The Helicopter Heist

by The Helicopter Heist- A Novel Based on True Events (retail) (epub)

  “Kids are great,” he replied with a wry smile.

  He gently closed the door again.

  John was waiting on the floor in the hallway. When Sami picked him up, he laughed. He was a happy baby. According to his parents, the boy was already talking, though not even his grandmother could understand the noises Sami heard as “Mom,” “Dad,” “car” and “bird.”

  In truth, he was a little too heavy to be carried around now, but he liked it, and Sami felt freer without the stroller. In the bag he swung over his shoulder, he had packed gruel and extra diapers, and he added a blanket. Summer had spread its warm embrace over Stockholm the day before, but the weather report that morning had said that the warm front would be taking a temporary break for a few days. They wouldn’t be needing the overalls, at least, and for that Sami was grateful.

  He carried John on his arm as he walked down Högbergsgatan, but as he turned the corner onto Götgatan, the feeling of being followed struck him unexpectedly.

  * * *

  —

  The sidewalks were crowded. One week into July, and people still hadn’t started their summer holidays. Or maybe that was the reason everyone seemed so stressed, Sami thought. Over the course of four drizzle-filled summer weeks, passions were meant to be rekindled, relationships with children restored, books read, friends met and the fence scraped before being repainted. When it was finally time to go back to work in August, it felt like crawling back onto land after swimming through the stormy waters of time off.

  They reached Medborgarplatsen. Sami quickly headed for the subway station and ran down the escalator. Once he was almost at the bottom, he turned around. At least a handful of people farther up seemed to be in as much of a rush as he was.

  On the platform, he boarded the train toward Hagsätra that had just pulled into the station. But just before the doors closed, he jumped back off again. John, still resting on Sami’s arm, laughed happily. The leap onto the platform had given him butterflies in his stomach.

  No one else seemed to follow Sami’s example.

  He crossed the platform. According to the screens, the train toward Åkeshov was two minutes away. When it pulled into the station, he repeated the maneuver. Stepped on board, waited a few seconds and then jumped back out onto the platform. When he didn’t see anyone else do the same, he climbed back on board. John gave a big, gurgling laugh.

  They took a train to the central station, where Sami ran up to street level only to take the escalator right back down to the blue line.

  By this point, he was pretty sure he had been wrong.

  No one was following him.

  Still, to his son’s amusement, he repeated his platform-hopping trick on the train toward Hjulsta.

  * * *

  —

  Sami Farhan had moved around Stockholm’s southern suburbs while he was growing up, but he was less familiar with those to the north. When he finally emerged aboveground in Rissne, between Sundbyberg and Rinkeby, he initially went in the wrong direction. He was heading for the Shurgard building, a warehouse where private individuals could rent a dark storeroom to lock up whatever they didn’t want to use, throw away or sell.

  The one-year-old had almost fallen asleep during the subway ride, but as they came out into fresh air, he opened his eyes and seemed to be on the verge of protesting. As long as he was being carried, however, things could be worse, and so he remained in a good mood.

  The walk should have taken five minutes, but it took Sami fifteen. Eventually, he managed to find the place. He spotted the Albanian sitting on a stool outside the entrance to the new building from a way off. He was the sort of beefy man who, beneath all the fat, was more muscular than the majority of people. The man’s hands and arms were covered in tattoos, and on his neck, above the collar of his T-shirt, dark green flames licked at his earlobes.

  The Albanian struggled to get up from the stool as Sami approached. He didn’t give the baby a single glance.

  “You can go in,” he said.

  The building was dark, but there was some light coming from an open door farther ahead. Sami saw two more people inside the office. They looked exactly like the man who had been left on guard duty outside, and he remembered that they were all brothers. He had never done business with them before, but that was the whole point. Not using any of his normal contacts. The room was crowded and dirty, and the computers looked like something IBM had thrown together during the nineties.

  “This way,” one of them said, laboring to get up from a dark green velvet armchair that was leaking stuffing.

  Sami followed the man into the corridor, up a dark staircase and past a long line of locked doors. They didn’t pass anyone else along the way. Maybe the brothers were renting out the entire building?

  The Albanian stopped in front of the second-to-last door, unlocked it, reached inside and switched on the light.

  “Have a look round,” he said. “And tell me what you want.”

  Sami stepped into the room. It was both an exhibition room and a storage area. Machine guns and smaller firearms were displayed on top of wooden boxes in the same way you would see sneakers on sale at ICA Maxi. Sami absentmindedly touched some of the pieces with his left hand; he was still carrying John with his right arm.

  The Albanian followed him.

  “We’ve got a few new pieces over here,” he said. “If you want…But…what the hell’s that smell?”

  “What do you mean?” Sami asked, unconcerned.

  “You can’t smell it?” the Albanian said. “Smells like shit?”

  Sami had felt it against his arm as they climbed the stairs: the pattering fart and subsequent warmth. He had thought it could wait.

  “Can you give me a minute?” he said. “I just need to do something. It’ll be quick.”

