Three Minutes

by Anders Roslund

  He’d left Arlanda on a temporary passport for a twenty-six-hour trip. He’d lived a full life without really knowing what jet lag was. Now he did—after a night spent in that feverish zone between dreaming and wakefulness at the Hotel Estelar La Fontana. Top floor, overlooking the streets of Bogotá, which never seemed to sleep. A continent he’d never wanted to visit. A city he’d never imagined seeing. Life—despite all these years—was still hard to predict.

  One more cup. And the coffee tasted better.

  Thirty-eight years as a police officer, he hadn’t had a clue—none of them did—that so much would change. That they’d end up investigating a completely different kind of crime. That over his professional life, the number of drug-related deaths would increase by seventeen times. Seventeen-hundred percent. And then keep increasing. They’d all been taught to deal with other driving forces. Criminality so strongly linked to drugs, to drug use, to drug profits.

  The main industry of organized crime. One of the biggest industries of our age, annual sales of 2.25 trillion kronor and huge profit margins. The drugs he investigated in Stockholm had traveled as far as this wonderful coffee, I’d like a third cup, thanks, on a road lined with violence, blood, death. And when an organization had been built to smuggle drugs, it could just as well be used to smuggle women and weapons as well. And when that wasn’t enough, when profits need to be further maximized, it formed the basis for the more mundane crimes: looting, blackmail, embezzlement. A different time. When drug organizations run society.

  Grens stood up. He was deliberately early, unsure if he’d find his way through a capital city that was so different from the one he lived in. A walk with Wilson’s map, marked with three large letters in red ink, then a long bus ride, then another walk. Different—but he liked the surroundings. Despite this mission. He felt lighter here, the streets and buildings weren’t watching him in the same way, old patterns and emotions had stayed at home, or at least hadn’t caught up with him yet.

  He was about to sit opposite a man he’d never met. Someone he’d hunted, had been convinced he’d executed. But who’d tricked them all. Someone who had been dead and should be dead, but still walked the streets—what did that make him, a ghost?

  He’s coming back here, Ewert. Alive.

  Wilson had handed him five airplane tickets at Terminal 5. One with his own name. The other four with the first names Peter, Maria, William, Sebastian—all with the last name Haraldsson.

  No. He wasn’t bringing him back. Not against his will. The only murder case Grens ever investigated where he was happy to see the murderer go free—felt gratitude that he’d failed to solve it. Because this murderer, like himself, had been used, exploited. To take him back against his will was not an option. The moment they landed on Swedish soil, they’d have to assume other roles. Hoffmann would become—according to both the Swedish government and organized crime—the perpetrator of a double murder. And he would become a detective superintendent. If he brought Piet Hoffmann home, then Grens would have to arrest him, attempt to prosecute him, make sure he was locked up for a long time. Given a life sentence. And once inside he’d have to protect him from inmates who hated snitches. And that was the wrong ending to this story.

  And that was when he stepped into the dark, cramped room. Jeans, black boots, hunting vest over a thin shirt with short sleeves. Despite the tan he seemed tired, had aged considerably over the years.

  Grens noted how he automatically searched the premises, secured it. And only then did Grens see how he’d consciously changed his appearance, something about the nose and the chin, and when he took the black piece of fabric off his shaved head, he uncovered a large tattoo.

  “You . . . of all people?”

  “You are correct.”

  “I was expecting Wilson.”

  “That’s not how it turned out.” Ewert Grens nodded to the counter. “A coffee? It’s delicious.”

  Piet Hoffmann lingered, as if trying to decide whether or not to stay. And then he did—pulled out the chair across the table from Grens. “No, thanks. But I’d gladly take an aguapanela.”

  The detective looked at the man he’d thought so much about, but only spoken to once, a brief conversation over the phone before he decided to shoot to kill.

  “I can’t even pronounce that. Is it legal?”

  “Sugar cane pulp and warm water. I think a detective can drink it without risking breaking the law.”

