Hostage (27 page)

‘One of the passengers switched on his mobile and got a text from his family.’

‘Fuck,’ Erik said. ‘How the hell did that happen? Don’t tell me he’s started talking to the other passengers.’

‘No, he came straight to me. Twice.’

Erik could see that she hadn’t told them everything.

‘What did you say to him?’ Karim wanted to know.

Fatima bit her lower lip.

‘The first time he spoke to me when I was passing his seat, and I lied. But then he came to find me in the galley, and this time he was more upset. He was waving his phone around, and he
showed me the message from his mother. I had to be straight with him,’ she said.

‘You told him the truth? You confirmed that the plane is under threat?’

‘What was I supposed to do?’ Fatima said, looking angry and upset at the same time. ‘He didn’t believe it was a coincidence that his mother’s text arrived just
after you’d said we were going to be delayed by several hours.’

Erik understood that Fatima had been left with no choice, and he knew that Karim felt the same. However, Karim still looked agitated, as if he hadn’t expected that one of the passengers
would eventually begin to suspect that something wasn’t right.

‘We need to make some kind of announcement,’ Erik said to Karim. ‘More people are going to start wondering. You can’t just say we’re going to arrive several hours
late because of bad weather.’

If we get there at all, a little voice whispered inside his head.

Erik swallowed hard. He had no intention of dying. He had just become a father, and at long last he had stability in his life. He had a wife whom he loved, and a home they had built up
together.

‘No,’ Karim said. ‘We have to avoid unrest at all costs. I intend to wait as long as possible before telling the passengers what’s happened.’

Unrest.

What did that look like in a plane that was flying at thirty thousand feet? People were hardly likely to start fighting to get off first, which would have been the logical aim if they had been
on a bus or in a shop that had received a bomb threat.

Erik thought it over, and concluded that he didn’t agree with Karim.

‘People have the right to know,’ he said.

‘The right to know what?’ Karim said.

Erik felt as if his throat was closing up.

That this might be the day when they’re going to die.

‘That we’re under threat,’ he said.

‘And what are they going to do with that information?’ Karim’s voice was so devoid of emotion that Erik broke out in a cold sweat. ‘If you haven’t realised it yet,
there isn’t a damned thing any of us can do to change the situation.’

What was it that Karim didn’t want to reveal? What had happened that would explain his incomprehensible behaviour?

‘You have to talk to us, Karim,’ Erik said. ‘What’s going on here?’

Karim turned away and retreated into silence once more.

Erik tried to touch his arm, but Karim moved out of reach.

‘Speak to the passenger and ask him to return to his seat,’ Karim said. ‘And ask him to keep quiet. Tell him he’s endangering his own safety as well as everyone
else’s if he starts talking.’

Fatima stared at Karim’s back.

‘It might be a good idea if one of you spoke to him,’ she said. ‘His name is Joakim.’

‘I can go,’ Erik said. ‘I can have a word with the crew at the same time.’

His heart was racing. At last he had a reason to leave the cockpit without it looking odd, but he still didn’t trust Karim.

‘You stay here,’ he said to Fatima, who looked confused.

Erik felt something like fear spreading through his body. If Fatima didn’t stay in the cockpit, he couldn’t risk going out.

‘It will look odd if we both go,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and speak to this guy while you wait here.’

Fatima still looked as if she didn’t understand, but at least she seemed to realise that her co-operation was important to Erik.

‘Okay,’ she said.

Just as Erik unfastened his seatbelt, another call came through. Judging by Karim’s reaction, he was equally surprised; the voice they heard was speaking in English.

‘Flight 573, respond immediately. Over.’

Karim answered as required.

‘Captain Sassi, this is Andrew Hoffman, US military air surveillance. Can you hear me?’

‘We can hear you.’

Erik didn’t move a muscle. Fatima was still standing by the door.

‘I am contacting you on behalf of the US Department of Defense and the US government. It is extremely important that you listen very carefully to what I have to say, and that you obey to
the letter the orders I am about to give you.’

