Silenced

SUNDAY 2 MARCH 2008

BANGKOK, THAILAND

The flat was tiny and hot. The sun was kept out by thick curtains intended as a shield against prying eyes. As if anybody would be able to see into a flat on the fourth floor.

She paced restlessly to and fro between the little living room and kitchen. She had drunk all the water but did not dare to go out for more, or to drink the tap water. Dehydration and lack of sleep were taking their toll, trying to force her over the edge which she knew all too well she was balanced on. Below gaped a yawning chasm that threatened to swallow her alive. She tried to think constantly about where she was putting her feet, almost as if she did not trust the floor of the flat to bear her weight.

It was two days since she had learned from the online press that her family had died, probably the victims of murder. She could scarcely remember the first hours after she found out. Seeing her collapse into tears, the café owner resolutely closed his premises for the evening and took her home with him. He and his wife put her to bed on their settee and took turns to sit with her all night. Her weeping had been wild and uncontrolled, her grief insupportable.

It was the terror that was her salvation in the end. The news of what had happened to her family put her own situation in a different light. Someone was trying methodically, systematically, to dismantle her life and her past, and wipe out her family. Wondering what could possibly be the motive for such actions, she was suddenly horror-struck. And the horror and fear brought new, rational insight, forcing her to take action on her own behalf. As the sun rose over Bangkok that Sunday morning, she was calm and collected. She knew exactly what she had to do.

She did not know the background to the tragedy she was now being forced to live through. But she knew this much: her own disappearance was a vital part of the operation. People did not stage nightmare scenarios involving murder and conspiracy without a good reason. She sensed that it was all directed more at her and her father than at her mother or sister. Presumably because they were both so actively involved with migrant issues. Possibly prompted by the information-gathering trip she had just undertaken. Information that was now gone.

It was all pointless, she thought. The whole thing.

Her lack of personal documents and possessions frightened the trafficker to whom she turned for help.

‘Are you a criminal?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I can’t help you, if so.’

She had met him when she first came to Bangkok. She had been following the refugee trail, mapping out how things worked in Thailand. It seemed absurd and incomprehensible that people from the Middle East travelled to Europe via Thailand. It took her several days to win his trust, to convince him that she was nothing to do with the police, but had come to the country on her own initiative.

‘Why would a vicar’s daughter get involved in this sort of thing?’ he demanded scornfully.

‘Because she’s part of the reception system in Sweden,’ she answered, eyes lowered. ‘Because her father spent years hiding illegal migrants and now she’s following in his footsteps.’

‘So how do you view me, then?’ he asked, his voice full of doubt. ‘Unlike you, I’m not in it for anything but the money.’

‘Which could be seen as reasonable,’ she replied, though she was far from convinced. ‘Since you’re also taking enormous risks and could face a long prison sentence. So it seems reasonable for you to be paid in line with that.’

That was how she had won his confidence and trust. He let her shadow him, meeting passport forgers and travel document providers, individuals engaged in subversive activities at airports and key figures in the provision of safe houses. The network was unobtrusive but extensive, and constantly pursued by a corrupt police force, half-heartedly trying to clamp down. And at the core of it all were the people the entire operation revolved round. The people in flight, delivered up to a network that was criminal at heart, with hopeless, empty eyes and years of chaos and disintegration behind them.

She had taken photographs and documented. Borrowed an interpreter and talked to a number of the people involved. Explained that her aim was to present a fair picture of all parties, that there was great public ignorance on the subject in Sweden and that it would be to the benefit of everyone for this misery to be more widely known. To those earning money from the trafficking she promised complete anonymity and offered the carrot of indirect publicity and rising demand for their services. As if they could be more in demand than they already were; as if people had anyone else to turn to.

Bangkok had been her final destination. The journey had started in Greece, one of Europe’s major transit countries, where she had documented the treatment of asylum seekers and how they reached mainland Europe. She had moved on to Turkey and then to Damascus and Amman. There were over two million Iraqi refugees currently parked in Syria and Jordan. Their options were exceedingly few; if they returned home they would in many cases become what were known as internal migrants – still without a home or any sound basis for a life. Out of two and a half million migrants, a very small proportion went on to Europe. There seemed to be innumerable ways of doing it, but most took the land route through Turkey. She went back to Turkey herself, accompanying one particular family to observe things at close quarters.

It was when they told her of their expectations of their new life in Sweden that her tears came. They had dreams of a bright new future, of jobs, and good schools for their children. Of houses and gardens and a society that would welcome them in a way best described as unrealistic.

‘They need labour in Sweden,’ the man told her with conviction. ‘So we know everything will work out once we get there.’

But she, like all those with inside knowledge, was all too well aware that few of the family’s expectations would be met and that it was only a question of time before they found themselves rendered passive and apathetic, and stuck in a cramped flat on some estate, waiting for a Migration Agency decision that could take an eternity and still be a no. And then the real running away would start. Running away from deportation.

She had rung her father at home and cried down the phone line. Said she understood now what it was that had utterly broken his heart when he got involved in this desperate struggle for human redress.

