Hostage

by Kristina Ohlsson

  ‘Sorry, my head’s all over the place. You’re right, she told me that I wasn’t to land in New York under any circumstances; I was to head for Washington, DC.’

  ‘And where did she tell you to land?’

  ‘At Dulles airport.’

  ‘Nowhere else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She didn’t tell you to crash the plane, regardless?’

  Karim’s gaze sharpened.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You heard what I said.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Then let me ask you again: You weren’t told to crash the plane, regardless of whether or not the hijackers’ demands were met?’

  Karim looked as if he still didn’t understand the question, even though he had heard it twice.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, definitely not.’

  And then he said something that made Bruce stiffen.

  ‘How could you think that I would have accepted something like that? I love my family, more than anything in the world. But I couldn’t take the lives of over four hundred people for their sake. It would have been a terrible decision to make, but . . . She said there was a bomb on board, but I didn’t believe her.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘So you wouldn’t have done it?’ Bruce said.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  Of course he wouldn’t. That information had been given only to the security services involved, to deter them from opposing the hijackers’ demands. Or possibly to provoke a stress reaction.

  Which was exactly what had happened.

  We were so close to damning ourselves for ever.

  The doctor cleared his throat behind Bruce.

  ‘Your time is up,’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  Bruce had just one question left; the rest could wait.

  Karim looked anxious when he realised that Bruce and his colleague were about to leave.

  Bruce got in first.

  ‘Just one more thing. Why you?’

  Silence. It was obvious that Karim had asked himself that same question.

  ‘She said it was because of Flight TU003,’ he said.

  Bruce didn’t understand.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve asked myself the same question? I have no idea.’

  Bruce didn’t know much about planes or airline company employees, and wasn’t quite sure what to say next.

  ‘Have you ever been captain on a flight with that number?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘I certainly have,’ Karim replied. ‘Just once, back in May. A flight from Copenhagen to Rabat. I stood in for a colleague. It’s the only time apart from today when I’ve had to carry out an emergency landing.’

  Bruce didn’t comment on the fact that Karim hadn’t actually landed Flight 573.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked instead.

  ‘There was a fight among a group of passengers. The crew couldn’t manage to break them up; I decided they were a danger to other passengers, so I landed in Munich.’

  Bruce instinctively thought that this information could be important, but he didn’t know what to do with it.

  ‘Were any of the passengers particularly upset because you were landing in Munich?’ he said.

  Karim coughed and brought his hand up to the wound in his neck, as if he was afraid it might burst open.

  ‘Not as far as I recall. Apart from the guys who were fighting, of course, but that was only to be expected. The problem was that it took almost eight hours before I was allowed to continue the journey. During the time it took to land and get rid of the troublemakers, a terrible storm came in over the city. Gale-force winds, hail, thunder and lightning. It was positively apocalyptic. They shut down the whole airport for several hours, and then of course there was a queue when we were able to leave.’

  Bruce made a note of the flight number, then caught his colleague’s eye. Time to end the interview and head back to the office.

  Just as they were about to leave, Bruce heard Karim’s hoarse voice once more:

  ‘Promise me you’ll try to find my family. I don’t care what you do with me, just make sure you find them. I have to know what’s happened to them.’

  Bruce hesitated for no more than a second.

  ‘Karim, they’re fine. They were never taken hostage.’

  71

  STOCKHOLM, 05:06

  It was five o’clock in the morning, but Fredrika Bergman didn’t feel at all tired. Alex had gone home a few hours earlier to be with his family; Fredrika and Eden stayed on, along with Dennis and Sebastian. The night was dark and cold, and Fredrika was happy to be indoors.

  She updated her employers on the hour and every half hour. Once the media had grasped the fact that no one was seriously hurt, and had managed to pass this on in a range of articles, anxious relatives stopped calling the police switchboard.

  It didn’t take long before it became known that the police suspected Captain Sassi of being involved in the hijacking, and at the same time there was a flood of questions as to why the government had revised its decision to deport Zakaria Khelifi. After that, Fredrika didn’t have a minute to herself.

  She spoke to her boss at the Justice Department and provided him with the basis of a statement to the press. Zakaria’s deportation had been reviewed due to a comprehensive re-evaluation. The government simply couldn’t risk getting such an important decision wrong, and it was better to be safe than sorry.

  Fredrika looked at what she had written down.

  Why was she still not happy about this?

  She had got what she wanted, after all.

  Zakaria Khelifi would be allowed to remain in Sweden.

  There was nothing but emptiness inside her. She knew she ought to go home and go to bed, get a few hours’ sleep. Instead she went to find Eden.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  Eden glanced up. She didn’t look in the least bit tired.

  ‘It’s going well. I’ve put out a call for Zakaria’s sister, Sofi.’

  Zakaria’s sister, who was probably the person behind everything that had happened over the past few days. Please don’t let her leave the country or go underground. It would be a nightmare to lose her, knowing that she was still out there in the field as an opponent.

