Three Minutes

by Anders Roslund

  I didn’t go too far.

  Alone in a bare room, like a prison cell. He thought of Paula infiltrating his way into the prison. Exposed and abandoned. But still tricking them all. Only one man, besides Piet and Zofia, knew what happened and where he fled. Erik Wilson.

  Since then they’d met four times a year. Gaira Café in Bogotá, Calle 96, between Carrera 13 and 13A. At 15:00 on the first week of every quarter. A meeting place where no one asked any questions and to which Wilson traveled at his own expense. That was when and where Piet had asked for his help, explaining how the money had dried up—it was expensive to be on the run, even more expensive with a family. Living costs, buying protection, paying off the authorities in a country where bribery was a way of life. That was how he’d come into contact with the PRC guerrillas who financed their operations with drugs. Hoffmann returned to the same business he’d had in Sweden: drugs, buying and selling them, passing them on to dealers, and his business grew. Until the night two of his most reliable dealers ended up on the wrong corner and were executed for it. And their drugs and money—his drugs and money—disappeared. The capital for two deliveries, and now he couldn’t pay.

  Representatives of the PRC knocked on his door, threatened to kill him and his family, but in the opposite order. His youngest son, Rasmus, first. His eldest son, Hugo, next. Then Zofia.

  Hoffmann had defended himself and his family, taken out two guerrilla hit men. But what about the next time? And the next? He had no choice—he had to work off his debt, and when that was paid back, he stayed on to earn money. Six months later Wilson offered him an opportunity to double his income, introduced him to Sue Masterson at the DEA. The best undercover informant I’ve ever known is hiding in South America. He has the confidence of the PRC and would be willing to inform for you. Use him. A perfect solution for both you and Hoffmann. That was how he sold it. Piet Hoffmann needed more money, and the US authorities needed exactly that kind of informal agent. And that’s how it turned out. The US authorities recruited Hoffmann to infiltrate the PRC, the organization responsible for a significant portion of the drugs flowing into their country.

  “Coffee?”

  Wilson hadn’t heard a knock or a door opening. A very young man with a coffee tray.

  “Thank you.”

  A thermos of coffee, a pitcher of milk, and small dry cookies with a chemical taste to them. He had been waiting for half an hour. He chewed and continued to wait.

  Piet Hoffmann, who transformed into Paula, had now transformed again, to El Sueco. He was given a clear objective: get close to the PRC leadership—something Hoffmann started to do when a so-called El Mestizo realized how useful he could be. Slowly a conversation began, the initial hatred and suspicion transformed into trust. Piet Hoffmann was an expert at this, had done it several times before. The hit man and brothel owner had now, without suspecting his new mission—to expose, destroy from within—turned from employer to guarantor. After six months in El Mestizo’s circle, Piet’s duties were expanded, in addition to collection, he started protecting drug shipments and cocinas and training guerrillas. It was this confidence that his new employer wanted to take advantage of. And from his first day undercover Hoffmann’s American handler—the DEA’s equivalent to Erik Wilson—had been provided with tips for the best spot to intercept a delivery or tear down a cocaine factory in the process of being built.

  “Excuse me. That took some time. Again.” He had sweat stains on the back of his shirt and an open laptop in his hand. Jennings no longer wore an ironic smile. The phone call, to whoever it was, had resulted in the answer Wilson hoped for. “That news broadcast you and the rest of the world saw, those few seconds from a transport, came from this.”

  The embassy official ran his finger across the trackpad, clicked on an untitled icon with four files, opened three of them.

  “Here’s the film from the NGA’s satellites above the Amazon. Somewhere in Colombia. But this—this is the unedited material.” A total of two hundred and ten seconds, at times quite blurry and choppy. All shot from above.

