Petrovic nodded.
“I got the brief,” Zivic continued, “and I think it sounds exciting. You can count on me.”
Petrovic felt an immediate trust for the helicopter pilot, who also ordered a glass of water, this time carbonated, with ice and lime.
“But I do have a couple of questions,” Zivic continued.
It ended up being a long night, and Zoran Petrovic reluctantly said more than he had been planning to. Filip Zivic had survived the Balkan wars by not leaving anything to chance. He asked questions and then follow-up questions—both expected and unexpected. Petrovic answered as best he could.
Landing on the roof of a building in the middle of the night was, according to Zivic, no problem. It might seem difficult, but even in normal cases, helicopters landed on something called a “dolly,” a metal plate on wheels that wasn’t much bigger than the helicopter itself, and considerably smaller than the roof of a cash depot.
No, Zivic was more concerned about other things. Could Petrovic be sure that the Swedish police wouldn’t get into their own helicopters? Could the robbery really be carried out in ten minutes? And wasn’t there a risk that the police would open fire?
Zivic wasn’t happy until Petrovic had given him long, detailed answers.
By midnight, the two men had finally managed to talk everything through, and Zivic knew exactly what was expected of him.
“OK,” he said. “And when am I meant to be doing this?”
“We were talking about the fifteenth of September at the latest,” Petrovic replied.
“Why then?”
“Partly”—Petrovic sighed at the pilot’s inquisitiveness—“because of the day of the week. It has to be a particular weekday. And partly to give us enough time to prepare everything. Sweden comes to a standstill during July and half of August…”
“It’s a long time until September. Can I be sure you won’t change your minds?”
“This is going to happen,” Petrovic reassured him.
“Do I have your word?”
“You can have something better than that.”
Petrovic took out his Montenegrin checkbook. He found a pen in his inner pocket and wrote out a check for 20,000 kronor. He tore it out and handed it to Zivic, who stared at the slip of paper in surprise.
“I don’t need this if I have your word,” said the pilot.
“One doesn’t cancel out the other,” Petrovic replied with a smile.
They got up and shook hands.
21
The antenna on top of the Kaknäs radio tower blinked lazily in the distance. Its diffuse white glow vanished into the night, fading against the pale sky. The deer that hid among the trees on Djurgården during the day roamed across the dry fields at night, confident of remaining undiscovered by either dogs or people out for a stroll. And along the beaches around Hundudden, the swans rested at the edge of the water and the white-breasted Canada geese dozed by the footpaths.
The explosion ripped through the tranquil air.
The car was in the parking area hidden away behind the old riding school by Djurgårdsbrunn. During the winter, it was mostly used as a dumping ground for snowplows, and in summer by only the occasional taxi driver needing to attend to a sudden urge.
The windshield flew out of its frame, and tens of thousands of shards of glass rained down like crystals onto the concrete and into the woods. A red-and-yellow blaze flared up when the oil in the engine caught fire, ripping the hood from its hinges and sending it in a wide arc over the parking lot. It landed with a pitiful clatter a few yards away.
“Shit,” Michel Maloof said, running his hand over his beard.
“Wait,” said Niklas Nordgren.
They were standing at the edge of the woods, fifty or so yards away, watching the burning oil trickle beneath the car, a line of flame heating the gas in the tank. The flames from the engine compartment died out as suddenly as they flared up, and the wrecked car looked dark and burned out.
“Wait,” Nordgren repeated.
His words were followed by a second, more powerful explosion, as the flames finally made their way into the gas tank, possibly through the exhaust pipe or from beneath.
Maloof instinctively fell to his knees. Car parts flew through the air and landed on the ground all around them: window frames, electronics, plates and metal. Once it was all over and the silence had returned, the foam filling from the seats was still floating slowly through the air.
“Shit,” Maloof said again.
Nordgren took out his phone.
“The interesting thing about using a phone,” he explained, “is that you can be absolutely anywhere. On the other side of the world, if you wanted to be. All you need is for someone to put the other phone by the accelerator, or even better in the engine cavity, then you can call that phone’s number from the other phone and detonate it.”
He held up the phone he still had in his hand. “And then it explodes.”
“Shit,” Maloof said for a third time. He was genuinely impressed.
“Was it something like this you had in mind?” Nordgren asked.
He still didn’t know exactly what Maloof was planning. He was starting to suspect it was something big, something meaningful, but he had learned not to ask any questions, not even of his close friends. All Maloof had asked him so far was how they could use cell phones to detonate bombs from a distance. That was the reason for their trip to Djurgården.
From Maloof’s perspective, the secrecy wasn’t even about mistrust. It was more about respect. The robbery in Västberga was still in the planning stages, and raising Niklas Nordgren’s expectations would have been doing him a disservice. There were few people Maloof trusted as fully.
“This is better,” Maloof replied. “Much better.”
Nordgren smiled.
The two men stared at the wrecked car. It looked more like a burning skeleton.
“Should we… go?”
“Just need to put it out first,” said Nordgren.
He went to fetch a fire extinguisher from the car that Maloof had parked over by the old stables.
As they crossed the Lidingö Bridge, both the sun and the moon were visible in the pale summer sky. Maloof felt satisfied. Their quick trip out to Djurgården had shown once again that Niklas Nordgren’s know-how was exceptional. The man always lived up to expectations. He kept a low profile, but he knew more about almost everything than most other people. Maloof had never regretted saving Nordgren as “100%” in his contacts list. They had met five years earlier when they were both arrested for instigating the same robbery.
By then, Maloof had already lost count of how many times he had been thrown into a claustrophobic cell inside Kronoberg remand prison. For Nordgren, it had been the first time. They arrested him at work. Drove him to Kungsholmen in cuffs, booked him in, took DNA samples and fingerprints and then left him to spend a few nights on a rickety pallet bed before they unlocked him and sent him home. It turned out that Nordgren hadn’t had anything to do with the robbery that Michel Maloof would be convicted of just a few months later.
And so, when two uniformed police officers knocked on Niklas Nordgren’s door in Lidingö a few days later, he had assumed it was a simple misunderstanding.
“No,” he protested. “I’ve already been cleared in that investigation. You must have old information.”
The police grinned.
“You bet we do,” they replied, and while Nordgren said a few words to Annika about being back in time for the late news, the officers waited for him in the hallway.
It would be five years before Nordgren next sat down on the sofa in front of the TV.