by Jens Lapidus
He asked Hägerström to position himself behind one of the cars.
He pulled the Palestinian scarf up over his mouth and nose. Positioned himself next to the gray metal door that appeared to be the only entrance to the garage, aside from the route they’d just used.
He waited.
Seconds ticked.
Minutes passed.
He held his hand over the fake gun.
A fluorescent in the ceiling flashed. There were pipes and cables on the walls.
Jorge remembered when Mahmud’d been picked up by the EMTs on the street in Pattaya. Jorge’d thought his friend was dead. But now Mahmud was waiting for him in Thailand.
And Javier was waiting for J-boy in a transport car en route from jail.
It was like one of the computer games that he’d played as a kid. You shot a figure on the uppermost part of the screen. The figure fell down and destroyed two other figures lower down, just by falling on top of them.
Domino effects. All of life, every single thing you did, was like popping computer game dudes. Everything could affect something else. Everything was connected.
He was scared: all the shit he’d set in motion. All the people who were waiting for him. What if he’d taken other steps in life? What if he’d never saved Denny Vadúr there in the Ping-Pong room and never gotten in touch with the Finn? Something good—saving someone from a beating. Had led to something else good—a recipe for a CIT heist. A talk with Mahmud one night at the café. Led to something half-ass—two and a half million in booty. A small decision—to trick someone: led to the worst thing he’d ever been through. Again: everything seemed to be connected. It was like one giant complicated web of connections and people. Where did it all begin, really?
What if he’d learned to draw like Björn?
What if he’d tested heroin that time when Ashur tried?
What if he’d listened more to Mom? Who would’ve been waiting for him then?
Maybe the same people would’ve been waiting for him, after all. But they would’ve been waiting for something good. Not for him to attack the first best person who walked in through the door of an ambulance garage.
62
Hägerström was crouching behind one of the ambulances.
He saw Jorge standing by the side of the garage entrance. His face was hidden by his hat and scarf, only his dark eyes peeked out. And in those eyes, Hägerström saw the same thing he had seen when they met at the law firm: desperation, panic. Except now the panic almost seemed to have taken over.
Torsfjäll was informed about the situation. Jorge wanted to free Javier so that Javier could help him settle the score with the Finn and get his sister and nephew back. A rescue mission was a dangerous operation, but Torsfjäll had said, “The ends justify the means in this industry. That’s just how it has to be, or else us cops would never get anywhere. This will lead us to the brain behind the CIT robbery.”
The inspector was right. Within twenty-four hours, they ought to have Jorge, Javier, the Finn, Bladman, and JW, each in a cruiser on his way to be placed in custody. As long as Jorge didn’t totally lose it. As long as no one was injured unnecessarily. As long as Hägerström could control this thing.
At the same time, he longed for Javier. It was as though he had a mosquito bite—in the heart. Every other minute it itched so badly that he had to muster all his concentration not to feel too much.
A few seconds passed.
The gray metal door opened. An ambulance driver walked out. Green clothes with yellow reflectors over the shoulders. A radio attached to her breast pocket. A Bluetooth earpiece hanging around her neck.
Hägerström saw how Jorge took a step forward, raised the Taurus pistol. Pressed it against the woman’s head. Covered her mouth with his hand. He leaned over and whispered something in her ear.
Everything was so quiet. Hägerström had expected Jorge to yell and carry on. Wave the gun around. That the person who walked out through the door would cry or scream something.
Ten seconds later Jorge was beside him. A pair of keys in his hand. They ran to an ambulance. Jumped in. Hägerström climbed into the driver’s seat.
He used the keys to start the engine.
The window was open. Jorge kept the fake gun aimed at the ambulance woman the entire time. She was still standing by the entrance. Her cell phone and the radio on the floor in front of her, destroyed.
One of the two garage doors was already open. Hägerström carefully put the vehicle in drive.
Rolled out of the garage.
