by Kepler, Lars
Her phone buzzes and she stops, breathes cold air into her lungs, opens her pocket, takes it out and reads:
Järfalla ice hall, 3 a.m.
She keeps moving, thinking that she can be at the ice hall in fifteen minutes by car. If she’s wrong, or if for some reason they miss Jurek, she’ll set off there on her own and carry on as if nothing had happened.
When the ground starts to slope downwards she slows her pace even more, treading carefully so as not to make any noise, not to snap any twigs, or send any cascades of stones rolling.
Even though Saga knows where Jennifer is, she still has trouble spotting her. She’s cut some branches to give herself some cover, she’s wearing camouflage gear and a net over her helmet, and is lying on her stomach with her legs wide apart, with the barrel of her rifle sticking through a clump of heather.
Saga approaches at a crouch, and sees that Jennifer has heard her, but she doesn’t take her eye off the night-sight for a second.
It isn’t possible to make out the workers’ barracks in the darkened gravel pit four hundred metres away.
Not even the outline.
Everything is black.
Saga knows there’s a fence in front of the sheer drop to the bottom of the pit, almost fifty metres below the original ground level.
There’s a floodlight on a post maybe two kilometres away, but it’s little more than a white dot against the black sky.
They maintain radio silence until the final order to go ahead or break off.
Saga lies down on her stomach a short distance from Jennifer. She can smell the pine needles and damp earth. She brushes a branch away from her face and takes her image-enhancing binoculars from her rucksack.
They look like any other modern binoculars but pick up ultraviolet light where the human eye would only see darkness.
A micro-channel plate multiplies the electrons that are released by the incoming photons, and recreates a visible image.
Saga looks into the darkness and sees a radiant, emerald-green world. Most of the light captured by the enhancer seems to be coming from the floodlight on the pillar in the distance. But, in the glow of that, the barracks and broken tarmac are now visible.
That was where they started to extract sand on an industrial scale many years ago, and that was where Jurek’s father ended up when he fled to Sweden.
The old workers’ barracks have been abandoned for years. Some are almost intact, but others are in ruins, barely more than foundations now. Almost all the windows are broken, the roofs have collapsed and there are piles of overgrown bricks.
A crow calls in the distance.
Saga scans the target area, following the line of the buildings and scrutinising the weeds and piles of scrap and rubble.
Everything is a luminous green, and looks oddly plastic.
The shadows make the ground look like the surface of water in a pool.
In the forest on the other side she can just make out the other snipers. The lighter circle close to the ground must be the lens of the night-sight, which would fit with Linus’s position.
Jurek hasn’t had time to get out yet, but it won’t be long now.
There are no cars parked nearby, perhaps he’s left it in the industrial estate by the motorway, or possibly in Rotebro. Either way, he’ll have to set off soon if he’s going to get to the ice hall in time.
Saga checks that her pistol is still in its holster, and glances quickly at Jennifer. In the tiny amount of light given off by the night-sight, all she can make out is part of her cheek and one eyebrow.
Saga scans the barracks once again through the night-vision binoculars. She checks it piece by piece: the doors, collapsed walls, piles of bricks. The green world is peculiarly lifeless.
She stops.
There’s a candle burning in one of the windows.
She’s on the point of breaking her silence when she realises what she’s actually looking at. The light from the floodlight is being reflected in a splinter of glass left in an otherwise shattered window.
She needs to pull herself together.
There’s no room for any mistakes.
She checks the last building in the row – the one that’s been almost razed to the ground – before starting again.
It’s so quiet that she can hear when Jennifer swallows.
Saga doesn’t know how the snipers’ night-sights will react to Jurek’s black anorak, if he’s going to be swallowed by the shadows because of the sharp contrast.
That would make it much harder to get a clean hit.
He’s thin, and can move with remarkable speed.
They won’t get many seconds to line up the crosshairs on his chest and squeeze the trigger.
There’s a noise in the forest, like a branch breaking.
Saga looks back into the darkness, suddenly worried about tunnels and other entrances, that Jurek could get out of the quarry through a hidden exit.
Perhaps she’s made a huge mistake. What if she’s ruined the chances of an exchange by being greedy and wanting too much?
Her dad has been broken down by pain and dehydration.
Valeria is probably in an even worse condition – if she’s still alive.
They’ve got ambulances waiting by the Bredden traffic interchange.
There are two helicopters in the air above Kallhäll. They can’t be heard here, but they’re only a minute and a half from the gravel pit.
The moss crunches quietly beneath her as she moves one elbow.
Saga looks at the barracks again, going from door to door, then suddenly pans to one side to look at the entrance from Älvsundavägen. Someone’s dumped rubbish down the slope. The half-overgrown gravel track leads to a wire-mesh fence that’s supposed to stop people entering the more dangerous area. A sign with the name of the security company is lying in the grass. Further away are the rusting remains of a car, with weeds growing through the chassis.
Saga looks back at the barracks again. Everything is frozen in shades of pistachio and seaweed.
