Three Minutes

by Anders Roslund

  To his safe house. In another part of Cali. An apartment in Comuna 6’s poorest area that cost little to buy. Narrow streets with substandard housing, it lay directly on the riverbank in imminent risk of destruction, despite the ongoing construction of dikes. An apartment he’d designed every detail of in order to protect them from a level nine threat—as close to the security of the US president’s residence as it was possible to get. And which they would now use for the first time.

  “Piet, you don’t understand—we’re not going to live somewhere else. We’re not going to keep running. We’re going home.”

  “One week. Give me one week to solve this. I have a plan, Zofia. Trust me. I have a meeting tomorrow, which is the first step. Wilson. In Bogotá. Tomorrow, call in sick to work, tell Señora Vega the boys are sick. We don’t need to pack or buy food. The only thing you need to do when you get there is to follow the guidelines I’m about to give you. And in case of an absolute emergency—use the weapons I’ve got stored there, which I know you’ve mastered.”

  A situation that should never—based on the apartment’s design—occur. But he hoped it would make her feel a little more secure.

  “I’ve already started my work, my plan. I promise you—we’re going to survive.”

  “That’s not what I want. Survival. Just like I said.” Now she was screaming. “I said I want to live! And I want to do it with you and my kids!”

  Her desperate cries penetrated and hurt him with the same force that they bounced off the walls of the house. He waited it out, held her.

  “One week. Trapped.” She glanced toward the floor, lowered her voice, almost whispering. “Then I’m not waiting anymore, Piet. Not even for you.”

  A DUTY MANAGER in the communications department begged forgiveness for calling the chief of staff at 2:27 a.m. Then she told him an e-mail containing an attachment had just been sent to the White House’s public address. She had assessed it as needing to be dealt with immediately. A one-minute-and-forty-three-second film.

  The investigator at the NGA established later that the sender had used another Internet cafe and another IP address than at first contact, but this one was also located in downtown Bogotá and had the president as its recipient.

  A single continuous, unedited shot. The picture was steady—the photographer had probably placed a tripod in front of the locked cage door. Chief of Staff Perry and Vice President Thompson still lacked the strength to talk. When the film finally froze on what they realized was the last shot, they sat in silence in front of the computer screen placed on the low coffee table, quietly breathing in sync, waiting until one of them couldn’t wait any longer and instead leaned over and moved the cursor back to the beginning and started the film over. Seven times. And new details emerged with each viewing.

  They both recognized the straw mattress and red plastic bowl from the proof-of-life picture they’d received earlier. They didn’t notice the chain around his neck, oddly enough, until midway through the second viewing—a dark shadow had obscured it where it blurred from the tip of the chin and down to the upper edge of the breast. On the fourth viewing the chief of staff noticed deep wounds had replaced toenails on Speaker Crouse’s right foot. On the fifth they distinguished the swellings on his hands and arms from bruises and cuts in the skin. And during the seventh, they noticed on the floor of the cage a ground plate with electrical wiring, a torture method they’d heard of, but never seen the consequences of.

  The picture had been silent, no demands. This was a film. With sound. And demands.

  Chief of Staff Perry moved the cursor back one last time. Thirty-two seconds into the timeline. That was when Crouse grabbed the bamboo bars hard and in a quiet, almost whispering voice read some sort of sign that was being held up next to the camera lens, his tired eyes jumped up and down the rows of stilted, slightly bureaucratic English.

  “I, Timothy D. Crouse, am doing fine. I have been treated well and with respect by my hosts.”

  Chief of Staff Perry and Vice President Thompson could feel the pain in almost every word that came out of their friend and colleague’s mouth, even in the soft armchairs of this beautiful office in the White House, and by the end they knew those words by heart.

  “Mr. President, I am alive—but for how long? That depends on you.”

  Tim Crouse was strong, stubborn—the type with a back that would never bend. But his skin bore the traces of violence. Arrhythmic muscle contractions in his arms, chest, thighs, had been caused by electrocution. His empty gaze testified to further torture. Step by step they must have broken him down.

  “I therefore plead that the Crouse Force, which I myself initiated and created, be dismantled effective immediately, and that our imperialist aggressions and provocations against the Colombian people cease.”

  The Crouse Force. The effort to destroy the whole system of production in Colombia: blowing up cocaine kitchens, seizing shipments, capturing arms shipments, laying waste to warehouses, burning coca plantations. Crushing the very infrastructure of cocaine manufacturing.

  “If you cooperate, I will continue to live, with my loved ones, just as you live with yours.”

  The only information included in the anonymous email informed them that Speaker Crouse’s appeal, spoken on a camera by his own free will, would be distributed in full to media in the morning.

  “It’s very important that you act quickly, Mr. President. I await your reply.”

  Chief of Staff Perry stopped the film and turned off the computer. He couldn’t bear the hissing sound of the hard drive. And he knew how the movie ended. With several detailed images of Crouse’s face and body, the terrible injuries that neither he nor the vice president could stand to watch anymore.