  Before the Albanian had a chance to reply, Sami was on the way out. He ran down the stairs, out of the building and around the corner. He lay John on his back on the grass next to the parking lot, took out the blanket and wet wipes from the bag and put a clean, dry diaper on his son. On the way back to the Albanian and the automatic weapons, he found a trash can by the ticket machine and threw away the old diaper.

  The boy laughed as his father ran up the stairs two at a time.

  Sami chose a traditional Kalashnikov that he knew he could handle. He pointed to a couple of pistols and read from the list he had been given by Maloof. It detailed the things Niklas Nordgren had asked for.

  “Let’s do it like this,” said the Albanian. “Next time you come here, you bring the dough. We give you a key to one of the stores. The things you’ve asked for’ll be inside. You can pick them up whenever you want, then just leave the key in the lock when you’re done. OK?”

  AUGUST 2009

  23

  One Monday in early August, Niklas Nordgren installed an air-conditioning unit in a shop in Sigtuna and then headed up to Arlanda airport, which was just a fifteen-minute drive away.

  Airports were always sensitive targets, classified as high security and guarded around the clock. The police were based in one of the buildings adjacent to the main terminals, but the signs and the building itself were more impressive than the actual staff. The representatives of the law at Arlanda were neither the best educated nor the most heavily armed; their work usually just involved apprehending or ejecting disorderly vacationers who had been trying to drown out their fear of flying with alcohol. Terrorist threats and tips about drug smugglers were handled by other, more suitable units than the Arlanda police.

  Nordgren parked his car inside the round multistory parking garage by Terminal 5 and took the glass bridge over the taxi stand to the terminal buildings. He turned left into SkyCity, which linked the international terminal to the domestic ones. It was here that he found the information desk.

  A young woman chewing gum looked irritatedly up from her book. Her hair was dyed red and she had a piercing in one eyebrow.

  “Excuse me,” Nordgren said, looking at her f
rom beneath the shadow of his cap. “Just a quick question. Where do I find the police helicopter base?”

  “Helicopter base?” the woman mumbled, using her middle finger to search the directory she had on the screen in front of her.

  Both Michel Maloof and Niklas Nordgren had, each in their own way, used the Internet, police websites, Flashback and other chat forums to try to find out where the police helicopters were based.

  They hadn’t had any success, they hadn’t found a single straw to clutch at.

  Nordgren was well aware that audacity was something you should use sparingly if you were in the robbery business. But sometimes that method was best, and he was prepared to go further than usual right now.

  “Nope, can’t find it,” the woman eventually said. “Give me a second and I’ll call over to the police and ask.”

  Nordgren nodded gratefully.

  “Hi,” she said once she was connected. “This is Sophie from the information desk in SkyCity. I’ve had a question about the police helicopters. Are they based here somewhere? Terminal Three?”

  She continued chewing her gum as she listened to the answer. Then she thanked the person on the other end of the line and hung up.

  “Nope,” she said, “the police have never had any helicopters here. We actually have very few helicopters at Arlanda. They said they weren’t sure but that you should try Tullinge.”

  “Tullinge? The police said that?”

  “That’s what they said,” the woman confirmed, losing interest in him and returning to her book.

  * * *

  —

  Three days later, Michel Maloof was in the passenger seat of Niklas Nordgren’s car, watching the rain fall over Tumba. The nonstop music on the radio provided a perfect accompaniment.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Maloof said.

  “It was a surprise,” Nordgren agreed. “But a good one.”

  “I can’t believe it though. You’re really sure? Completely sure?”

  Nordgren was as sure as he could be. He had several contacts within the police force in Stockholm, and none of them had been able to say where a police helicopter depot might be based. But the one thing they did all claim was that there was only one helicopter stationed in the capital.

  “They’ve got a helicopter in Norrland,” Nordgren said to Maloof. “One in Malmö, one in Gothenburg and one in Stockholm. It sounds strange, but…when it flies over the city, everyone can see it, and they take it for a couple of spins a day so we think there are more. Apparently they sometimes borrow the one from Gothenburg. If they need it for any particular reason. If we’re unlucky.”

  Maloof nodded. If Nordgren said it was so, then that was that.

  “Just one helicopter…it’s still so strange.”

  They reached Tullinge and turned off toward the old airfield’s only landing strip to take a look around.

  “But you don’t…think it’s here?” Maloof asked.

  “No,” said Nordgren. “I’m pretty sure. But you never know. The police have apparently been moving the helicopter around for years. Not to be clever, but because no one seems to want it.”

  “No.” Maloof nodded. “Why doesn’t anyone want it?”

  “No idea,” said Nordgren. “But it doesn’t help.”

  * * *

  —

  In appearance, the two men were very different: the outgoing, always-smiling Lebanese man with thick, glossy hair and a perfectly groomed beard, and the introverted and sullen Swede with no hair at all. They had grown up close to one another—it was no farther than a good goal kick between Nordgren’s Vårby Gård and the Maloof family’s Fittja—and neither had been particularly interested in school. But where Nordgren had discovered a love for extreme sports, Maloof had stuck to the position of center back on the soccer team, something that reflected their personalities well.

