Hostage

by Kristina Ohlsson

  If I leave now, he’s not going to let me back in.

  Slowly, Erik returned to his seat.

  ‘I thought you were going somewhere?’ Karim said.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  If Karim was disappointed, he didn’t show it. A short while later, he decided that the passengers must be informed of the expected delay. His tone was firm as he explained to them that because of exceptionally bad weather in New York, the flight would be significantly delayed. There was no need for anyone to worry, because there was plenty of fuel on board, and the crew would do everything they could to make sure that their journey was as comfortable as possible.

  Erik hoped the passengers would accept Karim’s explanation and remain calm. They didn’t have time for any kind of trouble.

  After Karim’s announcement, silence once more descended on the cockpit.

  One word lingered in Erik’s mind: Washington.

  37

  STOCKHOLM, 18:01

  This day’s work would never end. The realisation came as a blow. Fredrika had no intention of going home until the hijacking was resolved one way or another. Spencer called her just after six.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine, but I won’t be home for dinner. We can have an Indian another time.’

  Then they talked about the children, what they should have for tea, what they should wear the following day.

  How did my life turn out like this? Fredrik wondered. How did I go from a career woman with a secret lover to a married woman with two children?

  Spencer’s transformation was almost as dramatic: from a married, childless professor in his sixties to a remarried father of two. And yet, Fredrika had never once doubted that he would cope, or worried that he might leave her. Their relationship was as clear as if it were etched in stone. He was hers and she was his.

  And that made her feel safe.

  Safe. When had she ever felt safe before?

  Her thoughts turned to the passengers on Flight 573. She presumed they had been informed of the delay by now. She hoped the crew would be able to continue to maintain calm and order; it didn’t bear thinking about what could happen if chaos broke out. A scenario in which the passengers panicked and ran amok would be both dangerous and difficult to deal with.

  The plane was now uncomfortably close to the US border. And anything could happen there. The Americans were noticeably stressed and seeing ghosts. She hoped Karim wouldn’t decide to defy them.

  Fredrika rubbed her hands together. There were so many dimensions to the hijacking, so many sidetracks, that she felt exhausted.

  First of all, there was a North African asylum seeker who was due to be deported from Sweden, because Säpo had decided that he constituted a threat to national security.

  Secondly, there was a secret US detention facility in Afghanistan.

  And thirdly there was a man who had followed his childhood dream and become a pilot, and was now regarded as a terrorist holding hundreds of people to ransom.

  The question was how these three elements hung together, because in Fredrika’s mind these widely differing strands must have come from the same source. Her boss had called just a few minutes earlier and asked her to produce a written summary of all the information that had come to light so far, and to send it by courier to the government offices.

  Fredrika wrote down her conclusions.

  They still hadn’t managed to link Zakaria Khelifi to Tennyson Cottage. It was of course possible that there was no connection, but in that case they must at least have a perpetrator who could be linked to both. Many people felt that Karim could be that perpetrator, and Fredrika was one of them. However, she couldn’t believe that he had done this on his own.

  What evidence did they have against Karim? A photograph of him and Zakaria Khelifi. A book by Alfred Lord Tennyson in which the photograph had been hidden. And fingerprints on one of the phones that had been used to make bomb threats aimed at various targets in inner city Stockholm. The same phone had also been in contact with Karim’s private mobile.

  The book and the photograph.

  The fingerprints.

  The telephone calls.

  So incredibly careless.

  She had the same feeling as before. There was something fundamentally wrong about the picture of Karim that had emerged during the course of the day. But what?

  Fredrika could hear Eden Lundell’s voice a short distance away in the open-plan office. She had taken off her jacket and was standing in the middle of the floor in a sleeveless top that revealed the most toned upper arms Fredrika had ever seen on a woman. Eden spoke quietly, but she was clearly annoyed.