Karim’s face was white, his lips compressed into a thin line as he listened to the American voice.

‘You have already been asked to remain outside US airspace. The following conditions apply for the remainder of your journey: you will not be given permission to cross our border at any
stage. It is up to you as the captain of Flight 573 to ensure that the plane remains in international airspace, or to travel to an alternative destination outside the borders of the USA. Is that
clear?’

The voice died away and waited for a response.

‘Captain Sassi, did you understand what I just said?’ Andrew Hoffman asked.

Karim wiped his brow with the back of his hand. ‘I understand,’ he replied.

‘Good, in that case we don’t foresee any problems.’

It sounded as if Hoffman was about to end the conversation, but both Erik and Karim had a number of questions.

‘Sooner or later, we will run out of fuel,’ Karim said. ‘Will we be given permission to make an emergency landing?’

The loudspeaker crackled.

‘Captain Sassi, you just said you understood the orders I gave you.’

‘Yes, but when the fuel runs out, I have two alternatives: either I crash the plane, or I attempt an emergency landing. Therefore, the latter option seems the most reasonable course of
action.’

Erik let out a sigh of relief. He thought Karim had ruled out an emergency landing after the conversation with the police.

‘In that case, you will have to do that somewhere else,’ Andrew Hoffman said.

What the fuck was going on here?

Karim looked almost panic-stricken, and Erik felt the same.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Karim said. ‘I am the captain of a plane with over four hundred passengers on board. I must have the chance to save them all from certain
death.’

‘I’m sure you will have that chance, Captain Sassi,’ Hoffman said. ‘In some other country.’

The alarm bells inside Erik’s head were so loud he thought it might explode.

‘You don’t understand,’ Karim said. ‘I have to land in the USA.’

Why? Erik wondered.

‘I would advise you to change course immediately and prepare for an emergency landing somewhere other than your original destination,’ Hoffman said implacably. ‘I’m
sorry, but the United States government does not negotiate with terrorists who are holding American citizens hostage. Unfortunately.’

Karim looked as if he was about to burst into tears.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ he yelled. ‘I must be allowed to land, surely that’s obvious?’

‘You are allowed to land,’ Andrew Hoffman said. ‘But not here.’

‘What’s your response to the hijackers’ demands?’

‘I repeat: the United States government does not negotiate with terrorists. Your flight will not be granted permission to land. If you still insist on entering US airspace, the plane will
be shot down.’

Shot down? Erik sat there, overcome by a kind of paralysis.

‘But you must have heard what was in the note,’ Karim said. ‘You have only as much time as it takes for us to use up the fuel we have on board.’

‘Exactly. In which case, I suggest, as I have already said several times, that you prepare for an emergency landing elsewhere. If you want to risk it, that is.’

‘If we run out of fuel I won’t have any choice,’ Karim said.

‘I think maybe you should read the note again,’ Hoffman said. ‘Because, according to our information, it states that if any attempt at an emergency landing is made, regardless
of whether you have run out of fuel or not, the plane will be blown up. Isn’t that right?’

There was something about Andrew Hoffman’s tone of voice that made Erik shudder. As if there was an implicit message in his words that only Karim understood.

When Karim didn’t reply, Hoffman continued:

‘Good, in that case we understand each other. Over and out.’

And he was gone.

Karim looked as if he had been turned to stone.

‘Fuck,’ he whispered.

‘What’s going on?’ Fatima asked. ‘Did he say they were going to shoot us down?’

‘The bastards won’t let us in,’ Karim said.

Erik forced himself to take several deep breaths, then he turned to Karim.

‘We have to do as he says. We have to try for an emergency landing somewhere else. We need to call Canada or Mexico right away, to ask if they can help us.’

What the hell do we do if they won’t give us permission to land either?

‘I don’t understand,’ Fatima said. ‘Why won’t they let us in?’

