they could shine outwardly. "We need them more than ever before." How true.
"Will you see to that?" Evert Danielsson said.
Helena Starke gave a short nod and disappeared along the corridor.
* * *
Ingvar Johansson was at his desk talking on the phone when Annika arrived at the paper. She was the first reporter to turn up; the others would show around ten. Ingvar Johansson first pointed at the fresh papers lying in piles alongside the wall, then at the couch next to the newsdesk. Annika draped her coat over the back of the couch, picked up the early edition and a plastic mug of coffee, then sat down to read while Ingvar Johansson finished his call. His voice rose and fell like a song in the background while Annika checked what they had got together since she left last night. Her own story on the terrorist angle and the threat against Christina Furhage were on pages six and seven, the two heaviest and most important news pages. The picture editor had found a picture in the archive of Furhage walking at the head of a group of men, all dressed in dark suits and overcoats. She was dressed in a white tailored suit and a short, pale coat, standing out as a figure of light in front of all the men. The woman looked stern and strained, an excellent image of an innocent person under threat. On page seven was a photo of Evert Danielsson emerging from the press conference. A good picture of a hard-pressed man. Annika noted that it was taken by Ulf Olsson.
On the next spread were Berit's stories on the victim and the police finds at the scene of the crime. Jansson had picked another of Henriksson's pictures from the Olympic flame to accompany them. It worked just as well today. And there was the injured taxi driver Arne Brattström's account of the explosion.
On the spread of pages ten and eleven, she found the biggest surprises so far; Patrik had been hard at it all night, getting two stories together. " 'I saw the mysterious man outside the arena,' the secret police witness tells his story" and "The Tiger wanted by the police."
Well done! Annika thought. He had found a guy who worked at the illegal club, a bartender who told of how on his way to work he saw someone hurrying across the forecourt in front of the arena's main entrance. But this had been about one in the morning, not just before the explosion as the police had said.
"I saw a person in a black anorak with the hood up, dark trousers, and heavy shoes," the bartender was quoted as saying.
Now we have an image of our Bomber, at least until we find a better one, thought Annika.
Predictably, the police had pulled out all the stops to get hold of the Tiger. Also on the spread were the meager police theories on the murder and the attack so far.
Pages eleven and twelve were dedicated to the Olympics, the consequences for the Games, and future security issues. The retrospective of past attacks on the Olympics was also here. The following spread was given over to a display ad for the last few days of Christmas shopping, pages sixteen and seventeen were the vox pop, plus Nils Langeby's compilation of world reactions.
Then the pages flickered past up to the center spread: celebrities coming clean about their various maladies, a sick child to be pitied, a trade union scandal, an unknown pop star caught drunk-driving, and a group of drag queens protesting against cutbacks in the national health sector.
Patrik's main story about the actual attack took pride of place on the center spread. Sequence of events, places and arrows, everything concise and succinct, laid out around the helicopter photo.
She looked up and saw that Ingvar Johansson had finished his call. He must have been watching her for a while.
"This is good stuff, don't you think?" Annika said, waving the paper in the air before putting it on the couch.
"It's not bad," Ingvar Johansson said, turning round. "But that's all history. Tomorrow's paper is all that matters now."
Damn killjoy, Annika thought. Tabloid news editors lived far too much in the future and not enough in the past, in her opinion. If you got something wrong, you didn't give a shit because that was already yesterday's news. If you did something good, you never got enough credit for it. That was a pity. She thought they could gain from reflecting on what they had done, both good and bad.
"What have you got for tomorrow?" he said, his back turned to her.
What the hell is wrong now? she thought wearily. Why is he doing this. I must have pissed him off and now he's punishing me. What could it be? Is he annoyed because I stole the show at the news conference yesterday?
"How am I supposed to know what's up, I only just walked through the damn door!" she exclaimed, surprised at how angry she sounded. She quickly got up and grabbed her coat and bag. Her arms full, she started walking toward her office.
"There's a police press conference at half past ten," Ingvar Johansson called after her.
She looked at her watch at the same time as she fumbled for the door to her office. Fifty minutes left; she had time for a few phone calls.
She began with the cellphone number that was said to be Christina Furhage's. The Olympic boss hadn't made a single comment anywhere, which meant that not even the Secretariat could get hold of her. Something was very wrong with her complete silence, that much Annika knew.
To her great surprise, she got a ringing signal. The phone was on. She quickly cleared her throat while listening to the beeping signals. After the fifth one, she got the automated answering service again, but at least she knew now that the phone was working and was in use. She made a mental note of the number.
Patrik and Berit appeared simultaneously in the doorway.
"Are you busy?"
"Christ, no! Come inside and let's have a quick look at things." She got up, walked around her desk and sat down on the old couch.
"Great work yesterday, both of you," she said. "We're alone with the stuff about what was found at the crime scene, and no one else had anything on the bartender at the illegal club."
"Though our rival's interview with Samaranch was much better, unfortunately," Berit said. "Did you read it? Apparently he was furious and threatened to cancel the Games unless the Bomber was apprehended."
"Yes, so I heard," Annika said. "It's a shame we had nothing on that. But I wonder— did he really say that? If he really wants to cancel the Games, why hasn't he gone public with it? He's said to all the other media and in the press release that the Games will go ahead, at all costs."
"Has the competition got a monopoly on what Samaranch's really thinking?" Berit said.
Annika opened the paper at the page with the interview in the other paper. "Their Rome correspondent wrote it. He's good," Annika said. "I think it's correct, but Samaranch will still make an official denial this afternoon."
"Why this afternoon?" Patrik asked.
"Because by then CNN will have mentioned it and put together a special item on it," Annika said and smiled, " 'The Olympics at stake' will be the headline, and there'll be some grandiose music in a minor key…"
Berit smiled. "I heard there's another press conference soon," she said.
"Yes," Annika replied, "they're probably going to announce who the victim is, and I wonder if it's not the Olympic boss herself."
"Furhage?" Patrik said. "What makes you think that?"
"Think about it," Annika said. "Either she's hiding, or something is seriously wrong. No one can get hold of her, not even her closest colleagues. There isn't a place on earth where the attack hasn't been reported. She couldn't have missed it. Either she doesn't want to make herself known— that means she's hiding— or she can't, probably because she's sick, dead, or has been kidnapped."
"I've thought about that," Berit said. "I actually asked the investigators about it yesterday when I talked to them about the finds at the scene, but they denied it categorically."
"That doesn't mean anything," Annika mused. "Furhage is a story today too, whatever happens. We have to follow up that death threat: What was it exactly? If she
is
the victim, we'll have to focus on her life story. Do we have an obit for her?"
"Not for her," Berit said. "Christina Furhage wasn't exactly about to peg out."