  ‘What if we don’t find her?’ Fredrika said.

  ‘We’ll find her.’

  She could hear from Eden’s tone of voice that she didn’t want to discuss the matter any further, but Fredrika was worried. Someone who had worked out such a detailed plan wasn’t going to leave her own disappearance to chance. And all they had to help them track her down was a name no one recognised and a picture from her uncle that was several years old.

  Fredrika remembered that Eden had assumed that the person behind it all was a man. Jumping to conclusions. The world wasn’t black or white; it was usually grey.

  ‘The government is going to release Zakaria for good,’ she said. ‘There’s absolutely no chance that they will review their decision again.’

  ‘I know,’ Eden said.

  ‘What do you think about his case, in the light of all that’s happened?’

  ‘I don’t think anything. I know. Zakaria is up to his ears in shit.’

  Information had come flooding in over the past few hours. Karim’s wife had confirmed parts of his story; someone had called his mobile and left a silent message on his voicemail. Karim had mentioned it to his wife, then called the person back. She hadn’t seen her youngest daughter speaking to a girl over the fence, but the child had told her about it.

  Eden had sent two officers over to Solna even though it was the middle of the night, and they had shown the neighbour a picture of Sofi. The woman had shaken her head and said that she hadn’t really seen what the girl looked like.

  ‘I just remember her hat. She was wearing a big blue woolly hat.’

  The Americans were sceptical about Karim’s story and the exp
lanation for his actions. Fredrika and the others had no doubts whatsoever. It was totally illogical to believe that someone would risk so much without a very good reason.

  Fredrika had sat in on the interview with Karim’s wife, who had asked several times what would happen to her husband now and wanted to know when he would be coming home. They had tried to side-step her questions and had answered evasively that they would have to wait and see. Karim was injured, and was in need of care first and foremost. They told Karim’s mother the same thing when they contacted her to tell her that her son was safe.

  But they all knew the truth: Karim wouldn’t be coming home. Not for a long time, perhaps never.

  The thought made her so sad that it was unbearable.

  Any one of us would have done the same thing in his situation.

  What also made her sad was that she couldn’t for the life of her see how they were going to connect Sofi to the crimes they suspected her of.

  ‘We don’t have a shred of evidence,’ she said to Eden.

  ‘Don’t we?’

  ‘No one has seen her; we have nothing to prove that she was involved, apart from the fact that she drove a car to Arlanda. And that she spoke to Karim, but the courts will never accept an identification solely on the basis of someone’s voice.’

  Eden finally looked up from her screen.

  ‘You can’t think of any other evidence Sofi has given us, without realising it?’

  Fredrika sensed a trap, but chose to walk right in anyway.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Two things,’ Eden said, holding up two fingers. ‘First of all, she must have made sure Karim’s fingerprints ended up on the phone. We can only guess how it happened, but I’m going to ask the Americans to ask Karim whether he’s used anyone else’s phone over the past few days. My guess is that Karim met her, probably in such an everyday situation that he had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. But with a bit of luck, he’ll remember what she looked like.’

  Of course. Monday’s bomb threats had had one purpose and one alone: to point the finger of suspicion at Karim.

  ‘And the other thing?’

  ‘Flight TU003,’ Eden said, turning the monitor so that Fredrika could see it. ‘Do you remember the article in which Tennyson Cottage was mentioned? Adam Mortaji’s father said that his son had killed himself, and his girlfriend didn’t get there in time. Sofi could have been clever and gone for any pilot, but instead she chose to make it personal.’

  Fredrika leaned forward; there seemed to be a passenger list on the screen.

  ‘Karim flew from Copenhagen to Rabat in May,’ Eden said. ‘I’m absolutely certain that Sofi was on board, under a different name. The flight was delayed for so long that she arrived too late to see Adam, the love of her life. By the time she finally got there, her boyfriend had already killed himself.’

  Fredrika felt that sensation of emptiness again. She realised Eden was right. Hopefully, it was only a matter of time before they worked out Sofi’s alias.

  ‘It was very convenient for her that Zakaria actually knew Karim,’ she said.

  It took a while before the extent of the damage Sofi had deliberately caused Karim became clear. She had made absolutely certain that he would appear to be involved in her plan. While he defended his actions on the grounds that his family had been held hostage, the police would be able to confirm that this had never been the case. The question was how the Americans would choose to judge him. Harshly, in all probability. Very harshly indeed.

  ‘It doesn’t look good for either of them,’ Eden said, as if she knew what Fredrika was thinking.

  No, it certainly didn’t.

  ‘What about the recordings of the bomb threats?’ Fredrika asked. ‘Did you get anywhere with trying to remove that stupid voice distortion?’

  Eden pulled a face.

  ‘It wasn’t quite as stupid as we thought, but we’re working on it.’

  In Fredrika’s opinion it probably didn’t matter all that much. She was convinced it was Sofi’s voice they would hear if they managed to remove all the interference.

  ‘She must have broken into Karim’s house,’ she said.

