Stewe Billgren stops chewing his thumbnail and feels the blood drain from his face as Chief Brolin calls their car again: “Alpha, come in!”
“Answer,” Mira commands Stewe.
“Alpha, Alpha Car!” yells the chief impatiently. “Come in!”
“Alpha Car here,” Stewe answers unwillingly.
“We can’t wait any longer for more people.” Brolin is almost screaming. “We’re going in now. You have to back up Group 5. Clear?”
“Clear,” Stewe replies, and feels his heart pound.
“Check your weapon,” Mira says tersely.
As if in a slow-moving dream, Stewe takes out his service pistol, opens the magazine, and checks his ammunition.
“Why do we—”
“We’re going in there!” Mira says.
Stewe shakes his head and mumbles, “He’s killing police like flies—”
“Now!”
“I’m going to be a father and I … perhaps I should—”
“I’ll go in,” Mira says. “Use the car as a shield. Watch the door. Keep in radio contact at all times and be ready if he comes!”
Mira clicks off the safety on her Glock and climbs out of the car without looking back at Stewe. She runs to the closest door through the broken fence, pokes her head in and back for the briefest of looks. The officer from Group 5 waits in the stairwell for her. Mira takes a deep breath, feeling fear pour through her body, and then steps through the narrow door. It’s dark. There’s a slight smell of garbage from the storage area on the first floor. Her colleague meets her look and motions for her to follow and secure the line to the right. He waits a few seconds and gives her the sign for the countdown: three, two, one. He turns into the Saluhall and runs through the door to crouch behind the counter in front of him. Mira follows and concentrates to catch any movement from the right. Her partner presses against the counter, which holds wheels of cheese the size of car tires. He’s murmuring into his radio. The little pinpoint light from his scope dances on the floor in front of his feet. Mira moves up to his right and peers around. The gray light of morning filters down from the glass ceiling twenty meters above her head. She raises her Glock. The room is full of shining stainless steel surfaces. She sees a large air-dried ox fillet. Something wavers among the reflections. She intuits a narrow figure with shining wings. An angel of death, she thinks in the split second before the dark Saluhall is lit by the muzzle fire of a silenced automatic rifle.
Stewe Billgren huddles behind his armored, unmarked car. He’s pulled out his SIG Sauer and it’s resting on the hood as he lets his gaze sweep rapidly back and forth between the two entrances to the Saluhall. Sirens are screaming nearer from all directions. There is the small nattering sound of a pistol from behind the wall. Stewe jumps. He prays to God that he’ll be safe and wishes with all his heart that he could just run away and quit being a policeman.
79
when it all goes down
In his apartment on Wallingatan, Joona Linna wakes up. He opens his eyes and looks outside at the light early summer sky through his open curtains. He never closes them, preferring natural light.
It’s early in the morning.
Just as he turns over to fall back to sleep, his phone rings.
He knows what’s happening before he sits up to answer. He listens to the excited voice telling him the latest developments in the operation while he opens his safe and takes out his Smith & Wesson. The suspect is in Östermalms Saluhall and the police have just stormed the building with no strategy at all.
It’s been six minutes since the alarm was sounded and the suspect retreated toward the center area of the building. The leader of the operation is now trying to close off the surrounding area while still continuing to guard Penelope Fernandez.
A new SWAT team heads into the entrance from Nybrogatan. They swing left past the chocolate counter and among the tables in the fish restaurant. Chairs are still upside down on the wooden surfaces. A chilled display counter shows lobster and turbot on crushed ice. The officers’ footsteps echo up from the floor as they rush forward. They spread out and take cover behind pillars. As they wait for further orders, someone can be heard moaning deeply in the darkness. A colleague sounds badly wounded and must be lying in his own blood.
The rising sun’s light is spreading through the sooty glass windows in the ceiling. Mira’s heart is thudding. Two heavy shots had just been released, followed by four quick pistol shots and then two more heavy shots. One police officer is quiet and the other one must be terribly wounded. He’s screaming he’s been hit in the stomach and needs help.
