Three Minutes

by Anders Roslund

  00:13—after half an hour’s journey—he stopped short, still at two and a half meters’ depth, made sure that Crouse’s blood pressure remained at 100/80. He then turned on the waterproof MP3 player and let it go, watched it sink as he listened to it perfectly reproduce the sound of a Russian submarine blowing air—the illusion of it preparing to open its torpedo hatches. Soon he perceived that just as the convoy’s corvettes guarded the ship above the surface, submarines guarded it from beneath, and they now began to move toward the source of the sound. Toward a recording.

  00:29—after forty-five minutes under water the dive computer on his arm started vibrating energetically, warning him that his target was now very close, just one hundred meters away. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. Confirmed by the muffled rumble of engines. Hoffmann dove seven meters farther down into the darkness, maneuvered the underwater scooter along the hull toward the bow and one of the reactors.

  00:32 (Arrival ship.)

  00:32:11.

  Eleven seconds behind schedule—exactly four minutes and fifty seconds left until the satellite window opened.

  After Hoffmann found his way to the ship’s engines, he ignored the dive computer and relied on his analog compass—turbines were driven by magnets, so the needle of the compass was the easiest way to find them. It was there on the hull that he’d attach the prism bomb laced with radioactive Cesium-137.

  He started the countdown on the preset timer for detonation at one hundred and eighty seconds. Enough time to get into position. To the place where he’d pull out the automatic sawed-off shotgun, loaded with four cartridges that contained ten pieces of carbon fiber thread each, and then, with that in hand, he’d change the water around him to air.

  00:37:01—00:40:00 (Time window.)

  00:36:46. Twenty seconds to detonation. Fifteen seconds to the window—when the satellites would cease to overlap for exactly three minutes, and when he would be invisible to an otherwise ever-watchful eye.

  He’d made it.

  The first thing he saw—00:37:01—as he broke the surface was what those on board called the island, or the tower, the heart of the ship, which held its captain and combat leader and a forest of antennas. It was also at that moment that he felt a detonation like a weak hissing ten meters beneath him. And soon the sirens started howling on deck. Soon an electronic voice started repeating radiation leak, radiation leak, over the speakers. Soon the crew was running toward their emergency stations in order to handle a radioactive leak that existed only in a newly assembled and detonated prism bomb.

  A crew that was exhaustively and skillfully drilled—focused on the tasks at hand, none of them took any interest in looking at the antennas or for a fully automatic sawed-off shotgun. Hoffmann bobbed steadily on the water, cocked his gun, fired. Four shots. Bangs like whiplashes, but they were drowned out by the sound of sirens and alarms. And he watched as the strands of carbon fiber were wound like hookworms around both the parabolic antennas and transmitting antennas.

  Communications knocked out.

  He dropped the gun into the water, let it sink to the ocean floor. As long as those carbon fiber strands remained where they were, the aircraft carrier would have no access to radar, GPS, sonar—temporarily cut off from the world.

  00:38:03.

  One minute and fifty seconds left until his gap closed.

  The crew might discover at any moment that there was no real radioactive leak. Might find those carbon fibers and reestablish the ship’s communications and surveillance. From that moment, it would be impossible to return. Impossible to survive.

  Hoffmann took the two incredibly powerful magnets out of the dry sack, ripped off their waterproof covers, and turned on the magnets’ batteries. Now he pulled over the sled with the sleeping American inside, opened the Plexiglas cover, and saw that his breathing was steady and secure and would remain so for at least another fifteen or twenty minutes.

  The first magnet would attach to the hull just above the water, that’s where he would park—affix—the sled. The second magnet he pressed down between Crouse’s legs inside the sled, closed the lid, and pushed it toward the magnet on the hull. It worked perfectly. The force of the interacting magnets snapped up the sled, it bobbed just as it should there in the shadow of the huge ship.

  00:39:38.

  Twenty-two seconds left until the satellite reopened its eyes.

