Three Minutes

by Anders Roslund

  Hoffmann knocked on the door. It would take a few minutes for the chemist to check all the cameras and decide whether or not to let in his guest.

  They greeted each other, not warmly, they didn’t know each other—just a simple handshake. He looked sharp, wore suits under his white coat, spoke carefully with an attempt at Madrid Spanish—he’d gotten the idea that Europe was somehow better, finer. And as he showed Hoffmann in, he smacked his lips self-importantly, an imitation of someone fancy, expensive.

  An industrial building with basically just the one large room hidden behind pulled-down blinds. There was rough, winding pipe all over, which used to transport water to the printing machines, but was now dormant and sealed off—in some places in Colombia water was a commodity that attracted thieves. Therefore, a row of filled water jugs had been set up next to rows of rusty gas bottles and blue chemical containers. They marked a path to the gas stove, which was placed on a simple wooden board and two wooden trestles.

  The bag lay completely finished in the only other room, a kitchenette converted to a drying room. A roaring, singing fan blowing cold air.

  “Three kilos. Just as ordered.”

  “Pure cocaine?”

  “As clean as I’ve seen.”

  “How much?”

  “Ninety-four, ninety-six.”

  Which you actually called 100 percent. Because that was as pure as it got. He’d visited labs all across Colombia and never been shown anything more than ninety-six. And if he compared it with the severely diluted version he’d sold on the Swedish streets, it was in another universe of quality. The content of a gram becomes more and more diluted the closer you get to the street level, and at the same time—more and more expensive. Three kilos in the form of a brown leather suitcase identical to those he’d seen in the jungle.

  Hoffmann held out the all-important envelope. “Your fee.”

  “And you know how to convert it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be very, very careful. Otherwise you’ll burn it. And then it ends up useless. There’s no reversing it. Then you’ve ruined it.”

  As he returned to the car and put the shiny suitcase in the trunk, he counted. Kilos, percent, euros, grams, kronor. On the streets of Sweden they bought and sold 30 percent cocaine. From three kilos of 96 percent you’d get at least nine kilograms blended. Seventy-five euros per gram meant 75,000 euros per kilo, so nearly 6.3 million kronor in that suitcase.

  EL MESTIZO’S PRIVATE parking spot had been converted a few years ago into two spots—one spot, slightly larger, for the brothel owner himself, harboring his black Mercedes G-Wagen, and one for the man the owner knew as Peter Haraldsson. Hoffmann parked there and got out, careful to making sure the trunk of his car was locked, and that he bore no traces of the cocaine lab in an industrial building that he’d just visited. Sometimes the distinctive odor of permanganate and sulfuric acid crept into textiles and lingered, the process of either killing it or bringing it back to life, disappearing a thick paste into leather or conjuring it from leather, and you could end up revealing more than you wanted to. So on his way here, he’d stopped at the small motel, changed clothes, and showered. If El Mestizo were to figure out his right-hand man was planning a journey, hopefully it wouldn’t be through any carelessness on Piet’s part.

  Hoffmann took a deep breath at the entrance, about to enter the morning meeting in the brothel’s large hall, where they always began their work—and today had to feel just like any other day. Because he assumed it was El Mestizo he needed to worry about, El Mestizo who was the first obstacle he’d have to overcome tomorrow in order to implement his plan. Hoffmann opened the front door but stopped again, turned around, and then turned once more, trying to shake off the odd feeling of being watched.

  He had no idea that was exactly what was happening.

  The lone operator in the White House Situation Room leaned closer to the big plasma screen on the wall on the conference table’s short side.

  There. The car was parked. The man had left it. That was him. Their second target, which they’d been patiently waiting for. The two terrorists were often together, traveled together or separately to the same places, and therefore were a good prospect for a double attack.

  He dialed the number he’d been instructed to call. “Sir? I think it’s time. The companion just arrived.”

