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

ground all overFredsgatan outside. The mistrust toward people like her was dense. It was therefore not surprising that she wasn’t familiar with this. Maybe she shouldn’t even be reading the text. But the report had been given to her and she wasn’t going to pass up the chance.
    She turned the pages, quickly skimming the introductory paragraphs that primarily contained standard formulations about European security that she had heard many times before. She glanced through the table of contents and turned to a description of how a contact network would be established.
    The phone rang. It was the desk officer at Finance.
    “Did you get my proposal?”
    “Yes, of course . . .”
    She threw the report aside and brought up her inbox. She had no idea what proposal he was talking about, but she opened his e-mail and quickly read it while her colleague on the line cleared his dry throat impatiently as he waited.
    “Can you reconcile it?” he said. “We might be able to get this signed off before twelve. We need it by then at the latest. Otherwise we won’t have time to run through it with the junior minister, and then it won’t fly.”
    “Okay. Absolutely.” She looked at the clock: one hour.
    She didn’t have time to read the report now. It seemed to be interesting, but it wasn’t her problem. All she could do was forward it to Justice. She pulled herself together and wrote a brief message describing how she had come by the report: she had been approached, she wrote, by a civil servant from the Commission and she believed the material should be dealt with by Justice. She was therefore attaching it, both for reference and so measures could be taken. Then she plugged in the memory stick, uploaded the report and entered the addresses of two people at the Ministry of Justice’s unit for international cooperation. It occurred to her that she could also send it to Jamal—she added him to the list of recipients.
    Jamal called just after lunch. He was stressed and hadn’t had time to eat lunch. Yes, he had received the report that she had sent but he hadn’t had time to read it. He was talking in his civil-servant voice.She didn’t know how to talk to him when he sounded so formal, as if she was just any old colleague. Maybe Jamal felt it too, because suddenly he said, in his normal voice, “Do you want to meet this evening?”
    “Yes,” she said. “Definitely.” She wanted to say something big—something that could express what she felt for him—when Jamal disappeared from the receiver.
    “I’m coming!” she heard him shout across the room, and the sober, stressed tone of voice was back. He had a meeting shortly.
    At half past six, Johan Eriksson stood in her doorway and swore that she must either be insane or very close to a promotion to be working overtime for such a poor wage. He insisted that it was time for a drink at Pickwick’s. Jamal had called again during the afternoon; he had to stay for a little longer, so she was in no rush. She quickly finished an e-mail to the desk officer at Finance while Johan shifted impatiently from foot to foot, then she gathered a few sensitive documents and threw them into the safe, locked it, switched on her phone’s voicemail, got up, and yawned. Okay: one drink.
    A lively murmur met them at the door to Pickwick’s. Most of the Swedish civil service appeared to have found their way there already and were now stood in a dark gray mass of suits, drinking their Friday beers. It was at Pickwick’s that servants of the government gathered. This was where they ate lunch, where they had a beer after work as they loosened their ties. At the bar there was a throng of assistants, deputy directors, ministers and junior ministers, investigators and experts; there were gatherings of experts in road taxation, fishing quotas, and the Middle East peace process, along with a few tourists. The pub was a copy of a Pickwick’s in London and, like all perfect copies, it was more