Karim didn’t reply; Erik’s heart was pounding like a sledgehammer. Now more than ever he knew he had to get hold of his father. The Americans’ stance was completely illogical.
Even if you took the bomb threat into account, it still didn’t make any sense.

Resolutely, he got to his feet, hoping that Karim wouldn’t notice how tense and nervous he was.

‘Fatima, stay here while I go and talk to the guy who got the text message.’

Fatima nodded. ‘He’s waiting in the bar with Lydia,’ she said, referring to the stewardess who was in charge of the bar in first class.

Erik turned to Karim:

‘I’ll be back in a few minutes, and then we can decide where we’re going to try for an emergency landing, okay?’

Karim didn’t reply.

‘I’ll be right back,’ Erik said, passing Fatima on his way out of the cockpit.

As the door closed behind him, he forced himself to breathe calmly. He would speak to the passenger as promised, and then he would call Alex and ask why the Americans had just signed a
collective death warrant for four hundred people.

F
redrika Bergman leafed deftly through the various documents in Zakaria Khelifi’s file. Extracts from phone-tap material that looked exactly
the same as the police records when Fredrika was working with the National Bureau of Investigation. Surveillance notes. Copies of interviews conducted with Zakaria while he was in custody.

Fredrika spent a little time going over the interviews; Zakaria didn’t dispute a single point that was put to him.

Yes, that was him in the surveillance shots.

Yes, he knew the man standing next to him.

No, they hadn’t met in order to plan a terrorist attack; his friend needed some help with his winter tyres.

Yes, he had made all the calls that Säpo knew about – except for the calls that had been made when the phone didn’t belong to him – and no, none of the calls was about
anything other than exactly what they sounded like. No coded language, no secret messages.

Someone must have tipped off Säpo about Zakaria Khelifi, because he was arrested one morning without having done anything.

But how did something like that happen? How did a man like Zakaria Khelifi suddenly become interesting to the Swedish security service and be declared a threat to national security if he
hadn’t done anything?

Fredrika started all over again from the beginning, and even though she knew Zakaria’s history with Säpo by heart, she spotted something new. Zakaria turned up over and over again,
and in the end there were just too many coincidences for any security service worth its salt to ignore. Such individuals existed not only within Säpo’s area of interest, but also within
the criminal circles investigated by the National Bureau of Investigation and other police authorities. Those eternal shadows that drifted from one investigation to another, always too
insubstantial to grasp. Obviously, even criminals must know people who weren’t on the wrong side of the law, but how were you supposed to know which was which?

There was no denying that Zakaria Khelifi had some explaining to do. The problem was that he had tried to do just that. He had answered their questions and given perfectly reasonable
explanations for things that seemed strange. He insisted that he hadn’t known what was inside the package he had collected. He didn’t know why Ellis had said he was involved. And he
claimed he hadn’t made the calls that Säpo were able to link to previous investigations.

Fredrika picked up the record of Zakaria’s earlier telephone traffic which had just been analysed again. The calls that Zakaria insisted someone else had made. How had the police coped
before the age of the mobile phone? In every single case Fredrika had worked on, the analysis of phone calls had been a key element. That was how they tracked down people who had disappeared,
picked holes in their alibis and were able to link them to various crime scenes and cases. On a yellow Post-it note someone, possibly Eden, had scribbled:

‘A comparison of the phone traffic before and after the point at which Zakaria says that he acquired the mobile indicates that he could be telling the truth. Different contacts during the
two different periods.’

A long column of calls was highlighted in yellow. Where the highlighting ended, someone had drawn an asterisk to mark before and after.

Fredrika’s cheeks began to burn.

What would happen if the government revised its decision and released Zakaria on the basis of the phone records? Would that bring the hijacking to an end? She was eager to find out more, but she
couldn’t cope with printouts; she wanted electronic access to the telephone data.

She left her desk right away and went to find Sebastian.

‘I’d like access to Zakaria Khelifi’s phone records.’

‘Isn’t there a copy in the file?’

‘I’d like an electronic copy, please.’

Sebastian looked dubious.