by Jens Lapidus
“What? You know what a screw makes?”
“Better than we make here, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe, but it’s all a bunch of crap. The Swedish government is pulling a fast one on us. We work like dogs, and what do we get for it?”
“At least you know you get something.”
“I’ve worked hard. Know what I did before I became a screw?”
Javier shook his head.
“Come on, bro, guess.”
Javier grinned.
The guy reminded him of Jorge, even though he’d seen so little of him. The same way of speaking, the same slang, the same way of moving. But still: Javier was mellower—there was a weed haze to his speech. Despite that, he had more intensity than Jorge. A gleam in his eye that seemed more inviting.
When, a half hour or so later, Javier found out that Hägerström had been a cop, he didn’t seem surprised. Either Jorge had already told him. Or else he was just playing it cool.
A few nights later, Javier approached Hägerström again.
That day Hägerström had traveled around the peninsula with Jorge, walked along the beaches, and pointed out the places that were for sale. They had a list of real estate agents in Thai that Jorge had made notes on.
Javier sat down without asking if it was okay. He ordered a beer.
“So, you guys finding anything?”
Hägerström assumed he was talking about their search for real estate.
“There are a bunch of places for sale here. But you know, it’s a matter of price and other conditions, about how secure the revenue stream might be and all that.”
They chatted. Javier said some friends of theirs might be coming. Hägerström tried to get a sense of how long they had been in Thailand, what they were doing here, why they were here. Javier was straight with him, but still not: “You know, there’s some stuff you just don’t talk about.”
Javier grilled him in return. Maybe he was trying to get something out of Hägerström. Where he came from. What prisons he had worked at. Why he had stopped working as a cop.
The guy was nice but far from exuberant. He couldn’t expect that from someone who knew he was a former cop. Still, he was open, talked a lot about sex, about Thailand in general, and his childhood in Alby. Javier was no spring chicken, that much was clear.
Hägerström was going to ask Torsfjäll to look this guy up later in the week.
He played along. Served up his story for the thousandth time: he hated the police force these days. Maybe they had already looked him up—JW obviously had some insider. That wasn’t a problem. Torsfjäll had entered Hägerström into the reconnaissance register for ongoing suspicions of possession, assault, and receiving stolen goods.
They kept boozing. Javier was talking more and more about how he wanted to take Hägerström out and show him the chicks in this Asian dump. Hägerström ducked as best he could. He didn’t want to end up in a situation where he had to do something with a prostitute in order to prove himself. He considered maybe it was time to call it a night.
Javier let the subject drop for a while. They each ordered a fruity cocktail. Javier was babbling on about how a real G couldn’t have a bunch of side interests. You couldn’t care too much about music or sports if you wanted to become someone.
They kept talking. Javier shot questions at Hägerström between rounds. Did he have kids? What unit had he worked in when he was a cop? How had it felt to get booted?
Then after an hour or so, he started up again, “Come on, man. The chicks here are fine.”
“Nah, let’s stay here,” Hägerström said. “I’m not up for it.”
“Are you a homo, or what?”
Hägerström ignored him.
“Come on, paco, show some brass.”
Hägerström just grinned.
“You wanna, I can tell. You wanna. I bet you’ve got a wife at home.”
Hägerström shook his head.
“Come on now, man. Fuck it. Just cause you’re a Sven, you don’t gotta be so scared.”
Finally, Hägerström said, “Let’s go back to the hotel instead. There are chicks there too, right?”
He had to play this right. He really didn’t want to end up in a sloppy situation with some woman. At the same time, he really needed to win this guy’s trust. If he pussied out, he might lose too much of the ground he had just made.
They got up, paid, and walked the hundred or so yards back to the hotel where they were staying. Sat down at a table at the bar. The decorating job in the place was standard: colorful lights, palm leaves, and Buddha figurines everywhere. Hägerström was starting to feel intoxicated. Javier started talking about other stuff. The guy kept running back and forth to the bartender, ordering different drinks.
