Three Seconds
Page 45
You're alive.
That was why he had been sitting at his desk for three hours looking at a hole growing on the bookshelf.
I didn't make a decision about death.
That was why he had to determine if what he had just seen was something he should be concerned about or whether it was of no significance if no one else knew.
Hoffmann is alive. You didn't make a decision about death either.
He laughed again while he took a document out of the desk drawer-summons to the court proceedings for the issue of arrest warrants that he was about to attend and that would lead all the way to a conviction and long sentences for three high-ranking officers who had abused their power.
He laughed even louder, danced across the floor of the silent office, after a while quietly humming something that anyone passing just then might have recognized as a melody that perhaps sounded like a song from the sixties, like "Somebody's Fool" and Siw Malmkvist.
And Yet Another Day Later
It was as if the sky were slowly closing in.
Erik Wilson stood in the asphalt yard, his thin clothes itching as nervous flies searched among the pearls of sweat. Ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit, just above body temperature and it would be even hotter in a couple of hours, in the early afternoon-the heat seemed to settle around that time of day.
He wiped his forehead with an already moist handkerchief and wasn't sure whether his skin or the material benefited most. It had been hard to concentrate in the lecture hall, the air conditioning in the building had broken down in the morning and the discussion about the follow-up course advanced infiltration had petered out. Even the heads of police from the western United States who normally liked to listen to their own voices were listless.
He watched, as he usually did, through the fence and barbed wire that overlooked the large practice ground-six black figures trying to protect a seventh, shots fired from two low buildings and two of them threw themselves over the protected object and the car raced forward and then off. Erik Wilson smiled. He knew how it would end: this president would also survive and the baddies who fired from the buildings would be unsuccessful. The Secret Service won every time, the same exercise as three weeks ago, different police officers, but the same exercise.
He turned his face up to the cloudless sky, as if to torment himself; the sun would wake him up.
At first he had blamed the heat. But it wasn't that.
He just wasn't there.
He hadn't been present at all in the last few days-he had taken part in the discussions and exercises, but he wasn't in the room, his thoughts and energy drained from his body.
Four days had passed since Sven Sundkvist had asked him to drive seventy kilometers to the state line and Jacksonville for lunch in a restaurant that had room for laptops with security camera images on its white tablecloths. He had seen Paula's face in a prison window and then an explosion and black smoke when the shot fired by a sniper had ripped apart a human being.
They had worked together for nearly nine years.
Paula had been his responsibility. And his friend.
He was nearly at the hotel, fleeing the heat on his cheeks and forehead. The spacious lobby was cool, jostling with people who were delaying going out. He headed for the elevator and the eleventh floor, the same room as before.
He got undressed and had a cold shower and lay down on top of the bed in his robe.
They burned you.
They whispered and then looked the other way.
He got up, the restlessness had returned, the lack of focus. He flicked through the day's edition of USA Today, yesterday's New York Times, drowned himself in TV ads for detergent and local lawyers. He wasn't there, no matter how hard he tried. He wandered around the room, stopping after a while in front of the mobile telephones he had already checked in the morning, his link to all the informants: five handsets side by side on the desk since the evening he arrived. It was usually enough to check once a day, but the restlessness and the feeling of being absent… he checked again.
Lifted them up, studied them, one by one.
Until he held the fifth phone in his hand. He sat down on the edge of the bed, shaking.
One missed call.
On a mobile phone that he should have disposed of as the informant was dead.
You don't exist anymore.
But someone is using your phone.
He was sweating again, but it wasn't the heat; this came from inside, a feeling that burned and cut, like nothing he had known before.
Someone has control of your phone. Someone has found it and has dialed the only number that is stored there.
Who?
Someone investigating? Someone in pursuit?
The room was cool, he was freezing so he pulled back the bedclothes and crept down under the duvet that smelled of scented conditioner and lay still until he started to sweat again.
Someone who doesn't know who has this phone. Someone who is calling a number that isn't registered anywhere.
He was shivering again, more than before; the thick duvet was chafing his head.
He could phone. He could listen to the voice with no risk of being identified.
He dialed the number.
A sound wave looking for a harbor in the weightless air, a few seconds stretched to hours and years, then the ringing tone, a long shrill peep.
He listened to the tone that rasped in his ear three times.
And a voice he could recognize.
"Mission completed."
Careful breathing on the other end, at least that's what it sounded like-perhaps it was just the signal that was weak and atmospheric interference was trying to muscle in.