  Hoffmann grabbed the mouthpiece that hung loosely over his chest, brought it to his mouth, and blew out any residual water. The mask rested around his neck, and he adjusted it until it was sitting across the face. He turned on the scooter’s engine and steered downward, under the surface, back to a depth of a couple meters.

  He’d made it.

  Three minutes. On the last occasion that time had been so crucial, it had been a matter of three seconds, so three minutes felt like an eternity.

  Without the sled the journey to Isla Tierra Bomba would go much more quickly. And halfway there, when he was about the same distance from the aircraft carrier as the fishing boat, he’d surface in order to make a phone call to Sue Masterson, say three words—exchange object moored—and hang up. It would be her turn to call the chief of staff and vice president, who would have to fulfill their part of the bargain.

  PART FOUR

  THE WIDE AND deep porcelain cups were steaming with a hot drink that didn’t look like much, still mostly reminiscent of plain tea. Aguapanela. Sugar cane pulp and water. It was here Ewert Grens had tasted it the very first time, the day after he landed in Colombia. Piet Hoffmann had persuaded him in that ill-lit corner table to try at least a sip. And he’d been hooked. Maybe didn’t order it quite as often as coffee, but almost—and in his case almost meant a considerable amount.

  Now he stood at the bar of the Gaira Café, exchanging pesos for a tray of steaming drinks. Sure, it tasted good. But that wasn’t really why. It made him feel a little daring to venture so far beyond coffee, black. And now—well, this was a party! They had something to celebrate.

  He carried the tray to one of the other corner tables, not spilling a drop despite the cups being filled up to the brim. And checked again before putting them down on the table—yes, from here, you could both see and hear the TV that hung from the ceiling on a metal arm. He pushed one cup across the table.

  “Aguapanela. Like you like it. And on a day like this!”

  Hoffmann looked at the cup without lifting it. “Thank you. That was thoughtful. But on a day like this, Grens, it’s coffee I need.”

  A small sip before the detective rose again to fetch a new cup with different contents. He drank, as he studied a man who looked happy, in high spirits, but also extremely tired and worn—a generation younger but at this moment, in this place, they seemed the same age. Hoffmann was unshaven, his eyes red, and he’d almost collapsed into the hard and uncomfortable chair. He looked like a man who’d coordinated and carried out a precise attack to free the world’s most high-profile hostage, all of it hinging on a narrow window of time that put one of the world’s most modern aircraft carriers out of action, and then after delivering the hostage had gone back underwater and headed to his starting point on Isla Tierra Bomba. Then took a fishing boat to the mainland and from there drove seventeen hours through the night and day to arrive just before five o’clock in the afternoon, trudge through a wayward entrance of bamboo into a café in downtown Bogotá. The way a man looks after saving a life and knowing he’ll soon get to keep his own.

  “Coffee. Black. If you’re more worried about the effect than the taste.” Grens returned with two new cups and placed both in front of Hoffmann. “This should keep you awake until the TV program is over.”

  The detective raised one of his own cups—he also had two now, a lot of sugar and vitamin C—held it in front of himself and waited for Hoffmann to raise his. They nodded to each other in a silent toast. Celebrating. Soon they’d change the channel on that rickety TV on the wall and watch as the world received the news. The result of their
collaboration.

  Hoffmann felt the heat fill him, the new energy, but his hands also began to tremble, then shake—and the detective opposite him noticed it.

  “An entire night in a car, Grens. With a bucket like this of black coffee. Straight to the central nervous system.” He smiled, raised his cup for a new toast, and his hands trembled even more violently.

  He missed her so much. Zofia. The boys. Soon. He would soon be done. Almost done. He’d delivered on his part of the agreement, but didn’t dare go to the safe house yet, where his family was waiting for him—the people trying to kill him had found him at the brothel, and he didn’t know how much they knew, how closely his movements had been mapped, what he could get away with before his name had been publicly deleted. My God, how he’d hurry, rush there as soon he got the green light! Immediately after the press conference from the White House that would announce the rescue and return of Speaker Timothy D. Crouse. They might even show him off in front of the cameras.

