He knew immediately what it was and what it meant.
Documents that no one should have access to. Papers more dangerous than firearms.
What Piet Hoffmann held in his hand were copies of logbooks and intelligence reports and code names from the Swedish police’s unofficial infiltration program. Documentation that existed in only one copy, locked in a safe in the most secure archive in the Kronoberg Police Station.
It was impossible.
But there it was, lying on his desk.
Tightly written pages from a secret black binder. Details of meetings held in temporarily abandoned apartments in properties undergoing renovation that could be accessed from two different addresses. In the first column, the infiltrator’s code name. Then date and time. Then a summary of the information exchanged between the infiltrator and his or her handler. He didn’t have to read much to see that these pages, the ones he was staring at, were from his handler Erik Wilson, and they were about him, Piet Hoffmann. About his ten years as a secret employee.
Because there was his code name.
Paula.
That’s the only name the police—his employers—knew him by. It was how he remained anonymous while exposing the innermost workings of violent organized crime. In that safe, together with the logbook, there stood a white envelope, which stored the infiltrator’s real name, written on a single piece of paper—sealed by their handler on the first day of a mission with a red lacquer seal. In that pile of documents sitting on his desk, there was also a copy of that piece of paper. The answer to who Paula was.
Even that.
Piet Hoffmann breathed in, out, like always when he was seeking calm.
If the wrong person read this. If the wrong person had access to the infiltrator’s true identity and previous missions, it meant an immediate death sentence. If any criminal network or mafia organization becomes aware of an infiltrator, a snitch, there’s no public trial, only ruthless action.
Death.
It was as simple as that.
“What are you doing, Dad?”
Hoffmann jerked. He hadn’t noticed Rasmus sneaking in behind him, and now leaning over the desk and this dangerous pile of papers.
“What are you doing, Rasmus? In here? Shouldn’t you be watching your show?”
“The episode’s over. And I’m out of soda.”
Hoffmann stood up, carefully pushing his youngest son in front of him across the wooden floor of his office.
“That’s not good. Because I have more work to do.”
“But I can help you.”
“Unfortunately, Rasmus, this is something I have to do on my own. But what do you say about . . . another soda? And another episode?”
“Another soda? Does Mom know?”
“If you want one, it’ll be our secret.”
A new drink, a new episode.
He ruffled Rasmus’s hair, brushed Hugo’s cheek, left them to their fictional worlds for one that hardly seemed real.
Someone had gotten inside a safe that nobody had access to.
Someone had opened a sealed envelope and copied the information inside, and knew who he was.
Someone had taken the secret logbook of disclosures he made during his time as an infiltrator and made a copy of it.
Piet Hoffmann breathed in, breathed out, in, out.
And was just about to put the whole stack back into the padded envelope when he noticed one more sheet all the way at the back, different from the others This wasn’t a copy. No secrets from the past. Just a white piece of paper with two lines typed in its center. A message that contained a few more words this time.
We can kill your children at any time.
We can expose you at any time.
He’d stationed himself on a wooden bench at the top of a small hill that rose shyly above the neighborhood, a hill that must have been forgotten when the rest of the area was flattened out to make parking lots or build the concrete foundations of apartment complexes. From here, he had a perfect view over the schoolyard and the windows of Rasmus’s and Hugo’s classrooms.
Around lunchtime Piet Hoffmann had driven his boys to their elementary school south of the city, where he’d gone many times for parent-teacher conferences over the years, and where Rasmus and Hugo were finishing up their second- and fourth-grade years. It had all gone by so fast. They were so big now. He and Zofia must have grown up quite a bit as well.
He’d dropped them off in front of the school, tried to hug them but had no luck in the chaos of every student arriving simultaneously, and watched them run toward their friends without looking back once. But he didn’t leave them. Nor was he leaving Zofia and Luiza unguarded. He’d placed a discreet call to Juan and Nic last night—two teenagers he’d gotten out of bad spots, and who were completely loyal to him and good with guns—and now they were following Zofia’s every step. Twice in less than a day faceless people had contacted him, threatened him, proved how easy it would be to kill his children.
Just the thought. Like a burning knife. That sliced him open from head to heart, and left nothing but destruction behind.
Someone was watching him, following him.
Who?
Somebody wanted something, a warning.
But why?
He almost screamed it out loud.
Show your face, for fuck’s sake!