  They would do as they were told, act fast—the hostage takers would get their answer. The United States does not negotiate with terrorists. The hunt would not be abandoned—it would escalate.

  Therefore, the White House would immediately begin preparing for the next attack, check another name off that list.

  THE LAST TRIP.

  The one you only make once. Just as clear, as special as the first, which you also only make once. Then there are the rest, all the others in between, the ones that just happen.

  Bernhard Glen watched a blinking computer screen, on a fairly simple chair at a fairly simple table. Three floors down and surrounded by armored steel. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower’s command center, the heart of this huge aircraft carrier, which, just like his own, was protected by what was around it, was sensitive, powerful, and kept him alive. A short distance away he glimpsed the back of Commander Norton, who was in the middle of a conversation with one of the operators; in another part of the room Lieutenant Commander Eriksen stood with a telephone in hand. Quiet, calm, even with eighteen people working in a confined space around the clock, even though in just one hundred and eighty seconds two keys would turn at the same time and open the cover on the firing button.

  He’d been just twenty-two years old the first time—Operation Desert Storm and those strange months in the Persian Gulf. That’s how it had seemed back then, not quite real, an excitement he no longer felt—maybe his advancing age or the realization that it was real people they were shooting at had gradually changed his experience. But he could still feel the hot, dry wind on his twenty-nine-year-old skin during Operation Southern Watch’s no-fly zone over Iraq, or hear the Indian Ocean’s roaring waves as they hunted al-Qaeda seven years later from Djibouti to Somalia.

  It all went by so fast. A professional life framed by death. That was also why he finally received his specialist officer grade—assisting researchers and engineers who were developing hybrid weapons, merging the control systems of anti-aircraft missiles and cruise missiles. In order to shoot, and kill, with them, too.

  “One hundred and twenty seconds—all set?”

  Lieutenant Commander Eriksen broke the silence. And Bernhard Glen nodded.

  “Ready, sir.”

  His very las
t journey began ninety-six hours earlier, when they received the go-ahead and left the Naval station in Norfolk, Virginia. They’d been upgraded to Code Orange forty-eight hours ago, when a group of Delta Force soldiers localized the Queen of Hearts and Ten of Hearts on a small property in the village of La Cuchilla. Gone to Code Red twenty-four hours ago, when a sniper fired a capsule onto the lawn of that property and the microchip embedded inside started to broadcast.

  “Ninety seconds—status?”

  “Homing device calibrated to the targeting systems. The location coordinates have been verified to the target coordinates. The firing codes are in place for both the launching pad and robot.”

  The Caribbean Sea. He’d been able to see the coast of Colombia from the deck, make out the outlines of a city called Cartagena. And now in his monitor—according to the numbers crowded at the bottom left corner it was just over 278 nautical miles away—their intended target.

  Washington sent the USS Liberty—which remained off the Pacific coast of Colombia—for a drone strike. But the property where these two doomed people were located, according to the Delta Force investigators, was equipped with jamming equipment powerful enough to ward off that kind of attack. The solution was one of the cruise missiles he helped to develop—modified for both satellite control, visual control, and inertial navigation. And it was neither the destroyers, nor the corvettes, who would fire it—it was him, and he was going to do it from this ship.

  “Sixty seconds.”

  The last trip. And then what? He’d never really thought about it, even though he knew he should.

  “Forty-five seconds.”

  There wasn’t much else. Teaching? He’d started receiving offers. And he’d tried it, that year when he thought stillness outside was the same as stillness inside, and so moved onto land and into the classroom. And that first attack—the one against the King of Hearts—had been carried out by Steve Sabrinsky, one of the men he trained, and perhaps he’d felt somewhat involved. One man firing his first shot, another firing his last.

  No. Never going to do that again. He was sure of it. It wasn’t the same. He’d finally learned that that had been his education. The calm outside of himself did not translate to calm on the inside, instead it meant even more anxiety.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  The ammunition handlers had left the launch pad. The camera on the tip of the missile searched the sky. The twenty-four digit and letter firing code, which was to be fed into the battle computer.

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  Mamie. The name of this newly christened cruise missile. Eisenhower’s wife. He wasn’t sure it was a good name.

  “Ten seconds.”

  Bernhard Glen took a deep breath, trying to freeze this final moment and stay inside it. It was impossible—it pushed forward, pushed under.

  “Five seconds.”

  And he didn’t know it yet, but afterward he’d even miss the jargon he’d despised for so long, dismissed as adolescent and tragic. Time to play some poker, Glen. Shuffle up and deal, Glen.

  “Four seconds, three . . .”

  The jargon he’d also encounter right after this was over.

  Well played, Glen—King of Hearts, and now the Queen of Hearts and Ten of Hearts.

  “. . . two, one . . .”

  Two more, Glen, and you’ll have a royal flush.

  “. . . fire.”

  NOT FAR NOW to Bogotá. He’d tried listening to music, but no matter what radio station he switched to the song seemed like a fake scream, an aggressive public display, and the melody an atonal sound loop with no harmony. He’d tried silence, but no matter how intensely he stared out the windshield trying to lose himself in nothingness, his wife’s words drowned out everything.