After a while, Javier said, “I wanna show you something.”
“Okay, what?”
“Not here,” Javier said. “Up in my room.”
Hägerström wondered what this could be about.
They took the stairs. Javier’s room was a mini-suite with a mini-bedroom and a mini–living room with a mini-pantry. Hägerström was surprised by how neat the place was. But maybe it was just the hotel staff doing their job.
Javier sat down on the small sofa. He had a drink in one hand that he had brought up from downstairs.
Hägerström walked over and stood by the window. Looked out over a construction site on the other side of the street: a new hotel. Bamboo scaffolding, tarps, and Dumpsters. Soon they would be starting up out there. The sound of drills and trucks driving back and forth.
Javier picked up his phone and started playing with it.
“Have a seat on the couch, man.”
Hägerström wondered what was going to happen next. What was Javier going to show him?
There was a knock at the door.
Javier grinned. Opened the door.
Two Thai girls were standing out in the hall. Short skirts, short tank tops, hair up in ponytails.
Obvious what they were.
Javier’s grin broadened. “This is my surprise. Now we’re gonna have a real good time, you and me.”
Suddenly Hägerström felt completely sober.
42
The blinds in the library were drawn. And it was dark outside too. Natalie’d turned the wall lamps on as well as the lamps that were perched on the low bookshelves. The wallpaper didn’t reflect much of the light in the room. Everything took on a dark blue shimmer: the maps over Serbia and Montenegro, the paintings that depicted various battles and floods in Europe, and the icons of the old holy guys.
It felt like a movie. But it was for real.
Natalie was sitting in Dad’s leather armchair.
Yes—she was sitting in it. And around her, sitting in the other armchairs, were Goran, Bogdan, Thomas, and a guy named Milorad. Dad’s men.
Her men.
It was the first time she’d invited them into the library. The first time she’d called a meeting. This would make it all more or less official.
Natalie Kranjic was the new leader.
Goran already knew. She’d bounced ideas back and forth with him for weeks, and now Stefanovic’s behavior was leaving her no choice. Thomas’d probably also guessed this would happen—but the fact that he was even sitting here was a big step. The dude was a Sven and had even been a cop—now he was in the boardroom with the others, in the innermost circle. But Natalie trusted him, he was safe and had been supporting her for months. But what was even more important: Goran maintained that her father’d felt the same way. That alone would have been reason enough.
Security’d been heightened, just like after Dad’s first assassination attempt. All the surveillance cameras and alarms were set. The safe room was turned on. Patrik was living at their house full time. The schism with Stefanovic wasn’t only under way—it was a fact. God only knew what that traitor might try to do.
Thomas and Milorad’d done the usual search for bugs. They’d left their phones in the kitchen and
taken the batteries out. They’d all arrived in different cars and parked them in different places. They wanted to avoid neighbors or someone else wondering what was going on. People in the area knew what’d happened to Radovan—they didn’t want filth in their fancy suburb. They wanted to continue enjoying fraud-Näsbypark.
Natalie considered serving whiskey, the way Dad’d always done. But she decided against it. A new era. She was the one who would set the tone, make her mark. And she didn’t like whiskey, so why should everyone drink it? She invited them to choose freely from the bar instead.
Bogdan poured a weak gin and tonic.
Thomas had a beer.
Milorad chose Coke.
Goran wanted whiskey. Johnnie Walker Blue Label—the same stuff Dad’d used to serve.
The men looked serious. At the same time, there was a mood of expectation in the air. Natalie thought she knew why. They wanted her to take control, clear things up.
She remembered how Dad’d served her whiskey in the library in front of a few of them. That was his signal: Natalie has my complete trust—and she should have your trust as well.
She’d told Mom to keep to the den or the kitchen. It felt weird to give her orders, especially considering the way things’d been between them lately. But there was no alternative, they couldn’t have her running around in the middle of the meeting.
Natalie and the men made small talk for a bit, while she filled their glasses. Then she sat back down in the armchair.
