Into a Raging Blaze Read Free Page B

would usually take pity and quickly glance through their documents, dead calm and absorbed, before leaving a few comments. And the fact was that she was rarely wrong. Despite this, she knew that the office of a civil servant at the MFA shouldn’t look like this.
    The desk was a jumbled landscape of crusty coffee cups, fruit peelings, tubs of paper clips, reference works, handbooks, and an avalanche of papers that had slipped down toward the computer screen. Somewhere or other there ought to be a cactus, but shedidn’t take care of it. The shelves along one wall were brimming with books, papers, and files. She contemplated the stacks of paper lying on the floor. The elegant, sheepskin-clad Lammhult armchair was beside the table. It actually belonged in the UNHCR desk officer’s room, but she had discreetly carried it to her office the day he left on paternity leave and nobody could remember whose it actually was. It was comfy, but couldn’t be sat in because towering off it was a stack of reports from all the past year’s summit meetings at the EU. That pile was a problem—from time to time it extended to the floor. Sometimes she would find classifieds in it—which was not good. The security guards patrolling the building at night were always checking if there was any classified material lying around in offices. If you forgot to lock up classified material, you received a warning in the form of an angry red note on your chair in the morning. Three warnings and you would be called in to the department head.
    The best way to keep a secret was never to divulge it, so they said. But in practice that was impossible. The greater part of the work at the MFA was done under cover of secrecy stamps. The House was bulging with secrets. They were collected, discussed; some built their entire careers on having access to the right classified material. The encrypted mail system delivered a flood of classified reports and analyses depicting reality in its true, complex and raw form. Everyone was careless with secrets. Classifieds were always lying around because no one could be bothered to adhere to the strict rules concerning the handling of secret material. But chucking classifieds on the floor was probably a little too nonchalant. She spotted a report from a NATO meeting in Kabul littering the floor, bent down, and picked it up. In all likelihood there were even more classified reports in the piles. She quickly shuffled through the armchair pile. She wouldn’t forgive herself if she made the beginner’s mistake of getting caught being careless about secrecy. She couldn’t become a problem to the department, not now.
    As EU coordinator, Carina had to work like a slave, but if she stuck it out for another year she would be within reach of apromotion. Her predecessor had been a deputy director. Every EU coordinator before her had been. But not her, she was still a desk officer. It wasn’t something that she dwelled on, but those were the facts, and a poisonous suspicion had begun to spread through her that she wasn’t quite as good as the others. The department head seemed to like her. But she knew how it was: she hadn’t taken the Ministry’s Diplomat Program—she wasn’t a “dipper”; she had come the long way around to become a diplomat, and that made all the difference.
    Carina had started as a temp in the Press, Information, and Communication Department, the least prestigious place to work in the entire building, but had quickly demonstrated an aptitude for analysis and had gone on to short temporary roles at the Department for Eastern Europe and Central Asia and then the Americas Department. Finally, after six years, she got a permanent job at the Security Policy Department. Thank goodness. “Dippers” were guaranteed a permanent position; they were guaranteed a career. She and they were not the same Homo sapiens. She had to fight every week to show her worth. She had considered applying to the Diplomat Program but