Hostage (7 page)

If you just glanced at the picture, you couldn’t see that anything was wrong. You didn’t notice Lena’s tired eyes, or how much weight she had lost. And you didn’t see the
shadow of fear on the face of both his son and daughter. His daughter was smiling as usual, but Alex knew what she looked like when she was happy, and what she looked like when she wasn’t. In
the photograph, she looked positively devastated.

And his son. With his hair standing on end as if he was a teenager, and an expression so angry that it made Alex shudder. They had never been able to communicate, not without falling out and
starting to yell at one another. At one time, Alex had thought he would be closer to his son than his daughter, but it turned out he was wrong.

Alex focused on his job instead. None of the bomb threats had been genuine. No one had been hurt. And yet he still felt on edge.

Four bomb threats. Not one, not two, not three, but four. Aimed at different locations in inner-city Stockholm that took a huge amount of resources to evacuate and search. They had thought it
might be an attempt to divert their attention from something much worse, but that hadn’t happened either. The whole thing had begun and ended with four bomb threats, made by someone in the
vicinity of Arlanda, using voice distortion.

Arlanda. What the hell was the link between the bomb threats and the country’s biggest airport?

I
t had been a chaotic morning. For a while it had looked as if Erik was going to be late for work. first of all, the bus to the commuter train was
late. Then the train to Central Station was late as well, which meant he missed the Arlanda Express he had been hoping to catch. When he eventually left on the next train, it had to travel at a
reduced speed due to an earlier accident.

Erik tried not to feel stressed, but beads of sweat broke through along his hairline, and his palms were damp. He was going to have to run to the plane, which was hardly appropriate for a
responsible co-pilot. Among other things – including a patch of dried baby rice on his uniform.

He had been delighted to get a job so quickly. Hard work and a natural aptitude for the profession went a long way, as it turned out. And the opportunity had been there. Very few of the other
pilots were as young as Erik. He felt his stomach flip over with a sudden attack of nerves.

What if I don’t deliver? What if I’m not good enough?

His mobile rang when the train had almost reached the south platform at Arlanda.

‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ he said.

And he was.

The train slowed down and Erik hit the ground running. Claudia called; she just wanted to hear his voice one last time before they parted. In an hour or so, she and their son would be on a plane
to South America, heading off to visit Claudia’s parents. Erik was on the flight to New York, and he would then follow them for a much-needed holiday. They would eat late in the evening,
drink wine and dance long into the night. Lie in bed in the morning. Claudia’s mother would take care of their little boy, give them a break. In Erik’s opinion, they were doing the
child a favour. It was hard work being the parent of a toddler; sometimes it was so hard that Erik would have given his right arm just to sleep through one single night. Therefore, it had to be
good for both the parent and child if they had a rest from one another occasionally.

That had to mean fewer arguments and a stronger bond.

The security checks had increased and grown far more stringent in recent years. Erik couldn’t help thinking some of them were unnecessary. As long as people were allowed to carry several
litres of alcohol on board, there was little point in X-raying their hand luggage and asking them to remove items such as nail scissors.

Erik was allowed to go to the front of the queue for the X-ray machines. The security guard gave him a nod of recognition.

‘Running late?’

‘Too bloody right.’

They did their best to speed up the process. It was only a question of minutes, then he would be on his way. Erik placed his bag on the conveyor belt and walked through the metal detector.
Picked up his bag and ran.

He could see his colleague in the distance. Karim Sassi, a man Claudia had once referred to as ‘the most handsome man she had ever seen’. With a certain amount of reluctance, Erik
had to admit that Karim looked good. He was six foot four, dark and charismatic. The main thing that made Karim Sassi so attractive was his cheerful expression and the energy radiating from his
brown eyes. ‘Eyes you could drown in,’ Claudia had commented, before Erik stated firmly that he didn’t want to hear any more about how fantastic his colleague was.

