That night.
Jorge couldn’t forget the MPEG video. Assumed it’d been used as fear propaganda for whores who stepped outta line. Had looked closer at the movie’s stats: It was about four years old. Did they run the same trailer over and over again?
A parody of sleep. First he couldn’t fall asleep. Then, once he’d finally fallen asleep, he woke up several times an hour. Went to the bathroom. Nightmared. Reminded him of the nights before his escape from Osteraker.
He felt like shit. Go ahead, watch porn and be happy-but not rape and abuse live in front of the camera.
Who the hell did the raped woman remind him of?
He groped at memories.
It felt good to have shot the shit out of the pimp and the brothel madam.
Now Mrado, the other guy from the video, and Radovan were next in line. He would crush them.
J-boy’s on your tracks.
In the morning, he drank strong coffee. Had to get going. Had to forget. It was Abdulkarim’s high holiday.
The huge shipment was arriving.
Jorge was part of the preparations-he and JW were supposed to watch over the delivery. From Arlanda to the cold storage facility.
He was meeting up with Abdulkarim, Fahdi, and JW in an hour to plan.
This was big. What he’d seen in the video the night before was bigger.
But now he had to focus.
The shipment would soon be here.
URGENT!!
Confidential.
Attn: Inspector Henrik Hansson, Special Missions Unit
Fax number: 08-670 45 81
Date: June 22
Number of pages: 1
Business: Operation Snowstorm, Project Nova
Operation Snowstorm Begins
Operation Snowstorm begins tomorrow at 10:00. All units will gather at Bergsgatan, room 4D, for an internal run-through.
Brief History
Johan Karlsson, who has served as an infiltrator within the realm of Project Nova (under the name Micke), has information that the target group is planning to receive a very large shipment of cocaine. The shipment is expected to arrive at Arlanda with flight B746-34 from London at 8:00 tomorrow. From there, it will be driven in containers by trucks from the transport firm Schenker Vegetables to the Vastberga Cold Storage Center. The exact location for unloading is unknown at present.
Plan of Attack
There is a possibility that several high-ranking persons within Stockholm’s Yugoslavian Mafia network will be present at the unloading of the shipment of cocaine. According to present instructions, Operation Snowstorm will therefore wait to strike until it is possible to arrest as many of these persons as possible.
We are currently working to gather exact information regarding the time of unloading and will be in touch as soon as we do.
The Special Missions Unit, Project Nova’s head surveillance team, as well as Drug Enforcement are included in Operation Snowstorm. This fax has been sent to all officers and unit chiefs.
55
JW and Jorge were sitting in a rented pickup. They were waiting, didn’t talk much, were just quiet.
JW’d drawn up the plan. Two trucks from Schenker Vegetables would pick up the containers at Arlanda. The teamsters who drove would go straight to Vastberga Cold Storage. They were in the know enough to get that what they were transporting was valuable, but also not to ask any unnecessary questions. JW and Jorge were waiting to follow the trucks. Make sure they didn’t go off track, didn’t pinch any of the shipment, didn’t get in touch with suspicious people. Abdulkarim and Fahdi would meet them at the cold-storage place. When the truckers left the scene it would be time for the Arab, JW, Jorge, and the rest to slice open the cabbages and repackage the coke. Move it, restow it. Rake in the dough.
What Abdul didn’t know, of course, was that JW was the biggest double-crosser of the decade. He’d informed Nenad of every single part of the plan. According to their agreement, Nenad would be armed, would take control as best he could, maybe tie people up, including JW, and boost the goods. It would be smooth and easy.
Abdulkarim’s time as a player was over.
And no one could blame JW.
It was brilliant.
That morning, Abdul’d held an executive briefing meeting. Gave orders like some sort of drill sergeant. As if he’d ever been in the service. JW, Jorge, Fahdi, Petter were riled up, ready, and, above all, potential cocaine millionaires.
The Arab went over the rules. New prepaid cards in new cell phones were a given. As soon as the goods’d been unloaded, the phones and the cards would be destroyed and Abdulkarim would distribute new phones. They all had to wear gloves-the traditional way of avoiding fingerprints. Fahdi brought a police radio with him in the car-the easiest way of knowing what the cops knew and, if they knew something, where they were going. They had to wear blue jeans and blue cotton sweaters-not a lot of people knew it, but forensic scientists hated blue cotton fiber. It was practically impossible to pin a person to a garment like that, since it was by far the most common textile residue people left behind. They had ski masks in their pockets: if the brass made a crackdown and you were able to get away, it was best that no one saw your face.
Finally, just as they were leaving-and it came as a bad surprise-Abdulkarim dealt his final card: He had Fahdi distribute weapons to Jorge and JW.
“You need these, boys. Like the dudes in England. We’re just as good. Now it’s for real. If the cocksucking cops try to fuck it up, just go for it.”
JW got a black gun. It gleamed. Felt dangerously beautiful. He sat on Abdulkarim’s couch and weighed it in his hand. A Glock 22. Fahdi showed him how to work it-the safety, the extra trigger safety, and the magazine. Then he demonstrated the right way to hold it, how to take the recoil.
Jorge got a revolver. Was cool about it.
JW felt torn-a mix of terror and delight.
Jorge was calm. He had dark circles under his eyes and whined about having slept like shit. His hair was straighter than usual. JW thought, Did he forget to use the Afro curler?
They were parked outside the gate by the fence at Arlanda’s freight terminal. Waiting for the trucks. JW in the driver’s seat and Jorge next to him. The Chilean stared out the window.
The car they sat in smelled new.
After ten minutes, Jorge turned to JW. He looked strange. Pensive, but tired at the same time.
“JW, you got a sister?”
JW took his time answering. In his mind, the chaotic questions piled up: Why did Jorge ask that? Does he know something about Camilla? Did Sophie tell him something?
JW nodded. “I have a sister. Why?”
Jorge replied, “Nothing. Just wondering. I’ve got a sister too. Paola. Only seen her once since the escape. Heavy. I carry her with me, always.”
JW lost interest. Jorge just wanted to talk. He didn’t seem to know the Camilla story. That his sister was missing, that she’d been with her teacher, who’d given her top grades in exchange for sex. That she’d ridden in a yellow Ferrari with an unknown Yugoslavian. That something’d been seriously fucked up.
Jorge was a solid guy. Lived up to the ghetto myth about the hardcore blatte. At the same time, he was a good person who’d shown real gratitude toward JW for picking him up in the woods.
JW said, “I carry my sister with me, too. I’ve got a picture of her in my wallet.”
Jorge turned to face JW.
He didn’t say anything.
The conversation dried up.
They watched the gate.
JW thought Jorge didn’t just seem tired; he seemed stressed-out, too.
After half an hour, the freight trucks drove out. Two of them, with the text Schenker Vegetables in green lettering on the sides of the containers. They’d already seen several identical cars and had started sweating. No way they could miss the right cars. Imagine if they followed the wrong shipment. Ended up with a ton of cabbage without C. JW and Jorge both had slips of paper with the license plate numbers in their hands-this time it was the right trucks.