Hostage

by Kristina Ohlsson

  Was this the right angle of attack? Eden was doubtful. She was finding it difficult to work out how to react to the two different demands contained in the note. Was Tennyson Cottage the most important thing for the hijacker or hijackers, or was it Zakaria Khelifi? Why decide to challenge two governments rather than just one? Surely, whoever it was must realise that the USA would never accept a hostage situation. They didn’t negotiate with terrorists, and there was no way they would shut down Tennyson Cottage during the time it took a jumbo jet to use up its fuel.

  As far as Zakaria Khelifi was concerned, Eden thought the same applied. The Swedish government was not going to revise its decision because of a bomb threat. If they did, it would open the floodgates for a surge of hostage situations and bomb threats. Besides which, they still didn’t know if this was a hoax, and that bothered Eden more than anything else.

  ‘Let’s just ignore the demands for a while and focus on the actual threat instead,’ she said. ‘The bomb that’s supposed to be on the plane. What do Arlanda say, first of all?’

  ‘I’ve been in touch with them,’ one of the investigators said. ‘They reckon it’s virtually impossible to smuggle a bomb on board these days, either in hand luggage or in baggage that’s been checked in. At least with flights that have the USA as their final destination.’

  ‘Because the Americans insist that everything has to be X-rayed?’

  ‘Exactly. Every single thing is X-rayed.’

  ‘And what do they do if they see something suspicious in baggage that’s been checked in? Do they open it? I can think of countless occasion when people have been asked to open their hand luggage to show what they’re carrying, but I’ve never heard of anyone having to open a suitcase after it’s been checked in. And most people lock their cases these days, so what happens then? Do they break them open? I can’t recall ever seeing that either.’

  Sebastian broke in, sounding slightly impatient.

  ‘Isn’t this exactly what this kind of threat is aiming to achieve?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They want us to sit here trying to guess whether or not there really is a bomb. The fact that we can’t be sure makes the answer irrelevant, because we can’t afford to take the risk. Therefore, it’s not a good idea to mess with people who threaten a plane that’s actually in the air.’

  Eden nodded thoughtfully. ‘We can compare this situation with the threats we dealt with yesterday. We were given times and locations for four bombs; we were able to get there, evacuate each location and carry out a search for any possible explosives. In the case of a plane that’s already in the air, with the threat that it will be blown up if it tries to land, that’s impossible. Even if we sent one of the crew down into the hold to search the baggage, it would be impossible. There are far too many bags to go through, and they don’t have the necessary equipment.’

  ‘This claim that the plane will be blown up if it comes in to land tells us something else,’ Sebastian said.

  ‘Yes,’ Eden agreed. ‘So far, not one word has leaked out to the press, so in order for whoever has made the threat to know if the plane lands . . .’

  ‘. . . at least one of them has to be on board. Or they have a contact on board,’ Sebastian finished.

  Eden thought for a moment. It was the perfect threat. The police and the government would need nerves of steel if they were going to defy the hijackers and hope that the whole thing was nothing more than a bluff, that there was no bomb.

  ‘If the person who left the note in the toilet is still on board, then that person believes they will be able to leave the plane without being recognised and stopped by the police. And they’re counting on the fact that they won’t have to blow the plane to pieces, because then the person in question would die too. Of course, it’s possible that he or she might be prepared to die for the cause, but perhaps it’s not the most credible scenario.’

  ‘Which raises another question,’ one of the investigators said. ‘How does the person behind all this think he or she is going to communicate with us, find out if their demands have been met?’

  ‘Through the media,’ Sebastian said.

  ‘But the media don’t have the story.’

  ‘Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time. There’s no chance that there won’t be a leak from somewhere – Arlanda, SAS, the police or the government office. Or the Americans, for that matter.’

  ‘So the person behind all this thinks that he’ll be able to read about it if Zakaria Khelifi is released and allowed to stay here, and if the Americans close down Tennyson Cottage.’

  ‘I think that must be the case,’ Eden said. ‘No one has tried to make direct contact either with us or the Americans.’

  She clasped her hands in her lap, which was something she often did when she was thinking.

  ‘We don’t know if there is a bomb on board, but most indications would suggest that this is unlikely. Nor do we know if the person behind the threat is on board the plane, but as the note was found in the toilet, that is a reasonable assumption.’

  She leaned back and went on:

  ‘What we do know, however, is that the news has not yet reached the mass media. We also know that the perpetrators have chosen not to contact us directly.’

  The others waited.

  ‘What are you getting at?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘We could try to effect an emergency landing in secret, and evacuate the passengers and crew before the news gets out.’

  ‘Are you crazy? And risk everyone’s life?’

  Eden pursed her lips.

  ‘Just think about it. If there really is a bomb on board, the perpetrators must have made extensive preparations in order to get it there. They must also realise that if the plane is blown up, airports all over Europe and the USA will revise their security procedures so that it will become even more difficult to take a bomb on board. In other words, they will never get another chance. Therefore, as far as they are concerned, it’s essential that everything works this time. Blowing up the plane just because we try for an emergency landing makes no sense at all to me.’

