Hostage (12 page)

Erik didn’t know Fatima all that well; they had worked together only a few times in the past. She was a pretty girl, and seemed clever. Tall and dark. She had the loveliest cheekbones Erik
had ever seen on a woman. If he had been single he would have asked her out for a glass of wine. But he wasn’t single, so he hadn’t bothered to find out whether she was seeing anyone.
Erik had messed up a lot of things in his life, but never his relationships. He had never been unfaithful to any of the girls he had gone out with. That kind of crap didn’t interest him.
Going astray was one thing, betrayal was something else altogether. And he just wouldn’t do it.

He turned to Karim. Tried again: ‘What do you think the police are going to do if you refuse to land?’

Karim shrugged. ‘What can they do? We’re sitting on a jumbo jet with four hundred passengers, flying at thirty thousand feet. If they want us to come down, they need to start
delivering.’

Erik attempted to reason with him.

‘If they meet the hijackers’ demands, they would lay themselves open to a horrific future, where it becomes worth hijacking a plane or taking hostages in order for terrorists to get
what they want. We have to resolve this in some other way.’

Fresh beads of sweat broke out on Karim’s forehead.

‘There is no other way,’ he said.

Erik didn’t know what to say, so he turned away from Karim and looked out at the sky instead. How did Karim know that there was no alternative to meeting the hijackers’ demands?

L
ess than ten minutes had passed since the Minister for Justice, Muhammed Haddad, had been given the latest update, and he was sitting alone in his
office. Collaborating with the Americans was never easy. Washington seemed to find it difficult to share its assessment of the situation and its expertise. As a consequence, Muhammed found himself
responding in the same way. The Secretary of State hadn’t quite known how to handle his American colleagues; Muhammed had made it very clear that he expected the Secretary of State to keep
them on a tight rein. Whether that was going to resolve the issue was another matter.

But the Americans weren’t the only problem. A short while ago the news about the bomb threat had exploded in the media. It was obvious that the press didn’t really know what angle to
take. A threat had been directed at Swedish interests for the second time in as many days, and in the first instance it had clearly been a false alarm. Did that mean this was another hoax?

Muhammed wished he knew the answer to that question.

The press secretary stuck his head around the door:

‘We’ve discussed the format for the press conference, and it won’t work unless you’re there to back up the PM. We’re starting in fifteen minutes.’

Muhammed felt a surge of irritation.

‘What the hell is the point of my being there?’

The press secretary looked surprised.

‘Has no one spoken to you? It’s all over the papers.’

‘Thank you, I’ve seen it.’

‘I mean the whole thing. Not just that there’s a bomb threat, but the plane’s destination and the hijackers’ demands.’

Right from the start they had known that there was something wrong about this business with the plane, but only now was Muhammed beginning to grasp the extent of the problems facing him.

‘How did that happen?’ he said. ‘How can someone have leaked the specific demands of the hijackers?’

The press secretary shrugged.

‘I haven’t got time to think about that right now. It could be anybody.’

‘Wrong,’ Muhammed said. ‘Only a few people in each organisation know that Zakaria Khelifi and Tennyson Cottage were mentioned in the note.’

‘That’s usually enough for things to reach the journalists,’ the press secretary said nonchalantly. ‘Besides, it doesn’t necessarily mean the leak has come from the
government or the police. It could just as easily be Arlanda or the airline.’

They would never know. The only thing they knew for certain about leaks was that you could never find the source, often because attempting to track them down would be illegal, but also because
it simply wasn’t worth the trouble.

‘So you want me to attend the press conference just to answer questions about Zakaria Khelifi and why we intend to deport him?’

‘Yes.’

Muhammed shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and gazed out of the window. A colleague had once said the he looked like John F Kennedy when he stood there like that. ‘Slightly darker,
that’s all.’ It was crap, of course, but pretty cool. A Kennedy from the Lebanon.

‘No,’ he said, still with his back to the press secretary.

‘No?’

‘It would be wrong to bring me in. We have nothing to add to what has already been said about Khelifi. We’re not going to get stressed and start making mistakes. The Prime Minister
has called a press conference to inform them that we have received the threat, and that we do not negotiate with terrorists, but will seek other ways in which to resolve the situation. He has
not
called a press conference to discuss whether there are reasons to reconsider our decision with regard to the deportation of Zakaria Khelifi.’

Muhammed turned around.

‘Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘I’ll speak to the PM right away.’

And then he was alone again. As he had been so many times in the past.

Muhammed sat down at the big conference table in the middle of the room. He knew what his role was. Many good people had held the post of Minister for Justice before him, and they had all left
some kind of impression.

Muhammed had often thought that his own range of choices was much smaller. He was predestined to leave one impression, and one alone: as the tough minister who took a hard line against the
extremists who espoused violence.

Violence bred violence. Most people were agreed on that. However, many seemed to believe that it was acceptable to go to any lengths in all other areas which also involved encroaching on the
physical freedom of the individual. He constantly heard calls for an increase in CCTV surveillance, more police involvement in social media. The police had to be where the terrorists were, that was
the recurring argument. Words that would have been unthinkable before terrorism showed its face in Scandinavia. Now that everyone knew what it looked like, it was as if the general public had lost
both its head and its judgement.

But Muhammed, who was born and raised in the Lebanon, had a different perception of what terrorism was, and what should really be feared. No one who had spent their whole life in Sweden and was
younger than sixty-five had ever lain awake at night waiting for a bombing raid from a neighbouring country. Or feared a civil war. Or seen members of their family imprisoned simply for expressing
the wrong opinions in public.

The Swedes didn’t know the meaning of fear. They thought fear was what they felt when their luggage arrived three hours late on a trip to the Canaries, or when energy prices went up.
Muhammed ran his hands over the smooth surface of the desk. There were days and occasions when he felt Swedish. But he would never live his whole life feeling that way. And he wouldn’t want
to either.

