The Oslo Conspiracy

by Asle Skredderberget

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  Poor man wanna be rich,

  rich man wanna be king.

  —BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, “BADLANDS”

  PROLOGUE

  May 23, 1977, Mediterranean Sea between Tunisia and Sicily, on board Corvette F541

  He lit a cigarette and thought about her.

  The five-week-long mission was into its final day. In two days they would be reunited in Rome—and start planning.

  Even after a twelve-hour watch, he couldn’t just go straight to bed. He was too tired to sleep. Instead he went down to his cabin and changed into civilian clothes, before climbing the stairs back up on deck and heading toward the stern.

  All around him there was total darkness. At this time of day the sky and sea were one. The only deviation was the white foam from the two propellers that drove the little Minerva Class Corvette military vessel steadily closer to Sicily, and steadily farther from North Africa.

  At the start of the mission the atmosphere on board had been marked by noisy expectation. The crew talked about the cities they would visit on their trip, which would take them from Sicily to Greece, on to Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, past Libya into Tunisia, before they returned to Syracuse on Sicily.

  Now the mood was marked more by impatient expectation. Expectation to get home to their families, impatient because it wasn’t happening fast enough. A day did not pass without him having to mediate between quarreling sailors, and the mood was also tense among the officers at times.

  Somewhere far off he glimpsed a lantern. He guessed at either fishermen or smugglers. Contraband was widespread in this part of the Mediterranean, and on this trip alone they had stopped several who looked like fishermen, but whose boats were full of everything from oil barrels to cigarettes and guns.

  And every time they had to board a boat, his whole body felt uneasy.

  Only two days earlier they had stopped a small fishing boat, and as he and a group of three men made their way on board, he knew something didn’t add up. The fact that his captain—his superior—was inclined to let the little fishing boat pass did not improve his gut feeling. They were often at odds about this. He thought they had a right and a duty to stop any boat they perceived as suspicious. Either because it sat low in the water or because it was outside a fishing zone. The captain, on the other hand, preferred to let things pass. Presumably because it saved them a lot of paperwork, which in turn gave the captain more time for his favorite occupations, drinking and poker.

  As the little group from Marina Militare—the Italian Navy—set foot on the deck of the fishing boat, they could tell that something was wrong. There was something in the gazes they met. The blankness in the eyes of the crew, as if they had given up.

  And he knew that people who had given up—who saw no way out—could be dangerous.

  They quickly gathered the crew and started searching the boat. Under the deck they found several dozen kilos of heroin, probably en route to Sicily or Naples. But they also found an injured North African with an unsecured hand grenade in his hand and nothing to lose by blowing them all to pieces. Instinctively he tackled the African and squeezed the grenade to keep him from detonating it. They rolled around on the floor while they fought over the grenade, and finally he sank his teeth into the back of his hand and bit as hard as he could, until the African let go with a howl.

  In a few seconds he was on his feet, running up on deck and throwing the grenade as far as he could away from the boats. It made a little splash when it hit the surface, and then a big spurt of water when it detonated.

  Forty-eight hours later he could still feel the incident in his body. He could have lost his life if the North African had dropped the unsecured grenade.

  But it worked out, and they were on their way home.

  He took two deep drags on his cigarette before he sent it in a long arc out into the darkness. Fatigue came on slowly. He enjoyed the warm wind of early summer that gently rumpled his hair, and stood swaying with eyes closed while he held on to the railing and tried to remember the smell of her.

  He just had time to register a deep shaking in the hull and a bang, then everything went black. The pressure wave that followed tore the deck to pieces as if it were made of paper, blowing loose objects—and people—into the sea.

  He did not notice that he ended up in the water. He did not notice how the waves took hold of his life vest and pulled him along. And he did not notice how little time it took before the sea extinguished the fire on the boat by engulfing it and sending it and his shipmates more than a thousand meters down to the seabed.

  He remained bobbing in the waves, his arms and legs hanging limply down in the water. In no condition to undertake anything at all.

  Because it was not up to him if he would live or die.

  MONDAY

  Present Day, Rome

  There are two types of people.

  Those who start to panic when they know they’re going to die. And those who stay calm, as if the very certainty makes their thoughts weighty.

  She stood there quietly looking at him and knew it was over. Obviously she could have tried to slam the door, thrown herself toward the bed and tried to call reception. Or run out onto the little balcony and tried to make herself heard over the Rome traffic six stories below.

  But she just stood there. Resigned.

  For a brief moment it suddenly felt absurd to think he might be dangerous. But deep down she knew. There was something in his eyes.

  He stepped soundlessly across the threshold, his body almost springy on the thick hotel carpet, and an odor of cigarettes and sweat reached her nostrils. He quickly took a firm hold around her neck, and she felt a sharp prick below her ear.

