by The Helicopter Heist- A Novel Based on True Events (retail) (epub)
* * *
—
They showed their IDs at reception and the state secretary to the minister for foreign affairs appeared a few minutes later.
“To what do we owe the minister’s interest?” Thurn asked as they climbed the wide stone staircase to the second floor.
Olsson made some kind of dismissive gesture that indicated that she would like to explain, but not right now. Therese Olsson was consumed by her professional role, and she would rather be accused of being boring than unclear. Climbing your way to the top of the envious ranks of the police hierarchy wasn’t something you did with straightforwardness and a cheerful temperament.
The police officers were ushered into the minister’s room behind the secretary, and they sat down on a sofa and waited in silence. When the minister appeared, they got to their feet.
The energetic minister greeted each of them with a firm handshake and asked them to sit down.
“I understand,” he said, and Thurn wondered whether it was his coarse dialect that made the Swedish language sound forced coming from his mouth, “that we are continuing our cooperation with Belgrade?”
“That is correct,” Olsson replied.
“As you know,” the minister continued, “I still have good relationships with the majority of decision makers in the Balkans. I just wanted to point out that if you need any help, I’m at your service.”
“That’s very kind, Minister,” Olsson replied, “but I think we have the situation under control. While the initial contact was at the ministerial level, our Serbian colleagues have also provided our liaison office in Belgrade with extremely detailed information that they seem to have stumbled on by chance.”
“Well, stumbling is rarely deliberate, is it?” said the minister.
Berggren laughed, and the minister flashed him an appreciative glance. Caroline Thurn smiled reflexively. She wasn’t much of a fan of jokey word games. A wave of weariness washed over her, and she closed her eyes and fell into a microsleep. She opened her eyes a few seconds later, without anyone else in the room having noticed what had happened.
Sleep was Thurn’s greatest enemy and challenge. She had always slept badly, but she couldn’t remember exactly when her nights had turned into drawn-out nightmares. At some point during her late teens, she would guess. It had begun as a sleeplessness, an inability to get any rest. The nights had become one long torment, the days a hazy fight to stay awake until it was time to repeat the whole process again.
She had experimented with everything she could think of. Eaten a lot or very little in the evenings, worked out or avoided working out after a certain time of day. She had bought mattresses of varying firmness, humidifiers and sound effects—rain and wind. She had started meditating and taken a long list of concoctions and drugs that both ordinary doctors and therapists had prescribed to her. Things had become more and more dramatic.
It was after only a few years, once she stopped fighting it and managed to find the right dose of medication, that her days became tolerable again; when she decided to stop trying, and didn’t even bother going to bed at night. Instead, she would sit in the dark and allow her thoughts to come and go, without any resistance and with the aim of saving as much energy as she could for the day ahead, before it was time to function in a social context once again.
The microsleep she had hated in the past—because it made promises and always broke them—became her best friend.
But she also knew she was different and that different wasn’t good. When Mats Berggren later asked where her bedroom was, she would lie like she always did and mention a fold-down bed hidden in the wall.
* * *
—
When Caroline Thurn and Mats Berggren left the office of the minister for foreign affairs thirty minutes later, they weren’t much the wiser. Commissioner Olsson had repeated over and over again that they had received a tip of great importance. She had even used the word “unique,” which was why Serbia’s foreign minister had contacted his Swedish counterpart. To win political points at the highest level.
The crime being planned would be the biggest robbery in Swedish criminal history. And thanks to their foreign colleagues, the Swedish police suddenly had a real lead, Olsson said.
But when Caroline Thurn tried to find out exactly what that lead was, the commissioner failed to answer. She didn’t know the details, she said. But she knew that this was a unique chance to show organized crime in the Balkans what the Swedish Criminal Police could do, what international cooperation could achieve. For the minister for foreign affairs and the government, it meant a debt of gratitude to the Serbians.
“I’ll call Björn Kant when I get back,” Thurn said as they were leaving the building. “He can fill me in.”
She hadn’t seen Kant since Henrik Nilsson’s arrest in one of the Hötorget buildings a few months earlier. Nilsson had barely made it into police headquarters before his lawyers and contacts had seen to his leaving again. When Thurn heard about that, she had gone out to Djurgården and run three loops of the canal to work out her anger. Men like Nilsson always got off, despite Sweden’s best prosecutor having been involved in the case. If Henrik Nilsson ever crossed her path again, she swore she would send him down.
“Björn Kant wasn’t available,” the police commissioner said in a neutral tone. “The International Public Prosecution Office appointed someone else to this case. Lars Hertz.”
“Lars Hertz?” Thurn repeated, racking her memory. “Is he from Gothenburg? I don’t think I know who…”
“This will be Hertz’s first criminal case,” Therese Olsson replied.
Caroline Thurn stopped dead.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I understand. We’re meant to be working with a prosecutor who’s never tried a criminal case before?”
“I’ve heard he’s very competent,” said the commissioner.
