Nights of Awe

by Harri Nykanen

  I found Simolin in Stenman’s room. Both of them glanced at me.

  I asked if there was any news on the Focus yet.

  “Oksanen’s still looking into it,” Simolin answered. “He likes car stuff.”

  “Come take a look at this,” Stenman said.

  There was a photograph on her computer display. I took a closer look at it.

  “Tagi Hamid,” Stenman prompted.

  “Where’d the photo come from?”

  Stenman scrolled downwards, revealing text in English.

  “We got a more detailed response from the Danish security police to the enquiry we sent out through Interpol, or actually it came to us through SUPO. Hamid lived there a couple of years ago, and he has contacts with several Palestinians who knew a terrorist named Ismel Saijed.”

  I asked Simolin what we had got from Tagi Hamid’s neighbours.

  “The next-door neighbour saw a foreign-looking man and woman enter the apartment the other day. That’s all. Hamid was a quiet guy, didn’t come or go much. Most of them had never even met him.”

  I asked Stenman to continue.

  “Saijed lived in Copenhagen from 1999 to 2001, and he has a forged Danish passport that he uses to go by the name of Issa Shamahdi.”

  Stenman clicked the front page of the passport up onto the screen. The photo was of a middle-aged, curly-haired man with a heavy beard and thick-rimmed glasses. Even just shaving the beard would change his appearance completely.

  “The Danes presume that he has several other Danish passports. If he’s in Finland, as the Danes and Israelis suspect, then he’s probably using the passports here. Quite a coincidence that Hamid comes to Finland from Denmark at the same time as Saijed is suspected of entering the country.”

  “The suspicion is based solely on tip-offs, I assume?”

  “At least for now,” Stenman admitted. “According to the information from the Danish police, Saijed travelled to Athens in June 2001 and participated in the attack on the El Al passenger plane. The plane was shot at simultaneously with two bazookas, but one of the grenades missed and the other one didn’t explode, it just passed through the plane. Members of several terrorist groups participated in the attack. The Israelis picked up his trail, but then he disappeared. Saijed has a long career as a terrorist. He began in his twenties and took part in a bombing in Paris in 1980. The bomb blew up in front of a synagogue; three people died and about twenty were injured.”

  “Hopefully he’ll never kill again,” Simolin reflected out loud.

  “The end is the most interesting part, to me at least,” Stenman remarked. “The Danish police claim to have wiretap information according to which terrorists are planning an attack in Finland. The architects of the attack are presumed to be Saijed and Hassan Bakr, who has done gigs for Abu Nidal’s terrorists and others. Bakr has arranged dozens of bombings. In 1986, two of Abu Nidal’s terrorists attacked a synagogue in Istanbul with grenades and sub-machine guns. Twenty-one Jews died, three of them rabbis. Bakr is believed to have planned the attack. His favourite targets are companies owned by Jews, Jewish restaurants, synagogues and the like.”

  Stenman took a small pause.

  I was certain that Denmark had got most of their information from Israel, and that SUPO knew it too. If SUPO wanted more information, it had to play with Mossad’s cards. I still didn’t understand what point there was keeping information from us.

  “Do the Danes also have a passport photo for Bakr?” I asked.

  “No. And no fingerprints for either.”

  “That would have been too easy. And we haven’t got anything on the deceased that got hit by the train?”

  “The fingerprints have been sent out through Interpol, but we haven’t heard anything. I can try and hurry them up,” Simolin said.

  “Do it.”

  I digested Stenman’s newsflash for a moment longer.

  “So the man who was waiting for Saijed in the Citroën might have been Bakr.”

  “It crossed our minds too,” Simolin conceded. “And he had accomplices too, or at least one accomplice, the woman.”

  “I believe that the woman is Finnish,” Stenman said. “In the first place, not many Arab women have driving licences, and in the second place, it’s difficult to imagine an Arab woman getting up to something like this. Besides, Arab women usually come to Finland with their families. We need to start looking for an Arab who’s shacked up in his girlfriend’s apartment.”

  “Have you requested the phone records?” I asked Simolin. “We might be able to pinpoint the apartment based on calls Hamid received at the body shop and at home.”

  “If he called from there,” Simolin added.

  The sounds of hurried footsteps came from the corridor. Oksanen charged in chomping on a slice of pizza, a can of diet soda in his other hand.

  “I think I found the car.”

  For once, Oksanen appeared to be as interested in his work as he was in his rally club.

  “It was a lot of work, but I finally got it. I figured out what that guy meant by the colour of an old lady’s underwear. It’s a pretty rare colour, but still, over four hundred of them were imported to Finland. I didn’t get anything that way, or from Stockmann Auto either. Besides, the car might have changed owners after they sold it. The short plate number is what saved the day. Only six Ford Focuses in Uusimaa County had one. One was a foreigner, a Moroccan guy by the name of Murak Laya. Just to be sure, I checked out the others too. One was a vocational-school teacher, the second a prison guard, the third a computer operator, the fourth a physiotherapist and the fifth a daycare-centre director. The Moroccan is the only one where everything fits. It’s owned by an auto lot in Vantaa, but Laya holds the lease. He lives in Koivukylä. I put out a search on the vehicle, and fifteen minutes ago we got a call from Vantaa. A patrol found the car near Laya’s place. I told the patrol to sit on both.”