Down in the pit are the sifting machines and huge crushers with their conveyor belts, and even further away is the entrance from Norrvikenleden, which is where the office and weighbridge are.
Jurek must be here, she thinks. He locked a huge steel door behind him when he left her dad. It looked like an old bunker, with a sandy cement floor.
Then again, there are more than sixty-five thousand bunkers in Sweden.
He could be anywhere.
What if she’s read too much into her observations? She can’t have done, surely? She’s been through the list hundreds of times, and both Verner and Nathan agreed that the operation was justified.
For some reason Saga finds herself thinking back to last summer, when she and Pellerina found a dead swallow in the garden in Enskede. Pellerina filled the shallow grave with flowers and wild strawberries before gently laying the bird in it.
A torn sheet of plastic is swaying in one of the doorways.
The wind seems to be getting stronger, whistling through the forest behind them.
Suddenly bright light makes the entire landscape seem overexposed, like the glare from a soundless explosion.
64
Saga lowers the binoculars and sees a car that’s turned in from the main road and is now rolling towards the fence. The light from the headlamps sweeps across the old paint tins, empty bottles, pieces of old tyres, a white oven with its door hanging open.
The woman in the passenger seat undoes her seat belt.
The young man says something.
Saga doesn’t understand what they’re doing, it looks like the woman is trying to climb over the driver’s legs. Greasy blonde hair hangs over her face. Holding onto the steering wheel with one hand, she turns round, pulls her dress up over her white backside, and sits astride the man.
This can’t be happening, Saga thinks.
They could ruin the entire operation.
Saga checks the barracks again, sees a darting li
ght from the corner of her eye, turns quickly back to the car and realises that the guy is filming them having sex on his phone.
The door of the third barrack has swung open, possibly because of the wind.
Jennifer is breathing slowly.
The operation will have to be called off soon.
Light fills the landscape again, turning it radiant white. The car reverses out, they’re already finished, the windscreen is misted up.
Not exactly a feature-length film, Saga thinks to herself as she looks at the window of the building where Jurek’s father hanged himself.
Time is running out. They should have seen Jurek by now.
Saga hears Jennifer’s breathing speed up, and quickly scans the target area again, but everything looks quiet.
An old bedstead and some wet cardboard.
There’s a slab of concrete lying on the tarmac. It’s cracked in the middle, and the rusty reinforcement rods are visible in the gap.
The wind has grown stronger, so Jennifer has to adjust the range on her rifle to compensate.
Saga looks at the time.
She can stay for another four minutes before she has to set off for the ice hall.
The likelihood that Jurek is here has shrunk dramatically.
A large bird moves through the treetops above them.
She tries to see anything in the dense green darkness behind the barracks, the image shimmers around the outline of the buildings.
It’s time for her to leave if she’s going to make it to the meeting, she’s aware of that, but she still scans the area again, just as rigorously as before.
Piece by piece, she checks Jurek’s father’s old home. The ragged curtain is swaying in the wind. She’s about to move on to the next building when something catches her attention at the end of the row. She pans across to the building that’s collapsed completely.
Dark green light spreads out across the foundations, the remains of one wall, collapsed tiles, and a fallen roof beam.
Saga holds her breath.
The image flickers, and as it stabilises again she sees movement, close to ground level.
‘The far building,’ Saga says, and hears Jennifer move the barrel of the rifle through the heather.
A thin figure is emerging from underground, step by step by step.
There must be some stairs there.
‘I see him,’ Jennifer says quietly.
The man straightens up and becomes a thin silhouette against the pale green glow from the distant floodlight.
Only when he takes a few steps forward is Saga sure it’s him. The moss-green shimmer surrounds his outline, but she recognises the black anorak and the empty sleeve fluttering in the wind.
‘Fire,’ Saga says over the radio, staring at the flickering image.
He’s heading towards the edge of the forest, and will soon be hidden behind the next building.
They’ve got less than three seconds.
The hood is pulled up, but the anorak remains undone. The check shirt is visible when the wind grabs the loose sleeve.
‘Fire,’ she repeats, as Jennifer fires her rifle.
Saga sees the shot hit, fairly high up his torso, she’s almost certain that the jacketed bullet passed right through his body.
Jurek takes a small step to one side, then carries on.
The echo of the shot bounces off the buildings.
Saga can’t breathe, she almost drops her binoculars. She looks over towards the barracks again with her bare eyes, but everything is dark, there’s nothing in sight.
With shaking hands she raises the binoculars again. Linus fires from the other direction.
Blood flies out behind Jurek.
He stops.
She can see that clearly.
Jennifer fires again, and hits him right in the middle of his chest. He falls sideways like a slaughtered animal, and lies there absolutely still.
‘Target one down, target one down,’ Saga reports to the team leader, and gets to her feet.
She drops the binoculars on the ground and rushes through the edge of the forest and down the slope.
She triggers little avalanches of stones as she goes.
She doesn’t care about the risks, about the Beaver.
