Three Minutes Page 37

  He’d answered. Without answering. I am not in danger. Someone else was in danger—someone he was prepared to take risks for.

  “One more question. Ewert—is this an order?” The connection was bad and the distances extreme. Maybe that’s what caused the silence that came rather than an answer. “Hello, did you hear me?”

  “Sven, I . . .”

  “Is this—an order?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t understand.”

  “Because all of this is for a case that doesn’t exist—at all. You could search through every file and folder and report in the entire police station, and you still wouldn’t find it. So I can’t order you as your boss, Sven, not this time. But I can ask you to do this for me as my friend.”

  THE FLIGHT TOOK the same amount of time as before—four and a half hours. And just like before, he managed to make his way through every page of the complimentary New York Times and the Washington Post handed out by the flight attendant before the passengers were asked to sit down and fasten their seat belts for a slow approach to Dulles International. But the similarities between Ewert Grens’s first journey to the American capital stopped as soon as he reached passport control. He was surrounded by three guards, taken out of a long queue, escorted to a dirty little hole that reminded him of the interrogation rooms he often worked in, and asked again and again to explain why he had no luggage, why he was planning to be on American soil for such a short time, so short he’d hardly have time to take a taxi into the city before he’d have to head back for check-in again.

  Because he wouldn’t need to. Because as soon as he passed through the perfume-scented and shiny tax-free boutiques, past the hall with the spinning baggage carriage, he was going to sit down at a table in a corner of a restaurant that served expensive airport food to stressed-out travelers mostly searching for the drinks menu. And he’d stay there—until he was finished talking to a woman who was already waiting for him.

  “Thanks for coming out here. I don’t have much time.”

  “Grens, neither do I. I especially don’t have time for people who promised me I’d never have to meet them again.”

  “And I’ll make the same promise this time.”

  Sue Masterson drank French mineral water. Grens asked for the same when the waiter passed. “But—we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for another promise, one you gave, that hasn’t been kept.”

  She looked at him, and perhaps her eyes seemed slightly softer. Behind that hard exterior was probably someone who felt humiliated, heartbroken, and was looking for retribution. She wouldn’t have met with him otherwise.

  “Very well, Detective Grens, go ahead—one last time.”

  That hardness. He liked it.

  “I asked you to come here, because for the first time since I applied to the police academy in the mid-seventies, I need a reference. I need an authority to vouch for me. You need to certify what an intelligent, reliable, analytical person I am.”

  She looked at him. Was he deliberately wasting her time? Was he mocking her? She decided that wasn’t the case. The older man had the same facial expressions, the same way of holding himself as at their previous meetings. And the same jargon. She’d become familiar with it. And underneath that jargon was something quite serious.

  “In about twenty-four hours you’re going to get a phone call from the US Embassy in Bogotá. It will be to inform you that Piet Hoffmann is dead.”

  Her stomach. As if he’d punched her. As if he’d punched through her. And there was a hole there now.

  “I don’t understand . . . when . . .”

  “Since Piet Hoffmann cut two fingers off a corpse with some pruning shears and tattooed its head to match his own.”

  The hole in her stomach. She slowly understood, and it disappeared. “Another joke like that and I’ll leave. And now it’s your turn, Grens, to answer my question. If you answer correctly, we continue.”

  “Okay.”

  “Was it a corpse from the beginning? Or did it become a corpse for Hoffmann’s solution?”

  An assurance. If a man’s life had—again—been sacrificed to save another man’s life.

  “It was a corpse. A corpse that became a corpse when sixteen-hundred Pennsylvania Avenue sent him to make a corpse of Hoffmann. So when your colleague at the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Section in Bogotá calls, it will be to decide whether or not to look at that corpse. And he’ll only do that if he believes the man sitting across from him. Me.”

  Masterson should have stood up and left. That’s what she would have done if the same question had been put to her just a few weeks earlier. Back then, even considering a deception of the police authorities that constituted her whole life would have seemed like fraud to her. But now, there wasn’t much left to lose.