  One week. Trapped. Then I’m not waiting anymore, Piet. Not even for you.

  He’d tied a black piece of cloth tightly around his head, hiding his tattoos just to be safe, but it was hot and itchy, so he loosened the knot on the neck. The only concrete piece of information they had on him was that lizard tattoo. From now on, he’d have to grow his hair back, looking like Piet Hoffmann was now less dangerous than looking like Peter Haraldsson.

  All morning he’d made sure to listen to the news at the top of every hour, that’s what he’d agreed to do with Zofia, that was how they had to live now—with constant updates. And when the clock struck eleven as he approached the city’s outer ring of suburbs, it became even clearer. Suddenly the slow report was interrupted by a blaring voice announcing there’d been a missile attack. At least that’s how he understood it. A missile and two dead people. He was sure of it now. That was followed by the official press release from the United States, which described a successful attack, and then a report about how the search for the remaining ten names on the kill list continued in what was now called the “Final War on Drugs.”

  The news report had just ended and the weather report started when the phone rang.

  “Did you hear?”

  Zofia. He loved her so.

  “Yes.”

  “Next time, Piet, it—”

  “I’m gonna fix this. I promise. We will survive. And live.”

  He parked like last time one block west of El Parque Metropolitano Tercer Milenio and crossed the large recreation area—ignored the impulse to step out on the basketball court and play for a moment, shrugged his shoulders at two people who thought he should have stopped their misdirected tennis ball—and walked back out onto the streets on the park’s east side. The World Orbital Systems office, one of forty-seven branches located in various world capitals, was on the ground floor of a newly built office building that was focused on technology and information. The slightly overweight, mustachioed manager didn’t recognize Hoffmann from his last visit—for research and prep—but his smile was just as friendly and he seemed to have plenty of time for explanations.

  “We call these ones spy satellites. Because that’s what they called them before. And, if I’m being honest, because that name sells.” The store manager winked, as if he’d just revealed something that was just between them. “They orbit the Earth just like any other satellite. But closer. Low Earth Orbit. And so they have to rotate considerably faster—otherwise they’d just fall down. It takes less than an hour for one of our satellites to orbit.”

  And Hoffmann had nothing against that, he liked salesmen who understood you got people to buy by making them feel special, that it was all about confidence and affinity—that’s what you did as an informant as well—so he winked back.

  “How long will it take until my satellite’s sent up? Until I can use it. If you get the coordinates from me, let’s say, now?”

  “I’d say five days.”

  “And if I want it up there today?”

  “That’s difficult.”

  “But possible? If I pay double?”

  A personal satellite released by a rocket at an altitude of three hundred kilometers. Thirteen centimeters long and weighing seven hundred and fifty grams. And with a life expectancy of three months, more than he needed.

  “In that case I’d say it is. Possible.” The store manager slid his eyes over to his computer screen and seemed to find what he was looking for. “One satellite. Today . . . let’s see . . . if I move one of the thirty customers who bought a place in the next launch, suddenly we have a hole. A free spot. And now we can put you there. What luck. You might as well take it.” A new wink. “Then we just need the purpose.”

  “Video recording of the Earth’s surface.”

  “And . . . officially?”

  This skilled salesman was good at that too. Reading people who were purchasing private satellites in order to monitor someone or something—and offering them discretion.

  “Write whatever you like.”

  “Measuring the Earth’s magnetism? Testing electronic equipment? A relay station for amateur radio? Biological tests?”

  “You pick.”

  The smiling salesman chose the first optio
n. Measuring the Earth’s magnetism.

  “You know that there’s space for you to load something into your satellite, up to two hundred grams?”

  “I just need video. That’s all.”

  Hoffmann paid twenty thousand US dollars—twice the usual price—but he was allowed to stay in the store and follow the launch on the manager’s screen. While he made his way back through a park filled with children and teens playing football in central Bogotá, his private satellite made its way from a rocket launched from one of the many islands that made up the Kingdom of Tonga. He was going to keep working on what he’d promised Zofia—making sure they survived, lived. In two days. Go to number one. The same time as always. After that unannounced detour through Medellín, he still managed to make it in time, now all that remained was the short distance to a café with bamboo walls and green door.

  To a meeting—though he didn’t know it—with a man who once tried to kill him.

  EWERT GRENS WASN’T quite sure he was in the right place. A strange little door painted with green frills by someone who had too much time on their hands and who’d overestimated their talent. Bamboo was hung like a second skin across the walls.

  This was Gaira Café. Grens wondered how Wilson had ever found his way here. Not much lighting. Chairs built for smaller, younger bodies. But pleasant music and a friendly waiter, who brought him a tray with a small coffee cup next to a metal tub of raw sugar.

  It tasted fantastic. Colombian coffee that hadn’t traveled halfway around the globe. Almost as good as what came out of the machine in the homicide unit corridor in the police station in Stockholm. There wasn’t much else that even came close.