MemoRandom: A Thriller

by Anders de la Motte

  He started the engine and did a circuit of the building. At the back, next to the Dumpsters, were a row of expensive parked cars. One of them was a familiar Audi with shiny wheel trims. Atif drove around the next corner and found himself close to the exit from the parking lot. He paused for a few seconds and looked at the time. Three hours and thirty-five minutes left until the plane took off. Plenty of time. The question was, what for? Why not just head out to the airport right away? Leave all this behind him, the way he had planned?

  • • •

  The reception area had a black slate floor and had to be at least fifteen feet high. Rhythmic bass music was pumping from the far end of the building, and behind a frosted glass window he could see bodies moving.

  To the left, behind another glass panel, there were rows of gleaming machines. A pair of gym-pumped guys were doing bench presses in there, but they were concentrating so hard on what they were doing that they didn’t even look in his direction. There was no one at the reception desk, but a large arrow marked with the word Café was pointing toward a closed door in the far corner of the atrium.

  Atif strolled toward the closed door. On the way he noticed the security cameras. Expensive ones, with night vision, not the sort of thing you usually found in gyms. He didn’t really know why he’d come in, it had mostly been an impulse. The gym, the Audi, and its owner, Cassandra—none of them had anything to do with him. Besides, he already had a fair idea of who owned the car. But he still hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to come in and get proof of whether he was right.

  Next to the café door was a solitary folding chair, and on top of it a half-full plastic bottle containing something pink. The sign on the door said closed, but Atif could still see movement behind the frosted glass panel. He could hear Abu Hamsa’s familiar voice and reached out for the door handle, but an unknown voice made him hesitate. Had he heard wrong? Atif stood there for a few seconds, listening for more sounds from inside the room.

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about, my friend, nothing at all,” Abu Hamsa was saying. “I’ve known him since he was a boy.”

  The other voice grunted indistinctly: “. . . cause problems?”

  “No, no, he swallowed the official version,” Abu Hamsa replied. “Adnan Kassab is dead and buried, and no matter how much our opinions may differ, we have to stay focused on getting hold of the traitor before he costs us everything we’ve built up.”

  Atif felt his heart beat faster. He took a cautious step closer to the door to hear better.

  “. . . going with the inside man?” another voice said.

  “The lawyer’s working on it,” Abu Hamsa said. “But apparently there’s some sort of problem. Crispin is convinced it’s only temporary, then we’ll soon be back on track.”

  “We’d better bloody hope so, after what we’ve paid,” a voice said in a singsong Eastern European accent.

  “That’s hardly fair, Crispin’s insider has been a huge help, which means we’ve been able to compensate at least in part for all the damage the traitor’s caused. The fact is that without the insider, we wouldn’t even know that Janus really existed,” Abu Hamsa said.

  A sudden hush fell inside the room, an uncomfortable silence that went on far too long. Atif realized immediately what had caused it. The name that Abu Hamsa had just mentioned: Janus.

  “Allow me to point out once again,” a dry voice said, “that according to the instructions you have been given, Janus is to be handed over to me at once. Alive, and unharmed. No one is to talk to him until I do.”

  “Not a problem for me,” the indistinct voice grunted again. “There’s no way he’s one of my boys. We don't have a rodent problem here.

  “Big words, Lund. It would be a shame if you had to take them back,” someone said.

  Atif started. He had heard correctly a short while before, no doubt about it. That voice belonged to another old friend. Although friend probably wasn’t the right word. The last time they had met, the man had held a pistol to his head and sworn to kill him.

  “The fact is that the rat bastard could be sitting in this room right now. With the exception of the consultant here, we’re all equal suspects, aren’t we?” the familiar voice said. “Everyone in here could be Janus.”

  “That’s why you should leave the cat-and-mouse stuff to me and my team!” The dry voice again, clipped, almost military in tone. Presumably it belonged to the man who had been called the consultant.