  “Okay, Grens . . .” She understood what Hoffmann was thinking. How someone else’s death might mean his life. “. . . I’ll vouch for you. If I know how.”

  Grens held out a two-sided document. “Here. An international drug project with the US and Europe as partners. The Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission. My suggestion is that we both participated in it. That’s where we got to know each other. Through the meetings I’ve summarized there.”

  She took the handwritten notes and read through them quickly. “Do you believe in this, Grens?”

  “In international drug operations?”

  “That Hoffmann could be dead. That you can make them believe it.”

  “I believe that this is his very last chance. And you and I are obliged to do what we can to help him implement it.”

  She looked at him. Shrugged her shoulders. “Well then. I’ll vouch for you. Say you’re clever. Analytical. That we worked together.” Then she got up, stretched a hand over the table, already on her way.

  “Not yet.” Grens pointed to her chair. “One more thing.”

  She chose to remain standing.

  He pulled one more document out of his small briefcase. “This is Hoffmann’s parting gift to you. A final good-bye. A tip about . . . somebody. Which I was clearly not supposed to know about.”

  She took it, ran two fingers gently over the wax seal. But she didn’t look as happy, or even as interested, as Grens had expected. Despite the hardness, he thought she’d smile, at least a little. Every boss loved a tip.

  “Sue?” He tried to reach her. In a tone that completely lacked any trace of teasing. This tone was serious. “Is something wrong? Besides the fact that we both got a very low blow from your friends at the White House?”

  She smiled. “I’ll take care of this envelope. Hoffmann’s tips have always been exactly what he said they were. But it will also be the last thing I do in this position. Then it will be my turn to chase down references.” She stuffed the envelope into her thin jacket’s outer pocket.

  “I wasn’t just duped. I’m going to lose my job. It’s not something anyone is talking about. But I know it—they never would have used a DEA chief like this if they planned on keeping them around, they’ve tried this with other police organizations that have bitten back pretty hard. I negotiated the only thing I wasn’t supposed to. And lost.”

  Grens was not a man who ran around hugging people. But he felt like doing that now. For a moment she looked so small, vulnerable, despite all that strength.

  “I understand fully what a risk you took by meeting me. Meeting Hoffmann through me. And maybe it’s not much consolation. But I promise you. You will never have to do that again.”

  She smiled again, faintly. And pressed his outstretched hand for one second too long. “Now, when it doesn’t matter anymore. When I could take whatever risks I want to. Like vouching for a particularly stubborn Swedish detective.” And then she disappeared, through the restaurant, and then out of the airport.

  Grens looked at the time, one hour until check-in, he had time to order again—replace the tasteless mineral water with a coffee and maybe one of those brownies.

&n
bsp; HE’D CHOSEN A car with a large trunk. That was the only requirement. Enough space for a pale, rigid body.

  They’d dressed the corpse in clothes from a secondhand shop, used but in good condition, high quality without being exclusive. Hoffmann studied his physical alter ego. The man Benedicto was pushing out of the Hospital Universitario San Ignacio’s side entrance on a gurney seemed believable enough, could surely be the man millions of people all over the world had seen in blurry news clips.

  “Thank you for your help. Here’s your compensation.” Hoffmann handed one final envelope to the morgue attendant, who’d been moving this cold, motionless body around to keep it intact.

  “Anytime, Peter. You know that.”

  They shook hands and the metal wheels of the gurney whined as usual as Benedicto returned to the other bodies, the ones that would be sliced up for the educational benefit of medical students.

  “And now, Superintendent, it’s your turn.”

  Hoffmann grabbed the corpse’s shoulders, Grens the legs. They lifted, pushed a little, lifted again—the dead man didn’t quite fit, the trunk was difficult to get closed.