  The door of the meeting room opened and closed as someone realised they were in the wrong place.

  ‘So you think that if we try to bring the plane down, we’ll find out if whoever is behind the threat is serious, and whether one of them is sitting on the plane, or has some other way of knowing what’s happening on board?’

  ‘Exactly. I believe that if we try to bring the plane down, even if there is a bomb on board, the plane won’t be blown up. I think the person behind the threat will make himself or herself known, and will remind us that we’re not sticking to the rules.’

  ‘And what do we do then?’

  ‘Then obviously we don’t defy the hijackers, we take the plane back up again. What do you think?’

  The others exchanged glances.

  ‘What would the view of the police be? They have more experience of this kind of thing,’ said the investigator who had spoken earlier.

  ‘I’ll talk to Alex Recht as soon as we’re done here,’ Eden said. ‘Then we can speak directly to the captain on the plane.’

  She thought to herself that in future she wanted Alex at these meetings. The situation was critical; there was no time to go through everything twice.

  ‘By the way, have we spoken to Khelifi about this?’ the investigator asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ Eden replied.

  She looked at her colleagues.

  ‘So what do you say? If the National Bureau of Investigation is with us, do you agree that we should try for an emergency landing?’

  Everyone nodded.

  ‘Good,’ Eden said.

  ‘Just one thing,’ Sebastian said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Remind the pilot not to dump the fuel, otherwise we’ve lost the chance of taking the plane back up again.’

  13

  FLIGHT 573

  Erik Recht was thinking about his son more than anyt
hing else.

  He really felt as if the boy had arrived several years too early. As his father pointed out, that was the downside of getting together with a woman who was ten years older than him.

  ‘I don’t want to wait any longer,’ Claudia had said. ‘If I do, we might not be able to have children at all.’

  What could he say to that? Not a thing. Claudia was almost forty. If he said he wasn’t ready, he would come across as being childish. And if he came across as being childish, she would leave him. So they had a baby.

  ‘Isn’t it all a bit quick?’ his father had said at the time.

  Erik didn’t answer that kind of question. They had never been able to communicate with one another – not when Erik was a teenager and out of control, and not since then. It was as if those damned teenage years had created a barrier between them, and neither of them was capable of ignoring it. The years went by, but Erik knew that his father still regarded him as unreliable, in spite of the fact that he had now been with the same woman for several years. In spite of the fact that he had completed his training as a pilot and got a permanent post with SAS.

  What was the point in trying if you were never told that you were good enough?

  ‘You’ve got a lot to be proud of,’ his sister had said the last time they met up. ‘Think about all the things you’ve achieved. You’ve lived abroad, for example. Lots of people dream of living your life.’

  The words had cooled Erik’s overheated temperament. There were those who would have liked a part of his life. That was good enough. Erik couldn’t be responsible for the fact that his father wished things were different.

  In Erik’s current situation, as co-pilot on a plane that had been hijacked, he began to wish that his relationship with his father had been different. He even caught himself longing to hear Alex’s voice. It carried with it a stability that Erik himself had never been able to conjure up. And the sound of his father’s voice made him feel safe.

  Erik’s thoughts returned to his own son.

  He wasn’t going to bloody well leave his son when he was still just a baby!

  He glanced over at Karim. He was miles away; he almost looked as if he was in another world.

  ‘We’ve got to get ourselves out of this,’ Erik said.

  Karim’s tense features hardened.

  ‘We will.’

  In order to reinforce what he had said, Erik went on:

  ‘We have to think about our families.’

  Only then did Karim turn and look at him.

  ‘Believe me, I’m thinking of nothing else.’

  14

  STOCKHOLM, 11:00

  Erik was born on a Sunday. Alex remembered it well, because Lena’s labour pains had started while they were having Sunday lunch with Alex’s parents. When it was all over, Lena said it had felt as if she was pushing out a baby that was lying across the womb, as if he was resisting, refusing to come out. The image of his son lying the wrong way round had haunted Alex all his life. That was how he thought of Erik – not flexible and accommodating like his sister, but constantly hot-tempered and determined to negotiate:

  ‘If you do this for me, then I’ll do that for you.’

  Lena had said that their son lacked direction, but Alex had seen only defiance. It wasn’t that he didn’t love Erik – he did, but he couldn’t ever remember feeling particularly close to him. The trip to South America a few years earlier had worked miracles. The journey had proved to Erik that Alex was genuinely interested in what he was doing, that he wanted to be a part of his life. It had made things easier. During the weeks he spent in South America, father and son had had conversations that Alex would never have thought possible.

  Then Erik had moved back to Sweden. Alex couldn’t work out how it had happened, but suddenly everything went downhill again. Lena’s death weighed heavily on both of them, of course, but there were other factors that also had a bearing on their relationship. Erik made one dubious choice after another. Like training to be a pilot, for example, at a time when so many pilots were being made redundant, and hardly any new appointments were being made. Sometimes Alex thought that if it hadn’t been for his overt scepticism about his son’s choice of profession, Erik would never have managed to push himself and secure a permanent post.

