by Arne Dahl
The rest of the group was already assembled when Norlander and Hjelm tumbled in. Chavez arrived just behind them with a handkerchief to his nose. Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin surveyed him skeptically from the desk at the front of the unexceptional little room; he was sitting there like an owl, or rather like a bored junior high school teacher who’d been forgotten by the pension board. His diminutive glasses were perched in their proper place, like a small, natural growth, on his giant nose. No newly kindled passion shone in his eyes, though something may have smoldered in their corners. He cleared his throat.
All the members of the select group were actually there; all of them had, as usual, flex-timed in early so they could go home early, and none had been loaned out to some strange posting elsewhere as punishment. Gunnar Nyberg, Arto Söderstedt, and Kerstin Holm were already sitting up front. Nyberg and Söderstedt were of the same generation as Norlander, which meant they were a few years older than Hjelm and many years older than Chavez; Holm was somewhere between the latter two. She was the only woman in the group; a short, dark-complected Gothenburger, she was the third cog in the trio of brains, along with Hjelm and Chavez.
On the other hand, she had something very important in common with the group’s purest bundle of energy, her office mate Gunnar Nyberg: both sang in a choir and weren’t ashamed to be caught singing a cappella numbers in their office. Nyberg had a colorful past as a brutal, steroid-using body builder, but nowadays he was a timid middle-aged man, a sloppily clad mountain of meat with a lovely singing voice who could still break out his old moves if necessary. During the investigation of the Power Murders, having already taken a bullet in his throat, he had tackled an accelerating car and put it out of action. Söderstedt, for his part, was one of the strangest group members, a Finland-Swedish, chalk-white former top lawyer whose conscience had caught up to him; he always worked apart from the others, following his own paths off the beaten track.
Norlander, Chavez, and Hjelm took places in the row behind the trio. Then Hultin began in his customarily neutral voice, “A Swedish citizen has been murdered in the United States. But not just anyone, not just anywhere, and not by just anyone. A relatively well-known Swedish literary critic was killed a few hours ago at Newark International Airport, outside New York. He was sadistically tortured by a serial killer whose activity goes back several decades. Up to this point, it has nothing to do with us.”
Apparently there was time for one of Hultin’s dramatic pauses, because what followed was that very thing.
“Our dilemma,” he continued, “is that this robust serial killer of a robust international character is on his way here.”
Another moment of silence, a bit more loaded.
“The information from the FBI indicates that the killer took the literary critic’s seat on the flight. At this very moment he is on flight SK 904, which will land at Arlanda in just under an hour, at 08:10. All together the plane is carrying 163 passengers, and the police in New York have chosen not to inform the crew of the situation. At present we are in a state of uncertainty as to the identity of the perpetrator, which isn’t so strange when you consider that he’s been eluding the FBI for twenty years. But they hope to find out what name he’s traveling under before the plane lands—I have an open line to a Special Agent Larner in New York. And so we need two parallel plans. One: we get the name in time, in which case there’s a risk of a scuffle. Two: we don’t get the name in time, in which case we have to try to pick out from among 163 passengers an elusive serial killer whose only known characteristics are that he is a white male, probably over forty-five years old.”
Hultin stood and pulled the zipper of his old sport jacket up over the butt of his pistol in its shoulder holster. He leaned forward.
“This whole thing is really quite simple,” he said tranquilly. “If we fail, Sweden has imported its first real American serial killer. Let’s avoid that.”
He tromped off toward the waiting helicopter, leaving behind the following words of wisdom:
“The world is shrinking, ladies and gentlemen. The world is shrinking.”
3
The immense, irreplaceable calm that always appears comes in expanding waves of bliss. He knows he will never stop.
Outside, the tremendous emptiness stretches on, with the earth as a tiny, negligible exception. A magnificent speck of fly shit on the great white page of perfection, a protocol error that has likely destroyed the limitless divinity of the divine.
A thin sheet of Plexiglas separates him from the great, sucking holes of nothingness that his serenity makes him part of. He copulates with it in divine, swaying movements.
The peaceful rocking of the clouds drives the images away. They are far away now. He can even think about them. And at no point does the peaceful smile leave his lips.
He can even think about the walk down to the cellar. It isn’t a series of images now—if it had been, he would have to conjure it away, smoke it out by the burning sacrifice—it’s a story, with a logical, coherent structure. And even if he knows it will soon be lost again and will call on its sacrificial smoke, he is able to find pleasure in its sudden, crystal-clear perfection.
He is on his way.
He is on his way down the stairs he didn’t know existed, down into the cellar he didn’t know existed. The secret passage in the closet. The unforgettable, sweet-dusted air in the stairway. The silent cement stairs that seem to go on forever. The raw, clammy cold of the handrail.
The completely self-evident logic of the initiation. When eyes can be raised and steps can follow steps on the stairs down into the pitch black, the logic is indisputable. He has been chosen.
It has to come full circle. That is what has to be done now. Then he can begin for real.
The stairs lead on. Every trace of light vanishes. He feels his way ahead, step by step.