  “Okay—now it’s my turn.” Grens had long since realized and accepted that he was not in control. That for a few strange days all he could do was follow, maybe try to understand a bit, but not much more than that. “But not until I get the tip we so desperately need and which you, Hoffmann, promised me.”

  Grens hadn’t even finished the sentence before the informant, who always had his own agenda and timetable, held out a grocery store receipt. Told him to turn it over. On the back stood seven handwritten rows of tiny letters that Grens couldn’t make out without his glasses.

  “Place, time, route. Just like you asked. More than a ton of ninety-four percent grade cocaine headed to Sweden through England. But the information is still dependent on a condition: a short prison sentence.”

  “I told you. I’m not just some Swedish or American police officer. I keep my word.”

  They parted at the hospital driveway. Hoffmann took off in his own car, and Grens headed in the rental toward the US Embassy, from the eastern part of the capital, through the darkness of the city center, and to the west.

  “Sven?” He’d dialed the same number as the previous night. Heard a voice that was equally drowsy and hoarse.

  “Again? Ewert?”

  “That’s right. It’s dear old Ewert. I bet you missed me.”

  The same groan, throat clearing, rolling out of bed with the phone to his ear.

  “I did what you asked me to. I emailed the photograph. So I—”

  “And you did it well. So well that I’m going to reward you with another job.”

  “Ewert . . . my reward is that I get to sleep. In peace.”

  “Soon. After you’ve written down what I’m about to tell you.”

  Something rustled. Sven Sundkvist had stood up, a pen and a notepad and pajamas, it was easy to imagine.

  “Okay?”

  “The biggest Swedish cocaine seizure ever.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “In thirty-six hours.”

  “One moment.”

  Grens heard a chair being pulled out, a sigh as Sven sank into it.

  “Continue, Ewert.”

  “A freighter. Which originally departed from Venezuela, a port city on the Caribbean Sea, or the Atlantic—now I’m not entirely sure of the pronunciation but basically . . . Ka-ru-pano. Spelled with a C and with an accent over the u. Transporting cocaine to multiple destinations. Arriving today in Aberdeen in Scotland, officially carrying coffee beans, and planning to proceed to Cádiz in southern Spain. But it’s the Aberdeen load that we are interested in. It’s meant for two submarines. One headed to Denmark and Norway, one to Sweden and Finland.”

  A pencil. You could hear the scratch of the tip against rough paper.

  “Did you say submarines?”

  “Yes. Mini subs. Eighty percent of all the cocaine smuggled from South America to the United States is now transported underwater. It’s the best way to smuggle it. You learn a hell of a lot down here, Sven. They’ve also seen even larger submarines headed in another direction—Europe. The risk of being lost in a storm or an accident is much greater than being caught. The ones I’m talking about go all the way from Scotland underwater. Filled with cocaine.”

  There was no longer any scratching. From the telephone line or from Sven’s pencil.

  “Where?”

  “The east coast. The Stockholm archipelago. Near an island called Granholmen. I’ll send the exact coordinates in an email from the Internet café.”

  His younger colleague was several thousand kilometers away in a land called Sweden, but you could hear him stand up, the scrape of the chair. Then those steps back to bed. His voice sounded hoarse as he lay down again.

  “I’m hanging up now. It’s the middle of the night here.”

  “Not yet. Tomorrow I want you to tell all of this to our favorite prosecutor. Every detail. Including the coordinates.”

  “Ågestam?”

  “Yes.”

  Now Sven Sundkvist shifted position, probably to his side. “Why, Ewert?”

  “I can’t tell you. Yet.”

  Yes, on his side. That’s how he lay. Definitely.

  “You’re telling me that this—and I know I’m tired—but you’re telling me about the chance for a record seizure? And you want him of all people to take the credit for it? The man you like the least out of all of our colleagues?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “All you need to understand is that Ågestam has to take all the credit. The happier, the prouder he is, the better.”

