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

Petrovic left the restaurant, crossed Tegnérlunden, walked down the hill toward Sveavägen and then continued straight ahead. His two tails did the same. When the Yugoslavian reached Birger Jarlsgatan, he turned right and paused outside a food shop. His followers slowed down and stopped ten yards away, pretending to be interested in the way a garage door had been constructed.

Using the reflection in the shop window, Petrovic decided that Jason, who worked in a computer shop farther down the street, had followed his instructions. He glanced in the direction of the plainclothes police officers, smiled and waved.

Everything happened very quickly after that.

Petrovic ran straight across Birger Jarlsgatan. He jumped over the barriers at the bus stop and continued toward the motorbikes parked on the other side. He leaped onto a Honda whose engine was already running and, with a roar, tore off in the direction of Roslagstull.

He left the two disconcerted police officers in his wake.

Petrovic drove at high speed for a few minutes, passing Odengatan, and then turned right onto Surbrunnsgatan and parked the bike outside the building where Jason lived. He hung the keys on a forked branch on the cherry tree by the door and then walked up Valhallavägen to find a taxi out to Saltsjöbaden.

“You seem a bit low, Michel?”

Alexandra Svensson was looking at him with concern. It was just before lunch on a Tuesday as overcast as Maloof’s mood, and they were walking across the bridge toward Skeppsholmen, trying to ignore the fact that they were freezing. Summer was definitely over, and autumn’s arrival had been abrupt. Despite that, Alexandra was dressed for summer, in a skirt and blouse with a thin cardigan on top. It hadn’t been a good choice.

She had been nagging Maloof to go to the Moderna Museet with her for several weeks now, and he had finally given in.

He deeply regretted that decision.

He had experienced setbacks before. Without making any claim to be scientific about it, he would say that nine plans out of ten never came off. The criminal life was, just like all other ways of living, based on hopes and dreams. The wildest ideas were barely ever meant to come true; they were more like a box of chocolates—something sweet to savor for a moment.

He would even say that it was quite unusual to get as far as they had with the Västberga plan. Being forced to call it off now, with just days to go, when they’d thought they had everything in place, was out of the question.

They had met two days earlier, at the Kvarnen pub in Södermalm. Sami, Maloof and Nordgren. They had arrived early, before it filled up, and sat at one of the tables behind the bar, at the very back.

When you were planning a job, the first rule was that you never allowed the group to be seen together so close to the deed. But they hadn’t had any choice.

“You’re sure?” Sami had asked.

“I’m sure.” Maloof nodded. “Absolutely.”

“I trust you,” Sami swore. “I trust you. It’s your friend I don’t know. I’ve never even met him. You know what I’m saying? You can’t trust someone you don’t know. And the fact he has a tail…”

“And it’s definitely him with the tail?” asked Nordgren. “Not you?”

Maloof nodded. After the incident in Skärholmen, he had spent the rest of the week reassuring himself that no one was after him. He had hunted for bugs, searched for shadows, but nothing. He’d had no contact with Petrovic, so he had no idea how things were on that front.

“I’m clean,” he said. “So that thing with the car… it’s not something else. It isn’t the first time they’ve tried the scare tactics.”

“Easier to cut him out than risk it, maybe?” Sami suggested. “Maybe? You know? I don’t know if—”

“No. We need him,” Maloof interrupted. “He’s in.”

Sami didn’t reply. He pulled at the neck of his T-shirt, trying to make it looser; maybe he needed more space to breathe.

“That’s not the issue anyway,” said Nordgren.

He met their eyes from beneath his cap.

“It’s the roof,” he explained.

“But we need to work something out?” said Sami. “You know? After plan A, there has to be a plan B. That’s how it works. Something happens, we move on to plan C. Then D, then E, then F?”

They nodded. But what was plan F?

Maloof had gone home after that, and taken out the drawings of the building in Västberga. He had spread them out on the living room floor. The answer had to be there somewhere. If you couldn’t go through the roof, if that wasn’t possible, maybe they didn’t need a helicopter and a pilot after all?

But how could you get up onto the sixth floor any other way?

On Saturday, he had sent a message saying he couldn’t play in the soccer match that had been planned for that afternoon. On Sunday, he had called his mother and said he felt lousy, and rather than going for Sunday lunch with his parents and siblings, he’d gone up to Kungens Kurva, bought food from McDonald’s and then returned to the drawings, which had to contain the key. Breaking the glass skylight would be easy enough, but what would they do then? There was nothing beneath the dome, just six floors of free fall.

“No, no,” he now replied to Alexandra Svensson, not looking her in the eye. “I think I’m just getting a cold, that’s all.”

She shook her head. Women were always complaining that Maloof was hard to understand, that he was hard to read. He didn’t react the way they expected him to, he remained calm until the day he ended things. He rarely got angry, never showed any weakness, and that was why Alexandra’s intuition confused him. He hadn’t behaved any differently with her than he had with the others.

The waves were foaming beneath the bridge. The wind was strong, and they hurried over to the island on the other side.

“A cold? Really? You never said anything about that yesterday?”

Alexandra had called early on Monday morning. By then he had already decided that his strategy of staying locked up in his apartment in Fittja wasn’t sustainable. Maloof wasn’t really the giving up type, and setbacks tended to make him more determined to prove the opposite. But he did admit that it felt tough.

“Sometimes,” she said as they continued up the hill on the other side of the bridge, “things can feel, like, hopeless.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s true.”

“So let’s say something’s happened,” she continued.

“I think it’s just the start of a cold,” Maloof insisted.

“But say it’s not that,” she said firmly. “Say it’s like I said, something tough’s happened, and that’s why you look like you want to hang yourself or something?”

Maloof didn’t reply. He was staring straight ahead and continued to plod up the hill toward the museum building that the original Spanish architect, after all the political modifications, no longer wanted to be associated with.

“That’s when you’ve got to find that extra bit of strength, Michel,” Alexandra continued. “That power we’ve got, the thing that’s made us come this far. You know?”

He couldn’t help but smile and run his hand over his beard. Every time things felt too much, she was there to support him. But as nice as it was to have her support, he also felt a pang of guilt.

Maloof was used to living a double life. During all the years he’d worked at the youth center in Fittja, his family and friends had thought that was how he earned his money. As a youth leader. No one knew that at night, he pulled a balaclava over his head, or that in parallel with his law-abiding life, he’d also found himself another career, a profitable kind of moonlighting. But that was how he had wanted it, and it wasn’t something that had bothered him.