As she runs she draws her pistol.
She can’t see him now, but keeps telling herself that he must be dead, he must be dead.
Crouching, she runs along the side of the building, pulls her torch from her belt and switches it on, climbs over an old pallet, then sees the body in the wavering beam.
It’s still there.
Crouching to get under a fallen beam, she stumbles and reaches out for the wall for support, and steps over a sodden mattress.
The rapid response team come running up behind her. Saga can hear the rustle of their equipment, the thud of boots, but doesn’t take her eyes off the body for a moment.
He’s lying by the remains of the foundations, twisted on one side, with blood spattering the heap of bricks.
She suddenly imagines that he lifts his head, that his neck strains and the back of his head lifts off the ground, just for a moment.
Her heart is beating far too fast.
The butt of the pistol is slippery in her sweaty hand.
Joona’s words about Jurek being a child soldier flash through her mind. He doesn’t care about pain, and will do whatever it takes to survive.
A sheet of plastic billows out, blocking her view.
She stops, holds the torch alongside her pistol, tries to find a line of fire, sees the light caught by the plastic, catches sight of him on the ground and fires three shots.
She sees the body jerk with the impact, and feels the recoil linger in her right shoulder.
She moves forward, holding the plastic back with one hand, and tries to blink away the flare of the shots.
Numbness from the shots is fizzing like bubble-bath in her ears.
A pane of glass cracks beneath her right boot.
She reaches the body and keeps the pistol trained on it as she kicks the lifeless body onto its back, and finds herself looking at her dad’s face.
She doesn’t understand.
It isn’t Jurek, it’s her dad lying there, it’s her dad that they’ve shot.
He’s dead, she’s killed him.
The ground lurches and she falls to one knee.
Everything collapses around her.
Saga reaches out her hand, and her fingertips touch his bearded cheek as everything turns black.
65
Saga is sitting motionless on a chair in a treatment room at the Emergency Ward of the Karolinska Institute. She has the blanket from the ambulance round her shoulders.
Nathan Pollock is standing beside her, trying to get her to drink some water from a plastic cup.
Her protective vest and rucksack are back at the gravel pit, but she’s still wearing her camouflage clothing.
Her pistol and holster are hidden by the blanket.
She’s pale and in a cold sweat. Her forehead is dirty and her cheeks streaked with tears. Her lips are as pale as aluminium, her pupils oddly enlarged.
She doesn’t answer any of the doctor’s questions, and doesn’t even seem to notice when he disentangles her arm from the blanket to take her pulse.
Her hand is limp, and there are traces of brown blood under her fingernails.
The hospital works closely with the National Centre for Disaster Psychiatry and the Crisis and Trauma Centre.
The doctor straightens up, takes out his phone, and calls one of the duty psychiatrists.
Saga hears what he says about dissociation and amnesia, but can’t be bothered to protest, there’s no point.
She just needs to think for a bit before she carries on.
The doctor leaves them alone, shutting the door behind him.
Nathan crouches down in front of her and tries to smile at Saga’s frozen features.
‘You heard what he said, you’re a victim, and it’s
perfectly natural to experience feelings of guilt about surviving …’
‘What?’ she mutters.
‘It isn’t your fault, you’re a victim, there was nothing you could have done.’
Saga looks at the floor, and the scratches and marks left by small rubber wheels, and vaguely remembers yelling that it was her fault when they forced her into the ambulance. She was crying and repeating that Jurek was right, that she hadn’t cared if her dad was dead or alive.
‘It was a trap,’ Nathan says gently, trying to catch her unseeing gaze.
Jurek hadn’t made a mistake when he led her to think about the gravel pit. The whole thing had been planned in minute detail. He made sure she saw the sand trickling out of the prosthetic arm.
He probably made up his mind when she tried to reach the pistol hidden in her kitchen. That was when he knew for certain that she wanted to kill him.
And the game changed tone and direction.
Jurek understood precisely how she thought.
He knew what the trap should look like, and how he should lure her into participating in his terrible plan.
It was basically a conjuring trick, an illusion – a check shirt and an anorak.
Her dad’s collarbone and shoulder were broken, and his arm strapped tightly to his back so that the sleeve would hang loose.
Jurek led her dad up the stairs and let him go while he himself left the bunker via a passageway to the pump-house in the edge of the forest. He had dug the tunnel beneath the rubble and ruined buildings.
With the help of tracker dogs, the police were able to reconstruct Jurek’s passage through the forest and along the edge of the gravel pit to the allotments in Smedby.
Saga had slumped to her knees beside her dead father. Time had stretched out into a huge, gaping hole. She was no longer aware of the rapid response team who were searching and securing the barracks. They made their way down the steps, checked the corridors and forced open the steel door inside the shelter.
There was no one there.
No Jurek, no Beaver, no Valeria.
There were no more bunkers, forensics hadn’t missed anything.
The rapid response team had even drilled into the reinforced cement floor of the bunker, but there was nothing but sand beneath it.