His thoughts returned to Zakaria Khelifi. He had every confidence in Säpo. It was extremely rare for them to raise an objection to the Immigration Office’s decision to grant someone a
residence permit. And for them to make a request as they had done in the case of Khelifi, revoking a permit that had already been granted, was virtually unknown. This told Muhammed that there was
something different about Zakaria Khelifi, and to ignore the country’s security service under such circumstances would be no less than a breach of his professional duty.

However, Muhammed had another idea, and the more he thought about it, the more it appealed to him. He went over to his desk and called Fredrika Bergman. He asked her to come up to his office,
then he called Fredrika’s boss and asked him to do the same.

Muhammed glanced at the clock on the wall. The major parliamentary debate on immigration and integration was over, and he had devoted hardly any of his time to it. He realised it was spiteful.
Those who criticised immigration could point to no less than two recent guilty verdicts in court, which was very unpleasant ammunition with which to arm themselves if they wished to kill off
Sweden’s long tradition of a generous immigration policy.

If Muhammed had not been expecting Fredrika and her boss, he would have done something that he had not done for several years: he would have got down on his knees and prayed for his brothers and
sisters. If the government agreed to reduce immigration, to make it more difficult for refugees – as Muhammed himself had once been – to come to Sweden, could he remain in his post as
Minister for Justice?

The answer to that question was no. If they closed Sweden’s borders, then Muhammed would step down, because if the anti-immigration elements won, Muhammed would have lost everything he
believed in. And that would mean that he could no longer see a future as a politician in Sweden.

But these were major issues. Right now Muhammed must do his duty as Minister for Justice. In the name of democracy, meeting the demands of the hijackers was out of the question. He knew that the
US government shared that view.

In which case, the only options were to attempt an emergency landing, or to find those who had set this atrocious plan in motion, before disaster struck. With every passing minute Muhammed was
less and less convinced that they would succeed.

A
match with the database that looked really bad.

That was what Sebastian had said, and Eden feared the worst.

They met in one of the operational conference rooms. Sebastian and one of his analysts went through what they had found out so far. Eden realised that Sebastian was still angry about her comment
on his colleagues, and wondered if Alex had picked up the awkward atmosphere in the room. She didn’t think so. He had nothing to compare it with; he had no way of knowing what was a good or
bad atmosphere in their normal working day. But Eden could feel the coldness emanating from Sebastian just as palpably as if he had placed an icy hand on the back of her neck. Fortunately he chose
to maintain a pleasant facade in front of Alex.

If only she could have lit a cigarette. It enabled her to think so much better. She ought to get something to eat as well. She would have to send one of her assistants out for a salad later.

‘What have you found?’

All her life she had been told that she was too impatient, so she made an effort to sound neutral.

The screen behind Sebastian flashed into life.

‘A remarkable connection between yesterday’s bomb threats and the threat on the plane, to say the least; this is the last thing we want.’

A list of telephone numbers with various lines between them appeared on the screen. Four were in red.

‘Yesterday’s bomb threats came from these four numbers. As you know they belong to unregistered pay-as-you-go SIM cards and cannot be traced to specific users or subscribers.
However, we were able to check whether there had been any other traffic to or from these phones. And there had. Three of the phones don’t appear to have been used before, but two calls had
been made from the fourth phone, which was used to make the last bomb threat. One call was made this morning, one yesterday evening.’

Sebastian pointed to one of the numbers that was highlighted in yellow.

‘To this number. A private mobile number, according to our enquiries. It belongs to Karim Sassi.’

One colleague after another passed by outside the glass cube, but Eden couldn’t take her eyes off the numbers on the screen.

Karim Sassi.

The captain of Flight 573 had been in touch with whoever had made bomb threats against four different locations in Stockholm.

It couldn’t be true, for fuck’s sake.

‘And what does this mean?’

It was a rhetorical question; as she spoke, it sounded as if she was thinking out loud.

‘Hang on,’ Sebastian said. ‘There’s more. Karim also called the same number both yesterday and this morning.’

Eden felt the waves of adrenaline surging through her body. She didn’t need to turn and look at Alex to know that he was also fired up by what he had just heard – she could feel it
in her bones. The hunt united them, they were the same creatures, they had just been born at different times.

‘Were they long calls?’ Alex asked.

‘The call to Karim this morning lasted for approximately twelve minutes; the others are all between two and three minutes.’

‘Did Karim make the first call yesterday, or was he the recipient?’ Eden said.

‘The call was made to him, then he called back,’ Sebastian said.

‘So our esteemed captain has been in touch with the person or persons who called in with the bomb threat against Rosenbad yesterday. Rosenbad was the final target, wasn’t
it?’

‘It was,’ Alex confirmed.

‘That’s too many calls to be a coincidence,’ Eden said.

‘I’d say it’s too few,’ Sebastian said. ‘If there were a thousand calls to different numbers listed on this phone, you could argue that Karim Sassi’s had come
up by chance. But there aren’t a thousand calls, and there’s just one number. And it belongs to Karim Sassi.’

‘Is Karim’s phone switched on at the moment?’ Alex said.

‘No, it’s off. We tried to call but it went straight to voicemail. We’re assuming he has it with him on board.’

Eden thought through what she had just been told. She agreed with Sebastian – it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, but she wasn’t sure what conclusions she could draw. Did
the contact between Karim’s mobile and the unknown phone mean that he had been involved in the previous day’s threats, and was therefore probably also involved in the threat against the
plane he was now flying? Or did it mean something else?

‘Could Karim have been threatened on a personal level?’ Alex wondered. ‘Is that why he doesn’t want to land the plane?’