Three Minutes

by Anders Roslund

  The commandant nodded toward his second-in-command, who immediately shoved the emaciated prisoner in front of him onto one of the few patches of grass. He took a black blindfold out of his pocket, identical to the one Crouse had worn during the journey, and tied it over Clarke’s eyes. The commandant strode over to him, and it was only now Crouse noticed that, unlike the others, the leader wore black boots with clinking spurs in the shape of stars with red stones sparkling on either side. On his right hip hung a revolver, he put it to Clarke’s head, circled around to that thin face and pressed the barrel hard against his left temple. Now the troops started to shout in chorus. Muerte. Dead. In English too, just to be sure. The commandant held the revolver to Clarke’s skull while he turned to Crouse, making sure the new prisoner watched him take care of the old prisoner. Watched while he pressed his finger to the trigger. Watched him shoot. My reality, not this terrorist’s unreality. Blood and spinal fluid gushed out of the bullet hole, staining the commandant’s uniform. And the troops laughed loudly, because that’s what the commandant was expecting. And when Clarke fell—not headlong, as if the gritty, sore body couldn’t decide if it should fall—it happened so slowly, as if through water, surrendering as all bodily functions shut down, and not even the will to live could turn them back on again.

  “Next.”

  The second-in-command ran over to Crouse, eager to obey his commandant, shoved the speaker as he’d shoved Clarke toward the same little patch of grass. Crouse was forced to stand next to Clarke’s body.

  “Do you know the very best part of advancing within this organization, Speaker Diaper? Of becoming an officer? Maybe even of becoming . . . El Comandante? Of course. It feels good to get as far as I have, I won’t deny it, and I like to feel good. But the best part, the very best, Speaker Diaper, is that it’s my job to execute powerful Americans. In these parts, I’m the one who does it. So the others had to spare you, keep you alive, for my sake.”

  The commandant held up his gun, rubbed his index finger on its muzzle as if removing dirt, nodded toward his second-in-command to untie the black blindfold that had slipped down Clarke’s lifeless face and move it to Crouse’s, tie it around his eyes.

  The world went black again. Just sounds and smells and vibrations as someone moved. And he heard it again. The troops howling. Muerte. And felt the round metal mouth of the gun pressed against his temple—and he had just enough time to think, right side not left, like Clarke—before it fired.

  ERIK WILSON RAN. Out of the darkened meeting room in the County Communications Center, up the stairs, through the corridors of the police station, and toward an almost forgotten and rarely opened oblong closet in one corner of his office. Eight uniforms on hangers. It had been a long time. He hadn’t even worn them on those formal occasions where it was expected. It just wasn’t his style. Now he tore away the dry cleaner’s plastic around the uniform hanging at the far back, threw it on, and ran out again. Past the closed door of the conference room, where he should be right now, and for a moment he wished he’d decided to go to that police commission meeting instead, that he’d never answered the telephone—then he’d still be unaware that his friend, his responsibility, might be legally assassinated at any moment. An outlaw. Again.

  This door he opened. The SWAT team’s room. Said hello as he passed by his busy colleagues and hurried on to the next room, toward external command. A large cabinet of keys stood open and he grabbed a set somewhere in the middle, was on his way out when the SWAT-team chief shouted.

  “What the hell are you up to?”

  “I’m borrowing one of your squad cars for a few hours.”

  “Listen—in my department, we ask first!”

  Wilson had already been swallowed up by the dark corridor and entered the irritating fluorescents of the stairs. Uniform. The marked police car. He had less than three hours to gather the information Sue needed, so she could play her best card. Piet Hoffmann’s card. The Seven of Hearts. And it was all about being taken seriously, sending the right signals, getting into a sealed embassy.

  The short hill out of the garage and up toward the boom and the sentry box, he turned on the sirens and flashing blue lights and accelerated along Hantverkar Street.

