by The Helicopter Heist- A Novel Based on True Events (retail) (epub)
He goes over to the lone car left at the gravel pit in Norsborg. He glances at his watch. It’s just turned six. They’re almost half an hour behind schedule. He’ll probably get stuck in the morning traffic heading for Södertälje.
He opens the passenger’s side door of the BMW and climbs in.
The shock renders him speechless.
Petrovic is sitting behind the wheel.
“But…” Maloof stammers. “What the hell…are you doing here?”
“You texted me and told me to come.”
Petrovic had been confused when he got the message after tricking the police to the north of Täby.
Up until that point, the plan had been for him to drive the boat and the money.
“Texted?” Maloof asks. He can’t believe this is happening. “Wait…so who the hell’s driving the boat?”
Petrovic looks at him. At first, he doesn’t seem to understand. “What?”
“If you’re here, who’s driving the boat?” Maloof repeats. “Someone drove off with the money. If it wasn’t you…?”
SEPTEMBER 23–25
97
Stenson’s ordinary working hours ended one hour after the first publication, the one he alone was responsible for: images of the white helicopter lifting off from the roof in Västberga. By seven, people had started pouring into the office, and Stenson knew he should have gone home after a long night. But it was impossible. There was a sense in the air that something historic had happened, and this was his story, even if the paper’s head start over its main competitor had narrowed. The tabloids, morning papers and Swedish public media were all at the scene out in Västberga, along with a huge number of foreign correspondents—all starved of any internationally interesting news from the Scandinavian backwater where they had been stationed. The scene at the crossroads of Västberga Allé and Vretensborgsvägen was chaotic, and a press conference had been scheduled at police HQ in Kungsholmen for later that day.
Stenson darted between the desks with very little to do, following the foreign coverage of the robbery with the rest of his colleagues. Their European colleagues from the closest time zones were already broadcasting the news by eight, but it took a few hours before the Americans woke up.
On CBS, the focus was on the fact that no one had been hurt. There was talk of the heist being like something from a Hollywood movie, and when they described the skillful robbers, they used an image of Tom Cruise in an action sequence of some kind.
On CNN, they concluded that reality, yet again, had exceeded fiction.
The online headlines from the English papers were, in typical fashion, all humorous plays on words:
“Chopper Heist Is Swede-ly Done,” wrote the Sun. “It was a heist that would have caught the imagination of any Hollywood producer,” wrote the Times. “But not even Danny Ocean—despite having three George Clooney films to play with—thought of using a helicopter.”
The coverage seemed much more focused on reviewing the robbers’ methods, drawing parallels to the world of film, than it was on reporting a crime.
Stenson knew that he wouldn’t be invited to the press conference at police headquarters after lunch; he was just a temp from the recruitment company. But at eleven thirty, the paper’s star reporter—who had won out and been awarded the prestigious job of covering the robbery by the deputy editor—came over to his desk.
“You can come along if you want, Stenson,” he said. “You were first, after all.”
Tor Stenson nodded. His pride swelled like a sponge in a bathtub.
98
The American airlines would have been out of the question. With Sami Farhan’s criminal record, the obligatory tourist visa applications made it impossible for him to fly via the United States.
Both Air France and British Airways flew from Arlanda to the Dominican Republic, via Paris and London respectively. But the flights also left at six thirty in the morning, and such tight margins weren’t acceptable. If everything had gone according to plan, they were meant to have landed in Norsborg at five thirty. Having only an hour to make it up to Arlanda after that would have been too tight.
That left Swiss Air as the only viable alternative. The first leg left at ten in the morning, and he would land—after a change in Zurich, and thanks to the time difference—in Punta Cana early the same evening.
* * *
—
When Sami climbed out of the car at Arlanda and walked into the international terminal, heading for the check-in desks, he felt as though a huge spotlight on the ceiling were following his every move through the departure hall. It seemed to him that everyone was staring, that the police officers talking outside the 7-Eleven were getting ready to pounce.
By the time he handed over his passport to collect his ticket, he could barely talk, his mouth was as dry as sand, and he pulled at the neckband of his T-shirt so hard that it stretched. A few minutes later, standing in the line for Security, his legs were trembling so much that he was shaking all over.
It wasn’t even seven in the morning yet.
Just over an hour earlier, he had been standing on a rooftop in Västberga, about to climb into a helicopter.
He could barely believe it when they let him through Security, and when he sat down to wait by the still-empty gate, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all just a trap. They were giving him false hope, they wouldn’t let him leave the country.
* * *
—
During the brief moments when Sami failed to keep up his cautious nervousness, two opposing feelings rose inside him:
The first was a bubbling feeling of joy, something like letting go of a small plastic ball you’ve been pressing to the bottom of the bath.
They had done it. Shit, they had actually managed to do it.
The second feeling was one of paralyzing anxiety when he thought about Karin and the boys back home on Högbergsgatan.
