by The Helicopter Heist- A Novel Based on True Events (retail) (epub)
He was in his third year in a leadership role now, and felt like it would soon be time to move on. Remaining an anonymous middle manager among hundreds of others wasn’t what his mother had meant when she saw the leader in him.
All the same, he was in no hurry to leave. The work itself might have been monotonous, and it was a struggle to convince himself he was doing something meaningful. But whenever he scrolled through the job listings in either Stockholm or Paris, he felt certain that things would be no different anywhere else. Neither in terms of working conditions nor career prospects, neither in Lyon nor in Malmö.
When it came to colleagues, Tavernier assumed that in any group, there would always be those that people liked, and those that people liked less.
In his current workplace, there was an older woman, Ann-Marie Olausson, who drove him mad. She was sixty-one, had worked for the company her entire life, and acted as though she owned it. She was the type of person who, without an ounce of irony, would say, “But that’s how we’ve always done it.” Tavernier assumed that his youth must antagonize her, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.
* * *
—
On Tuesdays, Claude Tavernier liked to go to the middle bar at Sturehof, waiting for midnight and the start of his shift. The middle bar was small and intimate, at once both a passageway and a cozy corner. He liked to exchange a few comradely words with the hardworking barman and then just stand around with his cold beer, watching all the beautiful people come and go in the mirror. In the taxi on the way to work, he would then chew some menthol gum so that no one would notice that he stunk of alcohol and decide that he had a drinking problem.
There was no real need for him to take a taxi out to the suburbs. Tavernier had bought a used Nissan a year earlier, a car he liked more than he cared to admit. But since the number of parking spots the company had out in Västberga was limited, Tavernier would have to wait for someone else to quit or die before he managed to get ahold of one.
He sighs, pays the bill and heads out onto Stureplan. He finds an empty TaxiKurir, the company he feels loyal to for some unclear reason, and then jumps in the backseat.
“Västberga Allé,” he says.
The driver nods and steps on the gas.
* * *
—
When Claude Tavernier climbs out of the taxi outside the G4S cash depot on the night of September 22, it’s ten to twelve. And there, just as he is making his way into the building, he loses all confidence for a very brief moment.
It’s something that happens a few times a week.
It’s like when you’re on a plane and the weather is good, and then it suddenly, unexpectedly, drops a few feet due to turbulence. Or like when you’re sprawled over the toilet and have been throwing up and up and up, so much that it feels like there’s nothing left to throw up, but still you know that the next stomach cramp is on the way.
I’m no one, he has time to think. I can’t be in charge of a load of people. I can’t make decisions for others.
Claude Tavernier takes a deep breath. He fills his lungs with the cool night air, raises his face to the sky and then the moment passes.
He’s the night manager for Counting on the sixth floor of G4S once again.
A young career man.
He finds his ID card in his pocket and holds it up to Valter Jansson, the security guard in Reception that night. Tavernier and Jansson have worked plenty of nights together in Västberga; they feel comfortable with one another.
57
11:52 p.m.
On the top floor of one of Stockholm’s few skyscrapers, a building where the newsrooms of Sweden’s biggest morning paper, Dagens Nyheter, and the country’s second-biggest evening paper, Expressen, were once based, is an internal dining room available only to the businesses in the building. Turning the room into a commercial restaurant has been discussed on a number of occasions; the views are spectacular and it’s not like there has been a lack of interested restaurateurs. But one of Dagens Nyheter’s historic boardrooms is on the other side of the wall to the kitchen, and though it’s been decades since the paper moved downstairs, the top floor is still thought of as its executive floor. And, naturally, it doesn’t want any outsiders up there.
It’s approaching twelve when the kitchen staff leave the restaurant kitchen on the twenty-third floor that evening. Food has been cooked and served to a working group from Expressen. Top-level management must have been present, because less alcohol has been consumed than usual, and the evening was quickly wound up. The kitchen and service staff are glad for the early finish, and they laugh on their way down to street level on Rålambsvägen.