  The PRC. For decades these Colombian guerrillas had been kidnapping Americans, Scandinavians, Japanese, French. Lengthy negotiations, often lasting several years, people locked in cages in a jungle no outsiders could penetrate. But this was something else. Timothy D. Crouse. Speaker of the House. A very powerful person. The USA was going to be forced to act. And everything had changed.

  Wilson zigzagged through a thick line of cars, drove on the sidewalk past City Hall, on a bike path past the government offices. He remembered how Paula’s escape started right there, in these very corridors of power, during a meeting with both the minister of justice and a police chief who guaranteed total immunity and support for Paula’s mission to infiltrate the Polish mafia in a high-security Swedish prison. Wilson fought down an infantile reflex to stretch a middle finger in the air at all the people who had made promises and betrayed them, who had sacrificed lives in order to preserve hierarchy. But they weren’t worth it. And, besides, they’d already been handed their sentence—convicted in the decade’s most high-profile trial—to sit in the very prison cells they’d left Hoffmann in to die. He kept shifting back and forth from sidewalk to street until he hit Gustav Adolf Square. There was no way forward there. Snorting, stressed out, carbon-belching cars formed a living wall. The beautiful roundabout that separated the state department from the opera, parliament, and royal palace, the very heart of the capital, was clogged and no siren or blue lights were enough to break through it. He checked the dashboard clock, waited a minute, waited one more. And then drove metal to metal, back, forth, along the side, forcing his way across the roundabout, bumping against flower boxes at the base of the statue of a king pointing out over his city. He increased his speed on the footpath through the Royal Garden and across the busiest street of bus traffic, which he never learned the name of, all the way to Nybroplan. There, in the middle of the small square, the phone rang again.

  “Sue, I don’t have time right now, I’m on the road and—”

  “Sorry to disappoint you—this isn’t Sue. I’m calling from Kronoberg jail. You’re speaking with the chief.”

  A deep, harsh male voice, a heavy smoker, Wilson was sure of it.

  “Then I’m the one who will have to disappoint you, since I don’t have time to speak to Sue or some prison chief right now.”

  “Well, this very much concerns you. So you’d best listen to me, Wilson. I have a prisoner up here making quite a fucking scene in one of my cells. And I want you to personally come here and pick him up.”

  “And why the hell would I do that? I’m hanging up so—”

  “Don’t hang up. You’re the one who needs to keep his eyes on his employees.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your employees. The people the public is paying you to be responsible for. The people who should be out on the streets chasing down trouble. Instead of causing it themselves.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “So now you’re listening?”

  “Goddamn it!”

  “I’m talking about our favorite detective—Ewert Grens. He’s in cell five right now. He’s been arrested.”

  Strand Road. The water at the very edge of the sea, beautiful no matter the season.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “According to the chief prosecutor Ågestam’s written arrest order, Superintendent Grens was taken in on suspicion of illegal use of a firearm and disturbing the peace.”

  A red light at Djurgård Bridge, Wilson slowed down, passed by the line of cars, and continued toward the fancy neighborhood where embassies stood in each other’s shadows.

  “Give me a couple of hours. I’ll deal with it. But until then he’ll just have to sit there.”

  “He’s making quite a ruckus.”
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br />   “I don’t have time right now.”

  “It’s my staff who has to take care of him.”

  “If he doesn’t settle down, tell him you have a message from me. Whisper that I think he’ll look great in stripes.”

  Wilson had deliberately delayed turning off the siren, did it now as he parked in front of the sentry box and guards in uniforms with crew cuts, large patches on their shoulders and sleeves. They were protecting a small piece of the US in the middle of Sweden. He stayed in the car, they needed to wonder who he was, what an emergency vehicle was doing here, why a high-ranking Swedish police officer, who would soon step out, needed to be admitted without question, taking up time they didn’t have. He counted the seconds, as he sat near all these small fortresses. Not far away the Italian flag waved, and next to that stood the German embassy, and then the British. On the other side of the road, streamers marked the entrance to SVT, Sweden’s largest TV channel. And here, right outside the passenger-side window, stood sloping concrete ramps and a high steel fence, surveillance cameras, and loaded automatic weapons wielded by people who had an angry fuck-off attitude—it reminded him of the prisons he had to visit regularly for his job. Everything was different now. After 9/11. The whole world had been designated the enemy.

