by The Helicopter Heist- A Novel Based on True Events (retail) (epub)
“Right,” Maloof replied, thinking aloud. “A crane? On the front? A building crane. One you could drive up at night.”
Petrovic reached for the glass of water on the table and took a sip.
“Could work,” he said thoughtfully. “Could work. Getting hold of a crane’s not exactly hard…”
“Or…a hot air balloon.”
“Are you serious?”
“A helicopter?”
“Is there room for a helicopter to land on the roof? Have you ever flown a helicopter, Michel? Damn noisy.”
“No…But you’d be able to get away in a helicopter too.”
“I prefer the crane,” said Petrovic.
Maloof nodded and grinned.
“Exactly. Sounds most plausible, maybe? But…how would you get away then?”
They heard the outer door open and close. Gustafsson had returned from his made-up errand, and Maloof got to his feet. It was time to leave.
“OK. Well…think about it,” he said.
“A crane,” said Petrovic. “I’ll think about it.”
“How’s it going in the container out there? Getting anywhere soon? Or not?”
Petrovic twisted self-consciously.
“Just take it easy,” he said in a superior tone. “It’ll work out.”
“You think?”
“You don’t want to wait fifteen years, I don’t want to wait fifteen years. So it’ll work out because it has to work out.”
“Right, right.” Maloof nodded.
“I’ve got something on the go,” said Petrovic. “I ordered something from France. It’s coming next week. A crazy thing, but it’ll solve the problem. I’m not even going to tell you how much it cost.”
They heard yet another faint boom from out in the container. Petrovic got up.
“I’m going to tell them to stop,” he said, sounding annoyed. “I don’t want to have to find more bags. It’ll work out. Next week. Finally.”
Maloof grinned. “What kind of thing?” he asked as Petrovic was on his way out.
The rain had eased up, but it was still coming down.
“You’ll see,” the Yugoslavian said over his shoulder. “All you need to know for now is that it’s going to make you a rich man.”
13
Jack Kluger was sitting in the Wasahof restaurant on Dalagatan, waiting for Basir Balik. It was twelve thirty, and though they had agreed to meet at twelve, Balik was always late for lunch. Kluger didn’t mind, he wasn’t in a hurry.
At the table next to him, two women were eating shrimp salads. Kluger would have guessed they were in their thirties, and that they might have worked at the hospital farther down the street. Both were blond and well dressed, and Jack couldn’t stop himself from smiling and giving one of them a friendly nod. The one sitting closest to him said something in Swedish that Kluger couldn’t understand, but her expression was crystal clear.
She wasn’t amused.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but in my part of Texas, nobody speaks Swedish.”
Then he smiled again, showing off the white dental veneers the American army had paid for.
It worked every time. His American accent was like a skeleton key, it could unlock any door. The woman’s irritated expression was replaced by an embarrassed smile, and just a few minutes later the three of them were sitting together, making small talk. There was nothing people in this city liked more than speaking English with a man from Texas. Kluger had even started dressing like a cowboy, with rough checked shirts and traditional boots. Clothes he had never worn when he lived in Texas.
“So if I only have a couple of days in the city, what would you suggest I do?” he asked.
* * *
—
Jack Kluger wasn’t a city person, but the minute he opened his mouth and said anything in his broad Southern accent, he was immediately identified as “American” and therefore someone who thought that Sweden and Stockholm were small and provincial.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Compared with Goldsboro, Texas, Stockholm was an exotic metropolis, full of dangers and temptations. Temptations in particular. There were beautiful women everywhere. They were in the parks, on the streets, sitting in restaurants. And the real miracle was that they all seemed to want to talk to him, of all people. Back home in Texas, he had been just one of many well-built boys who played American football and had a jaw as square as a cake tin. But in Scandinavia, he became exotic and unique.
In the past, he’d had low self-confidence when it came to the opposite sex, not least because he wasn’t much of a talker. It had been easier to fight for his opinions than to defend them with words. That was something he had inherited from his father; none of his siblings were particularly quick thinking.
But in Europe, and Sweden in particular, no one called Jack Kluger an idiot. There, the language barrier became a natural defense. Though everyone watched American films, no one realized that his vocabulary was as limited as his education.
“Gamla-stan?” he said, pronouncing the area of the city in his heavily accented way. “From what you’re saying, I’d need a guide. Would either of you ladies be interested?”
They laughed, but he could see that both were willing to lead him through the narrow streets of the capital’s main tourist thoroughfare.
Kluger glanced at his watch. Quarter to one. Where was Balik?
* * *
—
Goldsboro was a town of a few hundred people just south of Abilene, itself home to a hundred thousand inhabitants and a few hours west of Dallas. Kruger had been on his way back there for years now, but he was constantly finding new excuses not to get on the plane.
The detour to Stockholm hadn’t been planned, but he had managed to stay put there. He had always thought that Sweden was the country where they made chocolate and cuckoo clocks, but he now knew he had mistaken it for Switzerland. Geography had never been one of his favorite subjects at school. In fact, he hadn’t had any favorite subjects at all.
