by Jens Lapidus
He fell silent for a brief moment, letting the gravity of the situation sink in.
“According to my sources, he came to Scandinavia a couple of weeks ago. We know that he picked up weapons in Denmark, and we know that he visited an apartment brothel in Malmö. So unfortunately, a lot speaks for him having made his way north, here. And I might add, there is a great risk that he is here to hurt you.”
Ivan continued speaking. He described details of other attacks he’d been informed of. He told them about the Wolf’s reputation in Eastern Europe. Averin was a so-called freelancer—he didn’t belong to any organization. He was hired by avtoritety—the Russian mafia—oligarchs, and Central European crime syndicates when the need arose.
“Normally, I would say: we’ll track down his mother and father. We’ll track down his siblings and cut their throats. The problem is that the Wolf Averin doesn’t have any relatives that anyone seems to know about, except for his daughter. But she has changed her identity. His former wife and parents have been dead for a long time. And if they were alive, he wouldn’t care.”
Natalie felt cold. She looked down at her hands. They were trembling.
“Kum Hasdic—what do you advise?” she asked.
Ivan responded quickly. “If Stefanovic is behind this, you must liquidate him as quickly as you can. The only way is to strike hard and fast. If the Wolf Averin understands that he is no longer going to be paid by his employer, he will stop hunting you. That is the only advice I can give. And if there is trouble, I promise to support you as best I can.”
Natalie thought: There is only one way forward.
Stefanovic’s fate was already sealed.
She just had to understand how JW wanted it to be done.
The following day she met JW at one of the hotels where she stayed. He was driven there by the same man she’d seen pick him up by the Hotel Diplomat. She got the same vibes again, the same ones she got around Thomas. But with this guy, her gut was screaming “Cop!” even louder.
She and JW were lying on the hotel bed. Freshly kissed. Freshly licked. Freshly fucked.
JW explained the plan he was imagining for his big econ-bust.
Really, it was the same basic factors that’d set everything in motion. Several of the jurisdictions JW used had changed their policies. Gotten rid of their supersecrecy, let in international police and EU inspection committees, the UN and OECD. Switzerland’d given up a long time go. The Caribbean’d fallen about six months ago. The British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands were the latest examples. Liechtenstein’d just signed a contract about bank transparency. And now the haven-above-all-havens, Panama, was beginning to waver. The country’s president’d signed a contract about transparency with the United States. Within a few years, the EU would get the same insight. So JW had to move the clients’ money. He’d set up new companies in better countries: Dubai, Macao, Vanuatu, Liberia. JW and his people’d worked hard. Contacted new banks, issued new credit cards to their clients. They made an asset transfer of everything in Northern White Asset Management, moved it to a newly started company in Dubai: Snow Asset Management. After that, the money had to be transferred without setting off the banks’ warning systems.
Natalie understood only about half of what JW told her, but she got the basic idea.
Half the clients’ funds’d been moved. Gustad Hansén’d been working like a maniac from down there. Traveled among the countries like a fucking foreign minister. Met bank people, lawyers, management people in air-conditioned offices. JW and Bladman took care of the paperwork. Filled out forms for banks and law firms. Filed applications for new credit cards. Wrote letters and invoices. Confirmed that the deposits’d been made, faxed signatures, answered questions from clients, like, a hundred times a day.
So far, the clients who’d had their money moved were happy. JW & Co.’d transferred over eight million euros. That created a solid foundation to stand on. Confidence in what they were doing.
But the truth: an equal amount still had to be transferred. Those clients were impatient. Anxious.
And JW was prepared.
He’d been planning this for over a year. Created companies, trusts, accounts tied to accounts—but without activating them. Without transferring a single krona so far.
But soon it would be time: JW would set the ball in motion. Press the button and trigger a chain of transfers. To make a long story short: eight million euros would be transferred from already-existing accounts all over the world into new accounts—and from there into accounts that JW controlled. The clients’ money would become JW’s money.