  He let go, and she shoved him away and staggered toward the bathroom. She locked the door and waited for him to start pulling on it. But outside it was quiet. He had time to wait.

  She felt the onset of nausea, and her heart was pounding faster. There were tears in her eyes.

  She knew she did not have much time before the anesthetic took effect.

  The thought that everything had been in vain cut her in the gut, and she suppressed a “the hell it is.” She knew that he would take the PC, the notebook, the flash drives, the phone, and anything else that might reveal what she had been working on the past year. She knew that he was thorough.

  From the hotel room she could hear him clear his throat.

  She let her eyes sweep across the little bathroom and stopped at the row of medicines on the shelf beside the mirror. For a few seconds, she stood as if frozen. As if the four pill bottles were speaking to her. Quickly she went over to the shelf, pulling out one of the middle bottles. The choice was not random, but she could not count on anyone understanding. For that reason she tore off a little toilet paper and took out her mascara.

  She tried to write, but the paper tore and she had to start over. Her heart wa
s hammering as she carefully tried to write his name. It was almost illegible, but it would have to do. She thought for a moment while she tried to blink away the tears. Then she wrote one more word, before folding up the paper and putting it in the bottle.

  After that she stepped up into the bathtub and threw the bottle out the air vent. She heard it hit the cobblestone in the courtyard a few seconds later.

  Is anyone going to understand? she thought.

  In her toiletry case she found the nail clipper and made a few quick scratches in the joint between two of the bathroom tiles under the vent.

  She sat down on the tiles and leaned against the bathtub.

  The haze came slowly and could not be stopped.

  Her heart was beating more slowly and her upper body slid sideways along the bathtub.

  She felt no pain when her head pounded hard against the floor.

  FRIDAY

  1

  Milo Cavalli looked out over the gathering.

  Besides his fellow officers from Financial Crimes, the group in the room consisted of a unit from the police task force and detectives from the organized crime departmemt with the Oslo police authority. They listened to him attentively. Men with arms crossed and snuff under their upper lips. The detectives in jeans and T-shirts, the task force in uniforms.

  Milo adjusted his tie a little, and leaned down toward the laptop. A few seconds later the presentation was up on the wall behind him. The screen showed a grainy image, obviously taken with a telephoto lens, of a dark-skinned man in a suit on his way out of NB’s head office at Aker Brygge.

  “This is Reeza Hamid. He is twenty-eight years old, and by using a false reference he got a job in the brokerage house NB Markets. He’s worked there the past year and a half, but he is actually associated with the so-called Downtown Gang.”

  The pictures showed the young Pakistani man at various places in the city. He looked fit in a well-tailored dark suit. The prototype of the well-educated, well-integrated second-generation immigrant. Milo stopped at a picture taken outside a Narvesen convenience store, where Hamid was leaning forward as he accepted a light on a cigarette from another Pakistani.

  “This is the only picture we have of him together with Anzaf Mukbar, whom you know as the undisputed leader of the Downtown Gang. According to our informants, Mukbar simply calls him the ‘Finance Minister,’” said Milo, looking up at the gathering.

  Some of the detectives from Organized Crime nodded in recognition, and Milo continued the briefing.

  “We’ve been doing surveillance on Hamid for about six months and, with NB’s help over the past month, we can now link him to a dozen insider transactions on the stock market.”

  The investigation had revealed how the computer-savvy young man, from his position as an accountant in the brokerage firm, had an overview of what plans were in the works for acquisitions and transactions under the auspices of NB Markets, and how he used this information to buy shares in companies he knew would be bought, and how he knew in advance what stocks major funds run by NB planned to buy and thus push the price higher. Milo continued to explain how the investments were made through various companies.

  “We’re talking in part about companies that run a car wash, a construction company, and a cleaning business. These are all companies that Hamid and the rest of the Downtown Gang are behind, and that take in large amounts of cash from criminal activity. After that they plow the surplus into stock investments, sell out over time and launder millions.”

  Milo looked at the gathering again. Most of them were familiar with the activity of the various criminal gangs, whether it concerned torpedo activity, narcotics or prostitution. But it struck him that they did not fully understand the scope of what he was now telling them. He straightened up and cleared his throat slightly.

  “Just to emphasize: We assume that this group, which consists of a core of between ten and fifteen individuals, has earned more on illegal insider training on the Oslo Stock Exchange the past six months than they have pushing dope and ladies the past year.”

  The head of the task force, Daniel Guttormsen, rose and came up to the podium beside Milo. Guttormsen was short and broad with a bad haircut.

  “Very good, Cavalli. Thanks very much.”

  Milo nodded curtly and found a vacant chair while Guttormsen proceeded to his part of the presentation. He clicked through pictures of the neighborhood, architectural drawings of the apartment and evacuation routes.