Ten minutes later. Huddinge’s closed forensic psychiatric ward was only five hundred yards from the ambulance garage in a separate fenced-in building—they didn’t want the criminal crazies in the same building as the regular spooks, plus, of course: they had to keep them from escaping. Hägerström and Jorge had parked the ambulance two hundred yards from the insane asylum, in a staff parking lot.
Now they were sitting in a different car, an old Opel. Jorge said he’d boosted it earlier that day. They saw the driveway and the entrance to the closed ward twenty yards off.
Soon one of the cars from the Department of Corrections ought to pull in with Javier.
Jorge was smoking a cigarette. The window was rolled down. Still, he didn’t bother blowing the smoke out through the opening. Stared straight ahead instead.
Hägerström said, “Are you okay?”
Jorge exhaled smoke. “I’ve got a Kalashnikov in the duffel. Can you work one of those?”
Hägerström nodded. He thought: It’s better that I have the real weapon.
Jorge grabbed the duffel from the backseat and pulled out the assault rifle.
He held it low so that no passersby could see that they were handling a real AK-47.
He handed Hägerström the weapon. Images from his military service flickered past. Coastal rangers were educated in intelligence service work on enemy territory. If you came across an enemy weapon, you needed to be able to handle it as well as you could your own.
He ran his finger along the bolt. This was a model with an elongated barrel. Probably from some Eastern Bloc country. The magazine box was altered so that you could use Russian military ammo made for a Mosin-Nagent rifle.
Jorge looked at him. Handed over the magazine.
They waited. The weapon was resting in Hägerström’s lap. Loaded and ready.
Huddinge’s closed forensic psychiatric ward was in a one-story concrete building with a worn-looking facade and barred windows. The building was surrounded by a well-maintained lawn. Where the lawn ended, a six-foot fence with barbed wire at the top began. There were surveillance cameras attached to the fence and to metal rods in the lawn. He didn’t see any movement in the building.
The visitors’ entrance was located on the other side. Here by the gates that were used for transport, everything appeared quiet as the grave.
“According to that dirty lawyer,” Jorge said, “he should’ve come by now.”
“Yeah, but you can never trust lawyers. He’ll be here. And I know the Department of Corrections—everything takes longer than you think. I promise.”
Five minutes later a Volvo V70 pulled up to the gates. It was painted red, white, and blue. The Department of Corrections’s logo on its side.
It was a prisoner transport vehicle. Hopefully, it was that prisoner transport vehicle.
The back windows were tinted. Impossible to see whom they were transporting.
Hägerström turned on the engine.
Started the Opel with a jerk. The car jumped forward fifteen feet.
He turned in front of the transport vehicle. Blocked the entrance through the gates.
It was all in now. They took a chance that it actually was Javier back there in the vehicle.
Jorge threw himself out. Hägerström opened the car door, also jumped out.
Jorge was holding the Taurus pistol with both hands.
Hägerström hesitated for a millisecond. Then he saw Javier’s face i
n front of him. He raised the assault rifle.
Jorge pressed his gun to the driver’s-side window. Yelled, “Open the back door now!”
Hägerström caught a glimpse of a terrified face in there.
Then one of the backseat doors opened. He could see Javier back there, sandwiched between two transport guards. His hands were cuffed, and there was a chain running from the handcuffs to a broad leather belt around his waist.
Jorge pointed with the gun. “Let him out.”
Hägerström kept the AK-47 pointed at the two staffers in the backseat throughout.
Javier pushed his way past the guard sitting closest to the door.
Hägerström met his eyes. They glittered.
Jorge screamed, “Blow out the wheels!”
Hägerström hesitated.
Jorge repeated, “I said, blow out the wheels!”
Hägerström squeezed the trigger gently.
He fired off a shot. The noise sounded familiar.
The front tires of the transport vehicle deflated.
An hour later: they were sitting at Hägerström’s place.