“Can’t anyone hear me?” he pleads.
Mira sees a reflection in the window. A figure moving behind a display of hanging pheasants and reindeer shanks. She signals to her colleague that someone is right in front of them. He calls the chief of operations to see if any police officers are in the middle hallway. Mira wipes sweat from her fingers and regrips her gun. The obscure figure is moving very oddly. She goes closer, bent over, pressing her side against a vegetable counter. She smells the green of parsley and the earthy scent of potatoes. Her Glock shakes slightly in her hand. She lowers it, takes a deep breath, and nears the corner of the counter. Her colleague gestures toward her. He’s preparing an operation with three other officers who’ve already gotten in from Nybrogatan. He’s moving toward the suspect along the counter with the wild game. All of a sudden, a high-speed automatic rifle fires from the direction of the fish restaurant. Mira hears the wet, sucking sound of a bullet going through the protective vest and the body armor of boron carbide of an older officer and into his body. The empty cartridge of the high-speed automatic rifle clangs on the stone floor close-by.
The hit man sees his first shot enter the policeman’s chest and blood spurt from between his shoulder blades. The man is dead before his knees buckle. As he slides sideways to the ground, he pulls one of the tables with him. A salt-and-pepper stand clatters to the floor, and the shakers roll beneath a chair.
The hit man doesn’t pause. He’s running as fast as he can toward the center of the building and automatically calculates lines of fire. A police officer must be hiding behind a tiled wall next to the fish counter. Another is approaching through the hallway of wild game. The hit man whirls around and fires two quick shots while he heads for the kitchen of the fish restaurant.
Mira hears two more shots. Her young partner crumples, and blood spurts from the exit wound between his shoulder blades. His automatic rifle smacks the ground, and he falls back so hard that his helmet shakes loose and rolls across the floor. The barrel of his fallen gun points toward Mira. She moves away fast and crawls along the floor next to the fruit counter. Then chaos as twenty-four police officers storm the Saluhall—six pouring through each door. She tries to radio in, but can’t contact anyone. With an astonished blink, she sees the hit man less than ten meters away. He’s going toward the fish restaurant. Mira steadies her Glock in two hands, aims, and fires three shots at him.
A bullet plows through the hit man’s left forearm as he’s storming through the swinging doors to the kitchen. He keeps going along the grill, blundering through some hanging steel pans and toward a narrow metal door. Warm blood runs over the back of his hand. He knows there’s some serious damage, especially to the back of his arm. This was hollow-point ammunition, after all. But he can also tell the artery is untouched. Without looking down at his wound, he opens the door to the warehouse elevator, scrambles through and out the facing door. He finds himself in a narrow hallway and kicks open another gray metal door, heading toward morning light beyond. Eight cars are parked on an asphalt inner courtyard. Rising around him are the high, smooth walls of the Saluhall like the backside of a yellow theater curtain. He folds up the accessories to his weapon and runs to an older-model red Volvo that has no automatic ignition. He kicks out the back passenger window on the driver’s side and reaches in to open the door. The sound of automatic rifle fire still resounds inside the Saluhal
l. He sits down behind the steering wheel, breaks open the column and then the lock, pulls open the ignition, and, with his knife blade, starts the car.
80
the shock wave
Stewe Billgren has just watched twelve heavily armed police officers split up to run through two doors into the Saluhall. He’s been frozen with his pistol aimed at the closest door since Mira ran inside with Group 5 less than ten minutes ago. Now she finally has some backup. He stands stiffly up, relieved, and goes to sit in the driver’s seat of Alpha Car. Blue lights flash on walls all the way down to Sturegatan. A new movement in his rearview mirror makes him glance up. The hood of a red Volvo pokes out from an entrance to the building beside the Saluhall. It comes slowly forward across the sidewalk and turns right onto Humlegårdsgatan, nearing his own car. It passes and turns onto Majorsgatan right in front of him. The early-morning light reflects back from the windows and he can make out only a vague impression of the man behind the wheel. He looks away toward the square and watches an officer shout urgently into his radio. Stewe feels the urge to go over and ask about Mira when several things click into place in his mind. The man in the red Volvo had to let go of the wheel in order to shift. His black jacket looked shiny, as if it were wet. Stewe’s heart stutters. The left arm was wet. He couldn’t see the driver’s face through the reflections, but there were no reflections in the back side window because the window was gone. And the glitter around its edge was broken glass. The hit man had broken into the Volvo to escape and his left arm was bloody.
