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.
JW slipped into first gear. Slowly rolled after. The trucks drove up the ramp and swung around the terminal, JW right behind them.
The only hole in the plan was the access to Arlanda. Theoretically, the truck drivers could’ve ripped them off in there. They were the only ones allowed on the loading docks within Arlanda’s vicinity. But the risk that they’d have exchanged the goods for worthless crap was minimal. The truckers knew the deal: If they ripped off Abdulkarim and the others, they’d have to pay. According to the Arab, with their lives.
The task was important. Not let the trucks or the drivers out of their sight. Even if the truckers didn’t totally grasp what they were driving, it was too many pounds to take even the most negligible chances.
The trucks stopped for a few seconds by one of the parking lots just outside of Arlanda. Long enough for Jorge to jump out of the car. Check that it was the right guy driving the right truck. If it’d been the wrong guys, they would’ve forced them to get out of the trucks and into the car. Then driven them to Abdulkarim and Fahdi for the full treatment.
Jorge waved. That meant green light-correct guy behind the wheel in each car.
They kept driving.
It was a nice day. Two lonely clouds in a blue sky.
Jorge seemed preoccupied. Was he scared?
JW asked, “What’s up? You stressed-out?”
“No. I’ve been stressed-out a couple of times. Know how that feels. When I ran from Osteraker, almost a mile at record speed, then I was really fucking stressed-out. A sign is that I smell. I smell like stress.”
“Don’t take it personally, J., but you look like shit,” JW said, and laughed. He thought Jorge would grin.
But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “JW, can I take a look at that photo of your sister?”
JW’s thoughts in anarchy again: What the hell does Jorge want? Why all the talk about Camilla?
JW held the wheel with his left hand. Groped in his back pocket with his right. Pulled out the thin wallet in monogrammed leather: Louis Vuitton. In it he had only bills and four plastic cards: Visa, driver’s license, gas card, and a rewards card to an upscale department store.
He handed it over to Jorge and said, “Look under the Visa card.”
Jorge pulled out the card. Under it, in the same slot, was a passport photo.
The Chilean checked out his sister.
JW kept his eyes on the road.
Jorge returned the wallet. JW put it on top of the glove compartment.
“You look alike.”
“I know.”
“She’s pretty.”
Then silence.
The trucks were driving slowly. Abdulkarim’s orders were that under no circumstances were they to speed- the highway to Arlanda was a favorite haunt for the traffic police.
Less than an hour later, they were driving through the southern sections of the city. So far, it’d been smooth sailing.
JW called Abdul. “We’ll be there in forty. The trucks’ve been driving calmly. The drivers are cool. Everything seems to be working.”
“ Abbou. We’ll be there in twenty. See you there, inshallah. ”
Despite their new phones and cards, Abdulkarim’d decided that all numbers, times, and the like would be divided in four. In other words, JW and Jorge were actually ten minutes from Vastberga Cold Storage. Abdulkarim, Fahdi, and the others would be there in five. JW thought it was a bit much. If the police were tapping their calls, they were screwed no matter what. Jorge almost seemed asleep in the passenger seat. JW couldn’t have cared less about him. He fantasized about the future financial fiesta. He set his goal: When he had made twenty mil, he would stop with coke. The delicious part of the calculation: The goal might be reached within a year.
Fourteen minutes’d passed. The trucks backed into the loading docks, spots five and six, by the cold-storage facility. JW parked the car.
He said to Jorge, “This’ll be a chill day. You just be chill, too.”
Jorge didn’t seem to be listening. Was he focused on something else? What the hell was he up to?
They got out of the car and walked over to the freight trucks. The two drivers’d climbed out. JW thanked them and discussed briefly when they could pick up the cars again. Then he paid them. They got three thousand kronor each, cash in hand. A good mood settled. Maybe they thought it was cigarettes, liquor, or other small-time stuff. The risk that they understood that they’d just driven 100 million kronor in cocaine to, at the moment, the most nervous drug pushers on this side of the Atlantic was minimal.
Jorge got out of the car and took a turn around the loading docks. It was his job to scout out the area.
Petter, who’d arrived with Abdulkarim and Fahdi, walked in the opposite direction. He was also scoping out the scene. Made sure everything was straight.
Fahdi emerged from a steel door on loading dock number five.
He nodded to JW. Made eye contact with Jorge in the distance. Meaning: Everything’s been cool here so far.
Abdul opened the container on one of the trucks so that JW could look inside. In the dark he glimpsed a pallet and six rows of boxes.
Passed it. Instead, he groped with his hand in one of the boxes in the pallet behind the first one and picked up a head of cabbage.
Fahdi’s stare was fixed on the cabbage.
JW held it in his left hand.
Pressed his right fist down between the stiff white leaves.
He could feel it distinctly-the plastic baggie.
