The Sons: Made in Sweden, Part 2

by Anton Svensson

  Instead of continuing straight ahead and into the aisles with stacks of products, the guards veered toward the café and betting shop. Leaning over benches attached to the wall, a couple of young women in quilted jackets were filling in the week’s betting slips, and a taxi driver and two fathers with strollers drank coffee in plastic cups at colorful corrugated cardboard tables. The two guards helped move a walking frame that was blocking the security room’s door. They took out a bunch of keys, unlocked the door, and cast a methodical look back before they went in.

  16:14:40

  Outside the café’s elongated windows, no one noticed what was happening inside an illegally parked black Audi. The tinted car windows made it hard to perceive that the Blue Robber, who was sitting in the passenger seat, held up binoculars pointed at the ATM screens.

  16:15:05

  The security room was cramped—room for just a wooden chair and a wobbly plastic table beside the back of the ATMs, which in fact consisted of the doors to the safe. The key and magnetic card reader were required to open it. The male guard pulled the nearly empty cash cassettes out of the ATMs while his female coworker lifted the lid of the security case and revealed the six replacement cassettes with unfolded banknotes. And it was when she was placing the third cassette into the ATM to the right that the little room exploded.

  Eight blasts spread a ferocious cloud of coarse-grained dust, while thousands of splinters struck the walls and ceiling and cut their faces and hands like pieces of glass.

  Silence, a few seconds.

  Then five shots as bullets penetrated the bolt and flew at an angle into the wall, which hissed back and spat out more chips, forcing the guards, their hearts beating wildly, to press themselves down against the floor.

  The next impression was not sound. Vibrations. From rough soles stepping on the fragments of concrete, crunching under the grooved rubber surfaces.

  One of the robbers, in black overalls, aimed at the female guard, who was trying to turn her gaze toward the steps. Her eyes were bloodshot from the dust and, when she blinked, tears squeezed out and became a gray mass that settled below and above her eyelashes, glue that dried between each blink. She couldn’t see that the robbers’ faces were covered with black masks, that the blue overalls were identical to the black, or that one of them was carrying a large nylon bag over his shoulder.

  Neither could she see the automatic weapons or the hand that pressed her head very hard against the floor.

  She couldn’t even scream.

  A short, low moan was all that was left in her, drowned out by the loudspeaker outside announcing the week’s special offers to customers who still hadn’t realized that they were in the middle of a violent robbery.

  16:15:45

  Sharp, thin plastic was tightened around the guards’ wrists and ankles.

  Tape strips were pressed firmly over their lips.

  Earplugs were pushed into their ear canals.

  Dark pillowcases were pulled down over their heads.

  They were now completely isolated from impressions of the outside world.

  16:16:10

  The Black Robber passed the shattered security door and aimed his weapon into a department store, which quickly emptied out. The customers who hadn’t managed to escape took cover behind pillars, shelving, and checkout counters. He continued toward the entrance and parking lot and the panicked people throwing themselves down on the asphalt. Then he fired, above them. He emptied the magazine, changed it, and emptied the next one. Everyone was to be frightened away, not to be confused with those who were on the way.

  He was then careful to walk back and forth in front of the department store entrance so that the door opened and closed every time he set off the detector. He held the gun in two hands, aiming it upward. Those who would arrive soon would see his powerful weapon just as clearly as they would the getaway car parked next to him.

  16:16:40

  The picture was easy to take in.

  Deserted. A robber keeping watch. Doors of the getaway car open, the engine idling.

  It was then that the first police car stormed into the parking lot. The distance wasn’t more than fifty yards between a not-yet-fired round and the front of the police car.

  Between control and chaos.

  16:17:00

  The Blue Robber was prepared—that was, of course, part of the plan. Nonetheless he flinched at the shots, heard almost as clearly in the security room as out there in the parking lot. They knew that the nearest police station was only a mile or so away and had expected that the first patrol car would arrive promptly. It was the Black Robber’s job to shoot, wildly. To frighten. The police would understand that the robbers had guns as powerful as the ones they were equipped with themselves and that they couldn’t hide behind their cars—projectiles from an AK4 cut up protective sheet metal as if it were paper.

  While the shooting continued outside, the Blue Robber assured himself that the two guards remained lying on their stomachs with their hands and feet restrained and heads covered with cloth.

  It was absolutely crucial that they couldn’t see what he would do now.

  The nylon bag he had carried over his shoulder was on the floor in front of him, with its contents revealed—six green-and-white milk cartons, all in the half-gallon size. He picked up one of them, holding it by the top and bottom, and in one motion pulled it apart. It was completely drained of liquid. And in two parts, held together by an inner glued edge.

  He put one of the banknote cassettes in the lower portion and pressed on the upper. The joint was virtually invisible. The first prepared milk carton, transformed into a storage place before the robbery, now contained 900,000 kronor. He placed it in the bag and repeated the procedure five times—the remaining five cash cassettes. At the same time, he heard the shooting escalate out in the parking lot. What had begun with single blasts had developed into fierce, turbulent drumming.

