Project Nirvana Read Free Page B

turned to Tor’s sudden disappearance. He had tried to call him, but had got only his voicemail. Martin suspected, with good reason, that he had reneged on their agreement. The dimwitted ex-con could become a problem. A big problem, actually.
    He looked at the old stone building. It stood next to a waterfall and was perfect for its purpose. An abandoned safe house from the Cold War. Isolated and accessible only from a barely driveable gravel road. The last part of the track was almost invisible from the road. The noise from the waterfall drowned any sounds that might come from the building. As Brageler was in a windowless cell, this was somewhat superfluous to requirements.
    Many of his brothers-in-arms could not attend the interrogation. Although they had agile minds, their aging bodies could not sustain them. The organization’s rejuvenation strategy had failed and only a few youngsters had been recruited in the past few years. Recruiting was difficult and involved a great deal of risk. A problem that they increasingly had to battle against was the naivety of the younger generations and their misguided belief that Islam was like any other religion. Someday, they would be forced to see the truth.
    As soon as the Diaxtropyl-3S was procured, he would get to grips with the Tor Hedman problem. First, he needed to prepare himself for today’s debriefing with Thomas Kokk.
    The head of the Counter-Terrorism Unit, Thomas Kokk, carefully scrutinized Martin Borg across his desk. However much he wanted to, he could no longer trust the team leader. After the fatal shootout in Gnesta and the incident with the Islamic terrorist suspect who had died in custody, everything indicated that Ove Jernberg had not been solely responsible.
    The polygraph tests, after the death in custody of the Muslim suspect, had not shown any discrepancies. It was possible to improve the odds by focusing one’s thoughts on something else or by secretly pinching oneself hard. The questions that the polygraph operator asked demanded a great deal of concentration. Also, the subject was constantly observed during the interview to deter attempts at self-inflicted pain. Strangely enough, both Borg and Jernberg had passed the tests.
    There was no doubt in Kokk’s mind that they had both been guilty. They had drugged the detainee with an illegal truth drug that had later been discovered during the autopsy. Borg had claimed that the escaped killer in Gnesta was short and of foreign appearance. The prime suspect was tall and had a Scandinavian appearance. In other words, Tor Hedman, the hand-picked partner of Jerry Salminen. What Kokk did not understand was why Ove Jernberg would have had a confidential informant called Omar Khayyam. Jernberg had not even been authorized to handle confidential informants.
    During the minor confusion that reigned after the Gnesta incident, Internal Affairs had suddenly lost interest in Borg. This had come as a complete surprise, even for the Security Service Agency Director, Anders Holmberg, who had already marked Borg and Jernberg as the scapegoats for the failure of the SÄPO operation. After Kokk had been given a direct order by Holmberg to not lift any more stones, Kokk had made a decision.
    After long and painful consideration, he had contacted the Deputy Agency Director, Chief Inspector Sten Gullviksson, as well as the head of the Constitution Protection Division of SÄPO. He had described to them the orders given to him by Anders Holmberg but, much to his surprise, they had both concurred with Holmberg’s request to not stir up a scandal for the sake of national security. The Security Service had suffered enough controversy and enough bad blood had been shed this time.
    Thomas Kokk had stared at his colleagues in silence, as his belief in the system he was charged with protecting evaporated with every breath he took.
    Months later, here he was, still sitting in his post as head of the Counter-Terrorism Unit, and utterly