  He opened the car door and knocked on the closed glass hatch. He wondered if he was still the person he used to be, if the Erik Wilson who’d once been an expert handler—the policeman who found people in order to use them, who could get them to like him, trust him, give him what he wanted—still existed inside the current version of Erik Wilson, the superintendent firmly enmeshed in the managerial bureaucracy, unable to move. If he still had it.

  I know what they want to know. But how much do they know already?

  He was pummeled with questions by the guards, but his answers flowed naturally, and he started to feel that rush again. And not just that, he no longer felt scared or in pain, this was exactly what he’d missed. A forbidden feeling. Someone he cared about was in danger. He should continue being upset, confused. But he was filled with energy, excitement, focus.

  I feel alive again. Because your life is at risk.

  The guard hung up the telephone on the inner wall of the sentry box, nodded slightly, opened the heavy iron gate—whoever he’d called, the answer had been yes. The first step. Wilson left security zone 1.

  The embassy vestibule looked like the waiting room in a dentist’s office—except the marines on guard duty and the cameras, which now seemed to be following only him. Security zone 2. A woman smiled and asked him to sit down while she inspected his police badge, just like the guards outside. She also explained to him that he would be meeting with a Mr. Jennings. After twenty minutes, Wilson knocked on the window of the smiling woman’s office, asked how things were going, and was told it wouldn’t be long. He sat back down. Another twenty minutes, another knock, another just a minute, and he sat down.

  “Sorry for the delay.”

  One hour and seven minutes later.

  “I’m sorry. I had to vet you.”

  Mr. Jennings. The same age as Wilson. Or, maybe not, maybe that was wishful thinking. The man, who had short hair, a mustache, and wore a gray blazer, was probably not even forty.

  Another one of those closed security doors. Jennings opened it and led Wilson inside. Security zone 3. Some level of trust. A new sentry box with more cameras, more soldiers. Someone compared his face to the picture on his police ID for the third time. And then frisked him. Ran a curious hand scanner over his legs, arms, torso.

  “You’re cleared to go ahead.”

  A short hallway. A bare room with fluorescent lighting that made you look pale, bluish, almost sickly. A simple table sitting in its center, a pair of chairs. That was all.

  “This was the only room we had free.”

  Sure it was.

  This was the kind of room designed to place a visitor at a disadvantage, to show his lack of power. The kind of place he himself used when visiting Aspsås prison, when he first selected Piet Hoffmann as a possible informant and started to approach him and win his trust. Where he, step by step, pretended to be his best friend. That was how it worked. A handler becomes the informant’s best friend, so that the informant continues to be willing to risk their life to uncover new information.

  “Erik Carl Wilson.”

  Mr. Jennings didn’t even look up as he opened a folder and flipped through the papers inside.

  “Assistant at the Metropolitan Police in Uppsala for four years. Inspector at the Homicide Division in Gothenburg for seven years. Chief inspector for the CI handling unit in the regional intelligence office for five years, in charge of informants at City Police for four years. For the last two and a half years, head of the homicide unit.”

  “All that in an hour? Not bad.”

  “But, between us, that’s not why I let you in—I’m not overly impressed by the Swedish police.”

  “Hey, just between us, neither am I. Right now, I’ve got a detective in lockup.”

  “On the other hand—you’ve done five residencies at FLETC. Our facility in Georgia for special police training. Recruitment, information gathering, witness protection, interrogation techniques.”

  That’s where all of this started. It was the knowledge he gained there that helped him choose the prisoner Piet Hoffmann. It was how he knew to add a few crimes to Hoffmann’s record, a couple of Kalashnikovs for some weapons charges. From there it had been easy to push for tougher restrictions—no parole, no contact with the outside world. Hoffmann, who had a wife and two small children on the outside, became desperate after just a few months without communication or human touch. He would have done anything to get out of there.

