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 rushing 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 controclass="underline" 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.