Filip Zivic stepped into the room. The two men’s friendship was so old that golden pen holders and Persian rugs should have had no impact on it, but Zivic still reacted to the elegance of the place.
“We can sit here,” the minister suggested, pointing to a more modern cluster of chairs near one of the windows.
They sat down opposite each other.
“I was slightly surprised by your call, Filip,” Have began. “I didn’t even know you were in Belgrade.”
“No,” Zivic replied, “that’s deliberate. No one knows I’m here. But I think I have something which might finally bring our negotiations to a close.”
The justice minister nodded, but he said nothing.
Have was sure his room had been bugged, and he assumed that whoever was listening wished him well. All the same, he had made it a habit not to say anything on tape that could be turned against him in future. Regimes toppled one another, after all; it was practically a national tradition.
“I have information,” Zivic said, “about a robbery. The people involved are from Montenegro. And the whole thing is… spectacular…”
Nebojsa Have continued to nod.
“I can’t use information based on rumors,” he explained. “We’ve already talked about this, haven’t we, Filip?”
“This is more than just rumor.”
“And this robbery is going to take place here in Belgrade?”
“No.”
“In Montenegro?”
“No, it’s going to happen in Sweden,” said Zivic.
“Really?”
“Wasn’t it an EU country you wanted?”
“Sweden is good,” Have confirmed. “Sweden is very good.”
The justice minister was keen for his country to be involved in Europe-wide police cooperation, but it was always a case of give and take. The last time he had talked to Zivic about it was over a year ago. Back then, he had been careful to stress that any agreement must be based on mutual benefit.
“I can give you detailed information,” Zivic continued. “I don’t have many names, but I have everything else. Using that, the Swedish police should be able to work out where, when and how the robbery is going to take place. Judging by the plan, this would be the biggest robbery in Swedish history.”
Have sighed.
“Everyone’s planning to carry out the biggest robbery in history,” he said. “It’s practically par for the course.”
“But I need reassurances that you can keep your promise.”
Have had made the promise to his childhood friend a year earlier. It was the sole reason the pilot was sitting in his office today.
During the war, Filip Zivic had taken part in events that had earned him enemies for life. For a few years, it had seemed as though all had been forgotten, but then these old injustices had suddenly blown up again. He didn’t know why, but for eighteen months now, he and his family had been living under constant threats of death. Zivic forced his wife and son to move at least once a week, and he slept with a weapon on the bedside table. He had also cut off all contact with the majority of his friends and family. It was a way of protecting them, rather than himself.
But that kind of existence was unsustainable in the long run.
In parallel to this, Serbia’s justice minister—in an attempt to achieve real change in a country saturated with corruption and organized crime—had created the first credible witness-protection program. A program people could trust. In exchange for information, the state could provide a new identity, a new life under a new name, and it did seem as though all government leaks had, for the moment, been stopped.
Because Filip Zivic had followed Nebojsa Have’s career since his friend first entered politics, he knew that this was his chance. Have’s ambitions and morals were greater than any other politician’s.
“I can’t guarantee anything,” he now said, being deliberately cautious. “Especially since people know that we have been friends for years.”
“Let me say this,” said the pilot. “If I had information which was so unique and relevant that it could be used as currency in conversation with the Swedish and European police, would that get me into your program?”
“Of course,” said the minister. “You wouldn’t be treated differently to anyone else.”
“OK then,” said Filip Zivic. “The man planning the robbery I mentioned is called Zoran Petrovic and he lives in Stockholm. Should I save the details for the Swedish police?”
26
It was ten thirty when the national police commissioner’s name flashed up on Caroline Thurn’s phone. Thurn was having a coffee at Villa Källhagen on Djurgården at the time. Earlier that morning, she had discovered a door leading from the garage into the property on Karlavägen, but it didn’t matter, because the location of the garage meant that she and Berggren had—unwittingly—also had it under surveillance that night.
Thurn had returned home to find Berggren still snoring away on her sofa. She had pulled on her running clothes and decided to do a lap around Djurgården. It was on the way back that she had stopped for a black, liquid breakfast.
National Police Commissioner Therese Olsson sounded agitated.
“We’ve had a tip-off,” she said down the line. “We’re considering it extremely interesting. Meet me outside the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in half an hour.”
Thurn confirmed and hung up.
After that, she called Berggren. He sounded like he had just woken up. She passed on the National Police Commissioner’s orders.
“See you there,” said Berggren. “And thanks for letting me use the sofa.”
She could hear cars in the background and assumed that Berggren was no longer in her apartment.
It wasn’t unusual for Caroline Thurn to be called in to meetings at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, which was based in one of the oldest buildings on Gustav Adolfs Torg in the very heart of Stockholm. One of the reasons the National Criminal Police had been formed was to facilitate cooperation with foreign police authorities, and as a result there was a natural connection between the two institutions.
As Thurn parked her new-smelling service Volvo in one of the reserved spaces immediately outside the entrance to the building, she saw both Berggren and the commissioner waiting on the sidewalk.
Olsson was in uniform, and Berggren in the same clothes he had been wearing that morning.
It was the twentieth of August, and the summer heat had returned to the east coast a few days earlier. The sky was pale blue beneath a faint haze of cloud, and families wearing ugly sneakers were leaning against the railings by the water, using their phones to take photos of themselves with Norrbron in the background. It was only eleven o’clock. Late-summer Stockholm was a tourist’s paradise of hesitant cars on the roads, backpacks on the subway and pickpockets in every crowd.
Thurn climbed out of the car.
“You beat me,” she said to Berggren with a smile.
“I was just around the corner,” he said apologetically, as though he felt disloyal at having arrived before her.
Berggren wanted to ask about her bedroom, but he realized it wasn’t the moment.
When he woke that morning, he had searched the apartment for Thurn and realized that there wasn’t a bed in any of the rooms. Other than behind a locked door in the kitchen, he had looked everywhere. There was no bedroom.
They showed their IDs at reception and the state secretary to the minister for foreign affairs appeared a few minutes later.