Never Fuck Up: A Novel (59 page)

The smoke, the music. He inhaled the atmosphere.

Mahmud: relaxed for the first time in a long time.

No woman, no cry.

With flow. Rhythm.

One of life’s tranquil moments.

His irritation over everything was released in the fog. Three hundred thousand glimpsed on the horizon.

He floated away.

Praise the Rastafari, Jah.

Sunny Sunday shines.

*  *  *

It was still dark out when Niklas was woken by a text from Mahmud:
I heard they found a corpse with dirty feet, saggy balls & a hairy ass—call me so I know you’re still alive.
Niklas assumed the Arab was trying to joke.

Still, he waited to call. Needed to process the information he’d received during the night. The Operation’d advanced to the third phase: Patric Ngono. Niklas was well trained by now: he knew the mission and the SOP. The planning of the actual attack was already under way.

It wasn’t just about Ngono: there were three others in line after him.

Part of the victory was that the media’d started to understand what he was doing. Soon, they would get more material.

He thought about Nina Glavmo-Svensén. He thought about what he should do with Benjamin. Hoped that Mahmud’s treatment’d sent a clear message. So many human beings in so many different roles. And he was the only one who cleaned up—made sure that Sweden became a little more fair, a little more logical.

Niklas sat down at his computer. Opened the folder that he’d labeled “Johns.” Roger Jonsson wasn’t the only one who bought women.

In the afternoon, after training exercises, he called Mahmud.

“Hey, it’s me. The corpse.”

Mahmud laughed. “So you’re alive,
habibi
. You got time to meet up today?”

Niklas wondered what he wanted. Mahmud didn’t want to tell him over the phone—they decided to meet up later that night.

“You want in on something I’m doing?” That was the first thing Mahmud asked when they met up at his house.

Niklas thought his apartment was nasty. He could handle his own filth. But Mahmud’s dirt disgusted him: crusty dishes, bottles of protein shakes, bowls with dried powder mixes. And the Arab’s way of dressing: sweat pants and a T-shirt that said
Beach Wrestling
across the front. Was that really a way to dress when you had company? But Niklas owed him one. He didn’t say anything.

What Mahmud told him was the best thing he’d heard since he’d arrived back in Sweden. He almost felt religious. How could something fit so well into Operation Magnum? Mahmud’s question was simple: he’d been asked to do a job—on contract. It wasn’t just anything—it was about striking against some big-time pimps in Stockholm. Plus hurting the people and the organization that ran the human trafficking as much as possible.

Mahmud didn’t want to go into details. Maybe he didn’t know much more. He just said that someone who had some unfinished business with Radovan and the whore business wanted to get things done. The Arab didn’t know it, but no one was more suited for this job than Niklas.

They discussed some ideas briefly. Mahmud wanted to establish certain principles: no conversations on cell phones or landlines, no talking to anyone on the outside, when they needed to talk they’d fire off a text first—he outlined a bunch of different codes they would use.

They discussed if they needed to get anyone else on board. Benjamin is out, Niklas thought to himself. Would someone from Biskops-Arnö work, maybe? Felicia? Erik? No, they were too weak. Couldn’t handle the fight when the storm really blew in. They’d already proven as much.

Mahmud had a stringency and a warrior instinct that Niklas hadn’t expected. Niklas really got going. Started discussing types of weapons, attack methods, strategic planning. Mahmud smiled.

“Buddy, everything in its own time. We’ll get to that.”

“But you’ve got to give me something to get started on now.”

Mahmud thought it over. “Okay, I have the address of the place where we’re going to make the hit. We have to know the area. So it’d be perfect if you checked it out.”

Mahmud: like a badass general. Niklas loved it. Above all: he loved having a partner. To be a part of a TF again—a task force.

The next day, Niklas drove the Ford out to Smådalarö, in the Stockholm archipelago. The address Mahmud’d given him wasn’t a street, it was just the name of a place, maybe a house: Näsudden, and a zip code. Mahmud’d been talking about their employer’s warning: be careful—these guys have security. They’ve made a mistake before and don’t want to do it again. It was unclear if Mahmud knew whom it was they were going to be dealing with. Niklas had no clue, but he was an expert, after all.

