Stockholm Delete

by Jens Lapidus

  Nikola pressed his foot down further, gently, tried to hold it steady.

  Suddenly: the car jerked forward; he heard the rattle, and then a louder thud.

  The fence had fallen. Nikola kissed the gold cross hanging around his neck.

  Emelie had taped her Bluetooth earpiece to her ear to stop it falling out. She’d bought backpacks and dark sports clothing at XXL in town. She’d also bought three walkie-talkies and given one to each of the others in case they managed to lose their phones. Everything else had been bought from Järnia. She’d spent at least two hours studying the sketches and satellite images from Google Maps. By this point, she knew the area like she knew her own apartment. Still, she felt like the most inexperienced commando soldier ever.

  They kept Loke on the line.

  “Any activity over there?”

  “Nope, not that I can see or hear.”

  He’d set up his own parabolic microphones and night vision cameras around the prison. He was also using an ordinary police radio to pick up any broadcasts they might make.

  “It’s dead,” he repeated. “But I can see a faint light in two of the windows.”

  Emelie and Nikola were each carrying a ladder. She’d bought those earlier that day, too: they’d barely fit in Jossan’s little car, but she’d tied them in tightly and driven with the trunk open. They unfolded one of them and set it against the wall. Everything seemed easier than she’d thought it would be, even though Nikola was dragging a wooden frame behind him. Together, they managed to get the other ladder over the wall—she’d had an idea in her mind that a prison wall should be a difficult obstacle, but this was more like going over a climbing frame and down again.

  The two of them were now inside the perimeter.

  A few seconds’ pause—Emelie wanted to check in with Loke.

  “Still as quiet as Nifelheim in there,” he whispered.

  “Nifelheim?” Emelie hissed back.

  “Opposite of Valhalla, kingdom of death for the bastards, I guess. The goddess Hel, Loke’s daughter—”

  “Thanks, that’s enough. How sensitive’s your equipment?”

  “Insanely sensitive. It picks up all sounds within an eight-hundred-foot radius, though not through thick walls.”

  “In other words?”

  “I can definitely hear if someone’s outside somewhere in that area. But assuming they’re talking at a normal level indoors, and not sitting close to a window, there’s no guarantee I’ll hear it. But let’s say this: I can hear you two fussing in the grass over there.”

  They passed the main building from the west. Nikola with the wooden frame on his shoulders—he looked like some kind of kite surfer carrying his equipment on his back. Though not quite: the way he’d pulled his hood up reminded her more of someone who wanted to protect their hair on a rainy day.

  They turned the southern corner. The darkness wasn’t a problem. Emelie could see the yellow wall sixteen feet to her right the entire time. That was enough—the grass wasn’t too long here, and there didn’t seem to be anything to trip over.

  She paused again. Waited for Loke.

  She was cold. She should have called the police, after all—this was madness. They didn’t really have a plan: just to get in and hope there was no one but Teddy inside the old prison building. What would she and Nikola do if there were others in there? If there was someone waiting for them? Insanity. She should say something to Nikola; they should turn back right now. Call it off. They were playing cops. Amateur spies. Clown rescue team on a mission. Without any idea what they would have to deal with.

  “Come on,” Nikola whispered.

  “I don’t know…,” she mumbled as quietly as she could. “Maybe we should wait a minute, go back.”

  She could see Nikola’s dark eyes in the gloom. “I dunno what you’re talking about,” he said. “But even if you chicken out, I’ll go in myself.”

  He carefully put down the frame and took something from his pocket. She couldn’t see what it was at first, just an outline. Then she realized: a weapon, he was holding a gun.

  She felt her head grow hot. “Where’d you get that from? Are you crazy?”

  “I found it in a toilet. And I’m gonna save my uncle with it.”

  —

  They were standing in front of the entrance she’d picked out. Not the main entrance, since that would mean getting past a pair of locked doors. Instead, they’d chosen the goods entrance at the side of the building. According to the documents used as a basis for closing down the prison, the locking mechanisms inside the building itself shouldn’t be functioning. In other words: if they managed to get in that way, they should be able to get to floor 2, corridor A. Where they’d seen the lights.