A black car pulled up to the sidewalk. Olsson opened the back door and climbed in without another word. Thurn and Berggren were left standing outside the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Thurn was furious, but she managed to force a mild smile.
“I guess it’s up to us to give Lars Hertz a crash course in international criminality,” she said.
27
Through the half-drawn curtains, Michel Maloof could see down to the soccer field, the high and, farther in the distance, the dense forest. There always seemed to be an open box of pizza from the night before within reach, and he grabbed one of the leftover slices he had been managing to resist since lunch.
He didn’t know how long he had been staring at his computer screen. He hated Google Earth. The afternoon was slowly drawing to a close, and this was what he was spending his time doing. Searching for something he would never find. On the table beneath the pizza box, he had the printout of the map Niklas Nordgren had given him. Maloof had methodically split it up into squares, and he still had as much of it left to go over as he had already checked.
His one consolation was knowing that to the north of the city, in Lidingö, Niklas Nordgren was doing the exact same thing.
* * *
—
It was six thirty in the evening when, as he was staring three days later at the pixelated version of reality provided by Google, Michel Maloof found the dolly. Over the past week, the light from the screen and the terrible resolution of the images had given him headaches, so when he first spotted it next to the two small buildings in the middle of the forest on Värmdö, he was sure he was imagining things.
He leaned back and stared and stared, but he couldn’t come to any other conclusion: the picture, taken by chance by an American satellite, really was what he had been looking for.
Helicopters had no wheels, and that was why they landed on a metal plate that did—a so-called dolly—meaning they could be pulled, either by hand or using a vehicle, in and out of the hangar. What Maloof was staring at in the fuzzy image in front of him looked just like one.
He opened a
new tab, found a picture of a dolly and brought it up alongside Google Earth.
Staring at the two images, he called Nordgren.
“Hey. Listen…you can probably turn off the computer.”
The line was silent. Maloof could hear Nordgren breathing.
“Are you telling me you’ve…have you found it?”
“Right, right.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Yeah. Ninety-nine percent.”
“Unbelievable.”
“I’ll double-check tomorrow. OK. Sleep well.”
“Finally,” Nordgren declared.
* * *
—
Myttinge was to the north of Värmdö.
Maloof picked up Sami Farhan at Slussen just before lunch, and they drove out toward Gustavsberg in Maloof’s silvery-gray Seat. Thanks to the highway, it didn’t take much more than half an hour to reach Värmdö, but then the road past Ängsvik and Siggesta Gård was narrow and curving. There was no other traffic, but it was still hard to get up to the speed limit.
And then, suddenly, they saw it.
The hangar.
It was to one side of the road, unassuming and without any kind of surveillance. The fence surrounding it was made of ordinary chicken wire. They found a small forest trail around a bend in the road and parked the car, walking back to the hangar to make sure they really had found the right place.
The police had put up stickers on both the buildings functioning as the helicopter depot and on the gates. There were two small hangars, and through the window on the side of one, they could see a helicopter.
On the way back into town, Sami was in high spirits.
“It’s like they’re keeping it in a child’s house.”
“Right, right,” said Maloof.
“Getting in there with Nick’s mobile bombs’ll be a piece of cake.”
They drove over Danvikstull and then continued along Stadsgårdsleden where the huge ferries lay in wait for their paying conference attendees.
“I can give you a ride home,” said Maloof. “I don’t have to be anywhere until two.”
“Could you drop me off by Sergels Torg instead?” Sami asked. “I promised Karin I’d swing by that stroller shop to see if they have any spare wheels.”
While Sami went into great detail about the stubborn locking feature on the wheel of the stroller, Maloof drove along Skeppsbron, passing the king’s ugly castle and heading straight after the bridge. Kungsträdgården Park was lush and green, beautiful even without any elms, and there were people sitting on the grass around the statue of Karl XII, enjoying the heat. The schools had gone back already, but you couldn’t tell; summer vacation still seemed to be ongoing.
“God, that looks nice,” Sami remarked at the lightly dressed sun worshippers sitting with their picnics. He lowered the window on his side of the car.
Maloof slowed to a halt as the bus ahead of them pulled into a stop.
“What the HELL!”
It was Sami who had shouted. It came completely out of the blue, and Maloof, who had been just about to pull away, slammed on the brakes.
“Look! What the hell, LOOK!”
“What the hell is it?”
Maloof felt a cold wave course through his body. It was quickly followed by a rush of adrenaline.
“It’s him!” Sami shouted, pointing out the window. “The Turk! Hassan Kaya! That’s the fucking prawn thief!”
And before Maloof had time to process what was happening, Sami had opened the door and was sprinting across the road. A red Porsche screeched to a halt and the people who had just left the bus had stopped and were pointing, but Sami continued to run.
“YOU BASTARD!” he shouted.
“STOP!” shouted Maloof.
28
Early the next morning, after their meeting at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Thurn and Berggren were called into the prosecutor’s office on Östermalmsgatan. They met at a 7-Eleven not far from there at quarter to nine. Each bought a coffee, and Berggren couldn’t resist paying another five kronor for a sweet bun to go with it. To make the defeat less painful, he had eaten it by the time he left the shop. Thurn had trouble not looking away as he made a mess of himself. He was ashamed and could completely understand her.