  After finishing, Oksanen rewarded himself by biting off a hunk of pizza and washing it down with a swig of soda.

  I asked: “Did you have time to find out what Laya does?”

  “According to his application for a residence permit, he works at a paint plant in Vantaa. He has one suspended sentence for narcotics.”

  “Get his information to Karvonen right away and tell him about the weapons we found at Hamid’s place. Let’s let the SWAT team bring this guy in.”

  “You mean SWAT chief Karvonen?” Oksanen asked.

  “Yeah. This guy might be dangerous. He must know Bakr, Saijed, or Hamid, or maybe all three…”

  “I’m kinda busy… I thought…”

  Oksanen’s phone rang. He shoved the slice of pizza into his mouth and dug his phone out from the pocket of his tyre-company coat. Next he placed the can of soda on the table and grabbed the pizza slice with his left hand. After completing this complex set of manoeuvres, he was finally able to answer.

  He listened for a minute and swore: “Fuck, you’re not screwing with me, are you… don’t move a muscle, I’ll get some people over there right away.”

  Everyone turned towards Oksanen, who looked like he had been struck by lightning.

  “Some woman just entered Laya’s apartment and the place blew totally to shit.”

  16

  Oksanen’s description was more accurate than he could have imagined. By the time we arrived, fire and rescue were already gathering up their hoses. There were also two ambulances on the scene, and the Vantaa police had cordoned off the area.

  I slipped under the tape and appraised the aftermath of the explosion. The building was a four-storey Seventies prefab. There was a car park, a sandpit and a swing, and a shed for dumpsters; a smattering of pine trees represented nature. A dozen windows were blown out, and glass shards and furniture were strewn across the yard. From the remains, it was easy to determine which apartment the explosion had occurred in. A scrap of fabric that looked like a bedspread hung from the pine tree standing in front of it, and a tongue of soot a few yards long licked
upwards from the window. I went over to the fire marshal and introduced myself.

  “Can’t go in there yet. Might be more explosives; the bomb squad is checking the apartment and the car first.”

  “Any victims?”

  “One. The woman who entered the apartment. The pressure from the shock wave slammed into the upstairs and downstairs apartments with the most force, but luckily they were both empty. Neighbour’s an elderly woman, she was taken to hospital for tests.”

  “How’d the apartment look?”

  “Bad. All the contents were destroyed, but the walls and ceiling are intact, there’s about an eight-inch hole in the floor. Victim’s in unidentifiable condition.”

  “How big an amount of explosives are we talking about?”

  “Hard to tell; there was more than one explosion. A big explosion was heard first, followed by several smaller ones. We found signs indicating grenades. There were also guns in the apartment, or at least one sub-machine gun plus ammo. That’s why I ordered that the apartment be checked before we let anyone else in there.”

  Stenman came over to me.

  “The officers who saw the explosion are waiting in the car, if you have a second…”

  I thanked the fire marshal and followed Stenman.

  The men were sitting in the back of the van, looking grim. I shook hands with both of them.

  The older, bald officer gave a brief report of what had happened.

  “Did the bomb go off as soon as the woman stepped into the apartment?” I asked.

  “No, a light came on in the apartment, then it took five, at most ten seconds before it blew… and a few seconds later there were at least two more explosions, not as powerful. All the debris flew out into the yard during the first explosion.”

  “You knew which apartment it was?”

  “Sure. We received instructions to watch the car and the apartment and if necessary apprehend anyone… that is, if they tried to leave with the car.”

  “Where did the woman approach from?”

  “From over there.”

  The younger officer pointed at the end of the building. We had just come from that direction ourselves. Behind the building, only fifty yards away, ran a busy arterial road served by a local bus route.

  “So she came on foot, not by car?”

  “If she came by car, then it had to be farther off.”

  “Did she have anything with her? Carrying anything, a bag or something like that?”

  “A purse. White leather.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone else in the yard?”

  “When it exploded, you mean?” asked the bald police officer.

  “Yeah.”

  “No, almost definitely not. Before that, there were two little girls on the swing, but someone yelled for them to come home.”

  Yelled. It sounded so old-fashioned. Nowadays a mum was more likely to call her kids on their mobile phones than bother to step out onto the balcony and yell for them to come home.

  The car door opened. Simolin peered inside.

  “There’s someone here who wants to join you.”

  Sillanpää climbed into the van and sat down next to me.

  “Evening. Inspector Sillanpää from the Security Police. I’d like to hear everything once more from the start.”

  The police officers told him everything they had told me. I didn’t feel like sticking around for the rerun, so I hopped out.

  Sillanpää evidently couldn’t come up with any more questions than I had. A couple of minutes later, he emerged from the van.

  “Looks like it’s time for us to clear the air,” he said, attempting a smile. “Your boss already let me have it, so go a little easier on me, huh? Try to keep in mind this isn’t a simple matter.”

  “What matter are you talking about?”