  Nikola wiggled out of the wooden frame, carefully. Then he took off his backpack. The place had never been a high-security prison, it hadn’t been built with a perimeter that would stand up to attack, just one that would make it more difficult for the inmates than in a completely open prison.

  He started taking things from his bag: a drill, a head flashlight. This was probably the most crucial moment—in terms of noise, anyway.

  But this was also when Loke would play his second role. Emelie sent him a message. “Okay, we’re in place now, the explosive frame’s ready. You can start your little spiel.”

  Five seconds later, they heard the sound of Loke’s engine and saw his headlights light up the building. She knew what he was doing: he’d driven his car up to the gates by the main entrance.

  Then he started blowing the horn. The silence meant the noise was incredible—even though he was more than a hundred yards away.

  At the same moment, Nikola turned on his headlamp. Lifted up the drill and started working on the metal door in front of him. Loke’s noise continued.

  After a minute, Nikola was done. The honking was still going on.

  Emelie helped Nikola hold the explosive frame while he screwed it into the holes he’d just drilled. It fit like a glove. She thanked the City Planning Office again: the drawings were precise.

  She could hear Loke’s voice over the honking. “Someone’s coming. I can see a man in the headlights. He’s heading for the gates, came out of the central guard room. I’ll back up a bit if he gets too close.”

  67

  The claustrophobia wasn’t getting any better. He was an animal in a cage. If they didn’t let him out soon, into the yard, or even one of the outdoor cells, he’d go crazy.

  It was dark. They’d turned off the light earlier that evening. Teddy was happy about that, very happy—it was all part of his plan.

  He could hear a horn outside, probably from a car. He heard the honking faintly through the window. It sounded like an animal, howling in time with some inaudible rhythm. He wondered whether this place was close to a residential area, like Salberga—maybe it was just a car alarm that had gone off when someone tried to steal it.

  He didn’t care about the darkness now, even if it had stressed him out a few hours earlier, as the sun slowly set. He’d had plenty of time today. Aluminium foil from eight sandwiches: lunch, dinner, lunch, dinner. His meals these past few days. Each piece of foil carefully laid on the floor, the creases smoothed out, the metal thoroughly flattened. He’d torn off strip after strip, holding the foil as straight as he could, slowly pulled at the fragile material. Five strips per sandwich. Each strip roughly eight inches long. He’d thrown away one strip per sandwich—he had to hand over some trash. With the rest, he twisted the ends together. The final product: a strip of aluminium more than six feet in length. In other words: a six-foot-long electrical conductor. Or so he hoped.

  He’d unscrewed the lightbulb on the ceiling. Teddy. A tall man. If he turned the shit bucket upside down and stretched, he could do it. It had been enough—the strip of foil looped like a glimmering spiderweb from the light fixture to the door handle. Metal on metal. When someone switched on the light, turned the handle…zzzzap. He could only hope it had the desired effect. He�
�d carved birdhouses and park benches in prison before—never worked with conductors.

  The plastic mattress was sticky. His head was pounding. He’d told them he’d saved a copy of that fucking computer in the cloud—Loke was the one who’d taught him that word. And it had done the trick, that much was clear. Teddy had saved Cecilia for now. He’d seen the fear in that scarred bastard’s eyes. What he didn’t know was how long his lie would hold. He didn’t know what their lie detectors could show. He didn’t know anything, for Christ’s sake.

  How had things ended up like this? A chain of events leading to him lying awake in a cell again. His karma so dirty from once kidnapping another person that he was now being held captive by the same powers. He wondered when it had all started. Him and Dejan. Him and Isak. Him and all the others they’d grown up with.

  Teddy, maybe fourteen years old, playing billiards at the youth center in Geneta. Dejan too. Talking the rules of eight ball, the nerds from the parallel class they used to beat up, and Henke Larsson’s goals in the Allsvenskan league. In a few weeks, it’d be summer—they were both ending the school year with crappy grades: not even passing half their subjects. Still, they knew it’d be the best summer ever. The wildest.