"Wojtek eliminated in Asps å s."
He lay on the bed, didn't move, scared that the person talking to him would vanish from his hand.
"See you in an hour at number three."
Erik Wilson smiled to the voice that blended with another, a repeated call over the loudspeakers, probably in an airport.
He had perhaps known, somewhere deep, deep down, or at least hoped. Now he knew.
He answered.
"Or another time, another place."
From the Authors
Three Seconds is a novel about today's criminals and the two authorities-the police and the Prison and Probation Service-who meet and are responsible for them.
And a novel allows the authors liberties.
Fact and fiction.
Together.
The Swedish Police Service
FACT The Police Service has for many years used criminals as covert human intelligence sources. A cooperation that is denied and concealed. In order to investigate serious crime, other crimes have been marginalized and a number of preliminary investigations and trials have therefore been carried out without the correct information.
FICTION Ewert Grens does not exist.
FACT Only criminals can play criminals and have, if so required, been recruited when on remand or later. The police criminal intelligence database and reports have been used as tools to develop suitable and credible personal backgrounds. Extensive doctoring of information has become standard working practice in a society based on the rule of law.
FICTION Sven Sundkvist does not exist.
FACT Criminal informants are, in our time, outlaws. When a criminal informant is exposed, the authorities deny having used their services, and look the other way while the organization that has been infiltrated tries to resolve the problem. The police supervisory authority is convinced that conventional intelligence methods are not sufficient to combat organized crime and will continue to develop their work with covert human intelligence in the future.
FICTION Mariana Hermansson does not exist.
The Swedish Prison and Probation Service
FACT Most prison inmates are drug users. Anyone serving a prison sentence can continue to use drugs inside. A drug user who is released from prison having served their sentence often returns to crime i
n order to continue to feed their habit and to pay back drug-related debts incurred in prison.
FICTION Aspsås prison does not exist.
FACT Anyone who works with criminals knows that drug abuse is a major contributor to reoffending. Despite this, it is still possible to distribute drugs in high-security prisons by hiding amphetamines in bunches of yellow tulips that are sent to wardens, in the left-hand margin of hardback books from library stores, and in plastic bags stuffed down toilets using elastic bands and spoons. The Prison and Probation Service could-for goodness sake, a prison is a closed system-stop all drug supplies, but refrains from doing so.
FICTION Lennart Oscarsson does not exist.
FACT Drugs are effective in reducing anxiety levels and an amphetamine user who has had his fix will borrow a pile of porn magazines and disappear into his cell to masturbate. A prison system without drugs would therefore entail chaos and heightened anxiety and would thus put new demands on its staff. If prisoners were not high on chemical substances, the Prison and Probation Service would be forced to improve skills and competence at a cost that we, society, would not be prepared to pay.
FICTION Martin Jacobson does not exist.
With enormous gratitude to:
Billy, Kenta, C, R, and T, who have served or are serving long sentences, who have lived longer inside than outside, who in this book, as in all our previous books, have provided us with the necessary knowledge, authenticity, and credibility to write about crime, whether it is about why forty degrees is not as good as fifty degrees when preparing tulips to be filled with amphetamine, or the necessary consistency for rubber to protect the stomach, or what a toilet outside a workshop in a maximum security prison looks like. Your trust strengthens our resolve to differentiate between bad people and bad actions.
The wise and courageous police officers who have guided us through the extraordinary gray zone that unites police and criminals. Without you we would not have had the knowledge or legitimacy to describe in a novel how the work with covert human intelligence unravels the legal security that we others take for granted in a democracy.
For prison personnel-security, wardens, principal officers, and chief wardens-who, when you have met us, have always helped, but who are caught between the ambition to try to do a good job and a system that forces you to reach for the scissors and cut your uniform into rags for cleaning the car.
Reine Adolfsson for your expertise on explosives, Janne Hedstrom for your knowledge of forensic science, Henrik Hjulstrom for your expertise on snipers, Henrik Lewenhagen and Lasse Lageren for your medical knowledge, Dorota Ziemiariska because you speak better Polish than we do.
Fia Roslund because you are there for us and the text throughout the writing process.
Niclas Breimar, Ewa Eiman, Mikael Nyman, Daniel Mattisson, and Emil Eiman-Roslund for your extraordinarily wise opinions.
Niclas Salomonsson, Tor Jonasson, Catherine Mork, Szilvia Molnar, and Leyla Belle Drake at Salomonsson Agency for your energy, competence, and presence here and abroad.
Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström
***
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