Karim looked anxious when he realised that Bruce and his colleague were about to leave.
Bruce got in first.
‘Just one more thing. Why you?’
Silence. It was obvious that Karim had asked himself that same question.
‘She said it was because of Flight TU003,’ he said.
Bruce didn’t understand.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Don’t you think I’ve asked myself the same question? I have no idea.’
Bruce didn’t know much about planes or airline company employees, and wasn’t quite sure what to say next.
‘Have you ever been captain on a flight with that number?’ he asked eventually.
‘I certainly have,’ Karim replied. ‘Just once, back in May. A flight from Copenhagen to Rabat. I stood in for a colleague. It’s the only time apart from today when I’ve had to carry out an emergency landing.’
Bruce didn’t comment on the fact that Karim hadn’t actually landed Flight 573.
‘What happened?’ he asked instead.
‘There was a fight among a group of passengers. The crew couldn’t manage to break them up; I decided they were a danger to other passengers, so I landed in Munich.’
Bruce instinctively thought that this information could be important, but he didn’t know what to do with it.
‘Were any of the passengers particularly upset because you were landing in Munich?’ he said.
Karim coughed and brought his hand up to the wound in his neck, as if he was afraid it might burst open.
‘Not as far as I recall. Apart from the guys who were fighting, of course, but that was only to be expected. The problem was that it took almost eight hours before I was allowed to continue the journey. During the time it took to land and get rid of the troublemakers, a terrible storm came in over the city. Gale-force winds, hail, thunder and lightning. It was positively apocalyptic. They shut down the whole airport for several hours, and then of course there was a queue when we were able to leave.’
Bruce made a note of the flight number, then caught his colleague’s eye. Time to end the interview and head back to the office.
Just as they were about to leave, Bruce heard Karim’s hoarse voice once more:
‘Promise me you’ll try to find my family. I don’t care what you do with me, just make sure you find them. I have to know what’s happened to them.’
Bruce hesitated for no more than a second.
‘Karim, they’re fine. They were never taken hostage.’
71 STOCKHOLM, 05:06
It was five o’clock in the morning, but Fredrika Bergman didn’t feel at all tired. Alex had gone home a few hours earlier to be with his family; Fredrika and Eden stayed on, along with Dennis and Sebastian. The night was dark and cold, and Fredrika was happy to be indoors.
She updated her employers on the hour and every half hour. Once the media had grasped the fact that no one was seriously hurt, and had managed to pass this on in a range of articles, anxious relatives stopped calling the police switchboard.
It didn’t take long before it became known that the police suspected Captain Sassi of being involved in the hijacking, and at the same time there was a flood of questions as to why the government had revised its decision to deport Zakaria Khelifi. After that, Fredrika didn’t have a minute to herself.
She spoke to her boss at the Justice Department and provided him with the basis of a statement to the press. Zakaria’s deportation had been reviewed due to a comprehensive re-evaluation. The government simply couldn’t risk getting such an important decision wrong, and it was better to be safe than sorry.
Fredrika looked at what she had written down.
Why was she still not happy about this?
She had got what she wanted, after all.
Zakaria Khelifi would be allowed to remain in Sweden.
There was nothing but emptiness inside her. She knew she ought to go home and go to bed, get a few hours’ sleep. Instead she went to find Eden.
‘How’s it going?’
Eden glanced up. She didn’t look in the least bit tired.
‘It’s going well. I’ve put out a call for Zakaria’s sister, Sofi.’
Zakaria’s sister, who was probably the person behind everything that had happened over the past few days. Please don’t let her leave the country or go underground. It would be a nightmare to lose her, knowing that she was still out there in the field as an opponent.
‘What if we don’t find her?’ Fredrika said.
‘We’ll find her.’
She could hear from Eden’s tone of voice that she didn’t want to discuss the matter any further, but Fredrika was worried. Someone who had worked out such a detailed plan wasn’t going to leave her own disappearance to chance. And all they had to help them track her down was a name no one recognised and a picture from her uncle that was several years old.
Fredrika remembered that Eden had assumed that the person behind it all was a man. Jumping to conclusions. The world wasn’t black or white; it was usually grey.
‘The government is going to release Zakaria for good,’ she said. ‘There’s absolutely no chance that they will review their decision again.’
‘I know,’ Eden said.
‘What do you think about his case, in the light of all that’s happened?’
‘I don’t think anything. I know. Zakaria is up to his ears in shit.’
Information had come flooding in over the past few hours. Karim’s wife had confirmed parts of his story; someone had called his mobile and left a silent message on his voicemail. Karim had mentioned it to his wife, then called the person back. She hadn’t seen her youngest daughter speaking to a girl over the fence, but the child had told her about it.
Eden had sent two officers over to Solna even though it was the middle of the night, and they had shown the neighbour a picture of Sofi. The woman had shaken her head and said that she hadn’t really seen what the girl looked like.
‘I just remember her hat. She was wearing a big blue woolly hat.’
The Americans were sceptical about Karim’s story and the explanation for his actions. Fredrika and the others had no doubts whatsoever. It was totally illogical to believe that someone would risk so much without a very good reason.
Fredrika had sat in on the interview with Karim’s wife, who had asked several times what would happen to her husband now and wanted to know when he would be coming home. They had tried to side-step her questions and had answered evasively that they would have to wait and see. Karim was injured, and was in need of care first and foremost. They told Karim’s mother the same thing when they contacted her to tell her that her son was safe.
But they all knew the truth: Karim wouldn’t be coming home. Not for a long time, perhaps never.
The thought made her so sad that it was unbearable.
Any one of us would have done the same thing in his situation.
What also made her sad was that she couldn’t for the life of her see how they were going to connect Sofi to the crimes they suspected her of.
‘We don’t have a shred of evidence,’ she said to Eden.
‘Don’t we?’
‘No one has seen her; we have nothing to prove that she was involved, apart from the fact that she drove a car to Arlanda. And that she spoke to Karim, but the courts will never accept an identification solely on the basis of someone’s voice.’
Eden finally looked up from her screen.
‘You can’t think of any other evidence Sofi has given us, without realising it?’
Fredrika sensed a trap, but chose to walk right in anyway.
‘No.’
‘Two things,’ Eden said, holding up two fingers. ‘First of all, she must have made sure Karim’s fingerprints ended up on the phone. We can only guess how it happened, but I’m going to ask the Americans to ask Karim whether he’s used anyone else’s phone over the past few days. My guess is that Karim met her, probably in such an everyday situation that he had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. But with a bit of luck, he’ll remember what she looked like.’