  Grens took five steps to the serving counter and ordered the new drink as best he could. Dos. One each. When in Rome. And then he sat down again.

  “I was supposed to murder you. That’s what you wanted me to think. What I did think. Until I watched several days of prison surveillance footage. Back and forth. And then, suddenly, a wink in one of them.”

  A man dressed like a correctional officer in a blue uniform heading out of the central guard station stopped at the camera, looked straight into it, winked his right eye.

  “That was for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’d been manipulated into taking that shot. And you were the one who had to live with it. I had no choice, I had to manipulate the police officer who was responsible for the shot, you. But I didn’t think you should have to fucking bear that, afterward.”

  Hoffmann spoke quietly, with control. Despite the fact that every fiber of his being resisted reliving what happened back then. Those goddamn police chiefs who sacrificed him for their own power. And worst of all was that bastard Göransson, who’d betrayed them the most, who’d had the job Wilson had now, who promised to support the informant no matter what, then turned his back on him.

  “I’d heard of you already, Grens. I knew you were investigating the shootings on Västmanna Street and asked Wilson, before I committed the crime of being locked up and infiltrating from inside the prison, I asked him why he, too, like Göransson, was so damn worried when you started snooping around.”

  Two steaming cups were put down on the table by a smiling waiter, lemon slices on their porcelain rims. What they called aguapanela. Grens examined it, hesitantly, and decided it just looked like regular tea.

  “I thought I might as well try.”

  “A lot of vitamin C. Something to consider, Superintendent.”

  Grens sipped, swallowed. “And a lot of sugar.”

  “That’s how we do it in Colombia.”

  A real mouthful. Then another.

  “Stubborn. Searching for the truth for as long as it takes, even longer, when he senses from the outset that this might involve his colleagues. The kind of man who never gives up.” Hoffmann looked at Grens. “That was how they described you.”

  It was hard to tell if the detective—who was old enough to be Piet’s father—felt some sense of pride, but there almost seemed to be the flash of something like it in his eyes.

  “The letter you received, Grens . . . you were supposed to know it could only come from me. And if you were as good as Wilson claimed you were, if you started thinking and poking, then I figured you’d find that wink. I duped you and the whole fucking police force. You needed to know that you’d guessed right. But if you never discovered it, if you weren’t as good as they said, then you could just as well live with the guilt. And then you certainly wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

  Hoffmann winked with his right eye, just as he had on the surveillance tape and to the satellite dealer just now. And at that moment one of the three phones he’d lined up next to his steaming cup started ringing. A gentle, quiet ring tone. Grens tried to read the lighted display from upside down. Rasmus.

  “Unfortunately I have to take this. It’s important.”

  Hoffmann moved some distance away, answered when he reached the green front door. One of his few rules—always respond if one of his sons called. No matter what he was doing. He answered every time. They should know he was always just a phone call away.

  “Mommy is sad.”

  “Sad?”

  “She doesn’t w
ant me to notice. But I do anyway, Daddy.”

  Hoffmann heard a voice that was small but self-possessed, that took on responsibilities that someone so little should never have to bear.

  “Rasmus? Everything will be all right.”

  “What will be?”

  “Whatever is making Mommy sad.”

  “But how?”

  “I’ll fix it. And then everything will be all right again.”

  The Swedish detective finished the last of his warm cup and seemed pleased when Hoffmann returned to the table. He must approve of the sweet drink.

  “Rasmus?”

  “My son.”

  “Sebastian Haraldsson?”

  “That’s him.”

  They looked at each other. Until Grens looked away, down at the table. “I never had any. Kids, that is. I guess sometimes it just turns out like that.”

  Hoffmann should maybe have answered. Said something. Anything. But he didn’t. There was nothing to say. So they both sat in silence. Until Hoffmann couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Sometimes things just happen. And you’re forced to survive them. To live. Especially if there’s a Rasmus. And to do that I need your help.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “And that’s why tomorrow morning I need you to fly to Washington.”