“Want a napkin?” she asked.
He shook his head and licked his sticky fingers. “Let’s go now,” he said. “I’m curious. I heard it was something really impressive. You know, same level as the National Museum.”
Berggren was referring to one of the most audacious heists in Swedish criminal history. The robbers had struck two days before Christmas Eve, on a Friday just before closing, when the museum had been virtually empty. They had grabbed three priceless paintings no bigger than postcards, two Renoirs and a Rembrandt, and shoved them inside their coats. And then the robbers had run twenty yards to a waiting boat, which had disappeared into the pitch-black darkness of Stockholm’s open waters.
Caroline Thurn mumbled something inaudible.
“You worked on that, right?” Berggren asked. He didn’t want to sound too curious.
“Yeah,” Thurn replied. “Ali Farhan sent his younger brothers in to steal the paintings. There were loads of us on that case. We never would’ve managed it without the FBI. But we got them in the end. Not just the Farhan brothers either, there were plenty of others involved. They ended up being convicted of receiving stolen goods.”
“Right,” Berggren said, pretending to recall the information that he and every other police officer already knew in detail; almost as much had been written about the subsequent investigation as the robbery itself. “No, it’s one thing to wave an automatic weapon in the air, but it’s trickier to do business afterward.”
Caroline Thurn didn’t reply. She wasn’t sure she agreed. Doing business required different skills, of course, but did that have anything to do with the level of difficulty? And how were you meant to assess the risks being taken? When criminals put their lives on the line, it was often for a fraction of the amount of tax that director Henrik Nilsson withheld from the Swedish state. And the only risk Nilsson was taking was a few petty fines. In the traditional world of crime, the risk was no longer relative to the reward; it was in the newer criminal sphere, the world of banking and finance, that the big money was up for grabs.
Still, a crime was a crime, Thurn thought, regardless of whether it happened behind a desk or out on the street.
* * *
—
Prosecutor Lars Hertz was sitting in one of the impersonally decorated rooms along the long, dark corridor in the Swedish Prosecution Authority’s offices.
He leaped to his feet and greeted the two police officers with a firm, enthusiastic handshake when they came into his room. Hertz was a man in his prime, seemingly fit and fashion conscious in a slim-fitting, well-ironed white shirt. He looked kind, the furrows on his brow suggesting a troubled thoughtfulness, the thick mop of blond hair and blue eyes screaming energy and youth.
Berggren, who had begun panting as he made his way up the stairs, pulled out a tissue from his pocket and wiped his forehead as he sat down on the austere wooden chair in front of the prosecutor’s desk. Thurn sat down next to him.
“So,” Hertz began, “as I understand it, this is something of a sensational story?”
Berggren took out a notepad and pen. It was a habit of his; he could think more clearly with a pen and paper in hand, even if he rarely read through his notes afterward.
“What’s sensational?” Thurn asked. She hated the word, it sounded like a vulgar tabloid headline and had no place in serious police work.
“Well, I mean, the sensational aspect is in the level of detail in the information we’ve been given,” Hertz replied uncertainly.
“We were only given this case yesterday,” said Mats Berggren, “so we’re obviously curious about the details.”
“Of course,” said Hertz. “Of course. I understand. Well…as you might have heard, this will be
my first criminal case?”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Thurn said encouragingly.
“I need your help,” the prosecutor replied. “You have the experience I’m lacking. I’m well aware of my limitations.”
He looked from Thurn to Berggren and back again. During his career, he had learned not to waste time on pessimists and prophets of doom. The corridors and halls of the country’s courts and prosecutors’ offices were full of bleak professionals who barricaded themselves in their dark rooms and dismissed every possibility as meaningless.
The two police officers in front of him seemed difficult to place in a particular category. They seemed to be opposites; the tall woman, who was more beautiful than she pretended to be, was still smiling encouragingly. He had never come across such charming condescension before. And by her side, the fat, sweaty man no one would ever call beautiful, jotting down every word and seeming so at ease in his subordinate role.
“The information came from the Serbian police,” Hertz began. “We don’t have the name of their source, but it’s someone who has sought and been granted witness protection in Serbia.”
Hertz pushed his fringe, a serious tangle of hair, to one side.
“Witness protection?” Thurn repeated. “In Serbia? That’s a bit like hiding behind a lamppost.”
“No, it’s not,” Hertz objected, wounded on behalf of the law-abiding European state. “We’re talking about our colleagues here, correct, Detective Chief Inspector. Besides, it’s in Europe’s interests that our witness protection systems really do work.”
“You said the original source was granted witness protection,” Berggren interjected. “Does that mean there are others?”
The prosecutor nodded. “After the original tip, the Serbs tapped several phones. One of them, the most active, has been in regular contact with an individual in Sweden.”
“Who? Do we have a name?” asked Berggren. “You need to tell us what we know.”
