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

Thurn hushed him.

“Are you scared they’ll hear me from the helicopter?” he snapped.

“They might arrive in a helicopter,” said Thurn, “but they could just as easily turn up in a couple of cars. Maybe the helicopter’s just their escape plan. We have no idea.”

Berggren was about to argue, but he resisted the urge.

They knew considerably more than that, they knew an incredible amount, that was why they were sitting in this car, waiting for one of Sweden’s biggest robberies to take place.

But the minutes passed, and Mats Berggren grew more and more restless.

“Isn’t this exciting, Lars?” he said to the prosecutor in the front seat. “Finally getting to see what real police work’s like?”

Hertz gave a brief laugh and the conversation died out. The two men fell asleep, and Thurn stared out into the darkness as the hours ticked by.

At three in the morning, the police helicopter took off from Solna. Just like the National Task Force, it had been put at the operation’s disposal. Rather than allowing the pilots to sleep in the nearby barracks, it had been decided that the helicopter should be in the air once an hour during the night. That way, it would not only be able to help with the surveillance work, it would also be much quicker onto the scene when the time came.

There had been discussions as to whether they should try to move it to Bromma airport, meaning they would be able to get to Panaxia even more quickly, but a decision against the idea had eventually been made. The airport’s rates were, in the eyes of the government, hairraising, and the distance between the area in Solna and the airfield was only three or four minutes as the crow flies.

The agreement was that the helicopter wouldn’t fly anywhere close to Bromma until it was called in. They didn’t want to scare the robbers away.

“That was definitely something!”

Berggren was whispering loudly. The sound had come from some distance away, though not too far.

“Did you hear that?”

He hissed, his voice reaching a falsetto. Thurn had thought that Berggren was asleep. But she had heard it too. It wasn’t his imagination this time. The clear sound of movement in the grass not far from the road.

Thurn glanced at her watch. Five past four.

“It’s not far away. Should we let Carlbrink know?” Berggren whispered from the backseat.

Thurn nodded. She didn’t know where Carlbrink had positioned his men, but there was a risk that none of them were stationed along the road.

The detective silently closed the window, picked up one of the walkie-talkies and pressed the button.

“We can hear something,” she whispered into it.

“Understood,” came the immediate reply, followed by silence.

Thurn gently placed the radio in her lap and lowered the side window again. The three of them listened carefully. Hertz and Berggren nodded almost simultaneously. Someone, or perhaps several people, was out there in the darkness.

Movement. Silence. Movement. Silence.

It was heading straight for them.

“Are they moving away?” Hertz whispered.

His observation was correct. The sound was heading away from the Panaxia building.

“But that’s impossible,” Berggren said, equally quietly. “Carlbrink has a ring around the building. No one could’ve made it inside and back out again already.”

A few seconds later, they spotted the dog.

It was big and black, a cross of several breeds, and it wasn’t wearing a collar. It was thin and hungry; its ribs were clearly visible.

“Stay here,” Thurn instructed, possibly to stop Berggren from getting out of the car.

She picked up the walkie-talkie.

“False alarm,” she whispered.

They heard a crackling on the other end, which Thurn took as a confirmation.

The realization that nothing would happen, that the robbery wouldn’t be taking place, didn’t dawn on them until Berggren informed the others that it was quarter past six in the morning and that the sun was coming up.

It began as a joke.

“The Serbs said it would be a night flight,” said Berggren, “but I think it’s getting a bit late.”

Thurn muttered something incomprehensible. Her body was stiff. Her mouth as dry as paper.

“The one thing I’m worried about,” Berggren continued when neither of his colleagues replied, “is that if Carlbrink doesn’t get to set his army on the robbers, he’ll take his disappointment out on us.”

Hertz had dozed off in the front seat. He was sleeping deeply, his breathing calm, and neither Thurn nor Berggren wanted to wake him.

For some reason, the robbers had changed their plans.

Suddenly, Thurn jumped. One of the radios in her lap buzzed.

Was it Västberga?

Was G4S the target?

She picked up the walkie-talkie and held it to her ear, but it wasn’t Västberga. It was Carlbrink trying to get ahold of her.

“Nothing,” his tired voice said down the line. “And nothing in Västberga either. Over there?”

“Nothing,” she replied.

Caroline knew it was over.

She thought about the commissioner, about the minister for foreign affairs. Then she thought about all the police officers who had been involved in the investigation; those hundreds of hours of Zoran Petrovic’s inane chatter they’d had to listen to.

She sighed.

Had there been a leak at police HQ? It wasn’t impossible, the leaks there sometimes resembled a Chinese river delta. Maybe the robbers knew it had been a trap, and that was why they had canceled.

But it was equally likely that some part of their plan had failed at the last minute. With so many people involved, anything could have happened.

When the clock struck six thirty, Caroline Thurn was sure.

It wasn’t her job to dismiss Carlbrink, and so she called the commissioner instead, on her direct line.

“Hi, it’s Caroline,” she said, using her normal voice rather than whispering for the first time in hours. “It’s a nonstarter,” she continued.

Hertz woke in the passenger seat.

Thurn listened in silence for a moment while Berggren and Hertz looked searchingly at her.

She put down her phone and started the engine.

“They’re sending Carlbrink home,” she said. “They’re moving the helicopter back to Myttinge. The political version will be that with the help of our Serbian colleagues, we managed to prevent one of the biggest robberies in history.”

“Did we?” Hertz asked, newly woken. “Did we stop the robbery?”

“What do you think, Lars?” said Thurn. “What do you think?”

“I feel pretty crappy,” Niklas Nordgren said to Carsten Hansen.

“Yeah? But you hardly ever get sick.”

“I guess it was something I ate yesterday. My stomach’s kind of churning.”

“Shouldn’t you go home then?”

“I just got here,” Nordgren protested.

It was nine in the morning on Friday, September 18.

“But,” he added, “I really don’t feel right. Shit. You sure you’ll cope?”

“Go home and rest,” said Hansen. “It’s more important you’re OK than that the locksmith’s microwave works.”

“Yeah,” Nordgren agreed. “Yeah, I guess. Thanks, Carsten. It’s good of you.”

Nordgren packed up his things, thanked Carsten again and pulled on his coat. But as he turned the corner, he didn’t head for home. He headed for the station instead. He took the Lidingö line to Ropsten, the subway to Slussen, and from there a bus to Stavsnäs. When the Waxholm ferry docked at the quay and Nordgren stepped on board, he calculated that it had been five years since he last made this journey.