A good day: clear weather. Fall was turning into winter. He looked forward to the snow. When it’d been at its worst down there, he used to think about clean, white, glittering snow. Icicles dripping as spring approached. The crunching sound when you walked over hard-crusted snow. It was his childhood. Not a happy childhood, but at least it’d been clean. Not filled with dust, gun oil, sweat, and sand.

Still, he missed the real war. Everything felt so natural when he was among the other men. He knew the shape of each day. What was expected of him. How he would make his bed, care for his equipment, joke with Collin and the others, run through the day’s guard-duty schedule, bodyguard mission, or whatever it was. And sometimes their extra missions, the stuff that was too dangerous or too dirty for the official forces. The raids in the suburbs, the villages, the small communities where the enemy gathered, prayed to their god, and hoped for luck in war. Niklas knew why he’d become a soldier. It was a meaningful life. A life with dignity.

He drove over the bridge to Dalarö. Took a left by the sign: Smådalarö. A twisting road along the water. There were boats pulled up and protected by wood structures and tarps. It was one o’clock. Darkness would fall in less than two and a half hours. Sweden is a strange country, he thought. During the winter, you live in the dark for more than half the time.

He continued on. Golf courses, pine forest, private drives that branched out from the road and probably led to flashy summer homes. Niklas’d memorized the map and the aerial photos that he’d downloaded from Google Earth.

Six hundred and fifty feet left.

The small turnoff was blocked by a black metal gate. He stopped the car. There was a camera and a big sign on one side of the gate:
PRIVATE PROPERTY. GUARDED BY G4S
. They could guard as much as they liked.

He parked by a small forest road. Walked back through the woods. His boots clucked through the wet underbrush.

After a few minutes: a metal fence. Nearly seven feet high—like an industrial fence except without any barbed wire along the top—but not impossible to climb over. Still: there could be surveillance cameras. He walked along the fence, arrived at the gate after a few yards. Now he knew. Walked back along the fence, up into the woods. Lucky that the leaves’d fallen off the trees. After 330 feet or so, he glimpsed buildings beyond the trees.

He pulled out his binoculars. The main building was easy to see. Three floors. Pillars around the entrance. Crazy castle style. Gravel in front, a parked car. Next to the big house: a building that looked like a garage and a smaller outbuilding, maybe a stable, maybe a barn. He pointed the binoculars at the big house. Could see an entrance. He counted the windows, estimated the number of rooms, the height of each level.

Continued along the fence, his eyes locked on the trees behind it. He didn’t see any cameras. Looked closer at the fence posts and ground mounts. Concluded: no electricity. No motion sensors. It would be easy to get through.

After another few yards, the fence began to curve. Now he could see the house clearly, just 130 feet off on the other side. Hardly any trees. He picked up the binoculars again. The back of the house. There was another entrance there. He eyed the lock, what material the door was made of, tried to calculate where it led to. He could see straight in through a couple of rooms. A kitchen, a dining room, some kind of living room. He could clearly see motion sensors in the corners, in the ceilings, in the rooms.

He continued around the back. Estimated the distance, the possibility of climbing in through the windows. He needed answers to two big questions. First of all: Where would the target be located on the night of the attack? Second of all: Would the security staff be heavily armed?

They should be able to calculate the answer to the first question. Figure out the floor plan. The party would be in the largest room. Phallic compensation on this scale must’ve demanded more building permits and authorization than the entire Söderleden highway. The application documents for all those building permits must be in the county archives. And those kinds of documents were public information.

He was a fucking genius.

Question number two might prove more difficult. But maybe Mahmud could get some information.

On his way home, he saw images in his mind. Instead of scenes from Iraq: the attack against the house. The familiar rat-tat-tat from assault rifles mixed with the sound of glass shards crashing down on the ground. The panic in the eyes of those horndogs. Himself in full gear, battle rattle.

It would become a killing zone.

With pleasure.

There was too much information. Where should he begin? How would he possibly understand it all? He tried to grasp what was relevant, and what was just false leads. How did one carry out this kind of investigation? Dammit, the Palme Group’d probably had fifteen people working on it full time for over twenty years, without getting anywhere. How would Thomas Andrén, by himself, alone, hunted—above all, a patrol officer—do this?