“I’m grateful, and I’m as happy as I can be.” She spoke Swedish, not Serbian. Mainly so that Thomas would understand, but also: she had new ideas.
“You know that I miss my father every single day,” Natalie went on. “You know how I’ve been struggling with grief ever since it happened. You have respected that. You have supported me. But you also know that there are those who have handled this situation completely differently.”
The four men nodded. Natalie paused. Eyed them.
Goran: in his regular tracksuit. Head tilted slightly up. Not in a cocky way, more to show that he was paying attention to what she was saying.
Bogdan: in a red shirt with a huge Polo Ralph Lauren figure on his chest. Bogdan’s head moved constantly while Natalie spoke. He was nodding slowly: accepting what she was saying.
Thomas: in a shirt and jeans. Milorad was rocking jeans and a hoodie with a tribal pattern on it. Both were listening.
Natalie spoke. “First of all, I’ve gotten hold of material from the police investigation. The cops’ve analyzed fragments from the explosion and cartridges and stuff from the assassination attempt in the garage, and they’ve concluded that it’s a matter of a certain kind of grenade, a certain kind of plastic explosive, and bullets from a certain kind of gun. After that, we contacted Gabriel Hanna—you know who that is. He says he knows where the gear’s from. He sees a connection.”
She paused again. Checked out the men’s level of interest.
“According to Hanna, the grenade, the plastics, and the gun come from a restaurant called the Black & White Inn. He knows that they’ve been sitting on a store of precisely that kind of grenade, that they’ve had access to that particular type of plastic explosive, and that they received a batch of Russian guns at the beginning of the year.”
An aha through the library. Everyone was familiar with the Black & White Inn. The pub was an institution in the underworld. A marketplace for all kinds of things. Goran’d explained to Natalie: the Black & White Inn—the best shopping in Stockholm if you’re interested in self-defense or seriously injuring someone. But the thing was not that they were familiar with the Black & White Inn. The thing was that the pub was half-owned, through companies and front men, by Radovan’s estate. And worst of all: Stefanovic’d basically run the place when Kum was alive.
The connection: Stefanovic and the Black & White Inn, the sale of the weapons that’d killed Dad. The connection: Stefanovic was trying to prevent Natalie from digging into the investigation. The connection: Stefanovic wanted to take over Dad’s empire.
Still: circumstances spoke severely against the notion that Stefanovic was involved. He’d been sitting in the BMW himself when the explosion took place. He could’ve died as well, easy peasy.
So who was involved?
Natalie reported on other information that she’d found out by reading the investigation documents. The way both the assassination attempt and the final attack’d been handled pointed to someone with a military background, a pro. The perp’d used a grenade from the former Yugoslavia. Stefanovic’d contributed zilch in the interrogation with the police.
The men listened in silence. The information didn’t come as a surprise. That it could be someone with a military background from the home country—expected. But again: the connection to the Black & White Inn was not expected.
Natalie continued to analyze the situation. Not just the murder—she wanted to get a sense of the whole picture. JW refused to give her full information and control. Beogradska Banka was giving her trouble. Someone must’ve leaked to the authorities, it couldn’t be a coincidence. The Enforcement Administration was chasing after the estate with taxes, recovery orders, and repossession threats. She wasn’t being paid any dividends from the businesses that were continuing to run in Radovan’s name, except the ones that Goran and Bogdan were responsible for.
The men commented on the things she said. They added information. They wanted to know what they should do about the situation.
Natalie instructed Bogdan to go to Zurich and speak to the bank there, try to open the final reserves—Dad’s company’s safe deposit box. She gave him a power of attorney, hoped it would work. She didn’t mention that the money here at home would run out within a month.
She remembered once when she’d been allowed to come along to Switzerland. Maybe eight years ago—she’d been a girl then. Different keys, codes, receptionists who smiled and spoke bad English. Safe deposit boxes en masse. Dad’d opened his, pulled it out, and brought it with him into a booth. Natalie’d had to wait outside.