  Atif remembered that Abu Hamsa had said something about consultants at the funeral. He must have had this man in mind.

  “We’re experts in investigations of this sort, and we don’t have to pay attention to anything that might spoil our concentration. Finding and eliminating Janus is our job, our only priority, and the best thing you can do is stay out of the way,” the dry voice went on.

  Once again, mention of the name brought conversation to a halt. As if none of them wanted to be the first to speak after the name had been uttered.

  The sound of a toilet flushing just a few yards away made Atif jump. He turned his head and saw that the dial above the lock on one of the doors was showing red. Someone was moving about in there and was likely to open the door at any moment. But there was another door, on this side of the toilet. He took two long strides and tugged at the handle. The door was unlocked and led to a small cleaning cupboard. Atif slipped inside and closed the door behind him just as the toilet door swung open.

  He peered through the crack in the door. A gorillalike man lumbered past, picked up the bottle, and sat down on the folding chair next to the door, just a yard or two from Atif. The man was shorter than he was and had dark cropped hair and a diamond ring in one ear. His chest muscles were so pumped up that his arms stuck out at an odd angle. A tattoo stretched out from one sleeve of his T-shirt, covering his skin all the way down to the wrist. Atif recognized him at once: it was one of the men from the funeral. Dino, something like that.

  The man gulped down the rest of the protein drink, then belched loudly. He took out his cell phone and started fiddling with it. It took a few seconds for Atif to realize that Dino was sitting there for a reason. It was his job to make sure that the men in there could talk undisturbed. Not that he was a particularly attentive guard.

  Atif looked at his watch. Three hours and twenty-five minutes left, still no real hurry. He looked cautiously around the little room. The floor was only about ten feet square square, and obviously there was no window. The smell of ammonia and disinfectant was already making his eyes water.

  Dino belched again, then came a groan and the sound of a long, wet fart. Atif peered through the crack in the door and saw the man squirm in his chair. Suddenly he flew up and took a couple of quick steps, reaching out his hand toward Atif. But before Atif had time to react, the man disappeared from view and a moment later the toilet door slammed shut again. He heard the toilet lid being lifted, then a loud splash followed by a groan of relief.

  Atif slipped silently out of the cleaning cupboard, hurried across the reception area, and left the premises the same way he had come.

  • • •

  He found a good lookout post on a neighboring plot. In the middle of a row of parked trucks, with a wire-mesh fence that didn’t really impede his view but would make his car almost invisible. Three hours and nineteen minutes until his plane left. The drive to Arlanda would take an hour, so he still had plenty of time. He leaned his seat back and tried to stretch out as best he could. He wished he had his army binoculars with him.

  His window of time had shrunk by another twenty-five minutes before anything happened. Abu Hamsa emerged first, lit a fat cigar, then jumped into the Audi. Atif had guessed right. The tone of voice the old man had used when he spoke about Cassandra had given him away. His promise to look after the family and the fact that Cassandra had his cell number just made things clearer. The only question was how long the old man had waited after Adnan’s death before taking on the role of Cassandra’s protecto
r. Or had he already done so before Adnan was killed? But Atif reminded himself once again that it was none of his business. Cassandra made her own decisions, and maybe having an affair with Abu Hamsa was a cheap price to pay for having her family looked after.

  The bowlegged man who emerged after Abu Hamsa was big, and considerably more lardy than gym-pumped. Leather waistcoat, long goatee, blond hair in a plait down his back. Swedish biker thug, model 1A. Atif recognized him as Micke Lund: seven years ago he had just been appointed sergeant at arms in the Hells Angels. By now Lund must be close to fifty. A padded jacket hid most of his leather waistcoat, but Atif could make out red lettering on a red background. Still with the Hells Angels, then.