He would become eight million euros richer in one day. A huge scam. A ridiculous robbery. A superswindle, like taken out of a movie.
“They’re going to kill you,” Natalie said. “Even if I help you, there are going to be so many people who want your head on a plate.”
JW stretched. He looked visibly pleased.
“First of all: none of them can go to the police with it. But they’re going to be angry, you’re right about that.”
His smile was roguish, and his eyes sparkled.
“Second of all: everything I’ve done has been done in Hansén’s name.”
“Okay, sure, but he isn’t exactly going to sit on his hands when he finds out about this.”
“Yes, he is going to be sitting very still. In his car. Gustaf Hansén will be found in his Ferrari at the bottom of the Mediterranean with over two percent alcohol content in his blood. A tragic accident. To those who got swindled, it’s going to appear as though some client did it.”
Natalie didn’t know if she should grin or stare.
“But you’re still right,” JW said. “Even if I’ve made sure that everything points to Hansén, people are going to be mad at me. I’m mixed up in it, after all. That’s why I always need support from people like you. In my industry, you need dangerous friends. So I’m going to need your help, Natalie. I really am.”
Thirty minutes later. Rekissed. Relicked. Refucked.
After JW’s financial run-through: to have sex with him felt like playing with a loaded gun. He was almost too slippery. Too calculating. Too smart.
The entire setup was on a whole new level. Okay, she still had a lot to learn—but she heard Goran, Bogdan, and the others talking almost every single day. She’d discussed many plans, ideas—but JW’s coup beat anything she could even have dreamed of.
But now they needed to talk about the other thing.
“I’ve done what you said,” Natalie said. “My men approached that politician, Svelander, with the videos of him and the hooker. He got scared. Pleaded and begged. Said we could have anything we wanted.”
JW said, “Good, ’cause then the Russians’ll go crazy. Those videos actually belong to them. And they need them for their gas pipe. I’ve tried to set up a meeting with them and Stefanovic. The Russians want you to calm down. That’s all—they demand that you end the war, they want the material, and they want to take care of Svelander on their own. In a few days, I’ll get the time and place.”
“In a few days.” Natalie fell silent.
Soon it was time. There would be a meeting with Stefanovic. A meeting that the traitor would fully believe’d been planned by objective persons. A situation in which he would feel safe.
But really: a meeting where Natalie would be present and would do what she had to do.
Stefanovic would be eliminated.
For Dad’s sake.
58
Jorge’d answered yes to the question.
“Do you have the money?”
“Yes.”
How could he’ve said that he had the cash? Cómo?
Him: an idiot?
Him: a cunt? Got his own sister and his sobrino kidnapped.
Jorge’d been crushed many times in his life. When he’d been forced to crawl back into the cage. When the wheel loader’d been missing before the CIT. When he and the boys’d realized that they’d combed home less than two and
a half million.
But this: Paola and Jorgito—holier than God. More important than anything else in the world.
Again: How could he’ve said that he had the cash?
The fucking cash was floating around somewhere in Europe right now. A café in Thailand: worth zero in comparison. A credit card connected to the dough: worth zero million in comparison.
He slept like shit. Checked out of the homeless shelter at four in the morning. Wandered around the city. Oozed angst. Oozed self-loathing.
He sat down on a park bench in Tantolunden. He rode the loop on a night bus. He heard the birds chirping as though there were something out there in the world to be happy about.
J-boy—the loser.
Ghetto cockroach, betrayer.
Shawshank—what did that matter now?
He saw people going to work. Moms pushing baby carriages. Dads rubbing their eyes. The city was waking up.
Jorge just wanted to sleep.
Later on, he called JW—worth a try.
“Can I get the shit back? Something’s happened.”
JW sounded fed up. “Why?”
Jorge told him quickly what’d happened his sister and Junior.