He was the third of five children. He had no contact with his brothers, but he thought that his older and only sister was still living at home. Kruger himself had dropped out of high school and enlisted in the army, back when the war in Afghanistan had recently begun, and since that day he hadn’t seen either of his parents.
Joining the military hadn’t been a patriotic decision, even if his sense of patriotism had grown during his service. It was just a way of getting away from home, of getting a job and health insurance and being able to avoid thinking about what he was going to do with his life.
Jack Kluger wasn’t much of a thinker.
He didn’t want to think about the war or about Afghanistan. He was tired of all the films about Rambo and war veterans coming home full of regret and with shot nerves; men who couldn’t sleep at night and started drinking or smoking crack, who lost their jobs if they’d even had one to begin with. Jack Kluger was better than that. He wasn’t helpless, he wasn’t a victim, he wouldn’t go crazy and kill himself or be haunted by memories of people blown to pieces or children losing their legs. He was strong. He could control his thoughts. He could shut out everything he needed to, and turn his mind to beautiful, easy and fun things instead.
But sometimes, whenever he lowered his defenses for a moment or two, the doubt reared its head. It was as though he got confused, and it always happened without warning. In the middle of a conversation, at the checkout when he went to the supermarket, or during a lunch when he was meant to be talking work.
Or, like now, when he was trying to charm two women in a restaurant.
He lost focus, suddenly didn’t know where he was or what he was doing there.
And as long as these moments of confusion continued to affect him, he held off on buying that ticket back home to Goldsboro, Texas.
He wanted to be completely back to normal before he returned.
He was just about to ask one of the women, the one with the bigger lips, what
she was doing that evening and whether she wanted to go to a restaurant he had been recommended, when Balik came in through the door.
The sight of him made Kluger quickly end his conversation, and he got up to greet his friend. When the women left a few minutes later, the one with the bigger lips left her phone number on a napkin on the table. Kluger let it lie. There were plenty of other phone numbers in Stockholm.
14
Michel Maloof had been surprised at how unfazed Alexandra Svensson was by her own nakedness. Not wearing a thread, she climbed out of bed, went into the bathroom and left the door open. Once she was done, she flushed and continued, still naked, into the kitchen, where she first switched on the coffee machine and then began to slice oranges.
It was an early Sunday morning in early May. Alexandra had slept at Maloof’s place again; it was almost becoming a habit, the third time in two weeks. Compared with the way she lived, with someone else’s furniture in a tiny studio apartment, staying at his place was like visiting a castle. The roller blind wasn’t fully down, and he could feel the warmth of the sun on his skin. He lay in the soft bed, slowly waking to the sound of Alexandra in the kitchen. There was a growing knot of anxiety in his stomach, and he knew exactly why.
He was enjoying this far too much.
Maloof slowly turned onto his back, his head on the pillow. He opened his eyes. The sun glittered on the mirror on the wall. Why did his bedroom suddenly feel so much more comfortable? He glanced around and realized it was because of all the new feminine touches; the cushions she had brought over from her place, the new striped sheets she had bought, the pots of creams and perfumes on the counter, all the clothes she had strewn about and that smelled like a woman.
Maloof’s phone was on the bedside table, but he didn’t reach for it. That was one of the privileges of Sunday mornings.
He would have to watch out, he realized, though he was already longing to get back into bed after breakfast. Ideally with Alexandra. He smiled at the thought. He wasn’t in a proper relationship right now, though he did know a couple of women who wanted just that. If he didn’t actively fight it, he might easily end up in one with Alexandra Svensson. Just because it felt nice to know whom you would be spending the night with, and it was better than giving out keys to several women at once. He was well aware that that wasn’t a good enough reason to move in with someone, which meant he had to try to keep Alexandra Svensson at arm’s length. He was letting her sleep over for professional reasons, and he had to bear that in mind.
He climbed out of bed. After the obligatory visit to the bathroom, he pulled on his T-shirt and underwear from the day before. He was far from as comfortable with his own naked body as she was with hers.
He found her by the counter in the kitchen. She was standing with her back to the door, squeezing oranges against the juice press with both hands. Her round bottom trembled with the vibrations it was sending through her body. He laughed quietly.
“Can I help?” he asked.
“Very manly of you, Michel,” she replied without turning around. “But I think I can manage to make some orange juice without your help? You could, like, take out the coffee cups? Do you want anything else? Should I toast some bread?”
“No, don’t worry,” he said. Coffee and juice was a perfect breakfast.
She moved around his kitchen as though she was at home; she had even rearranged the furniture. He took out two cups and two glasses and put them down on the counter. He couldn’t help but glance at her small breasts as he did it.
“Stop it,” she said with a smile when she realized.
He tried, but he couldn’t help himself.
* * *
—
“Are you working tonight?” he asked.
They were sitting at the kitchen table. Alexandra had pulled on a dressing gown so as not to distract her lover, one made of silk that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in Maloof’s wardrobe.