  A stifled yawn. The operator looked at the clock—a monotonous twelve-hour shift was just ending. And he’d been watching that screen and the building in the middle of it for almost every moment of that shift. A satellite image linked and encrypted a few miles away by another operator in what they called the Crouse Room at the NGA, an image that was forwarded here, to a room that held much more power for further analysis and decision-making. A picture of a street with a line of brothels. The next target. He’d guarded it every moment with one exception—late last night when the vice president and chief of staff suddenly showed up, asking how things were going, and if he could help them use a second screen, which wasn’t needed until the actual attack. Not needed until now.

  He grabbed the remote and turned on the second screen and was met by a collage of images assembled from cameras worn on the helmets of four Delta Force soldiers. All of whom were stationed in the brothel on the other side of the street.

  Morning in the brothel’s main hall. A calm that appeared only during the hours between the night’s last and the morning’s first customers. At least on the surface.

  But inside the two people about to meet over a coffee at the owner’s table, there was churning, thumping, aggressive anxiety. It was most evident in El Mestizo. Not because today was the day when all the security officers on his payroll were allowed their free monthly visits to the brothel and they sometimes got a little too intrusive and prying. That didn’t bother him at all. The anxiety was there because in the past few days, he’d come to suspect a change in his right-hand man without really being able to put his finger on it, what others might call paranoia was for him healthy suspicion, and he’d felt, had known, since that fucking kill list went public that Peter had been affected and, though he couldn’t yet articulate it, was now on his way somewhere. And so he did what he always did when paranoia took hold—he ran around with a wet cleaning rag in hand, rubbing down the bar, wiping the tables, arranging the chairs. He’d even vacuumed the entire expanse of the floor—because he, though not necessarily the brothel, needed it.

  The entrance door opened, and Hoffmann walked down the stairs, through the great hall, and sat down at the owner’s table, in the chair that had almost become his own, said hello without receiving an answer. He recognized the mood. Johnny for some reason was as anxious as him. And because Johnny wouldn’t talk about it, never did until it was too late, there was no choice but to wait it out—Hoffmann had learned it was pointless to nag, stress, this was just how his boss worked, cleaning up and arranging were his way of trying to relax and thereby getting at the root of what was bothering him. And at the moment, it was for the best. It gave Hoffmann more time to hide his own anxieties—which had to do with a suitcase, and a detective negotiating for his life, and making sure all of it happened without this man, who he’d finally come to hate, noticing.

  Then Johnny came over. With sweeping arm movements, he swung his square body over to the owner’s table. Set his coffee opposite Hoffmann, drank, and hissed in irritation afterward, the chair legs squeaked as he forcefully pushed it backward.

  “Cold as ice. I’m gonna get more. You may as well look at this while I do.” El Mestizo pulled a pink envelope out of the loose front pocket of his blazer. “Do you remember the other day? Before we went to Medellín and Rodriguez? I’d just received this, was about to show you. When the liquor delivery interrupted us.”

  He took out a handful of photographs, which he placed in a semicircle on the table before heading to the polished bar and coffee machine behind it. He returned with a hot cup and downed it in a single gulp, staring at Piet Hoffmann with his head sunk
and his eyes hooded. “And, yes, I forgot about it afterward. But with everything that’s happened since then, I thought you might like to see. How things went down. In fucking Amsterdam.”

  It was as if El Mestizo was trying to ease the tension they both felt. Bring them together. By talking about the shared triumph portrayed in these five photographs. Enlarged, in color, and of decent quality.

  It took a moment to interpret them. A floor, that was easy enough to see. And there were people lying on it, all on their backs. A different person in each image.

  It got worse. All of them were missing a head. And also, arms. And their leather vests lay on the floor, but a bit away. Like paper dolls. Hoffmann’s first thought. He remembered his little sister, how she used to play with little cutout paper figures, which came in the weeklies their mother subscribed to. Bodies and clothing that could be joined to make whole people.