He closed his eyes and suddenly found himself in Vitabergsparken. It was spring, and the air smelled like grass; Karin was walking alongside him, right by his side, he could make out the scent of her shampoo, she was holding John’s hand. The boy was wearing a denim jacket and a pair of what had once been white Converse, laughing his cackling little laugh when a huge dog suddenly approached them. The dog was white and shaggy and as big as the stroller Sami was pushing ahead of him up the hill. John ran forward, toward the dog, and he hugged it, clinging to its neck. Karin followed him, squatted down and stroked its nose and head. Sami knew she wanted him to take the baby out of the stroller, but he hesitated. He didn’t like dogs. And so Karin got to her feet, picked up the baby and let his tiny hand, no bigger than a tablespoon, stroke the dog’s white fur, so he could see how soft it was.
Suddenly, between him and his family, a crack appeared in the ground. It ran along the path, the gravel falling into the dark opening, and the pang in his heart was followed by a sinking feeling of melancholy that he knew all too well.
Sami stood on one side, looking at them—Karin and the kids next to the huge white dog—on the other. Suddenly, Karin jumped onto the dog’s back, lifted the boys up in front of her and then the dog ran away, away from the perilous opening, up the hill. Sami shouted, he shouted again, but no one could hear him.
His heart was pounding like two bass drums, his veins ready to burst in his temples, the tears streaming down his cheeks, and then he woke with a start. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few seconds, but he glanced suspiciously around the room. Everything looked the same as before.
* * *
—
Almost two hours passed before it was finally time to board the plane. To Sami, it felt like an eternity. But afterward, he would look back and remember it as no more than a few seconds. Even as he walked down the windowless tunnel between the terminal and the plane, he couldn’t believe it was true.
They had done it.
By the time he sat down in his seat and fastened his belt, his anxiety had sucked the las
t of his strength out of him. He fell asleep with his mouth open before the plane even made it onto the runway.
99
The big room that had been put at their disposal for the press conference was far too small. At the very front, standing next to temporary screens bearing the police emblem, were the day’s key figures: the police spokesman, Christer Ade, and behind him, Task Force Leader Caroline Thurn from the National Criminal Police. County Police Commissioner Caisa Ekblad and the National Police Commissioner, Therese Olsson, were also present. Each looked surprised at the size of the assembled media in front of them.
Christer Ade waved his arms and shouted out the rules of conduct in both Swedish and English. As a rule, journalists were terrible at taking orders, and it took almost ten minutes just to get the people and the cameras into the right places and for them to stop talking.
The many languages being spoken in the room gave everyone the sense that the world’s eyes, that early afternoon of September 23, 2009, were focused on police headquarters in Kungsholmen. It felt like the oxygen was going to run out even before the questions began, and Ade asked someone from the BBC to open the windows and let in some fresh air. But when the sounds of the city came rushing in to the media’s assembled microphones, tape recorders and cell phones, they were quickly closed again. The journalists would rather suffocate than not do their job.
* * *
—
Once the noise levels in the room had fallen low enough that Ade thought he could make himself heard, he loudly cleared his throat and began by outlining what had happened. Nothing he said was news to those in the room:
“The robbery was well organized, well planned and technically well equipped. All in all, that may lead to a number of different hypotheses about who was involved, and during this afternoon and evening—”
“Have any arrests been made?” the reporter from Aftonbladet, Sweden’s biggest tabloid, impatiently interrupted him, waving a yellow microphone in the air.
Ade realized that there was no point continuing his prepared statement. He answered Aftonbladet’s question with the particular kind of authority that can only be learned in media training courses.
“No. We have questioned a number of people, the type we usually question in situations like this, but…no. At present, no one is being held in custody for the robbery in Västberga.”
“Martin Hogan, New York Times. How much did they steal?” The correspondent’s broad American accent caused everyone else to turn around.
He had neither a tape recorder nor a microphone. Instead, he was holding a small notepad and a pen in his hand, as though it were still the 1980s.
Ade switched to English.
“According to G4S, the robbers have stolen a ‘large but unconfirmed sum’ of money. We don’t know any more than that at present.”
“Why didn’t the police storm the building?” a columnist from Sweden’s leading newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, wanted to know. The paper’s news reporter, standing next to her, was irritated at not having thought of the question himself.
Christer Ade glanced at the national police commissioner, who shook her head almost imperceptibly. And yet Ade took a step to one side, as though to indicate that it was time for someone who had been directly involved to answer the question. County Commissioner Caisa Ekblad cleared her throat.
“There were indications that the robbers were heavily armed,” she said in English. “We may be dealing with individuals with military training and equipment here. We wanted to wait for the right resources.”
Her words made the room explode with excitement.
“Were they mercenaries?” the Washington Post reporter shouted.
“There are reports of helicopters exploding. Can you confirm that?” a representative from the French channel TF1 asked. “We know the police cars were stopped by the chains across the access roads!”
Therese Olsson took a step forward. There was something so authoritative in her movements that the room immediately fell silent. She replied first in Swedish and then in very good English.