  ‘Mikael, I am not going to have this discussion right now. Yes, it’s very unfortunate that you had to abandon your little confirmation students to go and pick up your own children while your wife tries to save the lives of four hundred innocent people, but . . .’

  She was interrupted by the person on the other end of the line. The next time she spoke, her tone was defensive.

  ‘I’m not being patronising, I’m just telling it like it is. I . . . What? And what’s wrong with describing your confirmation students as little? I mean, they’re not exactly big, are they?’

  Eden suddenly realised that Fredrika was looking at her.

  ‘I haven’t got time to talk about this now. I’m sorry you’re angry, but there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  She flipped her phone shut and put it in her pocket. Fredrika turned her attention back to her report. Eden came straight over to her desk.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  Her voice was like the crack of a whip, and Fredrika felt her cheeks redden. As if it were her fault that Eden had been standing in the middle of the office conducting a private conversation.

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  ‘We’re having a meeting in a while – it would be good if you came along.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  Another burst of rain spattered the window next to Fredrika. The October weather was dreadful. Soon the streets would be aflame with fallen leaves in shades of red and yellow.

  Eden lingered by Fredrika’s desk.

  ‘How do you feel your liaison role is working?’

  ‘It’s good. I’m just summarising how far we’ve got; the Justice Department has requested a report.’

  ‘Do you have any thoughts you’d like to share at this stage?’

  Fredrika hesitated, and Eden read her like an open book.

  ‘Go on,’ she said encouragingly.

  ‘Karim Sassi,’ Fredrika said. ‘I don’t think he’s the brains behind all this.’

  Eden frowned.

  ‘But surely you must believe he’s involved?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t buy the idea that he’s alone.’

  ‘Me neither. Nobody could carry out something like this on their own.’

  ‘So why aren’t we finding anyone else close to him?’

  ‘I would say that’s one of the major questions facing us, and I find it frustrating to say the least. There’s no way he can be alone.’

  Fredrika had more to get off her chest: ‘I’ve been thinking about all the coincidences when it comes to Karim Sassi.’

  ‘Such as?’ It was obvious that Eden was trying not to sound irritated.

  ‘Such as the book by Tennyson, for example. And the photograph of Karim and Zakaria Khelifi. Even Zakaria himself doesn’t seem to be aware that there’s supposed to be a connection between him and Karim that is so strong it would motivate Karim to hijack an entire plane for his sake.’

  Eden pushed her hands into her trouser pockets. She wasn’t wearing a watch, but she did have heavy silver bracelets on both wrists. The bracelets were covered in symbols that Fredrika thought could be Hebrew letters.

  ‘You mean someone got into Karim’s house and planted the book there?’

  Her expression suggested that she thought Fredrika was crazy.

  ‘Well,
no, that doesn’t seem very likely,’ Fredrika replied. ‘However, I can’t help feeling it’s a bit careless to leave something like that lying around. Did he want us to find it?’

  ‘Yes, or his wife. Perhaps it was a final message to her if everything went wrong.’

  ‘So why not come out and say he’s responsible for the hijacking? Why not make the demands himself instead of writing them on a piece of paper and leaving it in the toilet?’

  ‘Because he thought, or thinks, there was a chance he might get away with it without being exposed.’

  ‘And he left the book out in case he was killed or exposed?’

  Eden didn’t reply. Fredrika could see that she was thinking things over.

  ‘What if we flip it around?’ Eden said eventually. ‘What if we assume that someone other than Karim planted the book in his house? Why did that person do it?’

  ‘To give more weight to our suspicions against Karim,’ Fredrika said.

  ‘Planting a book in a living room isn’t particularly subtle,’ Eden said. ‘I mean, it would be very easy for the homeowner to say they’ve never seen it before, that it doesn’t belong to them. And even more importantly, how would the person who put the book there know that we would suspect Karim?’

  Fredrika suddenly felt immensely weary.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  Eden took her hands out of her pockets and started fingering one of her bracelets.