But to tell the truth, Erik really liked Karim. They had worked together for several months, and knew each other well by this stage. They had even started spending some time together outside
work; Erik hoped their friendship would deepen, because he enjoyed Karim’s company.

Karim was facing the window, but Erik could see his profile. Tense jaw line, eyes half closed. Always equally focused before a flight. He would never dream of having a couple of drinks and
falling asleep, like certain other pilots.

Erik covered the last few yards at speed.

‘I thought I was going to have to fly without a co-pilot today,’ Karim said.

‘The bus was late so I missed the commuter train. And then the Arlanda Express was delayed as well.’

Karim looked annoyed, but made no further comment on Erik’s timekeeping.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Erik couldn’t stop himself. He wasn’t that bloody late!

‘Has something happened?’

Karim ran a hand through his unruly black hair.

‘No, I just like everything to be in order. And I’ve had a report that a severe storm is due to come in over the east coast of the US during the day.’

‘Damn. Could that cause us problems with landing?’

‘It looks that way. But I’ve asked for additional fuel so that we can stay in the air for a few hours if necessary. Or divert elsewhere.’

‘How many extra hours did you request?’

‘Five.’

Karim turned away from Erik and headed towards the aircraft.

They took off at nine thirty, exactly as planned.

The sky was different above the clouds. Clearer. An endless space where there were no problems. Erik knew why he had become a pilot. To be a part of all this. Something bigger than himself. The
very idea made his head spin. Just knowing that he was thirty thousand feet above the surface of the earth right now got the adrenalin pumping.

I will never get tired of this.

The cockpit doorbell rang. Karim glanced at the monitor to see who wanted to come in. It was Fatima, one of the stewardesses. She rang again. Karim pressed the button to release the lock; Fatima
came in and closed the door behind her.

Her face was ashen. Erik had never liked that expression, but now he realised that was because he had never before seen anyone whose face had lost all its colour. Her lips were so pale they
looked bloodless.

‘I found this in the toilet,’ she said, handing Karim a folded piece of paper.

Karim opened it and began to read.

‘What does it say?’ Erik asked.

‘They’re threatening to blow up the plane,’ Fatima said.

‘What? Who’s threatening to blow up the plane?’

Fatima didn’t answer.

‘Where did you find this?’ Karim asked.

‘In the toilet in first class. When I went to check if there was enough toilet paper.’

‘Have any of the passengers seen it?’

‘I’ve no idea. But I don’t think so – they would have said something.’

Erik spoke up: ‘We’ve just turned off the sign telling them to fasten their seat belts; how many of them would have had time to go to the toilet?’

‘Not very many,’ Fatima whispered.

‘More like none,’ Erik said. ‘Can I see what it says?’

There were only a few lines written on the piece of paper. Erik passed it back to Karim, trying to stop his hand from trembling.

‘How the hell did it get in the toilet?’ he asked.

‘It must have been there when we took off,’ Fatima replied.

‘But who could have put it there?’

‘Perhaps someone was asked to leave it in there. Someone who had access to the plane.’

Erik didn’t understand. He didn’t understand why this particular flight had to be dragged into some kind of bomb threat, and he didn’t understand how the piece of paper had got
into the toilet. If they were lucky, the whole thing would turn out to be a really bad joke. If they weren’t, then it was a serious threat, and in that case none of them knew if they would
live to see tomorrow.

‘What do we do now, Karim?’ he asked.

Karim read the note again. Or rather he looked at the words, his gaze sweeping across the paper, back and forth.

‘We have to do as they say.’

Erik stared at him.

‘Do as they say?’

‘But that’s impossible,’ Fatima said.

‘And what’s the alternative? It specifically states that they will blow the plane to pieces if we don’t follow their instructions.’

‘How would they know?’ Fatima said.

Absurd. It was absurd. The whole thing. Erik tried to gather his thoughts.