And now here she was in one of the safe flats in Bangkok herself, fleeing an enemy she did not even have a name for. The only thing that consoled her even the slightest was that she had made that phone call to her father.

When she thought back over her trip, she began to suspect it was the final stage that had been the problem and perhaps triggered the catastrophe that had now befallen her. There had been talk of a new way of getting to Sweden from Iraq, Syria and Jordan. Disconnected little hints, nobody could confirm anything. But what she heard fitted with what had come to her father’s notice in Sweden. That there was a new operator on the scene, whose method involved a different set of values and smaller sums of money. Someone who was offering a simple way of getting to Europe, if you promised not to reveal anything about the arrangement before you left. But of course people occasionally let things slip anyway, which was how the secret had started circulating.

The new way used established travel routes, always via Bangkok or Istanbul. And always by air, never the overland route. That had given her pause for thought, because smuggling people in on flights was much more risky. But on the other hand, the new network only seemed to be taking on a very small number of clients. None of the people she approached had personal knowledge of anyone who had gone that way, it was all just hearsay. She had already been to Istanbul twice, and Bangkok had seemed a good place to round off the trip. So in one last attempt to contact someone working for the new operator, she went there. Made an extensive search, but without results. Or at least, without any results she had been aware of. But that might well be the answer to the riddle: she had got too close without knowing it.

She was weak with fatigue, paralysed by grief. She took her pen and paper with her and lay down in the little bedroom. The air was still and heavy, and outside it was almost unbearably hot. But her body seemed to have switched off and refused to react. She curled into a ball on the bed and shut her eyes. When she was little, that had always been her best trick for shutting out all the bad things.

Her protector, the people trafficker, had been surprised to see her again so soon.

‘I need your help,’ she said, and that made him listen.

She would pay when she got back to Sweden. When she tried to get at her bank details and have money transferred to Bangkok, she was informed that her accounts were closed and she could not possibly be the person she said she was. So payment would have to wait, and her protector accepted that. Maybe he saw her as a part of an exciting project, because he seemed positively elated at the prospect of helping her.

And as for her, she had only one thought in her head – getting home. At any price. Because although she believed the catastrophe that had befallen her was related to her own investigations, she was beginning to suspect that the full picture was less simple than that. The truth might lie closer to her and her family and be much more personal.

She dropped off, and did not wake again until it was dark outside.

And her nightmare just went on and on.

STOCKHOLM

He waited for them at the agreed place, a few hundred metres from the Globe. The giant golf ball was fabulously illuminated in the darkness. He was one big smile; his heart was pumping wildly and the adrenalin made him see everything so vividly that evening. He had reached his goal at last, his journey was over and now he could make his final payment. He stared up into the clear, starlit night, his head aching with the relief. Happiness hurt when it was this big.

A black car of a type he did not recognise pulled up alongside the pavement where he was standing. A window slid down and the person inside gestured to him to put his haul in the boot and get into the back, right-hand seat. He immediately complied. Opening the car door, he found the woman who had met him at the station sitting in the other back seat. Her face was impassive as he climbed in.

They drove through a cold, wintry Stockholm bathed in moonlight. He was virtually sure they were driving north this time. The spoils lay in their protective black sack in the boot. They must really trust him, since they hadn’t even bothered to check he wasn’t trying to swindle them.

The trust was mutual by this stage, so he felt no unease as they made the short journey. They took a turning off the main road into what looked like some kind of park. Despite the gleam of the moonlight, the night was too dark for him to be able to see properly. They indicated to him to get out, and he did so. The passenger who was sitting beside the driver did so, too. It was the man with the disfigured face. They kept the engine running.

The man’s instructions were wordless; he merely pointed down towards the darkness of the park. Ali followed the pointing finger with his eyes and thought he could see someone standing there, down amongst the trees. Someone waving. The person stepped forward from the shadows. It was the man who spoke Arabic.

He wondered why the meeting had to take place in a deserted park in the middle of the night. Perhaps because their agreement was too sensitive to be dealt with when other people were around. He set off resolutely towards the Arabic speaker. The disfigured man was two steps behind him.

‘I gather it went well today,’ the Arabic speaker said when he reached him.

He smiled at Ali, who beamed back at him.

‘It all went fantastically well,’ he confirmed with the eagerness of a five-year-old keen to impress.

‘You’re a good shot,’ the man said. ‘Lots of other people would have missed a target that was moving so fast.’

Ali could not help feeling proud.

‘I have many years of training behind me, I’m afraid.’

The man gave a satisfied nod.

‘Yes we know, and that was why we chose you.’

He seemed to be wondering what to say next.

‘Come with me,’ he went on, bowing his head in the direction of the woods, where a lake could be seen glittering through the mass of tree trunks.

Ali felt a sudden stab of doubt.

‘Come along,’ said the man. ‘There’s just one more little detail to be taken care of.’

He gave such a warm smile that Ali’s mind was immediately put at rest.

‘When can I see my family again?’ he asked as he went after the man into a clearing.

‘Very, very soon,’ said the man, and turned round.

A second later, a shot rang out. And Ali’s journey was over.