No one notices that someone who has been working on the cold buffet all night is missing from the cramped elevator. If they had, they might just assume that he had already left or that he was sorting out one last thing in the kitchen before heading home.
Both assumptions would have been wrong.
The missing man waits on the twenty-third floor until he sees on the display that the elevator carrying his colleagues has reached ground level. He holds back until he’s sure that none of the elevators are coming back up again. Then he takes out his electronic pass and opens the door to the stairwell. He climbs the stairs to the roof and opens the door, which is locked from the inside. Before he steps out into the night, he pushes a cork into the doorway so that the door won’t lock behind him.
During a shift a few days earlier, he had gone up to the roof to take a leak and hidden a pair of night-vision goggles behind one of the chimney stacks. This time, he’s carrying a black gym bag from SATS, inside it a warm sweater, a thermos full of coffee, four bananas and a bar of Marabou chocolate. It’s going to be a long night, and he’ll need the extra energy.
The man from the cold buffet breathes in the cool night air and looks out over the beautiful capital. Right below him, Riddarfjärden glitters in the glow of the streetlamps, the water curling like an autostrada from Rålambshovsparken to city hall. In the other direction, to the west, the Traneberg Bridge rises up across the narrow sound, and to the south, he can see red and white dots of light moving along the winding bridges of the Essingeleden highway.
It’s because of the view that the man is on the roof. From the highest building in Marieberg, he’ll be able to see anyone approaching Västberga from the air. He’ll be able to blow their cover in good time, whether they’re on the way from Berga or Uppsala.
He takes out a brand-new cell phone and dials the only number saved in the contact list.
Sami Farhan answers.
“Team Four. I’m in position,” the man from the cold buffet says.
58
11:55 p.m.
Ezra Ray is sitting in a gray 1999 Volvo V70, with all the registration and tax documents in the glove compartment. He doesn’t know who owns the car, but he assumes it belongs to the scrapyard in Lidingö where he picked it up an hour or so earlier. He drives across Lidingö Bridge and decides not to take the route through Lill-Jansskogen Park. It’s the middle of the night, and he imagines that the risk of being pulled over by the police will be greater if he chooses a dark forest road. Instead, he takes Valhallavägen, wide and well lit, full of heavy trucks delivering or picking up goods from the harbors beyond Gärdet.
Ezra Ray doesn’t know exactly what is happening tonight, but by putting together the pieces he has been involved in, the drawings he stole from the town planning office and the ladders he bought from Bauhaus, he could work some of it out. Studying the items beneath the blankets in the roomy trunk of the Volvo, he could probably work out the rest. There’s a circular saw and some mailbags. Ropes and frame charges. Detonators, cables and explosives. Face masks, body armor and headlamps. Two crowbars, an enormous sledgehammer and a smaller toolbox. The ladders. The longer of the two is twelve feet long when folded, Ezra had to push it between the front seats and let it rest on the dashboard. He still couldn’t close the trunk lid properly.
But he d
oesn’t put the pieces together, he doesn’t draw any conclusions. If he never thinks it, it’ll be easier to deny knowledge later. If he has to deny anything.
* * *
—
It’s not the ladders preventing him from closing the trunk that will be his biggest problem if the police pull him over. If they’ve set up a drunk-driving checkpoint by Roslagstull, if the car’s registration number is in a database of people who haven’t paid parking fines, or the traffic police happen to stop him, it’s all over. Possession of explosives is an offense in Sweden. Ezra knows that he’s aware of only a fraction of the planning that must have gone into this evening. He knows how this type of project is built on hopes and dreams.
And right now, the entire thing hinges on him.
Ezra smiles. He glances at the speedometer. The risk isn’t that he’s driving too fast, it’s that he’s driving too slowly in his attempts to seem law abiding.
The lights are green all the way to Roslagstull, and he drives straight on toward the university and Frescati. They had scoped out the place a few weeks earlier, and since then Ezra has swung by a few times at this time of night. He’d never seen another living soul there, not a single dog owner or taxi driver stopping for a piss.