Hägerström said, “Damn, the sound of the sirens is still ringing in my ears.”
Javier laughed. “Shit, so fucking elegant, man. We were probably making a hundred and ten when you stepped on it.”
They told and retold. Javier had jumped into the Opel. They had driven two hundred yards and then switched to the boosted ambulance. Blared the sirens and the lights. Taken the highway toward the city. Plowed through traffic like a car on Pravat’s toy racetrack. At Årsta they switched to a car that Hägerström had rented.
Jorge had left them there. He was going to call Hägerström’s place as soon as he knew what the deal was. He didn’t mention any details, but Hägerström understood what he meant.
Javier’s teeth glowed white. They were sitting on Hägerström’s couch. It was the first time Javier had ever been to his house. There hadn’t been any alternative. Jorge was homeless, and taking Javier to some relative’s place would be hopeless—that was the first place the police would look. What was more: according to Jorge, they were going to take care of the thing tonight and then go back to Thailand. It was just a matter of a few hours.
It had taken thirty-five minutes to file, cut, snip, and break apart Javier’s cuffs. But now his hands were free. They had lost all their tan. Hägerström thought his skin looked clean, like milk.
Javier took his hand. Smiled.
Hägerström curled up on the couch.
Javier rested his head on his shoulder.
They were lying in the bedroom. The curtains were pulled. Hägerström knew that the street outside was crawling with UCs. The plan was that they would follow Javier to Jorge who would lead them to the Finn.
But right now he and Javier were an island in time. Hägerström was planning on making the most of these minutes.
They talked. They had had sex about a half hour ago.
Javier told him about the interrogations in jail.
Hägerström told him about the interrogation he had gone through.
It was a strange feeling—he felt like he was twenty-one years old again. The conversations felt so important, so filled with meaning, so honest. They talked about reality. About things that had happened, things that meant something, for real. But what kinds of things? They were talking exclusively about Hägerström’s fake life in the gangster world. It was bizarre.
An hour or so later, his home phone rang. It was Jorge, who wanted to talk to Javier.
Javier went into the kitchen. Hägerström tried to listen in. Only heard mumbling and short responses.
Javier returned to the bedroom.
“We’ve gotta go. It’s payback time for me. Jorge really needs help.”
Hägerström sat up. “He said there was some shit with his sister. What’s going on?”
“Someone’s fucking with him. We gotta bounce. They’re settling the score. He needs our help.”
Hägerström shook his head. “I can’t come.”
“Why not?”
“I’m taking care of my son tonight. I can’t cancel. Sorry, I just can’t come.”
Javier looked at him quickly but didn’t seem to take it very hard. He was still so fucking happy to be free.
Actually, Hägerström was going to see JW in a few hours. Drive him to the meeting with Radovan Kranjic’s daughter and a few others—he didn’t really know who. The only thing he knew was that as soon as Jorge, Javier, and the Finn had been arrested, JW was going to be collared too. And there would be a search of Bladman’s office and all his properties, including the secret one.
Javier dressed and left.
In his mind’s eye, Hägerström saw the caravan of scouts who were trailing him down on the street.
* * *
From: Leif Hammarskiöld [leif.hammarskiold@polis.se]
To: Lennart Torsfjäll [lennart.torsfjall@polise.se]
Sent: October 17
Priority: HIGH
Subject: Re: Operation Tide, The Pillow Biter etc.
Lennart,
First of all, I was just informed about the freeing of Javier. How the hell did this happen? Shooting like a crazy man with an assault rifle? Don’t you have any control over the Pillow Biter? Make sure that Javier, Jorge, and if need be the Pillow Biter, are arrested immediately. If the Commie press finds out about the real situation here, they’ll eat us alive.
Second of all, the economic crimes investigators just informed me that they’ve received an alarm from a number of banks about a series of transactions that were made by Gustaf Hansén and/or JW and/or Bladman over the last few days. They have also succeeded in getting hold of names of a few of the implicated companies, and in around a dozen cases, these can be connected to physical people in Sweden.