  ‘To plant the Tennyson book, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. It seems strange that they didn’t notice anything.’

  Eden’s mobile rang, and she picked it up off the desk.

  ‘She could have had people helping her. Skilled people. And the book was only lying on top of the others on the shelf, after all. If nothing else had been touched, why would they notice an extra book among all the rest?’

  That was true, of course. And it might not have been there for long.

  ‘So you don’t think she was working alone?’ Fredrika said.

  ‘On something like this? No, I don’t.’

  How would they find out? Fredrika had no idea. Reluctantly she had to admit that she’d run out of energy. She just wanted to go home.

  ‘There was something else I wanted to talk to you about,’ Eden said. ‘Sebastian has started looking for another job; he feels he’s ready to move on. We’ll be needing a new head of analysis; would you be interested?’

  Fredrika was paralysed with shock.

  ‘Me? Head of analysis? Here?’

  She looked around at the world outside Eden’s glass cube, in an open-plan office so cut off from the rest of the world that she thought she would go crazy if she came to work here.

  ‘What do you think?’ Eden said.

  Eden, who would be Fredrika’s boss if she said yes.

  ‘It’s not for me,’ Fredrika said. ‘But thank you for the offer.’

  Her shift with Säpo was over, and she didn’t feel as if she wanted to come back.

  It had been worth a try. Fredrika Bergman had many of the qualities Eden looked for a new recruit.

  Integrity.

  Analytical skill.

  Intellect.

  But if she didn’t want it, she didn’t want it, and that was the end of that.

  What was more difficult to deal with was the fact that her own employer was keeping secrets from her. She had seen it when she went outside to get a signal on her mobile, and Efraim turned up. At first, she had thought she was just being paranoid, but after a minute or so she was certain. There were two surveillance officers sitting in a car on the other side of the street, and it was obvious that they were there because of Efraim. He had presumably seen them as soon as they started following him.

  But how could Säpo possibly know about Efraim?

  She knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. And she remembered how stressed GD had been whenever she had met up with him during the day. Something had happened, that much was clear, but for the life of her Eden couldn’t work out why it had happened right now.

  Of course the Brits had come calling; she was wise enough to realise that. The question was, why had they decided to pass on information to her new employer at this stage? Eden would never have got the post as head of counter-terrorism if they had known from the outset. It was that simple. For a while at the beginning, she had wondered whether to take preventative action, to devalue the information by going to see GD and putting her cards on the table.

  I made a mistake.

  I allowed myself to be led astray, and embarked on a clandestine relationship with an Israeli who turned out to be a Mossad agent.

  I swear I didn’t know who he was, and I also swear that as soon as I realised the truth, I ended the affair just as quickly as it had begun.

  The only damage done was to me personally. I betrayed my husband, and believe me, I pay for that every night when the guilt keeps me awake.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to make things so simple. Instead, she had allowed the time to pass, and that had been another mistake.

  The Brits knew that she wasn’t a spy. The very idea was ridiculous. But it was a good story to sell to others, which was what they had done. To Säpo as well, no doubt. Just to discredit her. And all because when she had realised wh
at Efraim’s agenda was, she had chosen to end their relationship rather than reporting it to her superiors and beginning to play a double game.

  ‘Do you realise what an opportunity you’ve thrown away?’ her boss had yelled. ‘You could have carried on seeing him, pretended to let him recruit you, and gained a unique insight into Mossad, for fuck’s sake!’

  The problem was not that Eden didn’t realise, but that the price was too high. She would never forget that night when it all ended, and she got back late to the apartment she shared with Mikael.

  ‘We have to move to Sweden,’ she had said. ‘I no longer have a job.’

  And then came the tears. The regret. The despair. She didn’t know whether Mikael would have stayed with her if he hadn’t had his God. If he hadn’t been such an expert when it came to forgiveness.

  I’m the only one who can’t forgive, Eden thought.

  She hadn’t forgiven her former boss, or Efraim, and she definitely hadn’t forgiven herself. The shame and embarrassment set her heart on fire. She clenched her fists in her lap and forced herself to breathe calmly. It had been so horrible, seeing Efraim again.

  It’s not so much that I hate him, more that I still want to go to bed with him. Just once more. Mikael, my love, forgive your wife for being such a cheap creature.

  They were flowing again, those bloody tears. Didn’t she deserve something better than tears after a day like this?

  In less than twenty-four hours, she had led an investigation where the team had managed to work out the story behind a hijacking that could have had such dire consequences that Eden didn’t even want to think about it.

  Resolutely, she dried her eyes. Enough. For several years.

  She had a job to do and family to take care of. And she had decided to do what she should have done right from the start.

  GD picked up on the first ring.

  ‘Please don’t tell me you have more bad news,’ he said, referring to the hijacking.

  ‘This is about something else,’ Eden said. ‘Are you still in your office?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I’ll be there in five minutes.’

  She hung up.

  Hopefully, she could get rid of the problem if she revealed as much of the truth as possible.