Stewe reacts immediately. He radios the leader of the operation even while the red Volvo is driving up Majorsgatan. He gets no answer. He starts his engine and shifts his car into gear without a thought for his own safety. The moment he turns onto Majorsgatan, the Volvo speeds up. The hit man realizes immediately that Stewe is on his trail. Both cars now speed up. They are on a narrow street past the neo-Gothic Holy Trinity Church and approaching a T intersection. Stewe is shifting into fourth gear and closing on the Volvo. He plans to force the driver to stop by swerving into its side. The light façade of the church seems to approach too fast. The Volvo swings right on Linnégatan so rapidly his wheels swerve up onto the sidewalk beneath a red awning to crash through some café tables. Splintered wood and metal scraps fly up. His left fender is torn loose and sparks on the concrete. Stewe slides around the curve and so gains a few seconds. He shifts up and closes in on the Volvo even as they are speeding down Linnégatan. The fender tears loose from the Volvo and smacks into Stewe’s windshield. He involuntarily ducks, slows a second, but speeds up again. A taxi honks at them from a side street. They both swerve into the opposite lane to pass two slower cars. There’s hardly time to see the roadblocks around Östermalm Square. Gawkers have begun to gather.
The wider road next to the National Historical Museum gives Stewe a breather and he tries to reach the leader of the operation again.
“Alpha Car!” he yells.
“Roger,” a voice says.
“Suspect is in a red Volvo on Linnégatan heading toward Djurgården,” Stewe calls into the radio.
He drops the radio and it bounces on the floor as his car hits a wooden barrier in front of a sandpile. His right front tire lifts off the ground and he slides to the left, passing the hole where the asphalt has been broken up. He disengages the clutch and matches the drift in the other direction, slides past the opposite lane, and is in control of the car again. He hits the gas.
He’s pursuing the Volvo down tree-lined Narvavägen Boulevard, which had crossed Linnégatan. A bus brakes hard to miss the Volvo. It slides into the intersection and the back end swings around to hit a light pole. Another car swerves to avoid the bus and helplessly drives right into a bus shelter. Glass splinters rain down onto the sidewalk. A woman throws herself away from the car and falls down. The brakes of the bus are still squealing, its tires thunder up onto the safety island, and the roof of the bus knocks off a large, overhanging tree branch.
Stewe keeps following the racing Volvo past Berwald Concert Hall. He’s coming closer just in time to see that the driver is managing to aim a pistol at him. He stamps down on the brake at the same moment the shot goes through the window near his head. The interior of Stewe’s car instantly fills with flying glass. The Volvo drives over a parked bike with a placard advertising Linda’s Café. There’s a big bang as the bike bounces up, then over the hood and roof and on into the air. It lands directly in front of Stewe to be crushed beneath his wheels and thwack up momentarily against his undercarriage.
They’re speeding through the sharp curve to Strandvägen, right over the safety island between the trees. Stewe hits the gas as he pulls out of the turn and his tires spin. They’re racing through early rush-hour traffic, leaving the sounds of squealing brakes and the thud of minor collisions behind. They come up to the left by Berwald Concert Hall, over the grass-covered safety island and onto Dag Hammarskjölds väg.