I also want to mention that Hansén has apparently been found dead. At this time, the Monaco police confirm that they do not suspect any foul play.
Lennart, this information is EXTREMELY sensitive.
We have seen names in this mess that neither you nor I want dragged through the mud. Your men must be extremely careful and meticulous at the planned hit toward JW and/or Bladman. There is a great deal of material that must not see the light of day. I want you to keep it all under strict control and naturally away from the prosecutor’s eye. Call me about this as soon as possible!
Delete this e-mail, as usual.
Leif
63
The Radisson Blu Arlandia Hotel: one point two miles from Arlanda Airport. According to JW: the Russians wanted it that way. They were only staying for a few hours. The good thing: Natalie was apparently meeting the ones who were really in charge. Not some hooligans stationed in Sweden. Not some underlings without any decision-making power.
She stepped into the conference room.
A man approached and ran a metal detector over her body. It crackled—but didn’t beep. He brushed her arms, body, and legs with his hand.
The man’s hand was covered in black tattoos.
Goran, Thomas, and Adam were sitting on the sofas in the hotel lobby. Sascha was sitting in a car outside the entrance.
She’d seen Milorad and a couple of Stefanovic’s men in another sofa group.
Thomas’d also pointed and told her that an old police colleague of his was sitting in the lobby: “He was fired six months ago, but I actually don’t know what he’s doing here.”
But Natalie knew who it was: JW’s driver. The dude who’d been giving her bad vibes. Thomas said, “I think it seems strange.”
Natalie couldn’t blow things off now. If JW trusted that driver, she would have to too.
The agreement: just her and Stefanovic—eye to eye—in the conference room. Plus JW and the Russians as mediators.
She looked around. An oval wooden table with steel legs. White walls with framed photographs of airplanes. Spotlights in the ceiling. Typical midrange-hotel feel—Natalie’d stayed at so many dif
ferent places over the past few weeks that she’d become hypersensitive to white walls and Scandinavian design.
It was dark outside. The curtains were pulled closed.
On the table: five glasses and a bottle of Absolut Vodka.
At the table: JW and two middle-aged men. The Russians.
Natalie didn’t know much about the people she was meeting. But Thomas and Goran’d told her the little that they knew. And JW’d said a few words too.
Solntsevskaya Bratva: one of the most powerful syndicates. Possibly the biggest mafia in the world. Almost certainly: the most influential organization in Russia—with a global focus. Probably the most dangerous people in the world.
Goran’d told her that her dad’d maintained close relations with avtoritety. But it wasn’t as Natalie’d originally thought—that the Russians’d contacted Dad to get help with something. It was the other way around. Dad’d contacted them many years ago with the following message: “I’ve got holds on people in Sweden who may be of interest to you. I am happy to sell you information when you need it.”
That made her proud. She felt like an equal. Her dad hadn’t just been some errand boy for avtoritety. He’d taken the initiative, offered them something they were willing to pay for.
They introduced themselves as Vladimir Michailov and Sergey Barsykov. Responsible for Scandinavia.
They shook her hand. JW’s eyes flashed.
The man who’d patted her down acted as interpreter.
Vladimir Michailov said, “Welcome. I hope vodka is all right?”
Natalie responded in Russian, “Da.”
They were properly dressed. But differently from JW or Gabriel Hanna—the suits the Russians wore were probably expensive, but they rocked a different style: shinier fabrics, broader shoulders, wider pants. She thought of Semjon the Wolf Averin.
Goran’d advised her to wear jewelry—a two-carat diamond in a simple setting around her neck—it’d been a twentieth birthday present from Dad. In her ears: her Tiffany’s studs. On her finger: a signet ring with the Kranjic family crest engraved in it.
She hung up her coat. Under: a silk top with a dark blazer.