Once nine minutes have passed since the drop-off, Kluger allows the helicopter to sink farther, meaning he is now hovering right alongside the building. The chains with the caltrops have delayed the police, but judging by the stream of new cars and blue lights flickering in the darkness, they’ve dealt with the problem. The cars are coming from the north, from the south. He’s lost count. They’re keeping their distance from the building, and it seems to Kluger as though they’re forming some kind of base over by the gas station on the hill, three hundred or so feet away from the entrance to the building.
He feels comfortable in the helicopter, behind the controls. He can’t understand why he was so nervous about it now. It’s like riding a bike. He hasn’t forgotten a thing; in fact, he’s forgotten too little. Flying with the dark sky as a backdrop, it’s as though he never left Afghanistan.
And then he notices the sinking feeling his stomach.
He blinks it away. Once. Once more.
He doesn’t want to remember.
He flies a loop around the building, just for something to do.
He feels a vague sense of unease that the police will open fire. After almost two years in Sweden, he knows that weapons and force are the exception, but he’s still an easy target. That’s why he’s keeping close to the building. He assumes they won’t dare shoot if there’s a risk of him crashing into the cash depot.
The next time he glances at his watch, it’s 5:23. Jack Kluger feels relieved. It’ll soon be over. He peers down at the roof and expects to catch sight of them any moment now. He’s aware that they said ten to fifteen minutes, and it hasn’t even been ten yet, but he just wants to get away. The pulsing blue lights on the ground are making him nervous, but it’s toward the horizon that he keeps glancing anxiously.
If he catches sight of another helicopter, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. Landing on the roof to pick up the robbers would be pointless if that happened. He’d never be able to take off again. The police helicopter would make sure of that. Nothing is stopping him from simply flying off. He decides that if he sees anything coming toward him in the sky, he’ll have to make a run for it.
77
5:23 a.m.
It’s exactly twenty-three minutes past five when Caroline Thurn pulls out of the garage on Väpnargatan in her Volvo. A white layer of frost covers the ground on Strandvägen, and as she drives toward the red lights on Hamngatan, she grabs her phone, pushes the white headphone into her ear and dials Berggren’s number.
He answers immediately.
“They shifted it back a week.”
She doesn’t need to be any clearer than that.
“Where are you?” he asks.
“It wasn’t Bromma, it was Västberga.”
“Where are you?” he asks for a second time.
“The situation’s ongoing. County police are involved. Local are outside the building with the lights flashing.”
“Where the hell are you, Caroline?” Berggren shouts.
By now, Thurn has made it to the Gallerian shopping center, and she turns left.
“Excuse me,” she says into the earpiece.
She comes close to hitting a homeless woman pulling a shopping cart across a crosswalk.
“I’m on the way,” she says. “To Västberga. Five, ten minutes. Might make it before it’s all over.”
“What the hell’re you going to do there, Caroline?”
She doesn’t have a good answer to that, she’s just obeying orders.
“Get hold of Hertz, Mats,” she says. “Tell him to get in touch with the military.”
Berggren doesn’t know what to say. The military? The robbery is ongoing? Had Bromma never been the target, or did the plans change?
“The military?” he repeats.
“They wanted to sabotage the police helicopters,” Thurn says as she passes city hall. “I don’t know if they stuck to their original plan, but… the military has helicopters out in Berga, doesn’t it? Or up at the Air Combat Training School in Uppsala?”
“Uppsala? I have no idea…”
“Ask Hertz to requisition the military helicopters. Make sure they get airborne.”
Thurn ends the call before her colleague has time to protest. Norr Mälarstrand is narrow, and she’s driving at almost sixty miles an hour. If she passes any newspaper delivery boys on bikes, or retirees out walking their dogs, she’s going to have difficulty avoiding them. Her fingertips are on the wheel, ready to make the maneuver that could save a life.
But when she reaches Rålambshovsparken, she still hasn’t seen another soul.
And in her head, she can hear Petrovic saying that he has something big planned for the fifteenth of September.
That bastard.
Caroline Thurn has made it onto the highway when her phone rings. Olsson again. She accepts the call by pressing the button on her earpiece’s microphone, whose white cable is hanging next to her face. There still aren’t many cars around.
“Where the hell are you?” asks Therese Olsson.
“Arriving in Västberga in four minutes.”
“What the hell are you doing there? You should be here.”
“You said to…” but she doesn’t finish the sentence.
Olsson has forgotten asking her to go out to the cash depot.
“I’m no use in Kungsholmen,” Thurn says instead. “But I need to talk to our helicopter pilot. Can you get someone to patch the call through to my cell? And I want to talk to whoever’s in charge out in Västberga.”
Olsson takes a few seconds to think.
“OK,” she says, and hangs up to avoid wasting any more time.
Thurn can see the exit for Västberga when the phone rings again. She glances at the time. Only eight minutes have passed since she left home.
“Thurn,” she says into the microphone.
“Hello?”
“This is Caroline Thurn. Who is this?”
“Jakob. The pilot. I… We’re on the way to Myttinge.”
“We’ve got an ongoing robbery,” Thurn explains. “There are reports of a helicopter, a Bell Jet… being used to…”
“A JetRanger,” the pilot corrects her. “A 206. We know, we heard about it last week.”
Thurn doesn’t know whether she should feel pleased or annoyed. She is on the line with an unknown person who knew about the robbery a week ago. Is this a case of another damn leak from police headquarters, or is the pilot one of those who was on standby in Solna last week?
She makes an irritated mental note.
“If I understand correctly,” she says, “the robbery is happening right now. So you need to hurry.”
“We’ve got the coordinates,” the pilot answers. His voice sounds like a young boy’s. “But this isn’t Bromma?”
“Västberga.”
The pilot takes a moment to think.
“Good,” he says. “That’s better. We’ll fly over the park in Årsta. We’ll be in the air in ten minutes.”
Thurn checks the time. It’s 5:31. The helicopters will be in the air by twenty to six.
“If they’re still inside when you arrive, you need to stop them from taking off,” Thurn tells him, slowing down to turn into the industrial area via Västberga Allé. “You shouldn’t intervene. If they still manage to take off, just follow them and let us know where they land.”
“Intervene?” the pilot repeats with a brief laugh. “Do you think we’ll be flying some kind of assault helicopter?”
“Did you understand the instructions?”
The pilot mumbles a yes as a new call flashes up on Thurn’s display.
“Report back once you’re in the air,” she says, switching her conversation partner.