“Yep,” she replied with a nod. “I tried to put together a time sheet for May where I wouldn’t have to see Claude, but no matter what I do he just turns up anyway. I mean, it doesn’t matter. He’d never dare do anything. But, I don’t know, he’s creepy.”
Maloof nodded. The kitchen smelled of cinnamon, something it only ever did when Alexandra was there. He didn’t know why, maybe it was her perfume.
“You get it, right?” she asked, continuing without waiting for an answer. “He thinks he’s, like, the world’s best boss. He’s been through management courses. And he’s basically promising me a career. I mean, what does he think? There are fourteen of us working nights, when we’re all in, which only happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays. What kind of career is that going to be, exactly?”
“Right, right. Is there…more to do on Tuesdays and…Thursdays, or something?” Maloof wondered.
“Mmm. We take the most money then. But, I mean, day shift on Fridays, there’s never more than maybe seven, eight people? So what’s he thinking? Am I meant to be the boss of three people and him the other four?”
She laughed. Maloof did too.
“It’s like,” she said, “get it together, you know?”
“Right, right.”
“I don’t want to go straight home,” Alexandra said with a sigh, changing the subject. “It’s going to be a nice day. If you wanted, we could have a picnic.”
This was how Maloof’s knowledge of the cash depot in Västberga grew. Each time he saw Alexandra, she revealed something else that could prove useful. That morning alone, he had learned that it was the morning after a Tuesday or Thursday that they should strike.
It was a long-winded way of planning a job, but this was how he worked. Thoroughly.
Alexandra’s dressing gown slipped open when she twisted to close the window. He couldn’t resist the urge, and reached forward to move his fingertips gently over her small nipple, which immediately hardened at his touch.
“Or,” she said with a shiver, “we could blow off the picnic and do something else?”
* * *
—
It was Alexandra Svensson’s description of the counting department that eventually convinced Maloof that Ezra Ray had stolen the right documents from the town planning office. She had described the big room on the sixth floor as being “banana shaped” several times now. What she was trying to say was that the open-plan office where she worked was constructed in some kind of arc, a gentle curve, across the top of the building.
Maloof had been in the café by the bowling alley in Heron City on the afternoon when Sami had given him the drawings. The thundering of the balls and the crash of the occasional strike had drowned out the canned music. Each had ordered a cup of black coffee, and Maloof had leafed through the stack of papers that Sami had brought in a plastic bag from H&M.
“But the fact he stole them,” Maloof had asked, “isn’t that basically like…announcing we’re planning something?”
“Do you know when someone last requested these documents?”
Maloof had shaken his head. Sami’s leg bounced impatiently beneath the table.
“October 1979. That was the last time. And before that, it was 1970. Said so on a note that came with them. Like some kind of library card.”
“Right, right,” Maloof had said, though he had never taken out a library book in his life.
“If someone only asks to see these drawings every thirty years, there’s not much risk in borrowing them for a few months, right?”
“No, no, of course,” Maloof replied, searching through the pile of papers and realizing why no one was interested.
The drawings were indecipherable. It was impossible even to tell whether the Vreten 17 building really was the G4S cash depot.
When Maloof got home from Heron City that day, he had spread out the drawings on the floor and started to methodically go through them. What made them particularly difficult to interpret was the large, open atrium that cut straight through the building. There was a glass dome on the ro
of, in the shape of a sharp pyramid, and beneath that, the huge space opened out. The various floors were built around that square void in the center.
After an hour or so, he managed to find the room Alexandra had been talking about. Its curved form was the only one like it in the entire building, and the key to understanding the drawings. Using that room as his starting point, Maloof was able to work out far more over the days that followed.
It didn’t worry him that he still wasn’t sure what the lower floors of the building were like. He found what he assumed was the vault, split between two levels, but knew there was no point attempting to break in there. Not just because Alexandra had talked about the legendary security system, but also because he had been hearing stories about officials from the Swedish Central Bank going there to study the setup before updating their own security systems for years.
The vault was one of Scandinavia’s most expensive. If you had access to a small army, you could probably get in, but otherwise it was better not to even try.
Every night, Maloof called Sami and gave him an update on his progress. The exhausted father was enthusiastic rather than helpful.
“OK,” he said to Maloof, “but is it going to work? What do you think?”
“Yeah,” he told Sami. “Just like she said. You blow a hole through the roof, and that takes you straight to place we’re aiming for. It…should take five, ten minutes. No more.”
There was a general rule that if it took more than fifteen minutes to get in and out of a bank or post office, the police would have time to arrive. But five to ten minutes felt good.
“OK,” said Sami. “But how the hell do you get onto the roof to begin with? And how do you get down again?”
15
It wasn’t like in the movies.
Sami Farhan had never been to a racecourse before, but he felt like he had seen hundreds of Hollywood films full of people doing dodgy deals as they walked around the trotting tracks, or cheering on their favorites from the stands.