Stewe pulls out his pistol and puts it down next to him. He reasons that he’ll reach the other car at Djurgårdsbrunnsvägen. At that point he’ll try to head him off, and then it will be time to take the man out. They’re passing the American embassy, hidden behind a high gray fence, at about 130 kilometers an hour. The Volvo, its tires smoking now, jerks from the road and turns to the left just past the Norwegian embassy. It goes up over the sidewalk and between the trees. Stewe reacts a touch too late and is forced to swing wide, right in front of a bus, over the sidewalk, up onto the lawn, and through some low bushes. His tires whack on the curbstones of the Italian Cultural Institute. He crosses the sidewalk and slides to the left on Gärdesgatan, where he immediately spots the Volvo.
It’s stopped in the center of the Skarpögatan crossway.
Stewe believes he sees a glimpse of the driver through the back window. He grabs up his pistol from the seat and releases the safety. He drives slowly up to the Volvo. Blue lights flash from all the police cars streaming from Valhallavägen beyond the Sveriges Television Building. The Volvo driver bails quickly from his vehicle and then he is only a black-clad figure running down the road between the two stately embassies of Germany and Japan. Stewe is almost out of his car when the Volvo explodes into a fireball. The shock wave hits his face and the blast deafens him. He hears the world as if cotton wool were stuffed into his ears, but he drives on into the unbelievable quiet, up onto the sidewalk, even directly across the smoking hulk, but he can no longer see the suspect. There is no other place to go. He speeds up, crashes through a high fence, stops as the street dead ends, leaves the car, and runs back with his pistol ready.
The man is gone. The world is still unbelievably silent, except for an odd high-pitched whistle as if a strong wind were blowing. Stewe scans the street quickly up and down. The embassy buildings sit behind gray steel wire. There was nowhere the man could go except into one of these buildings by using a code or even climbing over one of the high fences.
People are emerging from their buildings to see what caused the explosion. Stewe looks around, takes a few steps, then quickly turns around again. This time, he spots the suspect immediately, on the grounds of the German embassy. He walks casually, matter-of-factly, to the main entrance. The door swings open and the man steps inside. Stewe Billgren lowers his arm and tries to calm down from a feeling of total frustration. He tries to control his breathing. The German embassy sits on a piece of land that is diplomatically considered part of Germany itself. He cannot enter without an express invitation. Swedish jurisdiction stops at the gate.
81
the german embassy
A uniformed officer is stationed ten meters in front of the barrier on Sturegatan by Humlegårdsgatan when Joona Linna drives up. The policeman tries to direct him away, but Joona ignores him and parks at the edge of the road. He shows his ID, bends underneath the plastic tape barrier, and then starts to jog toward the Saluhall.
He’d received the call only eighteen minutes ago, but the gunfight is over and the ambulances have begun to arri
ve.
The leader of the operation, Jenny Göransson, is receiving a detailed report regarding the police pursuit of the suspect, which has concluded in the part of town called Diplomat City. It appears that the suspect has entered the German embassy. Saga Bauer is talking to a colleague outside the Saluhall. The officer is wrapped in a blanket. Saga catches Joona’s eye and waves him over. He walks toward the women and nods a greeting.
“I was sure I’d get here before you,” Joona says.
“Too slow, Joona, you’re too slow.”
“Yes, I am.” He grins as he replies.
The policewoman in the blanket looks at Joona and says hello.
“This is Mira Carlsson from Span,” Saga says. “She was one of the first into the Saluhall and she thinks she hit our man.”
“But you didn’t see his face,” Joona states.
“No, I didn’t,” Mira confirms.
Joona looks at the entrance to the Saluhall and then turns to Saga.
“They assured me that all the buildings nearby were secure,” he mutters bitterly.
“They assumed these were too far away—”
“They assumed wrong,” Joona says.
“Yes,” Saga agrees, and gestures at the building. “He was behind the fence of this entrance and he was able to fire a shot through Penelope’s window.”
“So I heard. She was lucky,” Joona says softly.
Barriers were up in the area around Östermalms Saluhall and small numbered signs marked the first findings: a shoe print and an empty cartridge from a full metal jacket American-made precision bullet.
Farther inside the open doors, Joona can see some tomatoes scattered across the floor along with a battered-looking magazine from a Swedish AK-5.