  One of the older kids came into the room. He walked over to their table. His gold chain looked like it weighed at least half a kilo. Turned to Teddy: “You’re Serbs, yeah? Can I give it a whirl?”

  You didn’t say no to a guy like that. He took Teddy’s cue, bent down, struck the ball hard—missed the hole: the ball bounced from the table. Thudded onto the floor.

  Teddy and Dejan pressed against the wall. The guy: unknown in the hood, already been inside for a year even though he wasn’t much older than nineteen. “Shit, this cue’s a piece of crap, not chalked well, either. You guys in tonight, by the way?”

  “In what?” Teddy had asked hopefully. This could be his break.

  “We’re doin’ a thing, need people on the lookout so the po-po don’t turn up. Pay you five hundred each.”

  Teddy and Dejan: they would’ve done it for free any day of the week. Didn’t care about the money. It was the cred that counted. Being someone. But: it was also about keeping your style. Teddy took the cue back: didn’t say anything. Bent forward. Took aim. Sank the four in the right-hand pocket—like a stone-cold snooker king.

  Dejan stomped nervously in the background: wanted Teddy to answer.

  When he did, he spoke slowly: “We’ll come. For a grand each.”

  The guy moved closer. “You got attitude, little man. Maybe you’ll have a career with us one day.” He held out his hand. “I’m Ivan.”

  The honking continued outside. Teddy wasn’t planning on staying put here. He needed to see his nephew—they’d spent too much time apart. Then he thought: I need to see Emelie, too—I’m lonely without her.

  The thin aluminium strip dangled in the darkness.

  And then he heard a crash outside. He went over to the window. His whole body still hurt.

  It was pitch-black out there.

  He couldn’t see a thing.

  68

  His ears were ringing. Light from his headlamp shining through the dust. An empty room. Old shelves or something like that along the walls.

  The door had popped like it was made of Legos. Nikola and Emelie had been waiting around the corner, fifty feet away—he didn’t see it happen. Still: the noise was almost worse than when he and Chamon blew the ICA place.

  They were inside now. A hallway. No lights, just his headlamp. Darkness and concrete.

  Emelie was talking. Nikola could hardly hear what she was saying. “Loke…get out…the man…”

  She squatted down first, showed him the way.

  Nikola raised Teddy’s pistol: held it in front of him with both hands, like that Beck idiot in those unrealistic Swedish films.

  Stairs up. Echoing. His headlamp casting white circles onto the gray walls.

  In the best of worlds: just one player keeping Teddy prisoner. The cameras were still down. The idiot had gone out into the night to chase Loke away.

  But in the shittiest: they were up against paramilitary cops. Lots of them. Armed. Perfectly ready to massacre them all in any rescue attempt.

  Nikola was starting to feel short of breath. Side by side with Emelie. Wide steps. Real prison feeling. He could just see the guards rushing up here during a disturbance. Plexiglass shields like a wall in front of them: the guys called them the black force.

  “Here.” Emelie’s breathing: quick too. Her forehead was dirty. They’d moved through swirling concrete particles back there.

  Nikola went over to the door. An abandoned fucking ghost prison. Four doors so far—none of them had been locked, other than the first one, just like they’d thought. He grabbed the handle. The door was heavy.

  A hallway. Even more of a classic prison feeling now: a row of doors with small hatches along one wall. The lights were on in here. A corner at the other end; he couldn’t see where it led.

  He saw three people ahead of him, toward the end of the corridor. One man, two women.

  Emelie shouted: “Let them go.”

  Nikola didn’t understand a thing: what was going on? Who were these women? One of them looked older than his own mother. The other one was young, younger than him. And the man? What the hell was he up to?

  Instinctively, he wanted to stop, but he couldn’t; he had to fix this now. He kept running. The gun in his hand like a baton in a relay race. “Where’s Teddy?” he roared.

