“I might have a guy,” the ever-hopeful Petrovic said. “When I was down in Cannes last time, I met an American who… he was in the import and transport branch. Sold American chemicals that made potatoes grow bigger. Or maybe it was less grainy? Anyway, he’d been in… the transport branch… a long time. And when he was working over in the West Indies, he’d had a helicopter pilot who flew stuff between the islands. That guy, Kluger, he’s been in Sweden for a few years now.”
The path led them out into an open field, and they passed an abandoned farm. Maloof had never seen a single sign of life in there. As they reached the middle of the open field, approaching the next wooded area, something made him turn around and look back.
The silvery-gray Saab was parked by a broken fence, almost out of sight. This time, Maloof paid attention to it. He waited until they were back among the trees before he said anything.
“We’ve got company.”
“What?”
“We’ve got company,” he repeated. “Look.”
They walked back on themselves. Maloof pointed between the thinning trunks and Petrovic saw the silvery-gray car.
“It followed you into the parking lot.”
“Me?” said Petrovic. “Are you sure?”
Maloof smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “No.”
“No?”
“Let’s check.”
Rather than continue into the woods, Maloof turned back and cut across the grass to the narrow paved road that passed the abandoned farm, the way the Saab must have driven. Petrovic followed him. After walking for a few minutes, Maloof took out his phone and held it in front of him. In the reflection of the screen, they saw the car start up and slowly begin to follow them.
“Shit,” Petrovic swore.
They continued toward the shopping center parking garage. Maloof’s intention was to shake off the tail by heading down into the subway. An increasingly irritated Petrovic, however, seemed to have different plans.
“Jesus Christ,” the Yugoslavian swore. “This is so fucking low. We’ll show that bastard. He’s got no damn right to follow us. We haven’t done anything.”
“Well, I mean…”
“Today. We haven’t done anything today.”
They had reached the parking garage, and while the silvery-gray car continued to creep along the small road, Petrovic ran to his BMW and jumped in. He leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door for Maloof.
“Come on!” he shouted.
Hesitantly, Maloof climbed inside. In the rearview mirror, he saw the Saab approach the entrance to the parking garage and then come to a halt. After that, everything happened very quickly. Petrovic reversed out of the space so quickly that the tires screeched. He threw the car into first gear, revved the engine and drove straight at the exit. To make his intentions even clearer, he sounded the horn madly.
“What are you doing?” Maloof shouted in surprise.
Petrovic didn’t reply, he just continued to drive straight forward. The driver of the Saab realized that he would end up on the wrong side of the exit unless he did something, and so he picked up speed and made it just before Petrovic, who turned the corner on two wheels.
“What are you doing?!” Maloof shouted again.
The sudden turn had thrown him against the door, and he crawled back upright and put on his seat belt.
“We’ll get him. I want to ask why that bastard is following us!” Petrovic snapped irritatedly, attempting to talk over the engine, which was approaching 4,500 revs.
“Right, right,” Maloof mumbled. “We’ll get him. We’ll get him?”
The German car roared. The Saab was a hundred or so yards ahead of them, on its way up the exit to the highway.
“We’ll force him off the road!”
Maloof didn’t reply. It was the worst idea he had ever heard. He glanced over to the speedometer. They were already doing a hundred, but the Saab seemed determined not to let them catch it.
“Why isn’t he stopping?!” Petrovic yelled.
The Saab was heading toward Södertälje, and Petrovic kept after it. They were almost bumper to bumper, but whenever the traffic thickened, the tall Yugoslavian changed his mind and focused on survival.
“We’re chasing a cop,” Maloof pointed out.
“That’s the way it should be,” Petrovic said, laughing.
“Right, right,” Maloof agreed. “But if he’s police, why doesn’t he just pull over, stop us and give us a ticket for speeding?”
After passing the exit for Fittja and Botkyrka at 120 miles per hour, they approached Södertälje.
“To hell with this now,” Maloof pleaded.
He looked indifferent, as usual, but inside, the panic was rising. However this ended, it couldn’t be good. But Petrovic seemed to have no intention of giving up.
On the straight stretch to the south of Salem, they saw the roadblock. Right in the middle of the highway.
To begin with, it seemed to be nothing but a single patrol car with its blue lights flashing, but the closer they came, the clearer it became that this was something else. Maloof could count five police cars parked across the road, waiting for them.
“Shit,” Maloof mumbled, sinking into his seat as though he were trying to make himself invisible.
Up ahead, the silvery-gray Saab slowed down. The cars blocking the road moved to the side, and it passed them. The gap closed again behind it.
Petrovic braked. He slowly pulled up and came to a halt a few yards from the patrol cars, he wound down his window. A female police officer came over and nonchalantly greeted him, as though she were helping a tourist with directions.
Maloof was expecting the worst, but nothing happened.
“That was a bit fast, wasn’t it?” she said kindly.
Maloof couldn’t believe it. Why did she sound so friendly?
“We want to report that car,” Petrovic said, pointing to the Saab which was vanishing into the distance. “He’s been harassing us.”
“In what way has he been harassing you?”
“He was following us.”
“Really?” the officer replied, giving Petrovic a few seconds to think.
“Not right now,” Petrovic said when he realized why she had paused. “That was me following him. But only to ask him to stop following us.”
“I suggest we draw a line under this,” the police officer said. “You’ve clearly been following one another. I think we can leave it like that?”
Maloof continued to stare through the window, but the situation was just getting stranger and stranger. Why weren’t they asking for driver’s licenses, ID, how could she not point out that they had been driving at 120 miles an hour?
The police directed Petrovic onto the other side of the highway, where he could drive back to Stockholm.
SEPTEMBER 2009
34
“Seems like an uphill struggle,” said Ali Farhan.
“Tricky,” Adil Farhan agreed.
Sami Farhan shrugged. His brothers were, of course, right.
They were eating dinner at their uncle’s restaurant in Liljeholmen, and the fact that they were three brothers sitting around a table wasn’t something anyone could have missed. Big brother Ali looked oldest, tougher than the others, with furrows on his forehead and around his eyes. Still, his eyes and nose were identical to Sami’s. Their younger brother, Adil, had considerably more hair and smaller eyes. There was also a sense of calm about him, whereas both Sami and Ali gestured intensely as they spoke, and radiated the same kind of impatience.
“I mean, sometimes it’s just like that,” Sami defended himself. “Things are a bit up and down?”