Fatima nodded. ‘He’s waiting in the bar with Lydia,’ she said, referring to the stewardess who was in charge of the bar in first class.
Erik turned to Karim:
‘I’ll be back in a few minutes, and then we can decide where we’re going to try for an emergency landing, okay?’
Karim didn’t reply.
‘I’ll be right back,’ Erik said, passing Fatima on his way out of the cockpit.
As the door closed behind him, he forced himself to breathe calmly. He would speak to the passenger as promised, and then he would call Alex and ask why the Americans had just signed a collective death warrant for four hundred people.
42
STOCKHOLM, 19:00
Fredrika Bergman leafed deftly through the various documents in Zakaria Khelifi’s file. Extracts from phone-tap material that looked exactly the same as the police records when Fredrika was working with the National Bureau of Investigation. Surveillance notes. Copies of interviews conducted with Zakaria while he was in custody.
Fredrika spent a little time going over the interviews; Zakaria didn’t dispute a single point that was put to him.
Yes, that was him in the surveillance shots.
Yes, he knew the man standing next to him.
No, they hadn’t met in order to plan a terrorist attack; his friend needed some help with his winter tyres.
Yes, he had made all the calls that Säpo knew about – except for the calls that had been made when the phone didn’t belong to him – and no, none of the calls was about anything other than exactly what they sounded like. No coded language, no secret messages.
Someone must have tipped off Säpo about Zakaria Khelifi, because he was arrested one morning without having done anything.
But how did something like that happen? How did a man like Zakaria Khelifi suddenly become interesting to the Swedish security service and be declared a threat to national security if he hadn’t done anything?
Fredrika started all over again from the beginning, and even though she knew Zakaria’s history with Säpo by heart, she spotted something new. Zakaria turned up over and over again, and in the end there were just too many coincidences for any security service worth its salt to ignore. Such individuals existed not only within Säpo’s area of interest, but also within the criminal circles investigated by the National Bureau of Investigation and other police authorities. Those eternal shadows that drifted from one investigation to another, always too insubstantial to grasp. Obviously, even criminals must know people who weren’t on the wrong side of the law, but how were you supposed to know which was which?
There was no denying that Zakaria Khelifi had some explaining to do. The problem was that he had tried to do just that. He had answered their questions and given perfectly reasonable explanations for things that seemed strange. He insisted that he hadn’t known what was inside the package he had collected. He didn’t know why Ellis had said he was involved. And he claimed he hadn’t made the calls that Säpo were able to link to previous investigations.
Fredrika picked up the record of Zakaria’s earlier telephone traffic which had just been analysed again. The calls that Zakaria insisted someone else had made. How had the police coped before the age of the mobile phone? In every single case Fredrika had worked on, the analysis of phone calls had been a key element. That was how they tracked down people who had disappeared, picked holes in their alibis and were able to link them to various crime scenes and cases. On a yellow Post-it note someone, possibly Eden, had scribbled:
‘A comparison of the phone traffic before and after the point at which Zakaria says that he acquired the mobile indicates that he could be telling the truth. Different contacts during the two different periods.’
A long column of calls was highlighted in yellow. Where the highlighting ended, someone had drawn an asterisk to mark before and after.
Fredrika’s cheeks began to burn.
What would happen if the government revised its decision and released Zakaria on the basis of the phone records? Would that bring the hijacking to an end? She was eager to find out more, but she couldn’t cope with printouts; she wanted electronic access to the telephone data.
She left her desk right away and went to find Sebastian.
‘I’d like access to Zakaria Khelifi’s phone records.’
‘Isn’t there a copy in the file?’
‘I’d like an electronic copy, please.’
Sebastian looked dubious.
‘Why?’
‘I want to take a closer look at them.’
It wasn’t really an answer to his question, but Fredrika didn’t want to get into a discussion about why she was asking for the records. She wanted to carry out her own analysis, that was all.
Sebastian made room for Fredrika at his computer and opened up a new program.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she said as she sat down.
‘No problem. I’ve got to go and check on something anyway, and you can only access phone records from certain computers, so you might as well use mine. Let me know if you need any help.’
Sebastian left the office and Fredrika gazed at the screen.
Soon her fingers were flying across the keys.
She identified the point at which Zakaria claimed he had bought the phone, and sorted all the calls into chronological order. Then she sorted them again so that all calls made to or from the same number ended up together. The phone had been in contact with roughly twenty numbers; some came up more often than others. Fredrika went through everything systematically.
Just as Sebastian had said, certain numbers came up on both sides of the dividing line, which meant that those numbers had been in contact with both Zakaria and the previous owner of the phone.
Three numbers appeared more frequently than the others. Fredrik made a note of them.
If Zakaria refused to say who the previous owner of the phone was, then surely one of the people who had been in touch both before and after the changeover would be able to help them.
Negotiating with terrorists was out of the question. Alex Recht knew that, and deep down he sympathised with that point of view. But what if the terrorists made demands that were reasonable? For example, what if Zakaria Khelifi really was innocent, and ought to be released? Should you refuse to countenance such a demand just because it came from terrorists?
