The planned two-month prison operation

The planned two-month prison operation is the time-limited undercover deployment of Piet Hoffmann inside the Swedish prison system. To gain control of the prison drug supply, Hoffmann must enter under a convincing criminal identity, build authority among inmates, and rely on officials to extract him when the agreed period ends. The plan makes time itself part of the bargain: two months is both the operational window and the limit Hoffmann insists must be honored.

Design and Terms

Erik Wilson argues that Paula must continue for at least two more months, warning that the opportunity to disrupt the prison market will otherwise be lost. Göransson decides to convene a meeting at Rosenbad. In a separate discussion about Hoffmann’s entry, the deputy CEO identifies inmates already placed in Aspsås, Hall, and Kumla, noting that they occupy different sections but can communicate. Hoffmann is to be arrested within the week for an offense serious enough to secure a sentence in one of those prisons.

Hoffmann accepts the two-month assignment but makes its endpoint explicit: he does not want an extension and wants a guarantee that he will be taken out at the precise point agreed. The deputy CEO offers reassurance, but Hoffmann repeats the demand for a guarantee. Their exchange gives the operation a clear term without removing its basic imbalance: Hoffmann must depend on the same authorities who control his arrest, sentence, placement, and release.

The staged arrest is designed to move quickly. Hoffmann plans to be caught with three kilograms of amphetamine, questioned, and to plead guilty while claiming that he acted alone. Because the quantity makes the offense a priority, charges can be brought immediately; by accepting the sentence, he expects not to have to wait for it to become final. If events proceed smoothly, he should reach the intended institution within two weeks. Wilson’s screen records the intended effect in two blunt assessments: Hoffmann will be known and dangerous. A long sentence is not merely cover; it is meant to give him the standing required to control the supply.

Entry into Aspsås

Despite having mapped Aspsås Prison from its church tower, studied the bars at its windows, and learned about prisoners and staff in Block G with Wilson’s help, Hoffmann has never been inside its walls before his transfer. He enters under heavy restraints and is taken through the security and registration process, then issued prison clothing and left in a sterile waiting room. The contrast is central to the operation: extensive advance knowledge cannot substitute for the experience of being processed and confined as an inmate.

Ten days pass before he joins the unit. For twenty-three hours each day he is held alone in a five-square-metre cell, without visitors, newspapers, television, or radio. The routine strips away ordinary contact and leaves him to adjust to confinement before he can begin the social work his mission requires. When the unit is due to return from its workshop, library, and classroom, a principal officer gives him a tour. Hoffmann learns practical rules, including where to relieve himself and the precise time for lock-in, while confronting the fact that the cell is now his home.

Building a Prison Identity

Hoffmann prepares his first impression as carefully as his false arrest. He has studied photographs and backgrounds of the other fifteen prisoners and chooses a seat in the television corner from which he can see each arrival. More importantly, each returning inmate will see him already settled in Cell 4. He occupies another man’s favored chair, takes marked cards, and begins solitaire at someone else’s table without asking permission. These gestures present him as someone who will not hide or wait to be approved; they make visibility and apparent confidence part of his criminal persona.

Two men matter especially: Stefan Lygas and Karol Tomasz Penderecki, members of Wojtek serving long sentences at Aspsås. They are Hoffmann’s helpers in eliminating competition and taking over the drug market, but they would also be his executioners if they discovered that he was Paula. Their support is therefore both an operational asset and a source of danger. They have prepared the ground by discussing Hoffmann’s arrival and circulating information about his offense, associates, and standing with an Eastern European criminal organization. Through Stefan’s lawyer, they obtain copies of police and prison records, criminal-intelligence material, and Hoffmann’s latest judgment.

At supper, two older prisoners challenge Hoffmann to produce his papers. Stefan and Karol Tomasz rise to intervene, but Hoffmann signals them to wait and allows the questioning to continue. He understands that the encounter is a test of standing, shaped by the prisoners’ shared hostility toward sexual offenders, and refuses to appear dependent on his allies. His response to one man’s proximity turns the challenge away from paperwork and toward personal boundaries. The episode shows how his position must be established through the unit’s informal rules as well as through the criminal history constructed for him.

Time, Exposure, and the Operation’s Limits

The operation’s progress is measured in small routines and brief periods of vulnerability. On a Wednesday morning, Hoffmann checks the pillow beneath the covers, the chair at the threshold, and a sock placed between the door and its frame. These arrangements are his protection during the short interval when an attacker might act beyond the guards’ view. He watches the minutes until breakfast and the unit’s return to ordinary movement, but the details also register how little control a prisoner has over the conditions of his safety.

Hoffmann’s first major move against the prison market is to fell the three principal dealers with forty-two grams of manufactured amphetamine at 30 percent purity. Reports reach Warsaw and the deputy CEO, who celebrate the operation’s next stage. The sequence ties the prison-level seizure of power to the wider organization directing the plan: the drug itself becomes evidence of progress, and Hoffmann’s actions are assessed from outside the prison even as he bears the immediate risks inside it.

That progress does not make the two-month timetable secure. When Hoffmann fears exposure, he demands transfer to voluntary isolation, and a ten-person prison riot squad escorts him from Block G to Block C. Isolation changes his surroundings but does not end the danger; it is a controlled refuge within the same institution. There, he realizes that one of four people he had regarded as protection and a possible route to escape has burned him. The planned duration thus remains an intention, not a guaranteed outcome: the prison’s divisions, alliances, and channels of communication continually reshape the conditions under which Hoffmann can survive and operate.