He passes the turnoff to the university and drives on, via Svante Arrhenius Väg, so that he’s approaching Stora Skuggans Väg from the north. After a thousand feet, he turns onto a small forest road he would never have noticed in the dark. He parks. Kills the engine and immediately starts unloading the car. He runs the items from his trunk into the woods in batches. It’s quite a long way from the car to the meeting place, but that’s how it has to be. Discovering the car can’t be the same as discovering them.
It’s a few minutes after midnight.
Ezra Ray takes out his phone and dials the number saved on it.
Sami answers immediately.
“I’m here,” Ezra says.
59
11:58 p.m.
The phone rings again. It’s the fourth call in an hour.
This time, TEAM 2 flashes on the display.
Team 2 is responsible for moving the huge rock used to block the entrance to the gravel pit in Norsborg. It’s there that the getaway cars will be waiting once it’s all over. It’ll still be dark then, so Team 2 also has to make sure that the helicopter pilot can see where he’s landing.
“Yeah?” Sami answers.
“We’re here,” says the voice on the other end.
“Thanks,” Sami replies, hanging up.
It’s time to get changed.
He goes into the bedroom and takes off his sweatpants and T-shirt. He shoves these, along with his toiletries, into the small bag his sister will pick up tomorrow afternoon. She’s also promised to tidy up after him.
Sami picks up the waist pouch he bought. He fastens it around himself after checking the documents for the tenth time that evening. Inside the small pouch, his passport and a plane ticket to Punta Cana. His plan is to head straight to Arlanda from the gravel pit in Norsborg and then kill some time in one of the cafés in SkyCity. The plane takes off seven hours later, which might seem like a long time, but it’s considerably less than he’s waited already today.
On top of the waist pouch, he pulls on a thin black sweater. Over that, he’ll be wearing a tight black windbreaker. His trousers are a pair of black jeans. They’ve agreed to wear black, all three of them, with one exception. Sami has to be wearing his white sneakers. Adidas. They bring him luck.
Once he’s ready, he goes back out into the living room and waits for the next call. It should have already come in, but maybe they rang at the exact same time as Team 2, maybe they got the busy signal?
The minutes tick away.
By the time the display reaches 12:05, Sami can’t sit still in the armchair any longer. He gets up, grabs the phone and goes into the bedroom. He moves around his bag, which he placed on the floor by the bed, and then goes back out into the living room. He repeats this twice. It’s 12:09, and his phone still hasn’t rung.
Team 3’s number is saved in his phone, but he knows he isn’t meant to make any calls from this SIM card. If they’ve run into trouble, a vibrating phone in their pocket isn’t going to help.
Sami composes himself. Moves behind the armchair and peers out the window. When the living room is dark, the glow from the streetlights on Kocksgatan seems even brighter.
His phone rings. It’s 12:18.
Team 3. They’re in Myttinge on Värmdö. It’s Team 3 that is responsible for keeping the police helicopters on the ground, a prerequisite for being able to carry out the job in Västberga tonight. If any of the chain teams fail, it’s unlucky, but it’s not critical.
Team 3, on the other hand, has to succeed.
Sami answers.
“Hello?” he hears a voice say on the line.
“Yeah?” Sami replies.
“It’s not here,” says the voice.
“What do you mean?”
“The hangar’s empty. The helicopter’s not here.”
60
12:50 a.m.
Michel Maloof sees the car approaching through the kitchen window. It’s the first one to drive down Billborgsgatan, in the heart of Norrtälje, in over half an hour. The nightlife in the town could hardly be called pulsing. The car slows down and finds an empty parking space right outside his door.
Zoran Petrovic unfolds himself from the driver’s seat. It’s a new BMW, it looks black from Maloof’s window, but it could just as easily be dark blue. The passenger’s side door opens. It’s the American, Jack Kluger. This is the first time Maloof has seen him. The man on the sidewalk reminds him of a quarterback from an American football team, he’s knock-kneed and his upper body is oversized in relation to his lower half. In all likelihood, he has no real idea where he is right now.