  And if he hadn’t been a pilot, he wouldn’t be sitting on that bloody plane right now. If it wasn’t for his son, Alex wouldn’t have been particularly stressed out by the bomb threat. Instead, he would have said they needed to have nerves of steel, that it was unreasonable to think there was actually a bomb on board, and that they should wait for further instructions from the hijackers. He would also have been curious to see what the government was intending to do.

  He had promised Hjärpe that he would act professionally without getting personally involved, but they both knew this was highly unlikely. Therefore, the responsibility for handling the situation had been discreetly passed on to another investigator in Alex’s department. That was fine by Alex; as long as he knew what was going on, he was satisfied.

  Fredrika Bergman called him and got straight to the point.

  ‘How’s it going? With the plane, I mean.’

  Why was she asking that? They’d just been at the same meeting at Rosenbad. He had nothing new to tell her.

  ‘I’m going over to Säpo in a little while,’ Alex said. ‘Nothing has been decided yet. What kind of signals are you picking up at your end?’

  ‘We’ve got a meeting with the Minister shortly. I’ll know more after that.’

  Alex wished she was working for him instead; he needed her right now.

  ‘Perhaps we can have a chat later, after our meetings?’ he said.

  If you tell me something, then I’ll tell you something.

  ‘Good idea,’ Fredrika said.

  He was about to end the call when he realised there was something else on her mind. How well did you know someone when you could tell how she was feeling just from her breathing?

  Fredrika lowered her voice.

  ‘There’s something else I need to tell you,’ she said. ‘But it has to stay between us. At all costs.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Alex had no hesitation in accepting those conditions when they came from Fredrika.

  ‘It’s about Zakaria Khelifi, the man who’s named in the note from the hijackers.’

  ‘What about him?’

  He heard the hesitation in her voice.

  ‘I don’t know, Alex. But I don’t like this case. I’m the one who’s dealing with it, and . . . I just don’t have a good feeling about it.’

  ‘You don’t usually let your feelings influence your decisions.’

  ‘No, but this time I don’t have any logical arguments to back up what I want to say. I’ve read Säpo’s statement and I was there when they went through everything, but now this has happened . . . Suddenly it all feels very flimsy. What if we’re wrong?’

  Alex could picture her so clearly, with that anxious expression, the depth of emotion in those eyes.

  ‘Hang on, you’re new to this job,’ he said. ‘There must be someone else who’s familiar with the case and can decide whether it’s flimsy or not?’

  ‘Of course. Several of my colleagues have read through the notes, and I haven’t heard a reaction from anyone else. They assume that Säpo know what they’re talking about, that they wouldn’t take a step like this unless it was essential.’

  ‘And you don’t feel the same about Säpo?’

  ‘Of course I do. I’m just saying that now we’re in this situation, I’m not sure if I really believe the judgement stands up.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  Alex thought there was a brief second’s hesitation before Fredrika spoke, but he could have been wrong.

  ‘What I’m trying to say is that it’s not out of the question that a misjudgement might have been made in the case of Zakaria Khelifi. In which case, it’s not impossible that someone out there knows he’s inno
cent, and is doing everything they can to make sure he can stay here.’

  ‘Even if that means risking the lives of four hundred people?’

  ‘I think so,’ Fredrika said. ‘After all, desperation has driven people to do far worse things, wouldn’t you say?’

  She regretted her words as soon as she put down the phone. Alex must think she was crazy, that she sympathised with the terrorists. At the same time, she knew she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t pass on her doubts in time.

  Because I think there is something wrong with the Zakaria Khelifi case.

  Fredrika knew what she would have done if she had still been with the police. She would have rushed out into the autumn chill and started talking to those around Zakaria Khelifi. Tried to gauge their mood, to assess how the people around him reacted to the accusations of involvement in terrorism. But Fredrika didn’t work for the police any more; instead, she was sitting behind a desk in the Justice Department.

  ‘You’re so incredibly successful,’ a friend had said to her just a few days earlier. ‘The Justice Department – have you any idea how many people would give anything for a job like that?’

  Why would anyone want her job? All she did was push paper around. It was a job that made no difference whatsoever to one single person on this earth. Apart from Zakaria Khelifi, perhaps.

  For what must have been the twentieth time that morning, Fredrika pulled out his file. She summarised Säpo’s information to herself. He, or rather his telephone number, had cropped up during a preliminary investigation back in 2009. Then he came up in the operation following the death threats against prominent figures in France. And finally, he came up again in the investigation during which he was arrested and charged. There was now proof that he had helped the perpetrators to collect packages containing substances that they had later used to produce a bomb. Furthermore, Säpo added that Zakaria Khelifi had been identified by Ellis, one of the perpetrators, as a person who had assisted them.

  Fredrika went over the issue again and again. She would be attending a briefing with the Minister for Justice very soon. Did she have any objections that she could raise during the meeting?