  The Blue Robber sensed the smell even before he saw the light-yellow liquid spreading out and darkening the stone floor. With a powerful jerk, he lifted the bag up to keep the male guard’s urine from soaking it.

  He threw the strap of the bag over his head so that it hung on his left shoulder and rested on his right hip. Then he ran to the entrance to signal to the Black Robber that the first phase was completed.

  Each new step left a successively drier shoeprint of urine behind.

  16:18:05

  The two police cars that arrived first were shot to pieces. But they were parked where they would block the exit effectively. The black-clad robber’s bullets had forced the four police officers to seek shelter on the ground. And, not at first realizing just how a military-grade automatic weapon damages vehicles, they could smell it now, burned rubber from the interior as the shooter’s bullets penetrated the sheet metal body of the car.

  16:18:15

  Six full cash cassettes in milk cartons, which in turn lay in a nylon bag, hung over the shoulder of the robber in blue overalls. From his position just inside the entrance, he yelled “Done!” to the robber in black overalls.

  They would now turn back in again. That was how they planned the robbery in cell 7 on block H. The police, who were waiting for reinforcements while they pressed down against the ground behind the vehicles perforated by bullets, would believe that the robbers were cut off from their getaway car and therefore taking shelter in the shopping center.

  What the robbers hadn’t expected, however, was that the reinforcements would get there so quickly. That there, somewhere in the row of parked cars, eight police officers from the SWAT team had already moved forward, step by step, taken their positions, and were ready for action.

  Nor had they expected that the police would be prepared to meet violence with violence on a whole new level than they had done during the series of robberies several years earlier.

  16:18:25

  The right leg buckled first. The fabric fluttered around the entrance wound, like when the nozzle on a ball
oon releases air. Then the leg’s muscles stopped cooperating.

  When the robber in black overalls fell backward, he aimed the gun barrel in the direction that he gathered the return fire came from and let loose a new, brief series of shots.

  He tried to get up again and sensed another person’s hand reaching out and taking his, support that replaced a leg that did not bear his weight. A hand that held and dragged him toward the doors of the entrance.

  It was then that he felt the three hard thuds at stomach height before the fifth bullet found its way into the area where the bulletproof vest wasn’t closed tightly enough.

  That was his last conscious thought . . .

  . . . since the sixth bullet hit the back of his head and exited through his forehead.

  16:18:40

  Sam was holding a dead hand.

  He felt it, just as he felt that it was bone fragments and blood that hit him exactly where the cutout holes on the robber’s mask bared his own skin.

  He let the lifeless body fall to the ground, ran back to the entrance, and waited for the next bullet that would bore its way into blue overalls, into his body. He had to get out of the line of fire. That was the only thing he could think of.

  Into the shopping center.

  He must get himself to the second getaway vehicle and carry out the rest of the plan alone.

  Sam heard the glass in the entrance doors shatter behind him. The bullets had missed. He was in. He ran to the part of the building where food was sold and followed the sketch that they had carefully drawn together.

  He hopped over a chrome fence and landed between baskets of cherry tomatoes and boxes of lemons gleaming under the hissing mist. He knocked over a pile of cucumbers when he veered off to the left and rushed through the aisle where various forms of pasta were crowded in with Italian sauces in jars. Next, he would force open the swinging doors of the stockroom. He was on his way there with the bag over his shoulder and the gun he was holding tightly onto.

  Suddenly he stopped. Not for long, just for a couple of breaths—while he realized what was happening.

  People were running away from him.

  No one came into the area he had control of. He was the one who didn’t belong, who frightened and drove people away. And if he concentrated, really listened, he could hear their breathing too—the customers who were hiding behind the freezer cabinets; someone crying, someone else mumbling incoherently. The only thing that seemed normal was the voice from the loudspeaker that continued to entice customers with the week’s special offers.

  Three shots.

  The swinging doors crackled, started to open up, and he ran into the stockroom to the rolled-up gateway that led him to the loading dock.

  16:19:25

  The truck—which had large pictures of milk on its side—was exactly where Jari had parked it in advance of the robbery. Across from waste management and cold storage for goods that had passed their expiration date. A good location, inconspicuous but without seeming hidden.

  The traffic, a short distance away, seemed to be still flowing normally. If he was lucky, it meant that the police hadn’t had time to put up roadblocks.

  And it was at that moment, when he jumped down from the loading dock and ran to the milk truck, that he realized he was shaking. His whole body was vibrating, like an aftershock. He was forced to hold his hands together hard until the knuckles whitened before he had the strength to open the back doors to the space filled with milk pallets.

  16:19:55

  Each pallet had room for eight crates, each holding sixteen milk cartons. But in the upper one, which Sam lifted down, six cartons were missing. There, in that hole, he placed the six specially prepared ones, which now contained cassettes filled with five-hundred-kronor notes.