After Fredrika had left him in the kitchen, he hadn’t known what to do. His daughter called him on his mobile, wanting to know how things were progressing. Alex knew what she really wanted to ask: was he going to make sure that her brother came home? Alex didn’t have an answer to that question.
He still hadn’t been able to contact his daughter-in-law. In an ironic twist of fate, she was on board another long-distance flight heading for South America. He couldn’t bear to think about how the news would be broken to her when she landed. They could ask the local police for help if necessary. What was Alex’s role in the ongoing investigation?
Nobody knew. With only the initial bomb threats to deal with, the National Bureau of Investigation had had a clear remit, but now Alex wasn’t at all sure what his function was supposed to be. No further interviews were planned, and Säpo seemed to be processing all other information themselves.
Fredrika had a point when she said there was something odd about the previous day’s bomb threats. No one had claimed responsibility, no concrete demands had been made. Four separate threats, two of them targeting such widely different places as the government building at Rosenbad, and Åhlén’s department store. Had they missed some underlying symbolism in the choice of targets? Did it have something to do with the subsequent hijacking? Alex didn’t think so. The only link was Karim Sassi’s fingerprints on one of the mobile phones. Which was no bloody help at all.
Alex left Säpo HQ and went back to his own office to check on how far they had got with the investigation into the bomb threats, see if any new information had emerged. Not that it would change anything, but
he had to keep busy somehow. He remembered their thoughts on the hijacking before they found out that Karim was involved. Either they had to get the Swedish and US governments to meet the hijackers’ demands, or they had to defuse the bomb that was supposed to be on board. Or find the perpetrators behind the hijacking, thus averting the danger.
But with the captain himself involved, that last option disappeared, which was what Alex found so frustrating. There was no longer any chance of having an impact on the threat from the ground; it had to happen on the plane. And Erik was the only one who could help them.
Alex went to speak to one of his colleagues who was working on the previous day’s bomb threats.
‘At the moment I don’t have anything useful to report,’ he said, barely able to look Alex in the eye. ‘We don’t understand why Karim Sassi was careless enough to leave his prints on one of the phones, but not the others. And if we presume that others were involved, do they also work at Arlanda, or for an airline company?’
‘Arlanda?’ Alex said.
‘All four calls yesterday were made in and around the airport.’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘If we assume that Karim made the call using the phone he left his prints on, then we can also assume that he made that call before or after he started work. But if he wasn’t the only one who called, then why did all the calls come from Arlanda?’
‘Surely, we must be able to sort this out, for God’s sake,’ Alex said. ‘Have we listened to the recordings properly? Can’t we tell if it’s the same person making all four calls, or different individuals? Or does the voice distortion make it impossible to work out?’
The voice distortion, bloody Mickey Mouse. Or what had TT said – was it Donald Duck?
‘I know that Säpo’s sound technicians took over that part of the investigation, because we couldn’t remove the distortion here. But if you’re asking me, then I’d say it sounded like the same person.’
Alex heard Fredrika’s voice echoing in his mind:
It doesn’t necessarily mean that Karim made any calls at all; his fingerprints could have ended up on that phone in a different context.
‘Have we checked whether Karim has an alibi for the times when the bomb threats were made?’
‘An alibi?’
Alex clarified: ‘Do we know whether he was in the vicinity of Arlanda when those calls were made? Have we asked his wife where he was at those particular times? Checked his mobile, tried to fix its position? Because if he wasn’t in or near the airport, then we can be certain that someone else made the calls.’
They hadn’t drawn the conclusion that Karim was behind the calls, but nor had they excluded the possibility. Too many loose ends were never good.
‘Check that right away,’ he said.
The evidence was laid out like luminous stones in a dark forest, leading the police in one direction: towards Karim Sassi. It wasn’t just the Tennyson book and the photograph. There were also the bomb threats, the purpose of which they still didn’t understand. And the prints on the phone, and the fact that the phones had been dumped in a waste bin in a car park at Arlanda.
Why would Karim Sassi have been so careless?
The clues he had left behind were so clear that he might as well have stood in front of the police, waving both arms and shouting: ‘It was me – don’t you get it?’
And that was exactly what Alex couldn’t understand. It was as if Karim Sassi wanted to be found out.
43
19:35
She would have given anything for a drink. A long, strong rum cocktail. Eden Lundell would happily have paid an entire year’s salary. Instead she defiantly lit a cigarette in her office.
I’ll just have a couple of drags. I can stop any time I want to.
The plane would be shot down if it violated US airspace. That was the news they had brought back from Rosenbad. A kind of madness she was neither willing nor able to absorb. No one would ever be able to forget the memories of 9/11. The Twin Towers collapsing, the column of smoke rising like a rocket into the sky, which just an hour earlier had carried the planes towards their destination. Events like that were bound to shape a country’s policies and mental health.