  Hoffmann stretched up to the television, flipping through the channels until he found CNN. Just a few minutes to go. Right now, there was a news summary and images from a wildfire in California, which were exchanged for images of a plane crash off the west coast of Australia. He muted the sound, the smaller button to the left, images would do for now.

  The detective leaned over the table. “And after this broadcast I can go home to my little office in Stockholm. You’ll be crossed off the kill list. Mission accomplished.” As if wanting to ensure that no one heard him, even though they were completely alone now that the waiter disappeared into the kitchen. “But I have another mission. To ensure that the Haraldsson family comes home with me.”

  “We don’t need to anymore. In just a minute, I’ll no longer have a death sentence hanging over me. And I’m in no rush. Zofia wants us to go—but I can’t go home to life in prison. Have you been in a prison, Grens?”

  “Yes. I visit prisons all the time for my job. And have been for over thirty years. I’ve been in every single one.”

  “You visit a prison. And you leave. But you’ve never been trapped in seven square meters behind a locked steel door inside a seven-meter-high wall day after day, week after week, month after month. So you can’t understand what it’s like not to live your life—because that’s how it is, you cease to live in there, you don’t participate in time, it just disappears, gets used up, a long fucking wait.”

  Hoffmann glanced toward the television screen. Images from the Syrian civil war were exchanged for images of demonstrations against a summit of EU foreign ministers. A couple of minutes left.

  “A life sentence, Grens? A whole lifetime of waiting? I can’t do it. Won’t. I would rather die here a little bit at a time. At least I’d still be living.”

  “And your wife? Does she feel the same?”

  “I’m hoping that I can persuade her.”

  “A life sentence, you say? Or continue on here? What about a third option?” The detective was tense, excited—both because of what they were about to see on the TV and because of the idea he’d been turning over in his head for the last twenty-four hours. “I want to know the next major cocaine delivery to Sweden. Time, place, route.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a cop, and that’s what cops do. Stop crimes.”

  Hoffmann wasn’t overly interested. But he was listening.

  “Like this: you give me a tip on the next delivery via England or Spain or . . . doesn’t matter, as long as the final destination is Sweden. You’re pretty good at that. With your tips, and if I address it to the right person, I’ll find a solution. Even if that person protests, in the end he’ll understand that he wins by not arguing. A solution that would mean you’d get a sentence—but a short one. Then you can be reunited with your wife, your children.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? I can’t go back to prison. And I’m never helping the Swedish or the American police ever again. It doesn’t usually turn out so well for me—does it?”

  “Considerable ruthlessness, it says in the penal code. I see several extenuating circumstances surrounding your conduct, which makes it far from ruthless. I will fix that. Am fixing it. But I need your tip in order to implement it. You’ll simply have to trust me, Hoffmann. I’m neither a Swedish nor an American police officer—I’m Ewert Grens. And I keep my word.”

  Static slid across the screen like a run in a stocking. Hoffmann gently knocked the side of the TV and turned a couple of buttons. Until it suddenly disappeared and the picture became, if not perfect, at least fairly clear again.

  “I won’t be caged. I’d rather die. And I will make Zofia understand that—now that I’m off the kill list.” He continued turning and pressing different buttons somewhat aimlessly. Until he found another frequency, a better picture. “I’m so fucking tired of everything. Do you understand, Grens? I turned my back on my life and gained another life, which turned its back on me. Used. That’s not a good feeling. The police have gotten enough from me.”

  “Hoffmann, I—”

  “Besides, I’ve got a death sentence, too. I’m a known snitch. The worst kind. There is no prison in Sweden where a snitch would be safe without protection. For the sake of the police, I went back into your fucking prison and they put me in isolation, didn’t help, not even the hole. They proved they could reach me anywhere. That’s why I’m here, don’t you remember, Grens, you too sentenced me to death? I would need La Picota.”

  “La Picota?”

  “It’s a prison here in Bogotá. A special prison built for those they plan to move to the US. One of the world’s ten most secure.”

