As far as the hijacking was concerned, she was reasonably happy, but not satisfied.
All their questions had been answered.
All their questions apart from one:
Where was Sofi?
NOVEMBER 2011
72
She could still recall the lighting in the room where her fate had been decided, and she realised that she was going to get away with it. The light itself was almost a shade of blue. The man sitting opposite her, evidently an agent with the federal prosecution service, followed her gaze as she looked up at the ceiling, and shook his head.
‘You’re not the only one who finds it unpleasant,’ he said.
She gave him a disarming smile.
‘It’s fine.’
He laughed.
‘It’s pretty miserable working in a place where even the lighting is crap.’
She laughed too.
His expression became serious once more.
‘So, Lydia, you want to go home, preferably within the next few days.’
‘Yes – tomorrow if possible.’
‘Naturally, we have no intention of standing in your way. You’ve been enormously helpful, and we trust you to come back for the trial. Your evidence will be very important.’
She nodded firmly.
‘Of course, I’ll help you in any way I can.’
The agent made a few notes on the papers in front of him, then he put down the pen and looked her straight in the eye.
‘If no one else has done so yet, I must thank you on behalf of the United States government. You and your colleagues showed great courage in a very difficult situation.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, although that didn’t feel like the right thing to say at all.
‘I hope this terrible episode won’t make you look for a new career. Individuals like Karim Sassi are few and far between, thank goodness.’
‘No – I love my job, and I intend to carry on flying.’
Weak, pathetic people. That stupid bastard Karim couldn’t take the pressure. He was going to get us shot down by some shabby fucking American missiles, and I had no intention of dying that way. Even though I was definitely prepared to die.
‘Amazing,’ the agent said, and she could see tiny beads of sweat forming on his fleshy upper lip.
She tried to curb his enthusiasm.
‘I don’t believe I’m any different from my colleagues. We all intend to carry on flying.’
Ten minutes later, she was standing on the pavement outside the prosecutor’s office, breathing in the cool autumn air. All the relevant documents had been signed, and she would be leaving the USA the next day.
For a while, she had thought she’d had it. They had released her name and photograph to the press, but the picture was several years old, and Sofi knew that even if she bore some resemblance to the girl in the photo, it would never occur to anyone that it could be her.
Apart from Zakaria, their uncle, and Zakaria’s girlfriend Maria. And they would keep quiet until the day they died.
It was love that had brought Sofi to Europe in the first place. She married a man who had a residence permit in Germany, and at first, she had thought she was in love with him. Until she met Adam. She had waited just long enough for the authorities not to regard her marriage as a sham, then she had wanted to file for divorce.
But Adam said no.
It would be easier for both of them if the bond between them remained a secret, and she agreed with him.
By this time, he had shown her the right path. She had been so blind before she met him, allowing so many injustices to go unchallenged. But not any longer. In Adam’s company, her hatred towards the USA and every other country engaged in the so-called war on terror grew and grew. A war that apparently legitimised any insanity whatsoever.
It wasn’t right.
They had been well aware of the risks they were taking, and had acted accordingly. Her marriage broke down; that was inevitable. However, the structure of her relationship with Adam didn’t change. They didn’t start seeing each other more frequently, and when they did meet, it was as discreetly as possible. When Adam was finally arrested, they knew they had done the right thing. No police officers came banging on Sofi’s door, no one wondered whether she might have been involved in the crimes of which Adam was accused. He was never charged. Twice they picked him up; twice they had to let him go.
The third time was during his trip to Pakistan.
Sofi hated recalling the uncertainty, the fear.
Why hadn’t she gone with him?
No one knew where he was, no one knew what had happened. And there was no one she could ask.
Then one day he came home, but by then the Americans had already broken him.
It was Sofi who in turn had shown Zakaria the right path. Since she had acquired a residence permit in Germany using false documents and was known there as Lydia, she didn’t tell anyone she had a brother in Sweden. Zakaria did the same; hardly anyone knew his sister in Germany, who came to visit him from time to time. Sofi didn’t know how much he had told Maria, but she did know that Maria was loyal, and that was enough.
