Jens Lapidus - Never Fuck Up

They’d walked through the woods, in the snow, up to the fence. Waded through the snow. None of the boys were whining, yet. Niklas stopped. Took his backpack off. Dug around inside. Fished out four handsets.

“I have four walkie-talkies here. They are much better than cell phones. No one can track that we’ve used these. Mahmud and I will have two of them, for those of us going inside the house. Robert, you’ll have the third handset and Javier will have the fourth. For the men remaining outside the house.”

He pointed down, toward the road. “Now we’re going to go check out the entrance gate.”

One hundred and sixty-five feet farther off they saw the lights from the road. A car drove by, slowly. They walked closer. Saw the silhouette of the fence against the headlights. The car stopped: a Range Rover, model XL. Niklas watched the gates. Two men walked up to the car. The windows were rolled down. One of the men poked his head in. Said something. Then he waved: all clear.

The gates slid open. The car rolled in.

It was eleven-forty.

The moon was cold and large. Niklas led his men up along the fence again. The snow was reflecting the little light that was filtering through the trees from the house and the moon. It was enough, he didn’t need to get out the night-vision goggles.

He knew this area. Knew the house’s façade, angles, distance from the fence. He knew the course of the fence, where there were larger stones and gaps in the trees.

They walked another hundred feet. Silent. Calm. Focused.

Niklas stopped. “Here, Robert, this is your position. You know what your job is. Sit on this rock and wait. I’ll inform you over the radio when it’s time to get going. It’ll be around midnight.”

Robert looked like he understood the gravity of the situation. Nodded grimly. Gripped the AK4 with both hands. Mahmud shook his hand.

“See you later, habibi . This is gonna be big.”

They pushed through the snow.

Three hundred feet. They glimpsed the back of the house through the trees. A warm light glowed from the windows.

He ran through the same procedure with Javier. Javier got in position with the AK4 held high. Ready. Prepared for his mission.

It actually felt good. So far.

Fifty more feet. Just Niklas, Mahmud, and Babak. Dressed in black, dark as the desert night. Niklas felt for the Beretta in his jacket pocket. Picked it up one final time. Popped out the magazine. Inspected it in the moonlight. He knew this piece by heart. He thought about Mats Strömberg and Roger Jonsson. Pigs who’d faced their butcher. Soon, justice would be served. The New Year would be off to a good start.

They stopped by the designated spot in the fence, where the distance to the back entrance of the house was the shortest. Niklas took off his backpack. Fished out the bolt cutters. Crouched by the fence. Began from the bottom. Cut into the thin steel: easy as paper.

After five minutes: a hole nearly three feet high and twenty inches wide.

They crouched down. Crawled through. Behind enemy lines.

Eighty feet. Slowly. Niklas in the lead. Staying low to the ground, military posture.

Sixteen more feet. They approached the house.

Another sixteen feet. Niklas stopped. Looked ahead. No people outside the house as far as he could see. He fished around in the bag again. Brought out the night-vision goggles after all. Mahmud and Babak sat down behind him. He scanned the façade. Window by window. The light from the inside was intensified by the effect of the goggles, hurt his eyes. He eyed the door: no people outside. All appeared quiet.

He took the goggles off. Turned to Mahmud. The Arab still had his ski mask rolled up. Niklas whispered, “We move in ten minutes.”

Mahmud smiled widely. Made thumbs up.

Something was fishy. Mahmud looked strange. Niklas didn’t drop his gaze. Took a step closer to Mahmud.

“Can you show me your mouth again?”

Mahmud smiled again.

His teeth were dark, almost looked bluish. Maybe it was the moonlight.

“What the fuck did you eat?”

Mahmud grinned. Responded in a low voice, “Rohypnol, of course. It makes your mouth a little blue. You didn’t know that, buddy? You want some?”

Niklas didn’t know what to do. For a brief second, he considered shooting Mahmud in the face. Bolinder could happily find a defrosted Arab corpse in the spring. Then another thought passed through his mind: he should abort the mission. Get up and sneak back out the same way they’d come. Leave these two clowns to do whatever they wanted. Still, he remained where he was in the snow. Crouching. Shivering. Completely paralyzed. It couldn’t end like this. He’d promised himself. I’m in charge. I make the decisions. I don’t give up. I make a difference.

“How long ago did you take that shit?”

“Right before we saw the Range Rover. I want to be ready. It’s not a big deal, Niklas. I promise. I always take roofies when there’s gonna be action.”

“You’ve made a mistake. But we’ll have to let it slide for now. You won’t take any more of that stuff. Is that clear?”

Mahmud’s smile died. He looked down. Maybe he understood his slip. Maybe he just didn’t want to argue.

Fifteen minutes passed. They were lying down. The snow was touching their chins. The house: fifty feet off. The kitchen entrance was clearly visible. A wood door—90 percent certain it was locked. Niklas could hear music from inside. Could see people moving around behind the curtains. Music, laughter. Whore sounds.

He fished around in his backpack. His very own IED: improvised explosive device. His homemade grenade. It looked like a black beer can.

Mahmud and Babak were lying diagonally behind him.

Niklas held the grenade in his right hand. Looked at his watch. It was five minutes to midnight.

Soon time to catapult the whore hounds into the New Year.

There was music coming from the floor above. Thuds in the ceiling. A bass. Laughter. Thomas thought about his dad’s old favorite poet, Nils Ferlin, and his poem about a ceiling being someone else’s floor. Then he thought, There is no room for poets in today’s Sweden. Way too few who even know Swedish well enough to read stuff like that. What’s more: the ones who speak Swedish don’t care about poetry anyway. He was pining. Not just for his old man. He was pining for a Sweden that no longer existed.

In front of him: high metal storage shelves. Probably a total of thirty yards of shelving. Classic black binders with felt spines. Binders that locked around the paperwork. Around the bookkeeping material, the verifications, the documents. Hopefully the same stuff that Hägerström and Thomas’d just gone through. Hopefully something else too. Proof.

New Year’s Eve’s night was running on. Finally, right before he got here and made his way inside, the weather’d calmed down—Åsa would get a perfect view of the fireworks. Thomas was inside, alone—alone against the power. Alone against the ones fucking with him. Now it was his turn to show some people who’s boss.

Hägerström’d looked shocked at first. “You work a side job at a strip club?” But his surprise settled quickly—the case was more important. Still, he advised against going to the party. Went on and on about how they should wait till tomorrow, try to talk to some superior, give an account of all the information they had. Rantzell’s connection to the Palme murder and Bolinder’s organization. Get a formal search warrant.

Thomas grew irritated, mostly. “You know as well as I do that what we have won’t get us anywhere. Really, what proof do we have? That Rantzell guy’d been given shady payments. It has to do with the murder weapon, that much I’m certain of. But in what way does our information really point to someone having something to do with the murder? And it certainly doesn’t point to the murder of Olof Palme. But when we add up what Ballénius told us about Rantzell and the payments that you found, we know that we’re on the right track.”