  Niklas Nordgren’s need for company was limited. He was more interested in electronic circuits than human relationships, and the questioning look with which he studied the world around him from beneath his cap was constant. He didn’t want to label himself a brooder, but the concept of happiness had never seemed definite to him. At times, he struggled with his self-image, and there was no denying the fact that there was a hint of destructiveness in his choice of work.

  Michel Maloof was different. He liked sun more than rain, soccer more than hockey; he preferred the solution to the problem. He wasn’t someone who made life difficult for himself. Maloof’s parents were both Christians, and they had forced their children to traipse off to church at regular intervals. But the Christian faith had never managed to take hold in Maloof’s heart, and his siblings were convinced that it was down to his Buddhist orientation. Maloof’s ability to tolerate injustice, to remain indifferent to provocation, to smile at stupidity rather than get worked up, to sit still and listen while someone told the same story for the hundredth time—that was nothing but miraculous. The Dalai Lama claimed that the road to happiness was achieved by replacing every bitter or negative thought with one that was positive and beautiful. That was precisely how Maloof lived his life.

  His only problem was money.

  He didn’t have enough of it.

  But what that word—“enough”—meant, he couldn’t say.

  * * *

  —

  Michel Maloof’s family, his four siblings and happily married parents, were the bedrock of his life. Thanks to the combined strength of the family, the children had made it through the Swedish school system with only superficial bruises and established themselves in the society their parents still frequently misunderstood. All but him. And the reason was that he had never been able to define the word “enough.”

  Even Niklas Nordgren’s parents’ near forty-year marriage had survived the strains that many of their friends’ relationships had collapsed beneath. Niklas didn’t have the same feeling of belonging to a flock as Maloof, he had only one sister, but neither she nor his parents had ever come close to the kind of life he ended up living.

  Their sons’ criminality had come as shock to both Nordgren’s and Maloof’s families. All the same, they had done nothing but be supportive, both when the two men made their pathetic calls for help from prison that very first time, and when they broke their promises never to do it again and ended up calling a second, third and fourth time. Their crushed mothers and brooding fathers had loyally waited outside the prison on leave days, and furious siblings had angrily had a go at them when they came home.

  And worse than the thought of the isolation cells in prison was the thought of being a disappointment in the eyes of their families when the blue lights of the police appeared in the rearview mirror.

  Unlike the majority of other people Nordgren and Maloof met in their line of work, they were both exceptions in their respective families.

  And the fact that their friendship, once it had been established, grew strong was because they could both see themselves in the other person’s self-appointed isolation.

  * * *

  —

  The rain was still falling when they arrived, and it would have been difficult to find a more abandoned and gloomy place. The idea that planes had ever taken off and landed on this tiny strip of ground was hard to imagine. They drove a few loops around the area to make sure there was neither a living soul nor a threadbare helicopter hangar in sight.

  Maloof sighed and ran his hand over his beard.

  “This is…different.”

  Nordgren laughed. “Some people go fishing in the archipelago. We’re on a helicopter safari in the Stockholm suburbs.”

  But there was no police helicopter to be found in Tullinge.

  Before they parted ways, they divided Google Earth between themselves. Nordgren had printed out and drawn a line right through Stockholm County. He would take the eastern half, Maloof the western.

  “What is it we’re…looking for?” Maloof asked.

  “A hangar. In a forest. Big enough for a helicopter
or two. With asphalt in front of it. It doesn’t need to be as big as a landing strip for planes.”

  “Right, right.” Maloof nodded with a smile. “It’s…it sounds…more like a hangar in a haystack.”

  “We don’t have any other option, do we?” Nordgren said firmly.

  The rain had grown heavier again, and was now hammering against the windshield as he drove along Hågelbyvägen, back toward Fittja.

  24

  It was three thirty in the morning, and no one would be coming out of the door they had been watching since midnight. Caroline Thurn, task force leader with the National Police Authority’s Criminal Investigation Department, had already given up hope an hour earlier. Still, she had chosen to stay.

  They were parked on Karlavägen, almost at Karlaplan. The building on the other side of the road functioned as a covert brothel for foreign ambassadors stationed in Stockholm, but it seemed like the diplomats’ testosterone levels must be low that night.

  Thurn glanced at Detective Chief Inspector Mats Berggren, her colleague for the past three weeks. He was asleep in the passenger seat. The whistling noise coming from his throat, along with the sound of his fleshy cheeks vibrating, would be difficult to get used to. But so far, Thurn had managed to work well with every colleague she had ever been subjected to, and she had no intention of failing with Berggren. The secret was respect and distance.

  Thurn didn’t become friends with anyone, or enemies. It was about being professional. Her job wasn’t to make friends, it was to maintain and defend their democratic society.

  “Mats,” she whispered, and he jerked awake. “Let’s give up for tonight.”

  She had never met anyone as big as Berggren before. He had to weigh around 300 pounds, and she had heard that he was always struggling with one diet or another. Clearly it was an unequal struggle. She herself weighed only 135 pounds, despite being five foot nine. She had denied herself sweet things and white bread since her teens, though she no longer thought about pushing her food around her plate rather than eating it, to avoid any questions about why she wasn’t eating.