The Bomber Read Free

work.
     
     
"You can see the smoke now," the taxi driver said.
     
     
She leaned over the passenger seat and looked up to the right. "Oh yes. Look at that…" Thin and black, it trailed up toward the pale half-moon. The taxi left the Värmdö Way and turned onto the South Bypass.
     
     
The road had been blocked off several hundred yards from the opening of the tunnel and the arena itself. Some ten vehicles were already parked next to the barriers. The taxi pulled up behind them, and Annika handed over her taxi charge card.
     
     
"When are you going back? Do you want me to wait?" the driver asked.
     
     
Annika smiled wanly. "No thanks, this is going to take some time." She collected her notepad, pencil, and phone.
     
     
"Merry Christmas!" the taxi driver yelled as she shut the door.
     
     
My God, she thought, it's a whole week to Christmas. Is this "Merry Christmassing" business starting already? "The same to you!" she said to the rear window of the car.
     
     
Annika weaved her way through cars and people and up to the barrier. They weren't police barriers. Good. Those she would have heeded. She jumped over the wooden roadwork barriers and fell into a jog on the other side. She didn't hear the indignant shouts behind her but just stared up at the Olympic complex. She had driven past here many times and never failed to be fascinated by the enormous structure. Victoria Stadium was built into a rock; the hill where there used to be a ski slope had been hollowed out for it. Environmentalists had kicked up a fuss, of course, as they always did as soon as a couple of trees were chopped down. The South Bypass continued straight into the hill and underneath the stadium, but at the moment the tunnel entrance was blocked off by large concrete blocks and several vehicles from the emergency services. Reflections from the rotating lights on their roofs gleamed on the surface of the slippery asphalt. The North Stand normally jutted out like a giant mushroom over the tunnel entrance, but now it was damaged. The bomb must have gone off right there. The normally rounded shape stood jagged and torn against the night sky. She ran on, realizing that she probably wouldn't get much closer than this.
     
     
"Hey, where do you think you're going?" a fireman shouted.
     
     
"Up there!" she shouted back.
     
     
"The area's been sealed off!" he continued shouting.
     
     
"Oh yeah," she muttered to herself. "See if you can catch me!"
     
     
She continued straight on and to the right as far as she could. She could see that Sickla Canal was frozen. Above the ice-covered canal, there was a concrete platform, some kind of ledge that the roadway rested on before disappearing into the tunnel. She pulled herself up on the railing and jumped down, a drop of about three feet. The holdall bounced on her back as she landed.
     
     
She paused for a moment and looked around. She'd only been to the stadium twice before: at a press preview and on a Sunday afternoon last autumn with her friend Anne Snapphane. To her right lay what would become the Olympic Village, the half-finished blocks in Hammarby Docklands where the athletes would be staying during the Olympics. The windows were black holes; it seemed that every pane had been blown out. Straight ahead she could just make out a training facility in the dark. On her left was a thirty-foot-high concrete wall. Above this lay the forecourt in front of the main entrance to the stadium.
     
     
She ran along the road, trying to differentiate the sounds she could hear: a faraway siren, distant voices, the hissing of a water cannon or possibly a big fan. The emergency vehicles' lights were flashing across the road. She reached a set of stairs and started running up them to the stadium entrance. At the same moment, a police officer started unrolling blue-and-white tape to block the entrance.
     
     
"We're sealing off the area," he told her.
     
     
"My photographer's up there," Annika said. "I'm just