  There were heads and arms. When he looked through the pictures. Placed on the other side of those sprawling leather vests—HELLS ANGELS HOLLAND on the back and AMSTERDAM on the left breast—that’s where the rest of the body parts lay, neatly lined up. The magnification revealed straight, professional cuts. Each severed head had an entrance wound through the temple and an exit wound through the back of the head.

  “So it wasn’t you. Or anyone else here.” Laughter. That low-voiced chuckle.

  El Mestizo studied the photographs, one by one, holding them close.

  A motorcycle club in a European capital. Good customers, a long business relationship. Until a few months ago. Until three hundred kilos were sent with the usual routine—divided into three containers aboard three ships with three different ports as destinations. Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Ostend in Belgium. Until the message. Until the Dutch contact person phoned up El Mestizo himself.

  “The load is gone. All containers are missing.”

  “What the hell are you—”

  “And no cargo, no payment.”

  El Mestizo hadn’t laughed then. His anger had turned to fury and then to hate, as he started his own extensive investigation to figure out who should die.

  And soon received an answer: Everything had been loaded on board. Three hundred kilos of cocaine had been packed into wooden boxes—just like every delivery. The contents and seal had verified that the boxes contained Arabica beans managed in collaboration with FNC, the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia—just like every delivery.

  “You pay. Or you die.”

  Another conversation with his contact. Who turned on him.

  “So you want us to pay for three hundred kilos that never existed?”

  “That’s your problem.”

  “Then you’re screwing us.”

  “My responsibility ends when I load the product, and it’s left Colombian territory. You know that as well as I do. You have two weeks!”

  El Mestizo had deepened his investigation—assuming now that one of his own had talked too much.

  The cargo never arrived! And he hunted. Some bastard’s been talking! And he threatened. Who the fuck sold us out? And he threatened to kill. Who the hell knew about this—who doesn’t want to live anymore?

  Three sea captains. Seven members of the PRC. And his right-hand man, El Sueco. That’s who knew.

  His paranoia escalated. For the first time in more than two years, he’d even questioned Hoffmann—who answered him as usual, with certainty and calm—the furthest thing from what he actually felt. He bore another secret much heavier than a missing cargo of three hundred kilos of cocaine.

  “Peter . . . El Sueco . . . I don’t know who the fuck you are anymore!”

  “I’m the man who’s got your back, the man you’ve chosen to trust, the man whose hands you put your life in.”

  He’d learned already. That a lie can’t hold up against doubt. That he had to be who he wasn’t, and fully. That you can only sell a lie if it’s got enough truth in it.

  “Yes, Peter. You stand there. But are you my friend—or my enemy?”

  “If you think it’s me . . .”

  “It is you, you motherfucker, you’ve fucked me? Right? Right!”

  Only a criminal can play a criminal.

  “. . . If you think that . . . shoot me.” He met El Mestizo’s eyes, thoughts, threats, hate. Outwardly strong, inwardly filled with doubt—if he really sees through me, if he digs beyond that lousy shipment, it’s over. The life of an informant. To be unmasked is to die.

  Then everything changed. The questions gave a different answer. A German Interpol police officer high up on the PRC’s European payroll found out the police in Frankfurt had seized a large quantity of cocaine in a criminal lab that matched the samples El Mestizo sent, the synthetic DNA that the PRC’s chemists inserted into each batch—its own unique DNA profile—so the shipment had left the ship and was there, on the other side of the Atlantic. The cargo had arrived.

  El Mestizo contacted the leader of the bike gang. Who acted.

  The execution of five rogue members—the photographs scattered across the owner’s table showing headless and armless bodies—were a clear message about how much the gang valued their business relationship. While the German Interpol police officer received his bonus—his son’s university education was financed. Not because it was of equal value to the information, but because it was crucial to know who you could trust in this business. And not trust.

  “What do you say, Peter?” El Mestizo smiled. The anxiety seemed gone. Replaced by self-control, which felt good. “I want you to look closely at those pictures again, Peter, while I finish cleaning up here. And then I want you to tell me what you think.” Back to the bar, back to polishing.