  First, a shipment of coca leaves and chemicals to a cocina guarded by soldiers, which you and the rest of the world have already seen. Then a river transport. Then a group of guerrillas in the border region near Venezuela being trained by the same man, and it was clear—from how he moved, gave orders—that he had advanced military training. Finally, more detailed images, again the same man, but now in the company of the hit man with the square face, and it was clear they were jointly guarding a shipment of weapons.

  “All of these are from above—not enough for a facial recognition program to develop a basis for identification. Until we got permission to use this new British technology, which has resolution down to the centimeter. Then we found this.”

  The fourth file. Jennings clicked on it. The same sequence as before, the weapons transport. But now zoomed in on one of the men. On his head, something that could be a lizard tattoo. Then on his face. An image that broke down into gray squares as they zoomed in.

  “We’ve had access to this for a few months. That’s as close as the technology can take us.”

  The face recognition program mapped the contours of the face in squares. Vague lines became a nose and mouth. A person who didn’t exist. El Sueco.

  I see you. And they don’t know. You don’t know.

  “What do you see?”

  You’re blurry. But I know you so well.

  “Wilson? Do you know who that is?”

  Jennings searched Wilson’s face while Wilson avoided eye contact, pretending to look at the image again, as if he were truly trying to decipher it.

  “No.” He looked up, met a disappointed expression. “No, Jennings. I don’t have any clue who that is.”

  A SHED WITH wooden walls and a tin roof. A narrow opening, bars of bamboo, for a door. A straw mattress in one corner, a bowl in another.

  “Chontos.”

  In just a few hours he’d learned a new word. The large hole in the ground that you squatted over. A wooden plank above, and you shoveled mud onto the excrement. The only place he was alone, two slashed potato sacks hanging from a tree branch, but it was enough, a makeshift wall to keep the bastards away.

  “Again?” The girl was probably no older than sixteen or seventeen. Around the age Liz had been when she disappeared. This girl’s long hair was held back in a knot, and she wore a uniform, had a weapon slung diagonally across her chest. Her lips were painted. “It’s nice.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your new House of Representatives, Speaker Diaper. I mean, hardwood floors, even a bowl for food with no holes in it.” She was speaking loudly. She obviously wanted the three teenage boys, automatic weapons thrown casually over thin shoulders, to hear. And they laughed. Not at her, but at the prisoner she was humiliating, who needed to be broken down.

  “Okay then. Chontos. One more time.” His jailer opened the gate with fingernails as red as her lipstick, aimed her gun at him, and walked behind him to the potato sackcloth. There she stopped, asking him every thirty seconds to hurry, telling him he had no more than five minutes.

  He sat down over the hole, long since finished, but just looking for some quiet, trying to understand his mock execution. He hadn’t closed his eyes. The metal was on his right temple, and Crouse had stared into the blackness, listening to the sound of the commandant’s silver spurs as his index finger pressed the trigger. He hadn’t thought of anything—just waited. Then the click drowned out all other sounds. He hadn’t even realized that’s what it was, a click. Not until the troops started howling with laughter—gurgling, hiccupping, chattering laughter that chased away the clouds of insects. A revolver loaded with a single bullet. Clarke’s bullet, the prisoner who was never exchanged, because all negotiations with the US government ceased after their list of demands had been rejected.

  But the fear caught up with him. He was going to die.

  Without being able to control it, he actually did wet himse
lf after that click, and the troops howled even louder, Speaker Diaper, they chanted, Speaker Diaper. But it didn’t break him, didn’t take what was inside. There was nothing in there to take. It was already in a grave in a field outside Washington.

  “Okay, Speaker Diaper. You’re done. No more chontos until tonight.” The woman, the girl, was speaking for the benefit of the others again, who rewarded her by aping a man peeing on himself and walking with his legs wide apart, hands to their noses as if something smelled very bad.

  Crouse was herded into his cage and the door padlocked behind him. He was sweating even more than before, his skin was shiny, and small drops rolled from his hairline down his forehead and cheeks and neck. And when the food came—a long ladle grabbed and then filled the dish—he had no idea what kind of fish was floating in what kind of broth. But he was sure that there were loose fish heads and eyes staring up at him.