  For the last part of the call, the car had been standing still. He was there. He glimpsed the roof of the US embassy just three hundred meters away. This is the spot where he was supposed to park, then take a taxi to his hotel, and it was here he’d return tomorrow to finish the work of securing Piet Hoffmann his last chance at survival.

  THE US EMBASSY in Bogotá looked exactly like the US embassy in Stockholm. A high fence with guards on patrol, a red and white and blue flag fluttering in the breeze, light-colored buildings with flat roofs and on them stood giant round satellite dishes gaping at the sky with longing. It also felt the same. A particular kind of hostility and suspicion. The presumption that everyone was an enemy intent on destroying you until proven otherwise.

  Ewert Grens was warm and flushed as he hurried up the gentle slope of the street on slightly aching legs and knocked on the window of the glass booth, the reception and entrance where Colombian service personnel were crowded in with elite American soldiers. He pushed his ID through the hatch, prepared for the same argument he had every time his investigations crossed into these small American kingdoms. But he didn’t even have time to finish his prepared explanation because a man in a suit, a white shirt, and a blue tie with very short blond hair sticking up like one of those satellites was already waiting for him behind a wall of muscular men in uniform.

  “Welcome. Jonathan Woods, director of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Section here at the embassy. Do you prefer English? Spanish? Portuguese?”

  “Swedish.”

  Jonathan Woods had very white teeth, and he flashed them as he smiled broadly. “Well then, I’m sorry to say you’ll have to make do with English—I never quite finished my Scandinavian studies.”

  They said little as they walked across the well-guarded courtyard. Grens counted the cameras, then the guards, and realized they were of basically equal number. Inside the building stood even more armed men, but dressed in civilian clothing. They climbed up the stairs to the second floor and entered an office with a view of the spiked iron gate he’d just walked through.

  “Swedish police?” Woods waved his suit-clad arm toward a visitor’s chair for Grens to sit down.

  “Yes.”

  “Our background check confirmed that—thi
rty-nine years on the force, detective superintendent at the homicide unit in Stockholm in a unit called City Police. But we don’t know why you’re in Colombia.”

  The chair that had seemed so elegant was uncomfortable. Wooden slats pressed against his lower back. The upholstery chafed.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  The embassy official watched his visitor twisting in his seat trying to find a comfortable position, then asked him to wait a moment, came right back with another chair, or rather an armchair. Red velvet, rounded armrests, soft without being too soft. Grens nodded gratefully, sank down. It reminded him a bit of the corduroy sofa in his own office.

  “You can’t tell me anything, but you can send me pictures of a dead body, huh?”

  “I can show you a body, too.”

  “And how do I know that it’s the one we’re looking for?”

  “You don’t know. But you can examine it. It’s yours to do what you want with it.”

  “And what do you get out of it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Everyone always wants something.”

  They’d discussed the lie. Hoffmann had told him—a lie has to be true enough or it will be seen through.

  “I ended up with a dead body on my hands.”

  The truth was both words and tone of voice, the movements of the eyes and the way of breathing. And Grens had told Hoffmann in turn that he, being twenty years his senior, had twenty years of experience on him when it came to lying.

  “And if it’s the body I suspect it is, then it will do you a lot more good than it will me.”

  “A Swedish detective in Colombia as a tourist. No official mission. But here he is running around with the corpse of one of the world’s most wanted men.”

  “That pretty much sums it up.”

  “Grens? Is that how you pronounce it? I would guess you’ve conducted thousands of interrogations, heard from thousands of idiots. If you were sitting in my chair right now, would you believe your story?”

  “No. But I can’t tell you any more than what I have. Does it matter? You’re looking for someone—and I may have him with me. If it turns out to be that person, you’ll be a hero. If not, you’ve wasted a few minutes on a visitor who’s not asking for anything. So if I was in your position, I’d stop asking questions. Get on the phone to a senior official and check to see if I’m a person who knows what he’s talking about. And I’d start with your boss, Sue Masterson.”