Each of them knows that they can’t spend much longer inside the building, but they continue anyway. They’ve been in a rush since they first stepped out of the helicopter, but they now know that they’re in an extreme rush. Once it looks like there’s no more room for mailbags on the little balcony on the fifth floor, they decide that they’re done.
85
5:35 a.m.
Task Force Leader Caroline Thurn climbs into the police van serving as the liaison center parked outside the Statoil station directly opposite the G4S cash depot. The station is on a slight elevation, which means it has a good view of its surroundings. The blue flashing lights from the patrol cars in the distance lend a cinematic quality to the scene. The sound of the robbers’ helicopter adds to that. Thurn had spotted it earlier, but it now seems to have disappeared into the dark night sky.
She has two options: either send people into the building immediately, risking shots being fired and a possible hostage situation, or wait until the robbers are back in their helicopter and attempting to make their getaway. She has a few more minutes to make her decision.
There are two uniformed police officers sitting in the front of the van, and several other people in the back. One of them is in plainclothes, and he has a laptop computer open in front of him. On the screen, Thurn catches sight of the green, pixelated images typical of live CCTV cameras.
“Who is that?” Thurn asks the nearest police officer.
“No idea.”
“What’s a plainclothes officer doing here?”
“Ask Månsson,” the officer suggests, referring her to the commanding officer.
The officer crouches back into the front seat. Thurn moves toward the back of the van and the stranger with the computer. The man seems to be in his early middle age, and he has a ruddy complexion and thick glasses.
“I’m Caroline Thurn,” she introduces herself. “I’m taking over command out here. Who are you?”
The man looks up at the tall police inspector and nods.
“Palle Lindahl,” he replies. “G4S security chief.”
Lindahl pulls out a business card and hands it to Thurn.
“You got here very quickly,” Thurn comments.
“I live just over there,” Lindahl replies.
He points out of the window and then continues:
“The manager in Counting, Claude Tavernier, raised the alarm with the on-duty guard. That was”—Lindahl checks the time on his phone—“twenty minutes ago. The guard called Skövde, which is where we have our control center. Skövde called me, as they’re meant to. I pulled on some trousers and… walked over. You lot were already here.”
Thurn nods. “Is there a risk of a hostage situation?”
That’s her most pressing concern.
“There’s no need to speculate,” the security chief replies, turning his computer so that she can see the screen.
On it, two men dressed in black are standing in front of what look like tall, bar-covered cages. They are lifting boxes out of the cages and then dumping bundles of notes into fabric bags. One of the men has an automatic weapon, probably a Kalashnikov, hanging from a strap over his shoulder.
“We have over eighty CCTV cameras in the building,” Security Chief Lindahl explains, “I can bring them all up on screen.”
“Impressive.” Thurn nods approvingly. “But sadly that doesn’t help.”
“The cameras aren’t meant to prevent crimes,” Palle Lindahl replies, sounding offended. “No number of cameras or vaults will keep skilled criminals away for particularly long. Our reasoning is that the perimeter security should stand up to attack for fifteen minutes. That should be enough time.”
“Enough time for what?” the inspector asks.
“Enough time for the police to get here. That fifteen minutes has passed, and you’re here. I can open and lock the doors and elevators throughout the entire building from my computer. You have a lot of people here. I can lead you up to the robbers, if you want.”
Thurn nods thoughtfully and peers out the police van window.
The many uniformed officers are standing outside their blue-twinkling cars, talking to one another in small groups. The reason none of them seem to be hurrying, or expecting orders of any kind, is that none of these officers have been trained for a situation like this. These were men and women who could chase down vandals and muggers, who could keep drunks away from public places, overpower men who abused their wives in apartments in the southern suburbs and in the best case also hit the target during their annual shooting exam. But they had no experience tackling international organized crime.
Ordering these men and women to storm the cash depot would be extremely risky.
And with civilians inside the building over the road, it would be a risk in which lives would be at stake.
Thurn is staring at the computer screen, struck by how calmly the robbers seem to be working. She watches them methodically fill their mailbags with cash. When one sack is full, they swing it up onto their shoulders or drag it across the floor and out of the room. Since they’re coming and going, all dressed alike, it’s difficult to tell how many of them there are. Four, she would guess, but it could just as easily be three or five.
“Where are they?” she asks. “In the vault?”
“No, no,” says Lindahl. “No one gets into the vault. That’s where the big money is. No, they’re up on the sixth floor. We call it Cash. Counting. It’s where we send the notes to be counted. Then they’re sent back down to the vault. We never have more than a few hundred million up there.”
“A few hundred million?” Thurn repeats, amazed.
“Right now, we have over a billion in the building,” Lindahl points out, to put those hundreds of millions in context.
“And there’s no one else there?” Thurn asks, nodding toward the screen.
“The room should be manned…” Lindahl eventually replies. “We have a dozen or so people working in Cash at this time of day. And their orders are to stay put if something happens. But I can’t see them. I don’t actually know…”
“So even with your eighty CCTV cameras, you can’t tell whether your staff are in harm’s way?”
Palle Lindahl shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I can’t.”
“No,” Thurn says.
“But what I can say, and unequivocally,” the security chief continues, without any attempt to hide his sense of wronged irritation, “is that if you storm that building and arrest the robbers, our staff—wherever they are—will be much better off.”
The headphone in Thurn’s ear starts to ring, and she presses the button on the cable around her neck. The pilots have finally taken off, she thinks.
But it isn’t the young helicopter pilot’s voice she hears in her ear, it’s Mats Berggren’s.
“I just spoke to Hertz,” he says. “There won’t be any helicopters from Uppsala or Berga.”
“There aren’t any?”
“Hertz is at Police HQ. I don’t know what’s happening, but the message from the military authorities is that we’ll have to handle this ourselves.”
“Politics.”
“They’ve promised to watch the radar. They can see everything in the air, they say. Apparently they’ve already seen our robbers’ helicopter a few times. Both when it took off and when it got to Västberga.”
“Politicians,” Thurn repeats.
“Hasn’t our helicopter taken off?” Berggren asks.
“No,” Thurn says, glancing at her watch. “But the pilots should have made it to Myttinge by now.”
“The Task Force is getting ready,” Berggren tells her.
“Getting ready?” Thurn is dismissive. “By the time they get here, there won’t be anyone left.”