  THE BLUE-AND-white police car was standing where he left it. Just outside the glass sentry box with its uniformed guards. Erik Wilson nodded toward them, got in, and drove slowly to Strand Road and the city, while thinking about those gray squares. One centimeter resolution. A face he recognized. Because a man is so much more, a way of moving, an impression, that only those close to you recognize. He stopped at the red light at Djurgård Bridge—he was in no hurry. He had done what he set out to do, gained the trust he’d wanted to, got the answers he was searching for. He still had it, that skill he’d used in a former life to get criminals to trust him, to recruit them, turn them into sources or informants for a few paltry thousands a month in exchange for risking their lives every day.

  “They don’t know.” He had called back, probably for the last time. Contact could be traced, and they’d already risked too much.

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Sue, they don’t know much more than what everybody could see on TV. His alias. And that he’s working with protection and training.”

  At one end of the phone, Hamn Street. Crowded, noisy, messy. In the middle of the small country in northern Europe that people often confuse with Switzerland. At the other end of the line, DEA chief Sue Masterson was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, toward 1600 and the gate to one of the world’s most famous buildings.

  “In twenty minutes I’m sitting down with Vice President Thompson, Chief of Staff Perry, FBI Chief Riley, and CIA Chief Eve. And I’m going to take care of our problem. I’m gonna explain everything, that El Sueco is in our employ, that he’s working on our behalf, that he is our most valuable asset inside the PRC—that we managed to sneak him onto our own list of enemies. That we need him alive.”

  Wilson wove his way through road construction and honking buses, Hamn Street turned to Klaraberg Street and then the bridge toward Kungsholmen. While a woman he trusted proceeded toward what many considered the most powerful building in the world.

  “What if it’s like what happened here—the politicians responsible know but deny it?”

  “It won’t be like that.”

  “Sue—if?”

  She was standing still now. He could hear it. Her breathing was stabilizing slowly.

  “Then we have a huge problem.”

  Then complete silence. It seemed like lunchtime in DC should be louder. Wilson wondered if she was deliberately covering the microphone, and if so, why.

  “I won’t be able to use official channels. Or even unofficial. I’ll have to block his handler—the only person besides us who knows his true mission.”

  There were plenty of parking spots on Berg Street near the southern entrance to police headquarters, which was unusual. It was quiet in Washington and empty here. It didn’t seem right, that much he knew, and a feeling of uneasiness stole over him. A day when the world didn’t make sense. He parked and went in—but not to the homicide unit and his office. He headed in the other direction—toward the jail. And the detective who was locked up there.

  Just one guard. They trusted her. And the Secret Service officer in his black uniform with a golden badge on his chest and golden stripes on his pants was probably escorting her more out of politeness than suspicion.

  This remarkable building, which she’d visited several times, whose walls and echoing floors seemed to be scrutinizing her and whose high ceilings seemed to press down—every time she walked through the hallways of the West Wing the feeling of being one of a chosen few washed over her. It was seductive. And dangerous. She apologized as they approached the open door, paused, took a slow, deep breath, and hid it far, far inside. If she gave in to that feeling in the room she was about to enter, then she’d already have lost.

  She straightened her short blazer and pants. Civilian clothes. That was important. Only on her very first visit, before she had assumed her position at the DEA, did she wear a uniform. But she’d discovered that she got more done, was listened to more closely, when she dressed like this. The more she mirrored them outwardly, the greater her success.

  The open door to the vice president’s office meant that she was welcome, even though she’d insisted that overbooked calendars had to be rescheduled and planned meetings postponed. Ten minutes. That was what she’d been given. The Secret Service officer smiled and waved her in. Her earlier White House meetings took place in the chief of staff’s office and consisted of constructive planning meetings on a chair next to the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. She’d never been in this room before.

  “Welcome, Sue.”