  The lard-ass stopped to insert a dose of chewing tobacco, waiting for the man following him out. Another biker, one who evidently didn’t feel the cold, wearing a waistcoat in the yellow and red of the Bandidos. Short hair, younger, fitter than Micke Lund, and far less the blond, blue-eyed stereotype. But the two men no longer seemed to have anything against each other. They stood and chatted for a few minutes as two more men came out to join them. They were wearing tracksuits and had closely cropped hair, with broad foreheads and defined cheekbones. Typical Eastern Europeans, probably Russian.

  The two tracksuits lit cigarettes and offered one to the Bandidos biker, while Micke Lund made do with his chewing tobacco. The men stood and talked for a few minutes, stamping in the snow. When another man with a face like a death’s head emerged from the door the four of them exchanged glances, then quickly shook hands with one another and slid away to their respective cars.

  The death’s head stood still as he lit a cigar. The man gave a suitably mocking wave to the others’ cars, then strolled over to a big Porsche Cayenne. Atif studied the man and concluded that he had heard correctly inside the gym. His appearance—bald head, hook nose, and sunken eyes—was unmistakable. It was his old friend and colleague Sasha. A war hero from the Balkans, capable of anything, a man with no inhibitions. On their first job together Sasha had cut off a man’s fingers with a pair of garden shears. He carried on until only the forefingers were left, even though the man had long since crumbled and told them what they wanted to know. Violence was one thing, but Sasha was a full-blown sadist, and eventually Atif had asked not to work with him any longer. Evidently this information had found its way back to Sasha, and as thanks he had held a gun to Atif’s head in the middle of a nightclub. He had told him that the next time they met he was going to pull the trigger, no matter how many witnesses there might be. Shortly after that Atif’s mother had fallen ill. And once Atif accompanied her back to Iraq, the matter had seemed irrelevant. But to judge by the conversation in there, and the looks the bikers and Russians had exchanged out in the parking lot, Atif wasn’t the only one who had a problem with Sasha. His presence at the meeting, his suit, and the expensive car clearly suggested that he had risen through the ranks. And was now someone to be reckoned with.

  Two different biker gangs, some Eastern Europeans, Abu Hamsa, and Sasha. The discussion he had overheard had been a top-level meeting. The gangster version of Who’s Who.

  The last man didn’t emerge until after Sasha had left. About thirty-five, suit, overcoat, short, dark hair, and a wary look in his eyes. It was impossible to see more from a distance. The man moved smoothly and exuded more genuine self-confidence than the others, more control. He was also considerably calmer than the men who had come out before him. Considerably less nervous.

  In all likelihood, this was the consultant Abu Hamsa had talked about. Although the man actually looked as if he was in the military. Or the police.

  The consultant stopped outside the back door for a moment and put on a pair of aviator sunglasses. Then he walked slowly toward a dark Range Rover as he let his eyes roam across the surroundings. The man stopped beside his car and for a few moments Atif was sure he was staring straight at him. But then the gym door opened again and Dino, or whatever the lunk was called, came out. He said something that made the consultant turn around and waved his short arms excitedly in a way that looked almost comical. The consultant said something in reply, then the two men hurried back inside the building.

  Atif wondered about the security cameras in the gym, and how easy it was to rewind the recording just a matter of minutes. A couple of mouse clicks and he’d be there on the screen.

  He turned the key in the ignition and put the car in gear. Just fewer than three hours before his plane took off.

  TEN

  When Sarac woke up he noticed two things immediately. First: it was pitch black. Not even a tiny light on a monitor, nothing to focus on. So he wasn’t in his usual room. Second: there was someone else there in the darkness. He could sense movement of some sort, and then someone taking a deep breath.

  “Can you hear me, Sarac?” a low male voice asked.

  He turned his head toward it as he searched his memory for something to match to the hoarse voice. A name, a place, anything at all. But he couldn’t find anything.

  “You’re not an easy person to get a little chat with, Sarac. There are lots of people keeping an eye on you. A lot of people worried about what you might reveal.”