  He pulled off the blue overalls and the robber’s mask, put them in the shoulder bag and shoved it in the middle of the next milk crate—just like in the crate before it where six cartons were removed. So that the bag was surrounded and covered.

  The automatic weapon also had its prepared place. Under the pallet’s base, between the wheels, they had attached metal loops that the barrel and stock could rest on without knocking and clattering during the drive.

  He jumped out, took a step back, and inspected.

  And he thought he heard Leo’s voice.

  When the cops start screening the idiots who are desperately trying to get out, then a milk truck will sail right through. Especially with a cargo space that’s easily checked since it contains only . . . milk.

  Sam closed the rear doors.

  Their plan had been based on the fact that it would be the two of them sitting there together, and they would help each other if they were stopped.

  That was no longer the case. Now, since he was alone, only he could talk his way through.

  16:20:40

  He noticed it as soon as he swung out from the back of the shopping center: The traffic was moving slowly over there, and that could be due to only one thing. The police had put up their roadblock.

  Further along he glimpsed the cars. Blue-and-white, with flashing blue lights.

  Sam looked at his hands. They weren’t shaking anymore. The police were looking for a robber who stole a new black Audi. Not for a milk truck. His fingertips dove down into the green-and-white jacket’s breast pocket. There. The driver’s license. With a relief in the shape of the country of Sweden in the plastic.

  And it’s you, Sam, who’ll sit behind the wheel at the crucial moment—when the car approaches the police roadblock. It’s you they’ll look at. If you are calm, the cops will be calm.

  He was close.

  Three cars between the milk truck and the police patrol that was checking every vehicle.

  And when he glanced at the rearview mirror, he couldn’t see, in the dim light, the small drops of blood that had dried on his skin.

  IT WAS THE largest TV he had ever seen. High up on the wall, actually the whole wall, from one corner of the service counter to the oblong cart that carried deep bowls of green salad and cabbage drenched in oil.

  Ivan leaned heavily forward with his elbows against the worn restaurant table placed in the second row by the window. He often sat here with a cup of black coffee and a pile of betting slips for the day’s broadcast of the Keno drawing. He had tried various tables, and it was from this table that the view was the best, no supporting pillars in the way, no backs of guests who were lining up for the toilets or got the idea they would pay at the checkout. A picture in gigantic size. Something had happened to TVs during the years he was on the inside. It was as if the manufacturers had retained the same volume and the same weight and then just flattened out their products with a steamroller.

  He was in a local restaurant a short stroll from Skanstull. It was in the neighborhood he kept to nowadays, in a one-room apartment subleased in downtown Stockholm. How the hell did he end up here?

  It was called Dráva, the restaurant. And Dacso, he was the one who had eyebrows stragglier than a porcupine’s bristles and darted between convection ovens in the kitchen. He owned the restaurant with Szilvia, his wife—very pretty but in an instant could become so cold that the beauty turned into ugliness. They knew who he was. What he had done. The Papa Robber who no longer drank. And they were always nice, on the verge of fawning. They sent their employees a little too often to refill his coffee cup. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that at some particular point during his first visit he had let it be known that if Ivan Dûvnjac hadn’t been at the hideout after the last bank robbery, the son he was about to meet here would have been dead. Between parents, that sort of thing sometimes makes all the difference. And it brought a kind of respect that it was easy to like and rely on. But right now it was just annoying, the curious, searching glances from the simple bar and marble pizza counter feeling bothersome.

  It had begun so well. An evening he would spend in the company of family, not with Keno betting slips and bad tips. He had felt so happy and b
een talkative—Leo, his son who was a free man as of today, was going to eat dinner with him here, at Dacso and Szilvia’s. But then, after the news report on the goddamn gigantic TV, Dacso had walked over to whisper something to his wife instead of saying it out loud. Their attempts to be discreet had been equally idiotic and impossible when the images from a robbery of a security van filled the wide screen and the Papa Robber was waiting for the Son Robber two tables away.

  Now they were whispering in front of the pizza oven again, and not even discreetly. They had switched to another channel and the next news report. Several pictures from an armed robbery somewhere south of the city, new pictures that hadn’t been shown earlier.

  It was about then that the unpleasantness began to be irritating—what took root deep inside him every time and, if it grew too large, lay there and lured him. If he didn’t watch out, he could slip, slide down, and then in a moment fall headlong.

  Several years ago he had sat on his own sofa watching television just like this. On that very evening the program Wanted had broadcast a one-hour special on the group of robbers that the media dubbed the Military League because of their method of hitting banks—violent and precise like military operations—and because of the record-breaking stunt against the military armory. He had come all too quickly to the realization that he knew them. Something he recognized on the screen as they strode into the bank with their weapons at the ready. A movement. The gait, angle of the foot, a hand pointing with the wrist slightly bent. And then when he continued to watch the short video from a surveillance camera, he recognized something else, what connected all those movements—a personality. And then it didn’t matter that on the television they had black masks pulled down over their faces, because the tracks they left on the screen were movements they had in common—movements that had been there all their lives.