  Nikola was approaching the people at the other end of the hallway. The girl was crying.

  Then he saw it: the man had a pistol to her head. Nikola was getting major cop vibes from him. But at the same time: something was clearly fucked-up here.

  69

  This wasn’t what she’d imagined. They would just have to break down one door, go in—open up and let Teddy out. But now: hostage drama, à la Hollywood. The policeman with the scar was holding a pistol against the younger woman’s head. Emelie paused.

  She recognized the older of the two: it was Cecilia. The younger woman looked like her, like Benjamin. It had to be Lillan.

  “Stay back,” the man snarled.

  Nikola was standing in front of her—his gun pointed at the policeman. Quietly Emelie said: “Take it easy, Nikola, don’t do anything we might regret.”

  She could feel the sweat on her back. Her ears were still ringing. She wondered where Teddy was. She could hear Loke’s voice clearly in her earpiece now. “The guy’s out here, but he’s on his way back inside. I’ll see if I can bring him out again.”

  “There’s one here, too,” she almost whispered back.

  They had to act. The other man would be inside soon, and he would probably be armed. She had no idea what to do. Pistol versus pistol. It was deadlock.

  The man pushed the women in front of him. “We’re leaving,” he said. He spoke almost as if he was reminding himself. “And we’re taking your little protector with us, too.”

  Both Lillan and Cecilia were crying now. Emelie almost started to sob; it was all so unfair, so wrong.

  The man stopped farther down the hallway, almost at the corner. In front of the last door. He took out a key and unlocked it. Still with his gun pointed at Lillan’s head. Then he grabbed the handle to open it.

  He fell to the ground with a shout.

  It looked like he was shaking.

  70

  The strip of foil was in pieces on the floor. It had stretched as the door opened, then torn apart. Teddy flung himself out—the door couldn’t be conductive anymore. He heard a voice that didn’t belong there; he heard Nikola shout.

  He leaped.

  Landed on his feet.

  His ribs and his right foot hurt like hell, like something in him had broken again. He collapsed.

  The hallway was bright. There was a man on the floor. He saw who it was: the cop with the scar—and he was trying to get back to his feet again. Lillan and Cecilia were stan
ding behind him. They were hysterical, clutching one another.

  Teddy turned his head. Farther along the hallway, he could see two more people: Nikola and Emelie. Nikola ran toward him.

  Teddy tried to get up, but his foot bent beneath him, like he was trying to balance his weight on a straw. The cop was back on his feet now, on his way. Lillan screamed. And Teddy saw what he was moving toward. A pistol, a few feet away on the floor—right where the hallway turned the corner. The man must’ve dropped it when he got the shock. A Sig Sauer, he saw. A police weapon.

  Nikola roared: he’d made it to Teddy now. “Stop.”

  But the man didn’t listen. He was three feet away from his gun now.

  Teddy attempted to get up again, but the fracture in his foot must’ve gotten worse when he flung himself at the door.

  Lillan and Cecilia leaped at the man. He realized they were trying to grab the weapon.

  Everything happened too quickly. Still, it was like it was slow motion. Each movement like something Loke had replayed to him, frame by frame.

  Nikola raised his arm. Took aim.

  The man with the scar grabbed his pistol at the very same moment.

  Nikola again: “Drop the gun.”

  The man raised his weapon.

  The crack of a gun echoed like a bomb had gone off in there.

  Teddy turned around. Nikola was on the floor. The man disappeared around the corner.

  Emelie bent down, crying: “He’s hit.”

  But she didn’t bend down over Nikola; she just picked up the pistol he’d dropped and rushed off down the hallway.

  “Take care of him, he’ll be okay,” she shouted as she ran past Teddy. “I’ll stop that bastard.”

  Teddy steadied himself against the wall, limped on one leg, toward Nikola.

  He’d recognized the weapon Emelie had been clutching. It was his Zastava. The pistol Nikola’d had with him for some reason.

  71

  Ninety-degree angle. The hallway soon came to an end. And she couldn’t see the man with the scar anywhere.