  ‘I agree with you, the business of the book seems too obvious. Almost like a kind of theatrical symbol, a specific message for the right eyes. Our eyes, for example. If it weren’t for the bomb threats, I’d be on your side. In that case, the book and the photograph would be the perfect trap. But as it is . . .’

  She rolled her neck, the blonde hair flicking across her shoulders.

  ‘Besides, there’s intelligence that strengthens the theory that the pilot is involved. There’s too much evidence to ignore.’

  Eden was right, and Fredrika was wrong, although Fredrika had never suggested that Karim was innocent. However, she still believed it was beyond all reasonable doubt that he could have carried out his plan alone.

  How could his helpers be completely invisible?

  Eden turned on her heel and went back to her office.

  Fredrika stayed at her desk and tried to bring some clarity to her thoughts. What had been the point of the previous day’s bomb threats? Four separate threats spread across the inner city, with no explanation, no demand for anything in return. Why? If the threats were linked to the hijacking, what role had they played?

  Fredrika gazed out of the window, wishing she could reach Karim Sassi up there among the clouds.

  Talk to us, she thought. Tell us what we’re not seeing.

  Because otherwise there’s nothing we can do to help you.

  GD had come looking for Eden while she was in the meeting with the Americans. He wanted an update, so she called him.

  The meeting with the CIA agents had left her feeling frustrated. She couldn’t cope with a pissing contest and battling against a headwind in a situation like this. And then they had had the nerve to hint at that damned business in London! Eden had never imagined that her history would remain within the borders of the UK. She had actually been surprised when she was offered the positions with both the National Bureau of Investigation and Säpo, but had then decided to take this as a sign that she could put the past behind her. Which she was very happy to do. Nothing was more painful than remembering, and nothing else in her life had cost her more.

  Suddenly, Mikael came into her mind. Mikael, who had had to dump his confirmation class to go and pick up the children. Mikael, whom she had snapped at and provoked, and who was beginning to get sick and tired of the hours she worked.

  Eden remembered how surprised her mother had been when she told her they were expecting a child.

  ‘You?’ her mother had said. ‘You’re having a baby?’

  There was no joy in her voice, simply blank bewilderment. As if the thought of Eden having a child was utterly ridiculous. Admittedly, Eden’s view of parenthood wasn’t quite the same as that of many other women. They had been living in London when the baby was born, and according to the rules and regulations that applied to working women in the UK at the time, she had had only sixteen weeks’ maternity leave, which was regarded as a long time. Mikael had refused to employ a nanny when the children were so small, and had stayed at home with them for a whole year. In Eden’s opinion, this meant he had lost the first and most important round of negotiations over who should take the lion’s share of responsibility for their daughters.

  GD answered his phone. He didn’t sound all that pleased to hear her voice, in spite of the fact that he was the one who had wanted to speak to her in the first place. Eden had no idea why he was suddenly so hostile, but it didn’t exactly improve matters when she relayed the results of her meeting with the Americans.

  ‘So the Germans knew about this? If that’s true, it’s totally unacceptable!’

  Eden tried to calm him down.

  ‘It’s overstating the case to say they knew about it. And what would we have done with such a vague email?’ She shook her head.

  GD muttered something inaudible, and Eden moved on to a different matter: ‘Did we know that Zakaria Khelifi has a sister here in Sweden?’

  GD sounded unsure: ‘I don’t know. Why would it be relevant if he has?’

  ‘I’m just thinking there could be other things that we’ve missed. We’ve always regarded him as someone who has relatively little in terms of roots in Sweden. And then we find out he has a sister here. And his uncle, whom we already knew about, of course.’

  Did she mean what she was saying? She thought so. They shouldn’t have missed the fact that Zakaria had a sister in Sweden. Why hadn’t he mentioned her himself? She wasn’t included in his file with the Immigration Service, and Zakaria had never said a word about her in any of his interviews. The only sisters Eden knew about were the ones who still lived in Algeria. There had to be a reason why Zakaria hadn’t said anything.