  Hoffmann had a small black bag with him. Now he opened it, lifted out a laptop.

  “And when you get there, head to Arlington. And don’t leave until you meet a person named Sue Masterson.”

  He opened the screen toward Grens and clicked on one of the folders, waited while it opened.

  “The DEA chief. One of three people who knows who I am. Erik Wilson—my handler in Sweden. Lucia Mendez—my handler here in Colombia. And Sue Masterson—the woman who recruited me.”

  “One of four.”

  Grens and Hoffmann exchanged a smile.

  “Erik, I can’t talk to. Lucia and Sue have cut me loose.”

  “But now there’s me.”

  “Now there’s you.”

  A single image now filled the computer screen. Very difficult to interpret. Lacking sharpness and resolution, it was far from perfect. It reminded Grens of images he’d seen in Wilson’s office. The perspective was from above. A satellite perspective. Of greenery that might be a jungle.

  “Survive. Live. In order to do that I’ll have to negotiate with the people who want to kill me. And in order to negotiate, I have to have something to offer.” Hoffmann pointed to the diffuse image. “So I’ll negotiate with this.”

  Grens searched across the screen, still not really able to piece it together.

  “You don’t see it? There, that grayish blob in the middle of the green—it’s the roof of a cage. And inside that cage is a human being.”

  Grens lingered on the image. The moving image, he could see that now, birds flew by, treetops swayed slowly.

  “As in . . . the world’s most sought-after man?”

  “Exactly.”

  And now he could see. If you knew where to look. A small opening in a dense jungle. And the roof of a cage in the middle.

  “I know where it is. I’m surveilling it from my own computer. With information from my own satellite.”

  A new cup of that sweetness was on the table without them even ordering it. Grens thanked the waiter and sipped on a drink he could get used to. “I don’t even know how to pronounce the slush we’re drinking. And I know even less about personal satellites.”

  Hoffmann drank some of that warmth, too. “You can get one of your own, Grens. Anybody can, at any time. Completely legal. Eight thousand dollars for seven hundred and fifty grams of satellite spinning in orbit above you. Not as fine-tuned as the others, this ten-centimeter resolution, but I don’t need faces—just need to know that the camp is in the same place.”

  Grens stared at the picture for a long time. At the cage. At Hoffmann. “And?”

  “Free the hostage. My life for the hostage’s.”

  “And would you do that on your own?”

  Always alone. Trust only yourself.

  “No. With your help, Grens.”

  They looked at each other. Until Grens nodded. “My help? With what?”

  “Sue Masterson.”

  “Our mutual friend instructed me in a . . . memo on all the who, where, and how, before I came here. In case. And then handed me the key to her—which I should only use if there was no other way.”

  “The key?” Hoffmann was waiting for him to continue. He didn’t. “The key, Grens?”

  “Wilson’s private key.”

  Hoffmann turned the computer slightly, light streamed in through one of the café’s small windows, and the screen flashed annoyingly. “I want to know the schedule for the orbit of these geostationary satellites. For a specific location. And it’s you, Grens, who’s going to find out.”

  Grens tapped his finger on the plastic screen and the image of a cage. “This?”

  Hoffmann shook his head. “Those coordinates, Superintendent, are my life. And I’m not giving them to anyone. I’m looking for the timetable for a completely different site—and I want to know exactly when the black holes occur there. The windows. The gaps. When the satellites don’t overlap. When they’re not watching. If someone were to be at this place, I want to know the moment when they couldn’t be seen from above. Furthermore . . .” He leaned forward, speaking more quietly, even though no one was listening. “. . . I want Masterson to put at my disposal eight highly skilled, trustworthy, incorruptible people with military backgrounds.”

  “Why?”

  “To negotiate. Exchange my life for the hostage’s.”

  “Where?”

  “The less you know the better, Grens, believe me—for your own sake.”

  “If you want my help, I want the whole picture.”

  “You’re not getting the whole picture.”