At first, Zakaria had been unsure; he had taken plenty of time to make up his mind. In the end, he had agreed, of course. Sofi had come up with so many persuasive arguments. Something had to be done; they couldn’t just stand there watching. They had to act, make a stand. And they had quickly discovered that they were not alone in their struggle. They found support in both Germany and Sweden. Sofi would be eternally grateful to the person who had helped her by calling the TT news agency. Calling from the plane was out of the question, so she had needed back-up.
They had also helped to take Adam to Sweden when he returned from Pakistan. He needed rest, peace and quiet. But Adam got neither. Zakaria kept his distance, didn’t want to be seen anywhere near him if either he or Adam were wanted by the police, and all Sofi heard was that Adam was getting worse and worse. One day, he went back to Germany, then travelled home to his parents.
If only she’d got there in time. If only she’d been able to speak to him.
She had made her decision at Adam’s funeral.
It was lucky that she happened to be an air stewardess; she had virtually unlimited opportunities to travel. There was absolutely no reason for the security services to question her movements around the world.
She could speak Swedish, so it wasn’t difficult to get a job with SAS, the Swedish airline. The conditions weren’t good, but it was the same everywhere. It wasn’t a permanent job, but that wasn’t what she needed anyway. She appreciated the fact that she was flexible and could fly out of several different cities.
She had bumped into Karim Sassi purely by chance one day. She had made a point of remembering his name after that disastrous flight to Rabat, when he had landed in Munich for no good reason. After that the plan had almost written itself. She made sure she was on several flights with Karim, and when she wasn’t working, she spent her time alone in the apartment that Maria had helped her to rent.
Although she had been so careful, Sofi was still surprised that she had got away with what she had done. At least for the time being. She thanked her god that everything had gone so well. She had managed to get to Karim’s house after he had left for the airport and persuaded his daughter to say a few words to her daddy on the phone, to convince him that his family were being held hostage. Then she had made it to Arlanda in time to get on the same flight. Thank goodness Erik Recht had been just as late as her; Karim hadn’t said a word about her poor timekeeping. He had had plenty of other things to think about by that stage.
She wouldn’t be coming back to the USA for the trial. No way. Sooner or later the authorities would realise, or begin to suspect, how everything hung together.
It didn’t really matter.
The mission was accomplished. Zakaria had been released the day after the hijacking, and apparently, Tennyson Cottage had been shut down months ago.
Sofi had resigned from her job with SAS and returned to Germany, where she had dismantled her life in less than a week. A friend had promised to take care of her post.
Now she was on safe ground, waiting for what would happen next. She was convinced that it was only a matter of time before they worked out who she was, but by then she would be far away.
Zakaria had emailed her from a secret address that they had long ago agreed to use only in emergencies.
‘We need to lie low for a while,’ he had written. ‘Our next contribution to the campaign will have to wait.’
Sofi was happy to wait.
She had all the time in the world.
They both did.
AFTERWORD
Hostage is a work of fiction.
Shall I just repeat that so that everyone feels safe?
The book you have just read is fiction. As far as I know, it bears no resemblance to actual circumstances. If it does, this is completely unintentional. I usually say that I write primarily to entertain my readers, and that is the case here too. If I decide to do anything else, I will let my readers know.
However . . .
In January 2011, I moved to Vienna, to take up a post as senior terrorism analyst with OSCE, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, only weeks after a suicide bomber had blown himself up on Bryggargatan in Stockholm, and only months after returning from my posting to Baghdad. I couldn’t let developments in the outside world pass Fredrika Bergman by. Just for once, she had to get involved in a case that touched on one of my more professional interests. I also felt that after The Disappeared, I needed to give her and Alex a new kind of challenge, and therefore, I decided to write a book that differs from my earlier novels in a number of ways.