  Grens was about to put his hand on Hoffmann’s arm. But changed his mind. He was no good at that sort of thing.

  “Listen. When you were serving time at Aspsås we had nine murders within the Swedish prison—and you were responsible for two of them. It’s not like that anymore. There’s a whole new section for prisoners whose lives are threatened. Because of what happened to you. Hoffman’s Law, if you like. A lack of administrative responsibility and lack of cooperation between the authorities, that’s what they called it. Since then we have not had any more murders inside those walls. In there, in that particular department, an inmate is truly protected from the rest of the population. And when you’re released . . . there is no longer a threat! With the information you gave us—in cooperation with the Polish police—we took down the entire branch of the Polish mafia you infiltrated. Wojtek no longer exists. And can’t threaten you anymore.” He lowered his voice. “And another thing. In that particular section there are two more serving time who have also been threatened. Two senior police officials who were sentenced for using false information to manipulate me to . . . well, like you said, to shoot you.”

  The red eyes in Hoffmann’s tired face gleamed, seemed to wake up. “Senior police officials like . . . the chief of police and Göransson?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I were to be given a reduced sentence in Sweden they’d put me in the same section?”

  “Exactly.”

  Those eyes, suddenly very alert. Grens could guess what he was thinking. How Hoffmann must wish for a chance to meet the men who forced him to flee—how a meeting like that, without witnesses and on equal terms, though it might not compensate, would still mitigate some of these last three horrible years.

  Now.

  The newscast concluded. And a live press conference from the White House was announced.

  “You’ll simply have to trust me, Hoffmann. In ten minutes you’ll be off that kill list. Then we’ll begin your journey home.”

  Hoffmann shrugged his shoulders in a way that might mean “maybe” and turned the volume up on the TV, a bit tinny and muffled, but still audible.

  A short intro. And then that same BREAKING NEWS banner across the top of the screen Grens had seen only a week ago—though it felt like a lifetime had passed—when Erik Wilson urged him to watch an American newscast in a Swedish police
corridor. And simultaneously more text rotated in the opposite direction, with the reverse of last week’s news—Speaker of the House free after rescue operation.

  The exterior of the White House. And now inside the White House. And a podium. Grens recognized the president and the FBI and CIA directors. All of whom he’d expected would be there. And then someone else, a face he didn’t recognize. At the far right of the screen stood a man in uniform, a highly decorated officer, as far as he could tell from the various medals and patches. As the camera zoomed in and showed each person’s nameplate, Hoffmann stood up and walked closer. It landed on the man on the far right last. Someone named Michael Cook.

  “Cook? Grens—who is that?”

  Grens didn’t have time to answer before the question became irrelevant. As the camera was adjusted to convey the small line under the name, partially obscured because Hoffmann was now so close to the television. But still legible, if Grens leaned to the side.

  Delta Force Commander.

  “Delta Force, Grens?” Hoffmann pounded his palm violently against the TV screen. “Grens, fuck! I’ve got a bad feeling about this!”

  The detective watched as the man who would soon be freed from a death sentence slowly got closer to the television screen, as if he wanted to climb into it, be there on the podium, the first one to know.

  “Hoffmann—I understand why you’re nervous. But it will be over soon.” Grens was as tall as his much younger fellow Swede, and when he put his hand on Hoffmann’s shoulders to make him sit down, he did so gently, with more presence than force. “Relax and watch and listen. Not everything needs to be a battle, Hoffmann. Sometimes life is just good. And this—this is such a moment.”

  Hoffmann sank down slowly with Grens’s hand on his shoulder, breathing in through his nose and squeezing the air out through taut lips, six times.

  The camera focused on the president, who was clearly aware of his enormous audience, as he walked up to the microphone and grabbed the podium along its edges. He waited until all focus was on him, looked into television sets around the world, and slowly began a live speech about how he’d been awoken last night by a call from a voice he recognized, tired but present, and how relieved and proud he’d felt.