Jonas Bonnier - The Helicopter Heist - A Novel Based on True Events

“Is it the pigs?”

Sami bent down to the stroller and lifted John from beneath the layers of blankets and covers. What had started as a quiet sniffle had turned into crying. It happened sometimes, when he woke from a deep sleep. Sami assumed it was his dreams that scared him.

“What the hell… is that a real baby?” Mandel blurted out in amazement.

“Are you stupid or what?”

“I just thought the stroller was a decoy.”

“A decoy?”

“To fool the pigs!”

“You’re sick,” Sami told the Estonian, rocking the baby in his arms until the little one calmed down and dozed off again.

Mandel shook his head.

“Don’t worry,” Sami said, gently putting the baby back into the stroller. “He’s not going to snitch.”

Mandel rolled his eyes. They turned back into the park. As they walked, Mandel went over the team and how he was planning on splitting the money.

“I need six million,” Sami said. “You can split it any way you want, but that’s my minimum. Got that? If you can’t guarantee me that, I’m out.”

“There’ll be more,” Mandel reassured him. “Much more.”

The majestic silhouette of the church was dark against the bright blue sky as they struggled back up the hill.

“The point,” Toomas Mandel explained, “is that it’s only three minutes to the boat club. No one’s going to believe we’re on our way there. We make it to the boat, we’re practically home. The police are up in Vaxholm and we’ll be in Bergshamra in less than ten minutes. They’ll never make it down in time. By then, we’ll be long gone, too much of a head start.”

“But does that mean you’re saying,” Sami asked, “that we have to ride down to the boat club? I don’t know… I’ve never even been on a horse…”

He had a feeling that rather than this being an idea that would get better the longer he sat on it, it was the opposite.

“It’s a possibility,” Mandel replied.

“But the whole of Täby fucking Racecourse is full of riders. You know? We’ll never manage to get away from them. They’re professionals.”

“All I’m saying is that it’s a possibility,” Mandel repeated. “It might be a bad idea, but if you’re on a horse, you can make it from the racecourse down to the boat club without getting caught up by any police vans or response units.”

Sami shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I buy the rest of it. Or I don’t know, a lot of it’s good. But you need to come up with another way of getting out. You know?”

“I’ll work on it.”

Michel Maloof was in the Hallunda McDonald’s, waiting to pay for his large meal, when the inconspicuous and now crumpled scrap of paper bearing Alexandra Svensson’s name and phone number followed a handful of change out of his pocket. To begin with, he didn’t remember where it had come from; eight weeks had passed since he’d met the man with the dogs. Maloof waited for his cheeseburger, twisting and turning the piece of paper in his hands. And then he spotted the address for the dating site. That jogged his memory.

He took his tray and sat down in one of the window seats, looking out at a branch of Bauhaus. He had never used any dating sites himself, he’d never had trouble meeting women. But he assumed that it suited some people, and each to his own.

He held up the note and drank his Coke through the straw.

Should he call her?

After the meeting at G4S, Maloof had thrown the black bag into his car and dejectedly driven away, emotionally overwhelmed and exhausted. Going in just a few short minutes from believing he would earn millions to realizing that he had fifteen years of negotiation and discussions ahead of him had been a real blow.

It felt like he had been subjected to some kind of cheap joke, as though the two directors had deliberately allowed him to misunderstand the situation and then piled on the pressure with their “contractual agreements.”

Maloof had driven straight from Stadshagen to Upplandsgatan to tell Zoran Petrovic what had happened. Maloof wasn’t much of a car enthusiast, but driving a Seat was frustrating when you were angry. Any sudden braking became smooth, and his sharp accelerations had no bite. Though maybe it had a calming effect, because by the time he reached Café Stolen, the worst of his anger had abated.

Petrovic had been waiting for him in one of the booths. His long, slender upper body stuck up like a twig above the table. He had a glass of lukewarm water in front of him. It was three thirty in the afternoon, and other than the staff, the place was empty. A new waitress Maloof had never seen before came over and asked what he wanted.

“I gave her a job mostly to test my self-control,” Petrovic had said once the girl in the tight skirt had gone back into the kitchen to fetch a cup of coffee.

It had been years since Maloof had stopped being surprised by Zoran Petrovic’s attitude toward women. He ignored the comment and told him about the meeting he had just come from instead. Though Petrovic was one of Maloof’s oldest friends, it was impossible for the Yugoslavian to detect any of the anger or frustration Maloof had just been feeling. Instead, he found himself faced with the always-smiling, calm and indifferent Maloof, who neutrally recounted the absurd conversation from the G4S conference room.

“That’s perfect though,” Petrovic had replied with his usual enthusiasm. “You’ve introduced yourself, they know who you are and what you have to offer. It couldn’t have gone better.”

“Right, right,” Maloof had said, laughing. “But, I mean, no. They could’ve bought the bags.”

“Forget about it,” Petrovic said with a laugh. “This is just the beginning. Going forward, shit, there could be a lot of money in this.”

After a few minutes, Maloof had reluctantly allowed himself to be infected by his friend’s enthusiasm. Both men were fundamentally optimistic; if things had been any different, they never would have made it this far.

Maloof put the scrap of paper onto the tray, but his eyes didn’t leave it as he lifted his cheeseburger out of the box.

Maybe Petrovic was right and everything would go to plan, but it was just as likely he was wrong. And what harm could calling her do? Hadn’t the man with the dogs said that this Alexandra Svensson was good-looking?

Maloof picked up his phone.

He invited her to a restaurant called Mandolin.

They agreed to meet at seven that Friday. Maloof made sure he was early, and he was waiting on the sidewalk on Upplandsgatan when the bells of Adolf Fredriks Church struck the hour. He had pulled up his hood to protect himself from the drizzle. The modern era’s winter had the capital in its loose grip, and galoshes would probably have been the best kind of shoes for that time of year.

When he saw a woman coming toward him from Tegnérlunden Park ten minutes later, he immediately knew it was her.

Alexandra Svensson was wearing a pair of practical rubber boots with a slim fur trim at the top, and her long down coat was pale blue. In her description of herself, the one Maloof had found on Match.com, she had written that she was someone who wanted to “bring a little luxury to life.” He was sure that the fur on her boots and the color of her coat were part of what she meant.

When she passed beneath the streetlight at the crossing with Kammakargatan, he could see her more clearly. She had written online that “biological age is meaningless,” but Maloof would have guessed that Alexandra was around twenty-five. A blond-haired, blue-eyed woman with round cheeks, a distinct protruding chin and a small, pouting red mouth, as though she wanted to be kissed. Maloof waved. Alexandra took a few happy, skipping steps toward him and gave him an impulsive hug.