Besides, it was only a question of time before the urge grew too strong for me: the urge to write a book linked to one of the two places in the world that I love and find fascinating, namely the USA. It is a country to love, and sometimes to question. A true friend cannot be uncritical. Even an author who writes with the aim of entertaining the reader has the right to spice up her work with important dilemmas and problems that the reader will hopefully consider afterwards.
My books usually write themselves, and that was also the case on this occasion. I made use of all the sources around me. Sweden, after experiencing its first suicide bomber. The world after 9/11. One of the questions raised after the terrorist attack in Stockholm echoed in my mind for a long time: ‘The guy was on Facebook and wrote about his views there. So why didn’t anyone notice?’ I was astonished. Did people really think that the Swedish authorities had nothing better to do than sit and read everything that’s written on Facebook? Didn’t they realise what the consequences of such an approach would be? And didn’t they realise how many people express various kinds of frustration and sometimes pure hatred through social media, both in Sweden and abroad? Are we to bring in all these individuals for questioning, interrogate them about their visions and plans? Do we fine them? And if so, by exactly how many thousand per cent would the forces of law and order need to be increased?
I am often asked how much time I spend on research, and when it comes to this book the answer is: many, many hours. Given my background, it was very important to me that the context in the novel could be perceived as factual, and could also be found in sources that are accessible to all. For example, it is no secret that the USA has, and has had, so-called ‘secret’ detention centres in other countries, and it is no secret that Sweden has laws that mean that a person’s permanent residence permit can be revoked under certain circumstances. However, both Tennyson Cottage and Zakaria Khelifi are products of my own imagination. Even someone who has worked in security policy for several years has the right to make up stories.
And terrorism is a productive subject, if you want to write exciting books. That may be crass, but it’s true. Having a vivid imagination and a never-ending desire to tell a story is also a great help, of course. To a certain extent, I had great fun writing Hostage. You have to love Eden Lundell, don’t you? She became such a delicious part of my literary excursion to my former workplace, the Swedish Security Service (Säpo). Many crime writers before me have tossed Säpo into the mix, and many will do so in the future. I don’t know what makes it so difficult to do Säpo justice. I don’t know why it’s so hard to work out what they do and don’t do, what they’re allowed to do and what they’re not allowed to do. After ploughing through their home page in my quest for publicly available information, I discovered a wealth of interesting detail about what our country’s security service actually does. All you have to do is take a look. As I did.
One of my early readers was horrified by the ending of Hostage. The guilty parties, the terrorists, get away! But why should that be so surprising? It’s a cornerstone of our justice system that if there is reasonable doubt on the question of guilt, then it’s better to be safe than sorry. Which sometimes inevitably leads to the fact that those who are guilty will get away with what they have done. And who says the story is over when it comes to the hunt for Sofi Khelifi? All I have said is that I am letting her rest for the time being. While Eden Lundell lights another cigarette and wonders whether she really has got over Efraim, I will allow Sofi and Zakaria to bide their time and make plans for the future. They won the first round in their battle, and they might also win the next, but sooner or later even the most successful bad guys have to pay the price.
AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As usual when I write my books, I have received fantastic support from Piratförlaget. Warm thanks to everyone who works there, and special thanks to my publisher Sofia and my editor Anna. Without you, things would often come to a standstill and end up much worse.
Thank you also to everyone at the Salomonsson agency who continue to ensure that my books reach readers outside Sweden’s borders. Special thanks to my agent Leyla, who puts such an enormous amount of energy into promoting my books overseas.
Thanks to Johan for his opinions and non-opinions on my manuscript.
Thanks to Karl-Henrik for taking the time to answer all my questions about airline security and routines.
And thanks to Sofia E for once again reading my book and coming back to me with wise comments.
And finally, thanks to my fantastic family and all my wonderful friends who continue to think it’s cool that I write books, and who are always there when I want something else to think about, or when I simply want to call them and tell them the latest news about my writing.
Thank you.
Kristina Ohlsson
Stockholm, winter 2012
Hostage Page 36