  “The highest marks, Wilson. Best reviews. There aren’t many who get that, not even among us Americans. I myself wasn’t even close.”

  Hoffmann had been assigned the code name Paula. Had become Wilson’s tool. Someone the Swedish police could use and throw away. That’s how he and his colleagues who worked in undercover operations thought about it. Since it was forbidden to use a criminal as an assistant, even though they worked best—only a criminal can play criminal—they’d learned that once a Paula, a Pia, a Berit had been discovered by the group he’d infiltrated and was doomed and in need of immediate police protection, they had to deny all knowledge and let him die.

  Tools. Resources. That was what you were supposed to be.

  Sometimes things don’t turn out quite like you expected. Sometimes we end up meaning more to each other than we intend to. And he still didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing to feel this way about another human being, to care about someone so much.

  “Okay. You’ve been approved, Wilson.”

  Jennings wore his suit jacket buttoned up. He was slim and when he leaned back in his uncomfortable wooden chair, his jacket tightened at his right hip. A gun holster. Armed, in here? A paper pusher?

  “And now it’s your turn to explain. What do you want?”

  I want to know what you know.

  “I saw the breaking news on CNN.”

  Without letting you know that I know what you want to know.

  “About the new war on terror. Thirteen terrorists who are going to be hunted down. And one of them, the Seven of Hearts—they called him El Sueco. The Swede.”

  Mr. Jennings was still leaning back. But he was listening.

  “You had pictures of them. All of them. Passport photos or mug shots or blurry images in the jungle. Except that one. Because you don’t know who he is.”

  “Yes?”

  A tightrope. He had to know. Without them knowing that he might know.

  “If there is a person in the jungles of South America called El Sueco, who might be Swedish, then of course our not-so-impressive Swedish police force would be interested as well. Who is he? Can we identify him? Can we assist our American colleagues in their search?”

  Mr. Jennings smiled. That ironic smile that US officials sometimes
give to the representatives of inconsequential countries just south of the North Pole.

  “And how exactly would you be able to assist us?”

  Walking the tightrope. Winning trust. Without arousing suspicion. There’d been a time when he’d been damn good at that. Even the grades this civil servant had dug up proved that. But that was then. Maybe too long ago.

  “One thing you should know, Jennings. When it comes to Sweden, there is no other democratic nation, anywhere, that has collected as much digital information about their citizens. Information that exists across many different systems. Many are open to the public. But there are others you might want access to that are closed. Inaccessible to unauthorized persons. So you need us—if El Sueco turns out to be Swedish. That useless Swedish police force has access to them.”

  Wilson tried to sound confident. But maybe he was rusty, exhausted.

  “But maybe that’s not something your bosses are interested in?”

  The gun in its holster. It pushed more firmly against the blazer as the American officer leaned further back, as if it wanted to insert itself into the silence.

  Maybe I went too far.

  Wilson tried to read Jennings’s face. It was square, much like the face of the indigenous-looking guerrilla on the hit list. But it was paler and lacked any braid to frame it. It was also completely neutral and impossible to interpret. Until the officer suddenly stood up. He had the folder with Erik Wilson’s police record in hand, ready to go.

  I went too far.

  “Okay.” Mr. Jennings looked at him: measuring, weighing, considering. And then he unbuttoned the blazer and took it off, baring what could only be seen in outline before—a black leather shoulder holster against a white, perfectly ironed shirt, as stark as a mourning band. Inside was a Glock 22, as black as its holster. A butt that would leave an imprinted pattern on any hands that squeezed too hard.

  Then he seemed to make up his mind, hung his jacket over the chair. “I have to make a few calls.”

  Wilson hadn’t noticed the door behind him, the same color as the wall. Now he did, as Jennings opened it and stepped into security zone 4, the heart of the embassy.