Thurn stares at the two officers squatting down with their weapons ready. Then she looks up into the air and realizes it’s already too late, the helicopter has made it too far.
“Shit!” the officer shouts as he realizes the same thing, and he starts running back toward his vehicle, closely followed by the two men who had been on their knees on the grass.
“Follow them!” Thurn shouts to the riot squad leader, and she starts running in the opposite direction, back toward her car up by the Statoil station.
As she’s halfway there, her phone rings. She answers the call without slowing down.
“Caroline? Caroline?” Berggren shouts into her ear. “It’s me. Hertz got in touch. The military says they have two fighter jets in the air, roughly where you are.”
Thurn tries to gather her thoughts.
“The robbers just flew off,” she shouts. “I’ve got a riot van following them. Could you make sure I can keep in touch with the van, Mats? Fighter jets? How would they help?”
“I don’t know,” Berggren replies. “Could they shoot down the helicopter?”
Thurn has made it to the parking lot. Without knowing who is on board, she can’t even think about shooting down the helicopter. Could the answer be in Lindahl’s CCTV cameras? Did any of the cameras capture who went on board?
“Give me a minute,” she pants down the line.
“What should I say to the jets?”
“Tell them to stand by,” Thurn replies. “Stand by.”
She runs over to the police van, but before she manages to speak to Lindahl, Berggren calls back.
“Counterorders, Caroline,” he says.
“What does that mean?”
“Olsson found out about the fighter planes. It’s illegal.”
“What’s illegal?”
“The military’s not allowed to get involved in police activity. There’s a law… Olsson gave the counterorder. The planes have gone back to their original course.”
“Politicians,” Thorn says with a snort, but she feels a certain relief at not having to take responsibility for a Swedish combat fighter attacking a private helicopter within the capital’s airspace.
“Is the helicopter showing up on any radars?” she asks.
“Not even when it took off,” says Berggren. “The military’s looking. Us too. No one can see a thing.”
“They’re flying too low.”
“Exactly. They’re flying too low. But surely that means the riot squad should be able to see them from the highway?”
Thurn nods. Berggren is right. Since the robbers aren’t only choosing to fly low, but also have probably turned off all communication equipment, they’ll have no choice but to stick to well-lit roads for navigation. Thurn can see daylight approaching on the horizon, but it’s no more than a thin line against the dark sky. From her own experience, she knows that through the thick windowpanes of a helicopter, the world seems even darker.
“Let me talk to the riot squad,” she says to Berggren. “Patch me through. Maybe I can help them.”
92
5:35 a.m.
Tor Stenson yawns and runs his hand over his stubble.
The night shift was always long and boring. His had started at midnight, as usual, when the intensity of the newsroom is at its worst. Deliveries to the printers have begun, and the next day’s paper is starting to take shape. People run down corridors, phones ring, articles are added and taken away, and discussions about the front-page headlines, kickers and puff boxes reach frantic levels. Tor Stenson has nothing to do with any of that. He is one of the younger members of the staff, and is employed by one of the recruitment companies owned by the paper. There has been a freeze on any new reporters in the newsroom since 2001; its current employees enjoy job security, but things are different for the people hired by the recruitment company. Though Stenson’s work focuses on the Web—in the tabloid world, everyone under the age of thirty-five is an online guru—he never knows whether his job will exist from one month to the next.
Stenson always begins his shift by exchanging a few words with his colleagues on their way home. Is there any Hollywood gossip to follow up on? He goes through their competitor’s site. Do they have anything he’s missed? All around him, the newsroom empties out, and after an hour or so the rows of desks in the open-plan room fall quiet.
When the phone rings, it’s already after five thirty. Stenson jumps. In the early hours, the flow of news is minimal, meaning the call is unexpected.
“Stenson,” he answers
It’s someone calling in a tip from the police command center.
What he has to say is incredible. Sensational, even.
Stenson’s pulse picks up as he listens. Robbers in a helicopter. Breaking into a cash depot through the roof. And making their getaway—with an unimaginable sum of money—in the same helicopter.
Stenson immediately knows that this is front-page news. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest. This is his chance to bag that permanent position.
“Pictures?” he asks. “Do you have any pictures?”
The police officer gives him the number of the guard who called in the robbery from Västberga.
“Shit,” Stenson swears to himself as he dials the guard’s number and waits for the call to go through. “Shit.”
He swears aloud, though he doesn’t know why.
Yes, the guard has taken pictures of the white helicopter lifting off from the roof of the G4S building and disappearing into the black night sky. Deep down, Stenson is celebrating, but he tries to sound as indifferent as he can when the guard begins to negotiate on price.
It’s 5:48 when Tor Stenson uploads the first fuzzy images to the website. He quickly checks whether the paper’s rivals have done the same, but he can’t see anything yet.
After that, Stenson calls the paper’s news editor at home, waking him up. Stenson repeats his name a few times to begin with, making sure the editor is perfectly clear about exactly who has broken the story. And then he tells him about the helicopter.
The news editor mumbles something, hangs up and then calls the deputy editor, who reluctantly calls and wakes the editor in chief.
“Were you asleep?” the deputy asks.
“I never fucking sleep,” the editor in chief slurs, clearly emerging from some kind of pleasant dream. “I’m the editor of a tabloid. I don’t get paid to sleep.”
The deputy quickly explains what has happened.
“A helicopter robbery?” the editor in chief sums up, already sitting on the edge of his bed, pulling on his underwear. “Is there a more concise way of saying that? Whatever, doesn’t matter, we’ll see. I’m on my way in. Send people out to Västberga to interview the police at the scene. Are there any hostages?”
The deputy has no idea about hostages, but the Web editor Tor Stenson, the one who got ahold of the pictures they now have online, claims the witness heard pops coming from inside the building.
“Pops? What the hell does that mean? Were the robbers making popcorn?” the editor in chief hisses, grabbing a half-stale cinnamon bun from a plate in the kitchen and heading for the door. “We need details!”
93
5:47 a.m.
The fuel-warning light continues to blink. It’s all Kluger can see, all that exists in that moment; the red light fills the dark cabin like a constant, fateful reminder that they’ll soon run out of fuel.
“Where the hell were you?” he shouts as he angles the rotor blades forward a few degrees, allowing the metal bubble to cut through the air, away from the glowing glass pyramid on top of the building at Västberga Allé 11. “We said fifteen minutes?! It’s been… thirty-four. This isn’t going to fucking work!”