  Vice President Thompson. A tall, middle-aged woman with blonde hair and glasses that evoked the fifties. She was sitting behind her oak desk, and she pointed to the only vacant chair. Sue Masterson looked around. A brief nod toward Chief of Staff Perry, never her enemy, who was sitting on a white sofa with overstuffed pillows, and a brief nod back. The other two, however, she had regularly fought with. In the blue chair, Marc Eve, director of the CIA, and in the green one, with his arms folded, sat William Riley, director of the FBI. She’d never met with them at the same time before.

  “Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  But a glass of water from the pitcher that had a slice of lemon wedged on its edge. She poured, drank half. They waited for her to begin. And it was clear that everything about that newly published kill list had been decided right here, by these people. They looked exhausted. The kidnapping had been carried out in an isolated area of the jungle, and since everyone was dead except the kidnappers’ target, they were the ones who chose when to talk or make demands. The kidnappers had waited hours, until midnight. And a few hours after that the people sitting around her now had gathered.

  “The Seven of Hearts. El Sueco.”

  She looked at the big clock over the fireplace. 9:50 a.m. By ten, she had to be done. Had to make them understand.

  “He’s not one of the enemy. He’s one of us.”

  Four individuals examined her, just as she was examining them. Three men, one woman. But it was as if they were all part of the same genderless body exuding the same genderless power.

  “I’m talking about this kill list. It contains one of our own. Our best informant. We only placed him on the Most Wanted list to strengthen his status. If we, the enemy, defined him as dangerous, then our enemies would, too.”

  She wondered if she’d become like that. Someone who exuded genderless power. She had so few true friends to ask such a question—the number of close relationships she had shrank with each new appointment. It was as if her titles scared people off, even people she’d worked side by side with for a long time suddenly saw her differently when she became their boss.

  “We’ve never had anyone get so far, never had anyone more capable. Based on information he’s gathered, we’ve taken down at least seven cocaine kitchens and stopped fifteen big deliveries. He’s the one who gave us our biggest achievement so far, a record seizure, fourteen tons of cocaine just outside Tumaco. The Navy and the police worked together to crack down on a lab not far from the port. We apprehended twenty-four
people, destroyed all the equipment on site, seized nine boats used for transport.”

  Sky-blue carpet, ocean-blue wallpaper. A mirror with a gold frame, a chandelier that held white candles that had never been lit. Even the room itself seemed to exude a kind of stereotypical vision of power.

  “So the kill list contains a mistake—and it has to be corrected. Now.” She looked at them one by one. While they tried to take in what she was saying.

  “Sue?” Chief of Staff Perry rearranged the pillows, as if he wanted to be free of them when he began to speak. “Are you absolutely sure about this?”

  “Yes, I’m quite sure.” She was glad he’d spoken first. No matter what he said, she knew that it would be based on analysis, not personal differences.

  “Well, that complicates the day somewhat. We just finished a press conference that’s been broadcast all over the world. It would be pretty hard to go out there and take back what we just said.”

  “Daniel—he’s employed by us.”

  “He’s a criminal who provides us with information.”

  “He’s more like a public servant. In the service of the United States. Entitled to the same benefits, the same protection as the rest of us.”

  “Sue, an employed civil servant has a contract.”

  “But we were the ones who put him on the Most Wanted list! Because we thought that would help him gain even more of their confidence—so he’d be able to do better work. For us.”

  “Confidence? Politics is about confidence. But political credibility is no stronger than its weakest link. The kill list we released during the invasion of Iraq, which we succeeded in getting international political support for, was about confidence. Now PRC guerrillas are terrorists—and the world agrees. But when we chose to upgrade from ‘terrorist’ to ‘war on terror,’ which includes the right to extrajudicial kills, we have to maintain international support, international confidence. And if it turns out that we’re wrong on one particular, then all particulars will be challenged, our credibility, our entire operation—and without international trust we won’t succeed.”