‘If the threat is genuine, and according to security regulations we have to act as if it is, then we ought to follow the instructions,’ he said. ‘Obviously. But we have to call
airtraffic control and SAS to ask for help on how to proceed. And we need to tell them what the message says. I mean, it’s clearly not aimed at us.’

The message is not aimed at us, we are the hostages.

For the first time, Erik felt afraid. Something else occurred to him.

‘What if one of the passengers left the note in the toilet?’ he said slowly.

‘Yes?’

‘That means he or she is still on the plane, monitoring our actions.’

Fatima stood there with her arms wrapped around her and leaned – or slumped – against the wall. If she started to cry, Erik would lose all respect for her. But she didn’t.

‘Did you show this to anyone else on the crew?’ Erik asked.

‘No.’

‘Keep it to yourself for the time being,’ Karim said. ‘We’ll call ATC and tell them what’s happened, then we’ll decide how to proceed.’

Fatima straightened up.

‘I’d better get back.’

She left the cockpit and slammed the door shut behind her.

Karim put on his headset and called Arlanda.

‘This is Karim Sassi, the captain on Flight 573. We have received a bomb threat; it was written on a piece of paper and left in one of the toilets on board. The content is as follows:
Unless the USA shuts down Tennyson Cottage immediately, this plane will be blown up. The same applies unless the Swedish government revokes its decision to deport a man by the name of Zakaria
Khelifi. If the plane attempts to land before these decisions have been made and implemented, it will be blown up. As captain, I am instructed to fly the plane for as long as the fuel lasts.
That’s the time the two governments have in which to act. They will determine how this ends. When the fuel runs out, the time runs out.’

T
he control tower received the information from flight 573 just after the plane had taken off. It was immediately passed on to the central
communications office at the National Bureau of Investigation, RKC, to SAS, and to the Transport Agency. The National Bureau of Investigation was still working on the bomb threats made the previous
day, targeting locations in central Stockholm, but the message was given top priority. For the second time in twenty-four hours, Alex Recht was sitting there with a bomb threat on his desk.

He could hardly believe his eyes as he read the memo from RKC.

A Boeing 747 that had taken off from Arlanda twenty minutes ago had received a bomb threat, and was therefore classified as hijacked, indirectly. The captain had contacted air-traffic control
and informed them of the situation.

In the light of the previous day’s events, the threat must be taken seriously. Alex had read the morning papers and knew who Zakaria Khelifi was. Apparently, Säpo had taken him into
custody and were going to deport him. That was the extent of Alex’s knowledge.

After speaking to his boss, he called Eden Lundell.

‘This Zakaria Khelifi is one of yours, isn’t he?’

‘That’s right.’

Eden had already received a copy of the memo, and was in a meeting with one of her deputies. She promised to call Alex back.

He spent the next few minutes going through the key details of the message. The plane had taken off with plenty of fuel. There were a couple of empty seats in first class, but otherwise it was
full. There was a crew of ten, including the captain and co-pilot. When the plane ran out of fuel, time was going to be up for the Swedish and US governments.

Alex could understand the demand that had been made of the Swedish government, but what the hell was Tennyson Cottage? Eden probably knew the answer to that question. During his years in the
police force, Alex had dealt with a number of bomb threats aimed at planes on their way to or from Sweden, but they had never turned out to be anything but a hoax.

Could this one be different? Was there a danger that there really was a bomb on board Flight 573? If that was the case, it meant that someone had checked in a bag containing explosives, and was
now sitting among the passengers. Unless the bomb had been smuggled into someone else’s luggage, which Alex thought was highly improbable. The most likely scenario was that there was no bomb
on board.

Alex’s boss appeared.

‘We have to go down and brief the government. Or rather you, not we,’ Hjärpe said.

‘Nobody’s done that yet?’

‘They know about the bomb threat, but not the details. We wanted to assimilate all the information we had first of all. I’ve called and told them we’re on our way. We need to
get a move on – it’s only a matter of time before the press get hold of this.’