  Now he was moving the drinking glasses from the sink to the rack dangling from the ceiling. And because he was a bit farther away, Piet almost shouted the question. “Think? About what?”

  “About what happens to the people who betray me.”

  Chief of Staff Perry put his cell phone back into the inside pocket of his blazer, preparing to rush through the long corridors of power.

  “Sir? I think it’s time. The companion has just arrived.”

  It was time to strike two more from the list. But first, a brief stop at his desk, while looking around the office he was so fond of.

  The day he stepped into the White House to begin his job as chief of staff, as the president’s eyes and ears, was also his first time here, ever. He’d never met the people who worked here regardless of an election’s outcome. Just like when he moved to DC—the first time he crossed a state border was in a moving van he drove from Denver through an America he still hadn’t had time to discover.

  A room with high ceilings, wooden floors, functional furniture. Clarity. And he had learned to appreciate that clarity. He’d be able to value its opposite.

  He searched along the bookshelf-lined walls. To have the world at his disposal, be embraced by it, understand how he influenced it. Bookshelves—but no books. There were, however, plenty of folders of varying thicknesses, in bright colors, files, and piles of loose paper, all of it organized by paper size from right to left, estimates, bundles of national and international newspapers, more bundles of trade magazines, and, finally, the long line of storage boxes for digital copies, CDs, DVDs, flash drives—he was careful to copy each day’s work before going home, constantly worried that electronics would fail and thoughts disappear.

  Always know more than everyone else. Always make sure that others know he’s the adviser with the answers they lack.

  In the center of the middle shelf, he stored what was going on right now, so he’d see it when he sat down at his desk. Right now there were thirteen binders. Red hearts on each one. Under every heart—a symbol and a number. He pulled out two of them. The fourth and fifth targets: Jack of Hearts and Seven of Hearts.

  The binders rested against one forearm as he walked out into the hallway, and it felt like he was carrying something much heavier than a few documents—a duality, he knew one of t
hose targets shouldn’t die. A political decision. Nothing more.

  Perry passed other rooms that held power before arriving at the elevator and sliding the plastic ID card with his picture on it that gave full access to the White House. Less than eight years had passed—but the man staring into the camera looked so much younger than him.

  The basement. He’d arrived. The last narrow hall that led to the Situation Room, and there they were—the vice president and director of the CIA on one side of JFK’s table, the FBI director and a new face he’d never seen before on the other.

  Perry offered the newcomer his hand. A man in his forties, in uniform. But he didn’t look like they usually did, he was a little too short, his hair a bit too long—the authority was in his eyes, voice, and a hand, which deliberately didn’t squeeze too hard.

  “Welcome. I’m Daniel Perry, chief of staff.”

  “Thank you. I recognize you. Michael Cook—Delta Force commander.”

  “The front line in our fight against terrorism.”

  “That’s our mission.”

  “When did you arrive?”

  “First time . . . well, almost exactly twenty hours ago, when we positioned our squad. Since then I’ve alternated between the screens down here and some meetings in the area.”

  Perry already liked this man in uniform, who’d flown in from North Carolina and who wasn’t even trying to pretend that this room, and what would soon be led from within it, was normal. “And Cook—any sleep?”

  “Soon.” The Delta Force commander smiled and turned toward the two huge screens on the wall. One showed a moving image from above, wide focus over a long row of hotel-like buildings—one had a flashing red arrow pointing at a swimming pool on a roof, currently empty. The same image—from a city called Cali in Colombia—which he’d seen yesterday while visiting this room with Vice President Thompson to look at a different satellite image for a different mission. Or the same, depending on how you looked at it. The second screen, the one they’d borrowed, was now divided into four equal fields—cameras mounted on helmets that were in constant motion, sequences that moved here and there. But you could see that all four were in a hotel—you occasionally glimpsed a double bed, a large mirror, a half-open door to a dull bathroom—and their cameras and thus their eyes were directed at the hotel across the street.