Petrovic and the American step into the building, and a few seconds later the buzzer rings. Maloof opens the door.
“Been a while,” Petrovic says, stepping into the apartment.
Maloof grins. “Right,” he says. “Been a while. Hi, hi.”
He shakes the American’s hand. Kluger’s grip is strong and dry. Reassuring.
“Where’s the food?” Maloof asks.
“Shit,” says Petrovic. “I forgot it.”
“You forgot it?” Maloof repeats, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice. He scratches his cheek. “But, I can’t…you can’t have forgotten it?”
They’re speaking Swedish. The American doesn’t seem to care what they’re talking about. Or maybe he understands Swedish but isn’t letting on. According to Petrovic, Kluger has been living and working in Sweden for a few years now.
“Sorry,” Petrovic says again.
Maloof struggles to seem indifferent. He smiles and shrugs. All the same, he can’t understand how Petrovic can have forgotten to drive by McDonald’s. They’ve been working together for so long now that he should know better.
“No, no,” Maloof says. “No, it’s OK. No problem. We can go now instead.”
He glances at the helicopter pilot and adds, in English: “We need some food.”
Maloof doesn’t wait for a reply. He goes out into the hall and pulls on his shoes and coat.
“You’re not serious?” Petrovic says.
“He’s coming. The weapons are in the bedroom. We can’t leave him alone with the weapons…”
When Maloof took the bus up to Norrtälje a few days earlier, he had walked past a McDonald’s on Stockholmsvägen. It was one of the few places that stayed open until one in the morning. They didn’t have much time.
“Come on, come on,” he says when he notices that the American is hesitating.
Maloof wouldn’t call himself superstitious. He’s not even religious. But there is also no point tempting fate.
He always eats a large meal from McDonald’s before a job.
It’s nonnegotiable.
61
1:15 a.m.
In the
end room in the apartment on Strandvägen, there is a deep alcove, and it is in this alcove that Caroline Thurn has placed an enormous armchair. It isn’t visible unless you actually step into the room. The soft embrace of this armchair is where Thurn sometimes spends her nights, her legs on the matching footstool or her knees drawn up to her chin, staring out across Nybroviken. She can either turn to face the roof and masts of the Vasa Museum, next to the silhouettes of the roller coasters of Gröna Lund, or else the other way, toward the center of town and the heavy stone facades of Nybrokajen leading up to Raoul Wallenbergs Torg.
Over the past week, she has found it unusually easy to banish certain thoughts and keep her worries at bay.
She’s wearing a pair of big, white headphones, and the incessant chatter saved on the hard drives she copied and brought home with her, hard drives that are now piled up on the kitchen counter next to her Nespresso machine, is fascinating her. Listening to Zoran Petrovic’s monologues is like watching waves roll ashore; there’s a kind of uniformity to them which has her spellbound.
Despite the hundreds of hours they have recorded, they still haven’t found a single clue relating to the aborted helicopter robbery.
Their surveillance has now stopped, but Thurn had wondered whether they should go back to the beginning and listen to the tapes without specifically trying to spot anything linked to the aborted raid on Panaxia. If they listened with an open mind, without any preconceptions, what might those hours of phone calls reveal? Petrovic’s address book was overflowing with criminal contacts, after all.
That was the original thought behind copying the hard drives and bringing them home. But the more Caroline Thurn listens to Zoran Petrovic’s insufferable torrent of words, the constant flow of noise aimed at promoting himself, making himself seem more interesting, emphasizing his importance, sharing his experiences and moving himself higher up the hierarchy, the bigger the knot of anger grows in her chest. The man Thurn had spent her nights focused on just one week earlier is as obsessed with himself as he is full of disgust for the society which gave him his chances in life. No matter how humble Petrovic tries to make himself appear, he is actually ruthlessly arrogant toward his countrymen and -women, all toiling away so that people like him can sail through life with the least possible resistance.