She also told Bogdan to contact the coat checks he used to work with and inform them that payments were to be made only to him or one of his boys. She ordered Goran to inform the truckers who brought in the smuggled booze and cigarettes the same thing. From now on, you deliver only to Goran and to people Goran has approved. She asked Milorad to regain control over the amphetamine channels and their stolen goods business.
She would reconquer what was hers. Calculation: Stefanovic would perceive it as an open confrontation. Conclusion: a war would break out for real.
They had to be prepared.
They discussed the issue for a while. They had to make sure that all the underlings were on their guard. Got bulletproof vests, armed themselves, never went out alone. All jobs, even just selling smack, would be done in groups. Above all: Natalie would never be alone.
Finally: she brought up the Cherkasova story. The others squirmed uncomfortably in their seats.
She was clear: “I’ve understood what my father was doing. You don’t have to be ashamed. I don’t judge him, even if I’m not exactly overjoyed to hear that kind of thing. He was my father. That’s enough for me.”
Goran took over. “I’ve looked into this more. The politician, Svelander, is serving on a committee that decides over Baltic Sea issues. I’ve made the rounds. Your father was involved, that much I know.”
Natalie: “How?”
“I don’t exactly know yet. But Stefanovic has instructed this—eh … what word should I use?—prostitute, to film Svelander. The guy has influence over building permits in the Baltic Sea. And the Russians are building a gas pipe on the bottom of the sea. So Stefanovic wants to be able to blackmail that horndog with the films this woman is taking.”
The men, reinspected: the determination in their eyes, their faint nods, their humming. They understood, they realized, they knew—this wasn’t the usual small-scale shit. This was in a different league. Obvious. And Stefano
vic was trying to run it on his own. Without giving Kum’s daughter her share. What an asshole.
“This is about the Russians,” Goran said. “Your father helped them by using this Cherkasova woman. Maybe he helped them in other ways too. And now Stefanovic is running the racket on his own. That’s not okay.”
“And where does this JW guy come into the picture?” Natalie asked. “We saw Stefanovic meet him.”
Goran looked into her eyes. He knew they’d met up. She didn’t know what he thought about that.
“I have no idea,” he said. “But he builds money-laundering systems. Him and Bladman’ve got to start playing for us. And now when there’s an open war with Stefanovic, they can’t put their heads in the sand anymore. They’ve got to pick sides.”
They ended the meeting. The men looked pleased—despite all the question marks. She’d finally taken control over the situation. They’d finally been given direction.
Nevertheless, she felt she had only herself to rely on. She was living in two worlds at once. The men were listening to her. Still, she was alone.
Alone with her grief.
Alone with the responsibility.
Alone with her hate.
Days passed. She put her law studies on hold. Worked frenetically. Reality was what mattered now. Called Goran, Bogdan, and Thomas several times every day. They called back from different phone numbers or Skype—they were security fascists. She appreciated that they were teaching her to be the same way. She talked, faxed, e-mailed American Express, SEB, Handelsbanken: at least saved something. She tried to get Beogradska Banka to understand that Bogdan was her representative, no one else. She studied the police investigation. She researched the Black & White Inn—mostly by talking to Thomas and Goran, but also through Mischa Bladman, who agreed to produce the bookkeeping and other documents. She looked up everything she could find about the politician who’d bought sex from Cherkasova, about Baltic Sea concessions, about the other men who paid for Melissa. She went around town and checked out restaurants, bars, pubs, and clubs that ought to get a visit paid to them by Bogdan or one of his men in order to put their coat checks under his protection. She tested out ideas about ways to import amphetamines, to cut the smack, to establish laboratories in Sweden instead of in the Baltics. This was all new for her—Milorad explained the whole setup, from the ground up. She schemed strategies for a meeting with Stefanovic—it was only a question of time before the shit hit the fan and he started to act. One thing was certain: she—they—needed money. Without cash, she couldn’t continue running this project. Without cash, she wouldn’t be able to handle a war with the traitor.