  ‘He probably didn’t want to drag her into his problems,’ GD said. ‘Nothing more sinister than that.’

  But Eden’s brain was working overtime by now.

  ‘It’s more than that. They don’t even appear to have been in touch. Or is she in our phone tap records, and we haven’t realised who she is?’

  ‘There are always unidentified individuals when we tap someone’s phone.’

  ‘And the uncle didn’t know he was supposed to keep quiet,’ Eden said, more to herself than GD. ‘He mentioned her as if she was an obvious part of Zakaria’s life.’

  ‘I think this sounds like something you don’t really need to pursue,’ GD said.

  Eden drummed her fingertips on the desk.

  ‘There’s more,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean, more?’

  ‘More about Zakaria’s case that doesn’t feel good, to say the least.’

  She told him what the latest analysis of Zakaria’s phone records had revealed, and not surprisingly he was furious.

  ‘Do you realise what the hell you’re saying?’

  ‘Of course I do. And believe me, I’m doing all I can to get to the bottom of Zakaria Khelifi’s case.’

  She ended the call with a distinct feeling that she was on the trail of something that had been very well hidden. And that it was Zakaria Khelifi himself who had blocked her chances of finding it.

  38

  FLIGHT 573

  When Joakim was a boy, he used to think that it was possible to walk on the clouds you saw when you looked out of the window on a plane. He would press his nose against the cold glass and dream of stepping outside to play in the soft, white shapes that looked like mountains made of ice cream.

  ‘But you can’t do that, darling,’ his mother had said when he told her. ‘Clouds are just air. If you tried to walk on them, you’d fall straight through.’

  The very
thought of plunging to the ground had made Joakim settle down properly in his seat without even glancing at the window. However, now he was an adult he loved to sit and gaze at the clouds. They had been in the air for some hours by now; the advantage was that the distance between him and the bad-tempered girlfriend he had left back home felt immense. Joakim was certain now. When he got back, he was going to finish with her. He didn’t need someone like her in his life. Not when he was moving forward, and all she wanted to do was stay in the same place.

  Joakim was restless. The flight time was supposed to be nine hours and fifteen minutes, and he hadn’t slept a wink. The captain had just announced that there would be a delay of several hours because of bad weather. Joakim’s seat was as hard as a park bench, and the man next to him stank of sweat. Joakim fiddled aimlessly with the small TV screen set in the back of the seat in front of him. There wasn’t a single film he hadn’t already seen.

  He picked up his rucksack and took out his camera. He scrolled through his photographs, most of which were of no interest at all. Party pictures and photos from his niece’s christening. He switched off the camera and put it back in his bag, then rummaged through the rest of the contents. Hadn’t he brought a book? A guide to the world of jazz in New York – a present from his parents.

  He found the book and put it on his knee. He wanted to listen to some music as well. The man next to him started glancing sideways at Joakim, obviously irritated by all this scrabbling in his bag.

  You stink and I’m scrabbling. If you put on some deodorant I’ll put down my bag.

  After a minute or so, he realised he was searching in vain. He hadn’t brought his MP3-player. He could see it clearly, sitting on the kitchen table. He had intended to bring it, but he must have forgotten. However, he was sure he’d transferred a few playlists to his new phone.

  With his book and phone on his knee, Joakim dropped the rucksack back onto the floor. He turned away discreetly so that his neighbour wouldn’t see that his phone was on. Lots of people had music on their phones, but they could usually switch to flight mode. Joakim didn’t know how to do that; however, he had recently read an article about how someone was trying, once and for all, to get to the bottom of how dangerous it was to have a mobile phone switched on during a flight. If it really was such a hazard, then why were people allowed to take a phone on board at all, the writer argued. The safety of the entire plane was left in the hands of individual passengers, with no control over how they handled that responsibility.