  Sillanpää steered me aside.

  “You already know that we received a tip-off just a little over a week ago that a couple of big-time terrorists were holed up in Helsinki – we’re talking international elite. We got names, but they weren’t of much use, because both of them had false identities and evidently Danish passports as well. All the other distinguishing characteristics were old too; we didn’t even have fingerprints for them. Both had lived in Denmark for a long time, one was apparently married there. Someone was right when they said that something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.”

  I started to suspect that Sillanpää was trying to butter me up by telling me everything I already knew.

  “Tell me something new.”

  “The information came at a fucked-up time, frankly speaking, because a couple of weeks earlier the foreign ministry of Israel had contacted us and informed us that Foreign Minister Szybilski was intending on visiting the Jewish congregation in Helsinki during their Yom Kippur. The foreign minister didn’t want any official visit or protocol; he just wanted to pay his respects to the congregation. The only meetings Szybilski would have would be informal discussions on the situation in the Middle East with the prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs. We were told the duration of the visit would be two days. When we were informed about the visit, we were also presented with a request to take a group from the Israeli security police around to the stops on the itinerary in advance, let them familiarize themselves. This is normal protocol in such situations, and we didn’t have any reason to say no. Five men from the security police arrived a week ago. Everything went as usual. They were here for four days.”

  “They’re the ones who told you about Saijed and Bakr?”

  “We already knew about them, but we got some updated intelligence. We were told that in addition to Bakr and Saijed, a UK citizen named Tagi Hamid who had previously procured weapons and explosives from Russia for terrorists was hanging out in Helsinki. Surprisingly, we found Hamid easily. It turns out that Hamid’s cousin who had been granted Finnish citizenship also lived here.”

  “Ali Hamid,” I said.

  “Right. Israel didn’t have any information on this cousin, so in other words Ali was innocent and only died because his cousin had got mixed up in some bad stuff, the same with his employee at the body shop… I heard that you found some of the weapons and plastic explosives that Hamid had procured.”

  “Some?”

  “According to our intelligence, there were many times more explosives and three launchers. It could be that some of it detonated in Laya’s apartment. Laya’s still missing, though, and so is Bakr. And that means that we still have a problem.”

  “We’re not sure yet that the man who got hit by the train was either Saijed or Bakr. As a matter of fact, we still don’t have a clue as to his identity.”

  “The Israelis believe he’s Saijed.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “They won’t say. They just talk about their sources.”

  It seemed strange that Sillanpää was still willing to believe the Israelis, even though he had been screwed over like us. It was clear that the Israelis were doling out information bit by bit, and only as much as they considered necessary. If they wanted to play, I’d play too, and I didn’t want Sillanpää to reveal my cards to them.

  “As I recall, the day before last you still believed that the events at Linnunlaulu and Vartiokylä didn’t have anything to do with terrorism,” I reminded him.

  Sillanpää grunted.

  “The commander and the rest of upper police command knew the whole time what was going on. The tactic had been agreed on with them. We had to maintain a low profile. Keep in mind, the foreign minister is arriving next week.”

  “You said that all the guys from Mossad left Finland.”

  “You better believe it. I escorted them to the airport and put them on the plane myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my bosses and I wanted to be sure that they left.”

  “What about now?”

  “We want to know who’s behind the Linnunlaulu killings, and we also want to get the rest of the explosives o
ut of here before the visit… and of course apprehend Bakr, Laya and the accomplice.”

  “What information do you have on Laya?”

  “We knew that he and Tagi Hamid were meeting. He didn’t have a record, and we evidently didn’t take him seriously enough. We staked out his apartment a few times, but then we concentrated on locating Bakr. We had our hands full with that.”

  “Did Laya have a girlfriend?”

  Sillanpää nodded.

  “I’d say she’s an ex now.”

  “She may have been the woman seen in Laya’s Focus in Kerava. In which case it’s more likely that the man who got into the car was Laya and not Bakr.”

  Sillanpää still wanted to hear how we had picked up Laya’s trail and what we knew about him.

  When I had told him, Sillanpää held out a hand.

  “So, a clean slate?”

  I shook the hand, even though I was sure that Sillanpää hadn’t changed his ways. Either that, or he had a different conception of a clean slate than I did.

  I left for home around nine p.m. By then I had learnt that sixty grams of hash and twenty-five grams of amphetamines had been found in Murak Laya’s apartment. On the way, I ordered a pizza. There were a few cold beers in the fridge, and I had already mentally cracked one. Life was more pleasant if you rewarded yourself now and again.

  I had just hopped off the tram at Viiskulma when my mobile rang. After a moment of silence, I heard a voice say: “Hey Ari, nice to hear your voice. It’s been a while.”

  I recognized the voice as easily as the figure from the Parliament House security camera. The caller was Dan Kaplan, my friend who had a warrant out for his arrest.

  “Hi Dan. You still in Finland?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “In Helsinki?”

  “Maybe. Is it true that you’re looking for me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Ask me what you want to know.”

  “Where are you?”

  Dan chuckled.

  “Let’s not get down to the nitty-gritty just yet.”