  Sarac tried to raise himself to a sitting position, but got tangled in the tubes sticking out of his body.

  “You know who I am, don’t you?” the man said.

  “N-no . . .” Sarac said. But that wasn’t entirely true. They had met, he was almost certain of that. He just couldn’t remember where and when. His eyes were gradually getting used to the darkness, and the man began to appear as a dark shadow just ten feet away away from him.

  “We had an agreement, you and me, remember?” the man said.

  Sarac shook his head, once again without really managing to convince himself. Was this all a dream, a hallucination playing out in his head? He clenched his hands tightly under the covers. He felt the back of one hand touch something. A plastic object connected to a cable. The alarm button.

  The man came closer and stopped right next to the bed. He smelled strongly of tobacco. Sarac could make out a furrowed face, the mouth a black hole in which a gold tooth glinted. His sense of unease slid into fear, making Sarac’s heart race. He fumbled for the alarm, but his hand slipped off it.

  “An agreement is an agreement. You know what the consequences will be if you break it,” the man said.

  Sarac shut his eyes, screwing them shut as hard as he could, and pressed the alarm button. Once, twice, again . . .

  “Get out!” he roared. “Go to hell!”

  There were voices in the distance. Then steps as someone approached along the corridor. Any moment now the door would open.

  “You can’t hide forever,” the man hissed in his ear. “You’re going to stick to our agreement, do you hear?”

  Sarac went on shouting, yelling out loud until the door opened and the light was switched on. He blinked against the sudden glare and saw the woman in white who was gently shaking his arm.

  “David, how are you feeling?” she asked.

  He blinked again, then rubbed his eyes in an effort to see better. Apart from the nurse, the room was empty. But in one corner was an empty chair. Its padded seat looked slightly compressed, as if someone heavy had recently been sitting on it.

  • • •

  The plane took off on time, at 8:35 p.m.. It climbed about seven hundred feet before retracting its landing gear and starting a long bank toward the east.

  Atif leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes. He tried to fit the pieces together as best he could.

  1. Adnan and his gang rob a security van.

  2. By coincidence, they happen to encounter an unmarked police car.

  3. The cops follow them and call in the rapid response unit, which strikes when the gangs are switching cars. Shots are fired. Adnan and Juha are killed. The third bloke, Tommy, is left a vegetable.

  A perfectly consistent story. No matter how thorough your preparations, the odds weren’t always on your side
. Adnan had been lucky up to then. This time the pendulum swung the other way.

  Atif had made a conscious choice and accepted the chain of events exactly as it was explained to him before he had arrived in Sweden. He had decided not to ask any unnecessary questions. Not to find out any more than he had to. But he couldn’t shake off Abu Hamsa’s words:

  Envy is fatal, boys . . .

  Even though Adnan made his living the way he did, and even though his little brother had a remarkable ability to turn gold into shit, Atif had envied him. Envied him all the qualities that he himself didn’t have. His charm, his family, and their mother’s unconditional love.

  Could someone else in Adnan’s vicinity have felt the same? And have wanted to take something or someone from Adnan? Was this about Cassandra? Atif seriously doubted it. No matter what the motive was, someone had ratted on Adnan and indirectly caused his death. Possibly the same person whom the gangsters in the gym were now terrified of.

  Janus. The Roman god with two faces. The lord of beginnings, transitions, and conclusions, the god who started all wars and made sure that they all ended. Associated with doorways, gates, doors, time, and, not least, journeys.

  Atif opened his eyes and looked up. The plane had become a tiny point of light that was slowly disappearing into the dark evening sky. In a minute or so it would be gone. He turned the key in the ignition, put the car in gear, and pulled out of the airport parking lot.

  ELEVEN

  Peter Molnar looked out the window, down at the meticulously gritted yard of Police Headquarters. He put a piece of chewing gum in his mouth, then glanced at his expensive diver’s watch. That asshole Kollander was five minutes late, as usual.