“We are defining this robbery as an extraordinary event. This means that police forces from across the county are working on the case. The police chief from the Norrmalm district was the commanding officer this morning, working alongside two operation heads, one in Västberga and one in Arninge. The operation is now working alongside us and the serious, organized crime unit. Which means that we are on high alert across the country.”
* * *
—
They loved it.
Caroline Thurn was standing in the shadows, right behind County Commissioner Ekblad, and realized that she would make it through the press conference unscathed. Neither Olsson nor Ekblad could hand over to Thurn at this point; it would make it look like they were shirking their responsibilities.
From her ringside seat, Thurn could feel that the atmosphere in the room was different than usual. Not just because of the number of journalists and nationalities. The questions were being asked in a very different tone, and there was a very different sense of expectation and intensity. At first, she assumed it was just because of how spectacular the robbery had been. Pictures of the helicopter taking off were already plastered across the Internet. No one had been hurt, they had gone in through the roof; this was the type of raid people loved.
But after listening to the commissioners for a while, and realizing that none of the reporters asked any follow-up questions about the course of action the police would be taking, she became doubtful.
A team from Japan and another from Taiwan pointed their cameras at Therese Olsson and asked, in unison, how likely it was that the robbers had left the country.
“We’re watching our borders and airspace closely,” Olsson replied, sounding very reassuring.
But since the police had no idea who had carried out the raid—not even Zoran Petrovic’s involvement was a given—keeping an eye on the country’s airspace wouldn’t help, Thurn thought.
The Japanese reporter seemed satisfied, however, and didn’t follow up with the obvious objection.
In that moment, it dawned on Thurn why this particular press conference was different. What she had already felt in the corridors of the police station over the past few weeks, a reluctant admiration for the robbers’ planning and professionalism, was now shaping the questions and attitudes of the assembled media. Ordinarily, the press would be trying to find a scapegoat, or else they would direct their interest toward the victims. The staff at the cash depot had undeniably gone through a deeply unpleasant morning, but no one had been physically hurt, no one had been subjected to a concrete threat.
These journalists, photographers and cameramen, Thurn realized, were here to create heroes.
In a few days’ time, in a week or a month, the fact that the police had known about the robbery in advance would come out, she thought. It wasn’t hard to imagine what the headlines would be like when that happened: “Police Force Knew Everything, Robbers Escaped.” She discreetly glanced around the room. The bright eyes, the loud voices. This, she thought, was just the beginning.
* * *
—
Tor Stenson cleared his throat. The press conference was coming to an end, and so were his chances. He needed to ask a question, something none of the other journalists had thought of, and he had to make sure it was caught on film. There was a job at stake. It had been a long night, morning and day, and weariness washed over him in waves. But suddenly, the question came to him.
Stenson pushed forward a few feet and waved the tabloid’s microphone in the air. Therese Olsson nodded.
“My name is Tor Stenson,” he said, “and I was first to publish the images of the robbers’ helicopter this morning. My question is, where were the police helicopters during the robbery?”
He could see from Olsson’s face that she knew the answer but didn’t want to say it. He glanced at the cameras around the room. They were rolling. Stenson breathed out. The job had to be hi
s now. He waited for her answer.
100
Mats Berggren wasn’t frustrated, he was furious. Unlike Caroline Thurn and the other policemen and -women in the conference room, Berggren couldn’t hide what he was feeling. He was neither a diplomat nor a politician; in that moment he was just a fat, annoyed police officer who, for reasons unknown, was being forbidden from hauling in an unquestionably guilty robber.
“This is completely insane!” he repeated. “Everything the Serbs told us happened exactly like they said it would. What is there to think about, surely we just need to bring Petrovic in?”
The late-afternoon sun was low in the sky, shining in through the windows out onto Bergsgatan. The light brutally revealed ancient coffee rings and fresher grease marks on the rectangular table. Those unlucky enough to be sitting with their backs to the corridor had no choice but to squint, as the high windows had no curtains. Breathing heavily, Berggren turned to Caroline Thurn, who was sitting a few seats away.
“Right, Caroline?” he said.
“Mats is right,” Thurn replied, since her loyalty in that room was to her partner. But she also added: “It’s just a question of when we do it.”
After the press conference, Thurn had been mentally exhausted, despite having been able to keep to the background. She hated attention almost as much as she disliked meetings. Like this one. Being cooped up in a room with four walls and a couple of windows, discussing what needed to be done, was the polar opposite of going out and actually doing it. All she could do was bite her lip and keep going, her specialty. She was painfully aware of the play that was going on right now. The people around the table were positioning themselves. They were strengthening their brand and making sure to keep a line of retreat open by bringing up their reservations and concerns. Which they could later remind everyone of, if and when it was necessary. The hundreds of microphones belonging to the Swedish and foreign media would continue to be pointed at every police officer who happened to walk by outside, and they would be a constant reminder that no one could escape. This was a police operation in which, sooner or later, all those involved would have to explain how and why they had acted like they had. The media would love uncovering the constant battle between the county and national police forces, Thurn thought.