He allows himself to pause while the calm rocks him closer to relieving sleep. He follows the imperfect wing of the plane as it swings imperfectly out into the perfect swing of eternity.
Another light becomes visible, a completely different light, and it accompanies his last steps down the staircase. Like the frame of an icon around a darkness brighter than any light, the light shoots out from behind the door. A halo showing the way. A golden frame around a future work of art.
Which will now be completed.
He cracks open the door to the Millennium.
Outside the window, the Big Dipper slides into the Little Dipper, making an Even Bigger Dipper.
“Tonight we can offer you the special SAS Swedish-American drink for a long night’s flight, sir,” he hears a gentle female voice half-singing.
But by then he is already asleep.
4
The A-Unit lifted off from the helicopter pad atop police headquarters at 07:23 on Wednesday, September 3. The seven of them were crowded together into a group that didn’t really exist anymore. For a split second, Paul Hjelm thought that they were just imitating a unit whose time had come and gone, but the second passed, and he focused on his task, like everyone else.
He was crammed between the huge, faintly panting body of Gunnar Nyberg and the much thinner skeletal shell of Arto Söderstedt. Across from him, Kerstin Holm’s small, dark body was squeezed between Viggo Norlander’s now extremely fit late-middle-aged muscles and Jorge Chavez’s youthfully unscathed compactness.
Between these two rows of people, Jan-Olov Hultin was crouching in a position that shouldn’t have been possible for a man in his sixties—even if he was still a formidable center back on their police league soccer team. And he had such an impressive pile of papers that it shouldn’t have been possible to gather them up at such short notice. He coaxed his glasses up onto his monumental nose. The need to shout over the din from the helicopter caused his voice to lose a bit of its neutral tone.
“This is going to be complicated,” he said. “The Arlanda and Märsta police are already at the airport. Hordes of armed officers have been rushi
ng around in the international arrivals hall, threatening tourists with aggravated assault. I think I’ve gotten rid of them now. We’re up against a man who’ll stop at nothing. That much I’ve understood—he’s a well-programmed murder machine, and if he starts to suspect anything, we’re risking a bloodbath and hostages and an all-around worst-case scenario. In other words, we must act with great care.”
Hultin paged through pieces of paper.
“There are more than 150 people on the plane, and we can’t very well shove them all into some old hangar and check them one by one. We would probably effectively kill several of them. So instead, we’ll have careful passport checks, done under our supervision of course; and we’ll do extreme vigilance over all white middle-aged men—which will probably be quite a few people on a typical business-class flight.
“In addition, customs has provided us with digital cameras that allow the person who inspects passports to discreetly photograph each passport photo. The immigration officers won’t be alone in their booths; you will be there behind them. You’ll be practically invisible from the outside. I’ve gotten the number of passport control booths reduced to two, which will cause some disruption in the flow of people, but it makes it possible for us to have an overview of the flow. Kerstin and Viggo will be located in these two booths. I urge you to be meticulous, attentive, and careful. Take action only in reaction to very strong indications; otherwise use the radio.
“The risk shouldn’t be as great during the passage through the concourse from the gate to customs, which is critical in and of itself, because there’s no exit there. It’s a straight stretch through bars and boutiques. I’ve placed the Märsta police in the concourse, under the leadership of Arto. So you, Arto, will go up to the gate in question, where a gang of Märsta detectives will be waiting. Above all, make sure they remain invisible. Your task is to try to make sure that no one deviates off course on their way to the passport check. Place people in the bathrooms, in boutiques, in all accessible locations—there aren’t many. The rest of us will be spread out around the terminal and outside. Because if anything is going to happen, it will happen there; everything indicates that that’s the case. Arto’s job is really just to herd the whole flock to passport control. Shepherd.”
“Are there any other planes arriving at the same time?” Arto Söderstedt asked in his resonant, almost exaggerated Finland-Swedish accent, looking doubtfully down at the E4 highway, which they were following like a helium-filled barge on the Danube River. “Black sheep,” he muttered nearly inaudibly. Hjelm heard him and gave him a cutting side-glance.
Hultin took another deep dive into the wind-whipped sea of paper.
“No other arrivals in the vicinity, no.”
“And the armed guys?” Nyberg said.
“They’ll be immediately accessible. But only if necessary.”
“Säpo?” said Söderstedt.
Söderstedt was eager to bring up Säpo, the Security Police. The line between the unit’s jurisdiction and Säpo’s was incredibly narrow, which meant that there were frequent overlaps, violations of taboos, and conflicts. The way Säpo had horribly sabotaged the investigation in the Power Murders was fresh in everyone’s mind.
“They’ll probably be there,” Hultin nodded with a sigh. “But since they never tell us much, we’ll act as though they weren’t there. Anyway, as you know, there’s only one exit out of the arrivals hall, which divides into two parts like a T via the customs area, just inside the main entrance. We need one man on either side just outside: Gunnar, Jorge. Paul and I will try to look like nonpolice somewhere near the baggage claim, to get an overview of the arrivals hall itself. This means that there will be something of a four-phase control: first the gate, Arto with the other men; passport control, Kerstin and Viggo; the arrivals hall, Paul and me; and finally the exit, Gunnar and Jorge. Is this clear?”
