There’s barely a scratch on it.
Nordgren nods. He knows what he needs to do. He applies a new charge in the same place. He tries to stop himself from feeling any stress, doesn’t doubt for a moment that he’ll manage, works methodically. He’s back in the storeroom with the others in less than thirty seconds, and the next charge goes off.
This explosion is considerably more powerful than the last. The smell of burned gunpowder fills the room when the three go in to see whether it worked. The smoke and dust quickly settle.
The door is still barely damaged.
“What the hell are you doing?” Sami whispers.
81
5:29 a.m.
They hear the next explosion at almost the exact moment the last bundle of notes is locked in the cage. The sound makes them jump; it’s louder than before, it seems closer.
“We can’t just stand here, Claude,” Ann-Marie whispers.
It’s unclear whether she is whispering so that the robbers won’t hear her, or because she doesn’t want to worry her colleagues.
“The instructions are clear,” Tavernier replies unnecessarily formally.
“We can’t just stand here,” she repeats, shaking her head.
“Can someone turn off that damn radio?” Tavernier snaps.
He doesn’t see who does it, but a few seconds later the device finally falls silent.
“Don’t worry,” he says aloud. “When the robbers make it into the vault, they’ll realize it’s pointless.”
But just before Tavernier has time to continue, they hear the third blast, and it’s worse than those before it.
“Shit,” he swears.
“It’s the security door!”
The voice comes from someone standing by the bend in the room, and they can see what Tavernier can’t.
“Everyone stay here,” Tavernier orders.
82
5:30 a.m.
If things had been different and they were sitting around a kitchen table, talking about this, Sami Farhan’s frustration would have known no bounds. He would have gotten up, moved around the table and talked nonstop. Gesturing wildly, he would have reminded the others what he had been through, stories he’d heard about cautiousness and a lack of decisiveness, and he would have pointed to Niklas Nordgren and said, “Fuck whatever’s on the other side of the door, just blow the damn thing open.”
But not now.
Not now that they’re on the sixth floor of the cash depot, staring helplessly at the steel-clad security door as their helicopter hovers overhead.
Now Sami says nothing. He trusts Niklas Nordgren because he has to trust him, and he assumes that Nordgren knows better than anyone what needs to be done.
“OK,” says the explosives expert. “Third time’s lucky. Take cover.”
He says it quietly. Without any hesitation, without apologizing. And while Sami and Maloof resolutely return to the storeroom, Nordgren pulls out an explosive frame rather than another can. He fixes the frame to the door, and this time he primes it differently. He knows there’s a risk he’ll take out half the wall with it. He knows there’s a risk that the money on the other side will be buried by plaster and dust and splinters.
Not to mention what might happen to the people working there.
But he has no other option. Though he hasn’t looked at his watch since they got onto the sixth floor, he knows they’re running out of time. Every stage has taken longer than it should have. This has to work now.
83
5:31 a.m.
Tavernier quickly goes over to inspect the steel door. It’s the emergency exit out to the atrium, and even from a distance he can see that there’s a dent in it, right beneath the handle, as though someone had taken a battering ram to it from the other side.
He takes out his phone and calls Valter.
“Can you see them?”
“No. But they must be up with you somewhere, they haven’t appeared on any of the cameras by the elevators or the stairs.”
“They’re trying to blow their way in here,” says Tavernier.
He doesn’t have time to say any more.
The third blast is more powerful than those that came before it, and it feels like the walls are about to come crashing down. Plaster, splinters and dust swirl through the air, and Ann-Marie starts screaming. No one tries to stop her.
Tavernier has had enough.
“Follow me!” he shouts, breaking into a run.
He is still holding his phone to his ear, and he rushes over to the opposite door, toward the stairwell.
Finally, he has become the leader he’s always wanted to be. They follow him, all of them, without any hesitation. The moment they make it into the stairwell, his phone loses the signal, but Tavernier continues—the stairs will take them down to the security doors outside the vault—and the others follow.
I’ll create a new secure position, he thinks. Because real leaders make smart decisions in difficult situations.
84
5:32 a.m.
This time, it takes a while for the dust to settle.
Maloof’s ears are ringing when he steps out of the storeroom. The relief he feels when he sees the battered door is indescribable. The gap is more than wide enough. Nordgren is already moving past him with one of the crowbars. He grabs the other.
With the larger of the two crowbars, they manage to force the door open. It falls into Counting with a thud.
Sami already has his gun raised, and he enters the room ahead of the others. He scrapes his hand on the half-destroyed wall on his way in.
He doesn’t expect there to be any staff left in the room, the bank world always instructs its employees to evacuate the premises as soon as they can. But nothing is guaranteed.
With his machine gun at hip level, he searches the room. It’s empty.
Maloof is close behind him. He glances at his watch. They’ve already taken over five minutes, and they still haven’t seen the money.
He starts the angle grinder. He does it by hand. It’s gasoline driven, so it’s a bit like starting an outboard motor or a lawnmower from the sixties. The engine starts with a loud roar. He moves over to the cages where the notes have been stashed and uses the grinder to cut the locks. A shower of sparks cascades beautifully to the floor. The smell of two-stroke gas fills the room.
Nordgren realizes that the staff has managed to lock everything in the cages. Yet more proof of how long it took them to get in. He banishes the thought. He doesn’t want to think about how many police officers are currently waiting outside.
As Maloof cuts open the cages, Nordgren and Sami fetch the mailbags.
The money is bundled up in red plastic boxes. They search for the 500-kronor notes and throw the boxes containing the 100- and 20-kronor notes to the floor.
Maloof moves on to the next cage. He puts down the angle grinder without turning it off, and it spins on the floor as though it had a life of its own. He tests the cage door. It won’t open. He grabs the angle grinder and cuts through the last bit.
The second cage contains the larger denominations.
They get to work.
As soon as one bag is full, they drag it out to the next room, into the storeroom by the reinforced glass window, and then throw it down to the balcony on the fifth floor.
All this takes time.