  “Listen . . . Paula? El Sueco? Haraldsson? Hoffmann? Call yourself whatever you want, I don’t give a shit. But now it’s like this. I once gave a command to kill you because I didn’t have the whole picture. I don’t plan on doing that again. So either you fill me in right now—or you’re on your own.”

  Hoffmann leaned even farther forward. Two heads very close together. Grens could see the hesitation, eyes looking for a way out.

  “This is what the operation looks like.” The informant pulled out his knife and emptied out what was hidden in its leather holster. Two folded pieces of paper. The first, with something handwritten on it, he put back. The other he held out, smiling. “My only safe these days.” He unfolded it across the table—written on old-fashioned typewriter, away from every Internet connection or search engine, never leave a trace.

  xx.xx (Briefing Calamar.)

  xx.xx (Departure ATV.)

  xx.xx (Arrival river.)

  xx.xx (Landing base camp.)

  xx.xx (Arrival prison camp.)

  xx.xx (Attack, break in.)

  xx.xx (Arrival helicopter.)

  xx.xx (Arrival Isla Tierra Bomba.)

  xx.xx (Underwater).

  xx.xx (Arrival ship.)

  xx.xx.xx–xx.xx.xx (Time window.)

  Grens read, read again. And pushed it back. “That means nothing to me.”

  “The timeline, not yet specified, for an operation that needs to start as late as possible—in order to minimize exposure—and has to end in the ocean. The Caribbean.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “A site along Colombia’s northern coastline, one mile from Cartagena. And a ship anchored there.”

  Grens looked into those eyes that had changed from doubt to determination. A ship? Cartagena? My God. It had been only a few hours since he’d stepped into all this.

  In order to fend off the empty, ugly feeling of abandonment that so often attacked him in a hotel room, he’d lain down on his bed with remote control in hand, restlessly flipping through the television channels. And met the same image no matter where he stopped, on CNN or
the BBC, and most explicitly of all on a local channel called El Tiempo. Black smoke, fire, devastation. The Queen of Hearts, the Ten of Hearts. Special broadcasts, excited voices from both local and international stations. A royal flush. And a building razed to the ground.

  “A ship? As in a US aircraft carrier? As in the aircraft that just took down two of your friends? Who happened to be on the same kill list as you?”

  “Yes.”

  So close to each other. Grens looked into eyes that had cheated death before.

  “You said survive?”

  “I said live.”

  There wasn’t much left at the bottom of the cup, just concentrated sweetness. Hoffmann drank the last drops, stood up.

  “Your tickets, Grens. And a few other things.” A white envelope on the table. “Say hello to Sue for me.”

  He nodded at the detective he didn’t really know but had chosen to trust, turned around, and walked toward the green door.

  A FOUR-AND-a-half-hour flight, and for the first time in his life, Ewert Grens saw the US capital. A slow turn over Dulles International and the United Airlines pilot urged all passengers to return to their seats and fasten their seat belts.

  The stewardesses had handed out fresh editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post at the beginning of their flight, and the Swedish detective had had ample time to read every story on the kidnapping of one of the nation’s most powerful politicians—no real leads—as well as day-after reporting on the sneak attack on two of thirteen targets in what they were calling the Final War on Drugs.

  This trip was becoming increasingly strange. Only hours ago Grens had sat in a dark café across from one of the only outsiders who knew the precise location this powerful politician was being held at—and furthermore, opposite one of ten remaining targets of this war.

  The taxi driver waiting in a pre-ordered cab at the terminal spoke English with an even heavier accent than his passenger, and confusion arose when Grens after a rather jerky journey tried to pay cash, just as Wilson had instructed him, even though the driver explained he didn’t have enough change. But taxi drivers were friendlier here, didn’t call the chief prosecutor on you when they didn’t get what they wanted, and Grens headed to a government building that was significantly less conspicuous than the many they’d already passed—as if it too were an informant, always blending in, acting without being seen. And on his way, he realized how much easier it was to breathe here, that the thin, high-elevation air in Bogotá had been replaced by something moist and oxygen rich.