The terrorist attacks in London and Madrid had had a similar effect on the UK and Spain. Rules that used to apply had become obstacles instead of tools in the quest for a safe society. To put it bluntly, you could say that security now came before openness.
The attack on Bryggargatan in Stockholm came somewhere in between. The madness had struck right in the middle of the Christmas rush, just as unexpected as a bolt of lightning in the chill of winter. The wound in the Swedish soul had healed quickly, but the scar remained, and sometimes it made its presence felt.
Flight 573 was heading towards a tragic end unless they could bring the plane down safely before it ran out of fuel. According to the hijackers, it would be blown up if it landed before the Swedish and American governments had met their demands. The same applied if the pilot attempted an emergency landing, even if he did so because he had run out of fuel. The conclusion was clear: if the demands were not met, then the plane and its passengers were doomed.
And now the Americans had said that if Flight 573 entered US airspace, it would be shot down.
Eden’s hand was trembling slightly as she stubbed out her cigarette. This wasn’t good news. Karim Sassi’s response when both the Americans and Säpo had contacted him didn’t exactly help matters. He had no intention of violating US airspace as things stood at the moment, but nor did he intend to fly to an alternative destination in order to land. When the fuel ran out, he would call the US authorities and demand permission to carry out an emergency landing.
‘I refuse to disobey the hijackers’ instructions,’ he had said.
‘But you’ll still be disobeying them if you attempt an emergency landing,’ Eden had replied.
‘Yes, but if I’ve run out of fuel, it won’t matter. I’ll have nothing to lose by going against their orders. But as long as I still have fuel, I’m going to do what they want, and stay close to US airspace.’
With that he had ended the call and Eden had returned to her desk to gather her thoughts.
Sebastian came in.
‘Perhaps you should try knocking?’ Eden said.
‘Perhaps you should try giving up smoking?’
‘Did you actually want something, or are you here because you’re too stupid to do anything sensible?’
Eden was ashamed of herself as she spoke, partly because she sounded like a teenager, and partly because she knew Sebastian was right. At the very least she had to stop sneaking a quick smoke in her office.
Sebastian laughed wearily.
‘You really are unbelievable.’
Eden crossed her legs and slid her lighter under a pile of papers.
Sebastian leaned against the wall.
‘Fredrika Bergman is going through the phone records.’
‘What phone records?’
‘The ones that show that Zakaria Khelifi could be telling the truth when he says he’s only owned that mobile for a few months.’
‘Let her carry on. Alex says she’s really good; maybe she’ll find something significant. Whatever that might be.’
‘I had a look at Khelifi’s file myself,’ Sebastian said. ‘Even if we can’t use the phone records, we still have a solid case. We don’t need any historical evidence to prove that he could be involved in activities that constitute a threat to national security.’
Eden went through the key points out loud:
‘We think we’ve come across him in three preliminary investigations. In the case that led to his being charged, we were able to prove that he helped the two main perpetrators by driving them to various locations, and by picking up the package containing the chemicals that were used to make the bomb. In addition, Ellis stated in several interviews that Zakaria had been involved in the preparations.’
‘Allow me to play devil’s adv
ocate,’ Sebastian said. ‘Zakaria says that the phone didn’t belong to him when it came up in our earlier investigations. He also says he didn’t know what was in the package that he collected. And Ellis retracted his statement.’
Their eyes met, and Eden could see that Sebastian was thinking exactly the same as her.
Sebastian looked surprised. His eyebrows shot up and his broad brow furrowed in a way that Eden found quite attractive.
You ought to look surprised more often.
‘We need to speak to Ellis again,’ he said.
‘Indeed we do. He and Hassan are still in the custody block, aren’t they?’
‘Yes – they’re due to be moved tomorrow.’
‘Arrange an interview right away,’ Eden said. Sebastian left the room.
It had been a long day for all of them, and it was going to be even longer. No one on Eden’s team could go home as long as the plane was in the air. She had even made Elina, who worked part-time, stay on.
‘But I have to go home and feed the kids,’ Elina had protested.
‘Don’t you have a partner who can take care of them?’
‘Well, yes, but he’s got his own business, and he’s really busy at the moment.’
‘In that case, I suggest you ring him and tell him that this evening, and any other evening, a threat to national security takes precedence over his little business. And if that’s not perfectly clear to both of you, then you need to find another job. In the very near future.’
Just thinking about the conversation made Eden’s blood boil. Sweden would never achieve equality as long as people continued to pretend that the family was the most important thing in the world. Nor would the country be safe. To think that it took a hijacking to make her realise something so obvious.
Although to be fair, it wasn’t only Elina who had problems with that kind of discussion at home. As she had already discovered, Mikael wasn’t too impressed by his wife’s priorities.
Damn him – if he hadn’t been so wonderful she would have left him and the girls several years ago.
The thought had barely crossed her mind when she was overwhelmed by such a wave of regret that she was afraid she would have to sit down on the floor. Eden hadn’t cried for years, but she felt the tears spring to her eyes.
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