  “Now we have the opportunity to crush the Downtown Gang by arresting Reeza Hamid, and we’ll make short work of it, lads. We’ll go in both from the main entry and the veranda. And then we’ll bring him in. We’re ready to move out of here as soon as it’s confirmed that he’s home. Probably about six thirty or seven,” he concluded.

  The gathering broke up and the participants slipped out of the room.

  Milo stayed behind and went over to Guttormsen.

  “Where do you want us?”

  Guttormsen smiled and patted Milo overly hard on the shoulder.

  “You’ve done a great job. We’ll take care of this now. So all you have to do is take off for the weekend.”

  He packed up his briefcase and started to head for the door after the other broad-shouldered officers.

  Milo walked alongside.

  “Guttormsen, the reason that Hamid managed to forge the reference from the business school was that he and the gang threatened one of the employees in the school administration. They promised to beat her husband and children senseless if she didn’t fix the grades for him. I only want to underscore that even if this guy has a bean counter’s brain and a nice suit, he’s dangerous,” said Milo.

  Guttormsen stopped, a broad smile on his face.

  “We are too, Cavalli.”

  * * *

  The Lorry restaurant at the far end of Hegdehaugsveien was just as noisily charming as always on a Friday afternoon, and Milo found Frikk in the bar, where he was trying in vain to impress a coed. If it had been one of the usual financial hangers-on, she would have realized from the oversize watch, outrageously expensive suit and swaggering tone of voice that this was a guy with assets she could milk. Fredrik B. Hanefjell, “Frikk” to his friends and enemies because he swallowed his words and talked at breakneck speed, was among the ten most successful stockbrokers in the city and pulled in between ten and fifteen million a year in salary.

  But all she saw was one big father complex.

  A guy who was a bit too short, talked way too fast, and who was faithful to only one person in the whole world: himself.

  She was clearly not letAs agreed on the phone, here is some more informationting herself be dazzled, and Frikk mostly resembled a calf trying to fight its way out of a swamp. With every movement, every bellow, he sank lower. And closer to destruction.

  “Hey! Milo!” he said when he caught the eye of his former associate, giving him a firm handshake and a pat on the shoulder.

  “You gotta meet Solveig. Law student.”

  Milo shook her hand and met her gaze. For a few seconds she measured him with her eyes, from the dark, half-length naturally curly hair, to the tailor-made Italian suit and handmade Neapolitan tie to the shiny black shoes. She sighed audibly.

  “Why didn’t you get here first?” she said with a little smile and a quick glance at Frikk.

  Before Milo could answer, she slipped off the bar stool and left them in favor of a girlfriend who had just come into the place.

  “Good that you came, Milo. Was startin’ to get bored!”

  With an experienced finger motion he got the attention of the Swede behind the bar, and a short time later they were each standing with a half liter. They talked absently while constantly checking their cell phones for messages and e-mail. Neither of them was quite ready to leave the workweek behind.

  “Make any money today, then?” Milo asked.

  Frikk snorted.

  “Even in a shitty market, like now, I don’t have to work too many ho
urs before I’ve pulled in what corresponds to your lousy salary.”

  Milo smiled over the half liter and took a gulp.

  “And yet you’ll never be as rich as me,” he said.

  Milo could not contain himself, and Frikk turned sulky. Like so many of his colleagues in the financial industry, Frikk was merciless in his characterization of competitors and colleagues, but lacked self-irony. And if there was anything he didn’t like, it was being reminded that others were richer than him. Because the milestone for success in the industry was the size of your fortune, and Milo knew that it was even more frustrating for Frikk not to be able to overtake an underpaid Financial Crimes investigator who lived on an endlessly growing family fortune from Italy.

  “Just kidding, Frikk. Relax. You’re plenty rich and smart.”

  “Just shut up.”

  They were waved over to a booth with various stockbrokers and analysts who had also strayed from the wine bars on Tjuvholmen, and Milo sat absentmindedly while he checked his cell phone regularly. It was approaching six thirty, and he could not keep from thinking about the arrest. He bitterly regretted that he hadn’t insisted on going with Guttormsen and the force, and wondered whether there was still time. He signaled to Frikk that he was going out to take a call, and sent a text message to Guttormsen on his way toward the exit.

  WHAT’S HAPPENING?

  Outside, the sun had long since disappeared and a cold draft in the air reminded the Friday crowd that winter was on its way.

  It suddenly occurred to Milo that he was only a few blocks from Reeza Hamid’s apartment, and he started walking up Hegdehaugsveien. There was a beep on his phone.

  THE OBJECT JUST CAME HOME. WILL HAVE HIM SOON. 5 MIN. RELAX.

  Milo could picture Guttormsen sitting in the operations vehicle, guiding his force as he had done hundreds of times before. But Milo was unable to do as he’d been told.

  He was unable to relax.

  Not until he’s in handcuffs, he thought.