Into a Raging Blaze by Andreas Norman, Ian Giles Page A

intelligence was notsomething a diplomat should be getting involved in. Admittedly, she was in the Security Policy Department, but some kind of explanation would be necessary to account for why she had turned up with a text like this. At the same time, she felt a childlike excitement at the prospect of taking a top secret, sensitive document back to Sweden. She opened her palm and looked at the memory stick.
    “I don’t know . . .”
    “Take it. You’ll regret it otherwise.”
    “Will you give it to anyone else?”
    “I don’t know. Perhaps.”
    She fingered the little piece of black plastic. A secret report from the Commission. She knew that she shouldn’t accept it. Everything would be simpler if she didn’t. She put the USB in her inside pocket and slowly started to eat her salad. The man regarded her in silence. There was something a touch pathetic about him. He looked friendly enough. His brown eyes and soft face, the beard and the thin hair made her feel a little sorry for him.
    “I don’t even know your name.”
    “You can call me Jean.”
    “Jean. It doesn’t make a difference.”
    “True.” He smiled sheepishly and gulped down his coffee.
    She didn’t know him, she reminded herself. People could appear to be as pleasant as anything and actually be completely untrustworthy. She didn’t know whether he was actually operating alone, as he claimed, or whether he had a taskmaster—the Commission, or someone else. She glanced at him and smiled when he met her gaze.
    “Aren’t you going to eat something?”
    He shook his head. “I’m not hungry, I’m afraid. How’s the salad?”
    “Just fine,” she said and wondered what they would talk about now that he had persuaded her to take the document. When she looked up from her plate she saw that he was staring across the restaurant with a curious pursed grimace on his face, not taking any notice of her. She looked down at her salad, chasing one of the pieces of crispy bacon with her fork while trying to work out whatwas wrong with him. He was frightened, it occurred to her. Scared, for real.
    She speared a salad leaf with her fork. “I can’t promise anything.”
    “I know. But you will try, won’t you?” The man looked at her quietly. Then he rose from the table, nodded furtively, and left her with a silent goodbye.

4
    Stockholm, Friday, September 23
    Four hundred and twenty pages. She waited by the printer in the mail room while the pages were spat out, one at a time. Back in her office, she sat down to look at the document. High up on the first page was a row of code designations, serial numbers, and stamps. She studied them for a while and noted that they were genuine. The report was in the second-highest top secret classification. She had never handled documents with the highest classification. The serial number said that it had been written by DG XI, the Directorate General for Home Affairs at the European Commission, just as she had thought. There were no sender details—no names. The title caught her attention: Security Across Borders—A New European Intelligence Service . They had always been ambitious at the Commission, had always had ideas about how the European Union should grow and become a superpower. But she hadn’t heard of this initiative. On the other hand, there were probably lots of initiatives to reinforce cooperation between security services in the EU that she knew nothing of. The Swedish Armed Forces, Justice, or the Swedish Security Service took care of things like that, while diplomats were rarely let into the conversation. Everything ran on a strictly need-to-know basis and diplomats didn’t really need to know anything about operational security work in order to do their jobs. Furthermore, MFA was seen to be a leaky bucket. There had been incidents when desk officers had opened their windows during the summer and whole piles of sensitive papers had been blown right out on cross-breezes, before fluttering to the