“I’m very sorry for you. What fucking pigs, man. But it’ll take too long to get the gear home. A few weeks, at least.”
Jorge ended the call.
The same question over and over again: How could he’ve said that he had the fucking cash?
Still: his wandering during the night on the town’d awakened a weak, crappy little idea. A teeny-weeny little plan.
Maybe.
There was an image on his phone. An MMS he’d sent JW four days ago. Crap lighting, the plastic bag around it, shit focus. It was a picture of the money. Clear enough—it was maaaany stacks of bills.
He would need help. But from whom? Mahmud, Jimmy, and Tom were still in Thailand. Eddie was still locked up. Elliot was living in Germany now—apparently he had three kids there, with three different babymamas. Rolando wasn’t even an option. And JW? The dude was too weak for this kinda thing.
He could think of only one person: the Sven who reeked of pork. The man with the most Sven name in Svenland. Martin the ex-screw-ex-cop Hägerström.
It wasn’t good. But it’d have to do.
Later. Cold as Santa’s ass. Jorge remembered the last time he’d been on the lam, when he’d crashed in people’s summer shacks. This was worse—he was colder inside this time around.
He pressed the button for the buzzer.
A canned voice: “The Practice.”
“Hi. I wanna see Jörn Burtig the lawyer, please.”
“He’s not in at the moment. Can I take a message?”
“It’s about his client, Babak Behrang. Can I come up and wait?”
“There probably isn’t any point. He’s in court and won’t be back until five o’clock.”
Jorge kept roaming around the city. He had nowhere to go now. He pulled his hat down even farther. Pulled his scarf up higher. Let people thing he was loco. Let them think whatever they wanted. Just as long as they didn’t call the five-oh.
With Hägerström’s help and the photo of the cash, Babak might accept. Maybe it would all work out.
He walked down to the water.
Looked out over the city. What kind of a place was this, anyway?
He’d run a café in the inner city for almost a year. Smoked weed with some niggas on Tomtebogatan tons of times. Partied at Stureplan. Boosted shit from the sports apparel stores around Sergelstorg as a kid. Chinga’d pretty chicas in tiny condos on the south side. He knew the inner city. He belonged here.
Still: it didn’t want him. He could feel it everywhere. People stared. Gripped their purses tighter. Pulled their cell phones out, prepared themselves. The inner city: too white for him. The inner city: as though there were an Israeli wall between it and him.
He tried to imagine what it would be like to mix Chillentuna with downtown. What it would look like if he brought half of Sollentuna here. To the fancy streets, the old buildings, and the trendy restaurants. Just half. How would it feel if he filled the place up with Latinos, Somalis, Kurds? If he exchanged every other clinically clean 7-Eleven with one of the homey tobacco stores on Malmvägen? Removed half the purebred Labradors and put in a few pit bulls? Exchanged the church spires for basement mosques? Removed the elite high schools and brought in the chaos classes, where the fifth graders hadn’t even learned to read yet but where the atmosphere swayed with creativity? Replaced some of the polite, boring, faggy feeling with pure emotions and authentic experiences?
He never even should’ve tried. La dolce vita—not for him. He should’ve just kept being a coffee man. Now he had to finish what he’d started.
Life deluxe—to turn everything back to square one. Paola and Jorgito back to their normal lives.
Later: the air was even colder.
He pressed the button. The same canned-sounding voice.
He was buzzed in. Two flights up, an ordinary stairwell.
The door to the law firm clicked.
He stepped inside.
Sick office—honest: Jorge hadn’t been inside a law firm in ten years, probably. The last times he’d seen his lawyer, he’d been locked up in jail. Sat in a sweaty, windowless room in order to run through things before the trial.
Red chairs, white walls, a lot of glass. A long desk in the reception area, two receptionists. The firm’s phat logo on the wall behind the welcome desk.
“How can I help you?”
Jorge removed the scarf from over his mouth. “I wanna see Jörn Burtig. He’s supposed to be here now.”
