The cold weather was back after a warm January, but the narrow canal was still clear of ice. Maybe the city made sure to keep all its channels open? He didn’t know anything about Stadshagen, it wasn’t his neighborhood.
Michel Maloof had been born in Lebanon. When he was six, his family had fled the country’s bloody civil war and made their way to Italy, via the coast, but for his father, the final destination had always been clear. They were going to Scandinavia, that paradise on earth. How or why his father had come to believe that the Nordic countries were the solution to all their problems, young Michel hadn’t known, but he hadn’t been raised to question his father. Their journey from Italy continued north, and the bright colors and warm winters of the Mediterranean were replaced by cold Norrland seriousness. Maloof’s lasting memory of that time in his life was that he had been freezing. Constantly.
After their first year in Åsele, in the north of the country, roughly halfway between Östersund and Arvidsjaur, even Maloof’s father had decided that he was fed up with the silence, the darkness and the forests. He made the family pack up their few belongings once again. The dream of Sweden still lived on, but living so close to the Arctic Circle was too extreme. So the family set down roots in the Stockholm suburb of Fittja instead, a place many associated with criminality, poverty and social problems. But it was there that the family had finally found the security they had been searching for, where the positives were so great that the negatives could be ignored. It was where they lived to this day.
At the foot of the Essingeleden Bridge, Maloof turned to head back. A fine layer of powdery snow was covering the grass on either side of the path, making the gray afternoon seem a little brighter.
Of all the neighborhoods in Stockholm, Stadshagen, tucked away to one side of the city center, was one of the most anonymous. The district had been an industrial area since the fifties, with no other ambition than to offer cheap square footage and accessible docks. It was only recently that the politicians and town planners had realized that the location was far too good to be an industrial and business wasteland, and they were poised to transform the area into an attractive place to live.
As Maloof walked back up onto Hornsbergs Strand and saw the signs of the building work, which had been temporarily brought to a halt by the cold, he felt the familiar relief at not living in central Stockholm.
He liked Fittja and never felt the urge to come into town; in fact, he almost always wanted to get away from it.
He looked at his watch. Ten to two.
Maloof took a deep breath.
An older woman with blow-dried blond hair and glasses with black frames was sitting in reception. On the wall behind her, the G4S logo glowed like a religious icon for its employees to bow down to every time they came into the office.
The woman gave Maloof a stern look as he climbed the stairs from the street.
He unconsciously straightened the knot in his tie, quickly pushed his long hair behind his ears and ran a hand over his neat beard. Then he smiled broadly.
“I have a meeting with Anders Mild at two?”
The woman wasn’t falling for his charms. She nodded reluctantly and told him to sit down to the right of reception while she called Mild’s secretary.
The minimalist sofa was even less comfortable than it looked, and as Maloof sat down, he was reminded of just how much he disliked wearing a suit. The modern cut felt tight across his shoulders. He had bought a dark red tie the day before, and it had taken twenty minutes of increasing frustration to manage a nice knot. How was anyone supposed to feel successful with a noose around his neck?
Maloof leaned forward and peered down the corridor of offices. The man he was waiting for, Anders Mild, was the managing director and head of G4S in Sweden. Without Zoran Petrovic’s help, Maloof would never have managed to arrange this meeting, and as Mild’s secretary came down the corridor toward him, Maloof realized how Petrovic had managed it.
Mild’s secretary was very young and very cute.
Maloof got to his feet. He realized he was clutching the handle of his black attaché case far too hard. He shook the girl’s hand.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked as she showed him into a large meeting room with a view out onto the roofs of the surrounding buildings and the treetops down by the canal. “Water? Coffee?”
“Sure,” said Maloof. “That’s fine, thanks.”
He pulled out a chair in the middle of the long table and set down his briefcase on the one next to it.
“Do you need to use the projector?” the girl asked, still not sure whether her guest had said yes or no to the offer of coffee.
At first, he didn’t know what she meant.
“For the presentation?” she explained. “You’re giving a presentation to Anders, no?”
Maloof shook his head. “Right, right. Yes… no projector today,” he said, patting his briefcase with a smile. “This is my presentation.”
She nodded, not caring what he meant, and then left him with the door open while she went to fetch her boss.
Maloof was far too worked up to sit down.
Along with Zoran Petrovic, Maloof had done a lot of research. G4S was the world’s biggest security company. Operating in 125 countries, it was also one of the largest private employers, with over 600,000 staff globally. The company’s humble origins could be traced back to Copenhagen, where, around the same time as fireworks lit up the night sky to celebrate the dawn of the twentieth century, a small firm that hired out night guards had been born. A few decades later, the company was renamed Group 4 Falck, but it would be a while before its growth really took off.
“It’s all about money,” Petrovic had explained to Maloof. “You can chug away for year after year without anything really happening. I mean, who hasn’t run a security company? But without resources, you’re not going to get anywhere.”
Some time after the dawn of the next century, the venture capitalists had suddenly turned their attention to the security industry. They opened their coffers, brandished their whips, changed the company’s name to Group 4 Securicor and launched an extensive takeover plan. In Sweden, the once state-owned ABAB fell victim to the growing firm, and Petrovic turned nostalgic and told a long, pointless story about how he used to trick ABAB guards in an industrial area.
Group 4 Securicor, or G4S, grew rapidly on the London Stock Exchange and eventually split into two distinct business areas: G4S Secure Solutions, which dealt with surveillance, and G4S Cash Solutions, which handled the secure transport of valuables.
Anders Mild was responsible for G4S Cash Solutions in Sweden, and he didn’t leave Michel Maloof waiting for more than a moment or two in the meeting room. Mild was blue eyed and average height, with a neck that barely seemed able to support his head, and he was dressed in a shiny gray suit and an exclusive pale blue shirt that was unbuttoned at the collar. He moved energetically around the conference table, shook Maloof’s hand and nodded toward the older man who had come in behind him, but who had chosen to remain on the other side of the table.
“This is Rick Almanza,” Anders Mild said, introducing his colleague. “Rick here is responsible for our European activity, Michel. He’s my boss. I told him about our meeting, and he thought it sounded so interesting that he flew over from London to join us. Is it OK if we continue in English?”
Maloof smiled and nodded.
Could it be true? What exactly had Zoran Petrovic said? Anders Mild didn’t know a thing about Maloof, who hadn’t even used his real surname when he booked the meeting, to avoid any problems with Google. Did people really fly over from London on such vague grounds? Was it a trap?