“The placement is crystal clear,” said Hjelm. “The question is how it will survive confrontation by hundreds of hung-over, jet-lagged passengers.”
Hultin let this remark pass without comment. “All of it depends, then, on our being able to move quickly from Plan A to Plan B. If we get the name our man is flying under from the United States before the passengers get to passport control, then that’s where we have to focus our attention, and then we have to take him on the spot. Is that clear? That’s Plan A. But if he’s changed identities in the plane, or if we’re not told his name, then the responsibility that Viggo and Kerstin have in the booths increases radically. That’s Plan B. As it is now, Plan B is in effect. But we haven’t the slightest idea yet who the fuck he is. Right now it’s … seven thirty-four, and at any moment”—his cell phone rang with a silly Mickey Mouse ringtone, which Hultin suppressed with a swift grab—“Right. Special Agent Larner will call.”
He answered the phone and turned away. The E4 ran on through exhaust-fertilized fields that were dotted here and there with a bravely struggling tractor. It was a crystal-clear late summer day, shot through with indescribable sparks that portended fall. Summer is over, Hjelm thought balefully. Autumn over Sweden. His inner voice trembled forlornly.
An exceedingly misshapen complex of buildings towered in the distance, beyond the fields.
“Arlandastad, right?” Kerstin Holm shouted.
“Unmistakably!” Arto Söderstedt shouted back.
“About five minutes left,” said Gunnar Nyberg.
“But why?” Hultin’s jaw suddenly dropped. Then he listened for another moment and ended the call.
“No,” he said, “they aren’t having any success in getting the name. It seems the killer canceled the flight in the murdered Swede’s name, then immediately booked the empty seat in a fake name. So that’s the name we’ll have to go on, and I don’t get why it’s taking such a fucking long time to find who booked that last ticket. Plan B is in effect until further notice.”
The helicopter turned away from the E4 and swung over the forests of Arlanda. They landed at Arlanda International twenty-four minutes before flight SK 904 from Newark was due, and five minutes later all members of the A-Unit had settled into position.
Chavez stationed himself inside the doors of the main entrance. Having plowed his way through a crowd of soon-to-be and former tourists, who were not yet particularly repellent, he found a bench next to a Coke machine where he had a good view of his entire area of responsibility: the far half of the exit from the customs hall. He turned on his eagle eye. His level of ambition was, as usual, just above the maximum setting.
Some thirty seconds later Gunnar Nyberg arrived, a bit depleted by the helicopter ride. He sat down at a café table, his face covered in both cold and hot sweat, and turned toward Chavez and the other half of the exit. Needing extra energy, he ordered a bottle of sports drink, of a brand he recognized from his former career as a body builder. As he downed the half-liter in one gulp, he realized that these days the drink was prepared with what was wrung out of left-behind workout clothes collected from all the world’s gyms. It was possible that he restored his fluid balance; it was certain that he restored the balance of his nausea.
Between the two men, a quintet who were not entirely difficult to identify as officials trod, against the current, in through the customs area. Hultin stopped and exchanged a few words with the palpably nervous customs employees and joined the other four A-Unit members inside the arrivals hall. He placed himself last in a winding line to the currency exchange, where he had a good view of the hall. The others continued toward passport control, until Hjelm fell away and found himself standing and staring like an idiot at a baggage carousel that wasn’t moving. Seldom has a policeman looked so much like a policeman, and the harder he tried not to look like a one, the more he did. When he felt the blue lights start circling on top of his head, he gave up the charade and was more successful. He sat down on a bench and paged through a brochure, the contents of which would remain eternally unknown to him.
At passport control, the remaining officers were
met by a senior official who admitted Norlander and Holm into their respective booths, where they perched on small, uncomfortable stools in the shadows of the immigration officers. Their presence was hardly noticeable from the outside, and if it was, it probably wouldn’t seem abnormal. They settled in, in anticipation of the coming rush.
Finally, Arto Söderstedt shoved his way through passport control and slalomed among scattered stragglers up the escalator to the concourse. He didn’t need to consult the arrivals board to identify the right gate. At gate ten, he found a collection of stubbornly recognizable men who were all but neon-blinking “police.” Söderstedt called together the Märsta officers and assigned them more discreet positions. The restrooms were the only truly secluded areas, so he placed one officer to each restroom and made sure that all the staff areas were properly blocked off. That left the duty-free boutiques, bar, and café. He stationed an officer by the name of Adolfsson at the bar, where he managed to look completely out of place, which was an achievement.
Söderstedt sat down at gate ten and waited. The concourse was still relatively empty. Scattered groups of passengers from earlier flights were wandering around.
A slight change in the state of things induced Söderstedt to push the loathsome little earpiece into his ear; he always felt as if it disappeared deep in among the creases of his brain. The fateful little word LANDED was now blinking after the notation SK 904 NEWARK on the arrivals board. Söderstedt looked to the right and through the large panorama window saw the plane roll by.