“He’s here, but I don’t know if he’s able to see you. What is this in regard to, and who may I say is calling for him?”
“Say it’s about his client Babak Behrang and that it’s very, very important.”
Twenty minutes later: Jorge was sitting in a worn-looking leather armchair. Not as minimalistic in here. Piles of documents, books, papers, computers. Paperweights, paintings, framed photos from newspapers.
Jörn Burtig on the other side of the table. Babak Behrang’s defense attorney.
According to the chatter on the inside: one of the city’s best.
They shook hands. Burtig rested one leg on top of the other, leaned back in his chair.
Burtig said, “Okay, Jorge. I’m in a bit of a rush. But I understand that you want to talk about Babak. What’s this about?”
The lawyer wasn’t from Stockholm, you could tell by his accent.
Jorge took his hat off. “I know Babak well. My last name is Salinas Barrio. Do you know who I am?”
The lawyer leaned back farther.
“I know who you are. And since I know that now, I have to ask you to leave. We can’t sit and have a meeting like this. You are one of the coaccused in the same case as my client, Babak. That means the police are looking for you. But that’s not the problem, I can assure you—I have no problem having meetings with wanted persons. No, the problem is that Babak is being held with restrictions on communication. That means he is not permitted to bring in or out any information that has to do with the case. And I am not allowed to do it for him. So with all due respect, I have to ask you to leave.”
“I know what restrictions are, believe me.”
“Good. Then you know that if I bring information in or out to Babak, I will be guilty of an ethical violation, which means that I risk losing my license to practice. So I would like you to leave before you’ve even said anything.”
“But can’t I say what I want, and then you do what you want?”
“No, I would rather not hear anything. If I do, I’ll wind up in trouble with other rules of professional conduct, loyalty to my client, and things like that. Do you understand? There will be trouble. You have to leave. Now. I’m sorry.”
Jorge didn’t know what to do. The fucking lawyer was shutting him down. What an asshole.
“But just listen anyway,” he said.
The lawyer stood up. “No, thank you.”
Jorge raised his voice. “I know Babak somehow got a bunch of lies out to a guy called the Finn. But tell Babak this: I want him to take back whatever he said. I want him to make the Finn stop hunting me.”
The lawyer held the door open.
“I’m prepared to help Babak if he does that,” Jorge went on. “Tell him to make sure he gets sick so he’s transferred to Huddinge Hospital. Just say that, and I’ll do the rest.”
“No, thank you. It’s time for you to leave now.” The lawyer grabbed Jorge’s arm.
Jorge rose. Reluctantly. “Just tell him to get himself to Huddinge and he’ll get a hundred Gs.”
Jorge held up his cell phone. The picture of the money in front of Burtig’s face.
The lawyer pushed Jorge out the door.
Jorge said, “I’ll give you fifty Gs too.”
Jörn Burtig, Esquire, didn’t even so much as glance at the photo.
59
They could have arrested Jorge yesterday already, when Hägerström met him. Jorge had explained what happened. Apparently Babak had talked smack about Jorge. Then that had leaked out from jail somehow. The shit had hit the fan, big time. A crazy fucker called the Finn had kidnapped his sister and nephew.
Jorge had tried to talk to Babak’s lawyer but got the cold shoulder. Now he was close to a breakdown. Hägerström could see it in his eyes, they were bloodshot, wide-open, intense. Desperation mixed with panic.
Torsfjäll got all worked up. Now they’d be able to pluck the Finn too. That would mean a major victory for the Stockholm police. And a guaranteed promotion for Hägerström. An enormous victory for society versus the rabble.
But Jorge didn’t want help with the Finn, he told Hägerström. He needed to free Javier.
“Listen, all my homies are in Thailand. I need to get Javier out. Then I hope he can help me with this Finn fucker. And maybe you can help me with that too. But first Javier’s gotta get out.”