Four periods. Soon their school day would be over. So far he hadn’t noticed anything out of place. But he did see the boys during recess: Rasmus and his friends throwing tennis balls at a board with holes cut into it, each one worth a different number of points, and Hugo on the basketball court playing three-on-three. His boys seemed so happy. A part of a context. Zofia had told him as much, how sometimes she could see them from her classroom, and it struck her how normal their lives had become. While they were living on the run, they had only had each other and lacked any form of socialization. But now they were part of a community that was as real as it was normal.
When the bell rang, he drove the short distance to the entrance. The students were trailing across the schoolyard in clumps, talking and laughing loudly and gesturing to each other before they split up. Hugo and Rasmus lingered at the basketball court, unaware that he was watching them. They seemed to think they had all the time in the world, the way only children can. And when they noticed him, they weren’t pleased.
“Again, Dad?”
“Jump in.”
“Seriously? We always walk home. This is embarrassing.”
“Just do as I say, Hugo. Otherwise, you’ll attract even more attention and your friends will notice even more that I’m here.”
His ten-year-old son didn’t seem satisfied by that. But he accepted the logic. He crawled in next to Rasmus in the back seat, hunching down to avoid being seen.
They were about halfway home when the questions started.
“Why, Dad?”
“I can’t tell you that right now.”
“First we have to go to your office. Then you drive us to school. And now you pick us up.”
“That’s just the way it is today, Hugo.”
“And I know you’re lying. Something happened. Something dangerous.”
Last year Hugo had interrupted family breakfast when he understood the danger his father was in, the danger his parents were trying to hide, protect their children from. And it was Hugo who’d refused to even speak to his father after he chose to infiltrate a North African human smuggling ring rather than coming home as he’d promised.
His eldest son. Who knew and felt so much.
Piet Hoffmann pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car.
“Hugo?”
This time he’d have to look at his sons while he lied to them.
“I promise—there’s nothing dangerous. Nothing happened. The only thing you and
Rasmus have to do is not tell your mother that I’m planning to surprise her. That’s the only thing you have to help me with. That’s why I dropped you off and picked you up today.”
“Tell us then. What is it?”
“What?”
“The surprise.”
“I will. When it’s ready. Trust me, Hugo.”
Zofia had put up a parasol on the brownish grass behind their house. Thirty degrees and still climbing. Two proud big brothers hurried over and took turns lifting their little sister out of her stroller, sat down in the shade, and drank a glass of juice with ice cubes in it, then another.
Hoffmann looked around and couldn’t see them. That was good. If he couldn’t figure out where Nic and Juan were keeping watch from right now, then neither could Zofia or the people threatening them. He stretched an arm into the air, a sign to them that he’d take over now, and they could go home, get ready for the next call.
He kissed his wife, always twice, then it was his turn.
To pick up his little girl.
Luiza. Hugo had chosen her name and insisted it be spelled with a z, just like Mom’s. When Piet held her in his arms. Saw that little mouth yawn. Felt those tiny fingers wrapping around one of his own. It was as if she existed, and yet not. As if she were barely real. As if any minute someone might tap him on the shoulder and tell him, You imagined her, you’re holding nothing but air in your arms.
He kissed her on the forehead twice, just like her mother.
Kissed her cheeks, so round and soft.
Brushed her little nose, her forehead, her chin.
“Piet, what is it?”
Zofia was staring at him. But he couldn’t return her gaze.
“Like I told you yesterday. Nothing.”
“Please, Piet. Just stop it. I know you so well—the way you breathe, move. Tell me what’s going on. I need to know so I can prepare myself.”
He didn’t answer. Not there in the garden. Not in the kitchen or in the living room that evening when she tried to catch his eyes without the boys noticing. Not even when they were naked in each other’s arms, making love in that intense way they rarely did these days, and she suddenly interrupted their movements and pulled away.
“I can’t.”
“Zofia, what . . .”
“I can feel there’s something going on. You’re not present. And if you’re not here—then I’m not, either. Talk to me, Piet.”
Not even then.
He’d promised her the truth so many times. He’d even told her about the deaths he was responsible for.
But this—he couldn’t.
And so that’s why they lay on either side of the bed, as far from each other as they could get, doing their best not to let bare skin touch.
And that’s why when they ate breakfast they focused too intently on setting the table and clearing it, why they brushed their teeth in silence, got dressed, made sure that Luiza was fed and changed, nodded discreetly to each other as he left to drive the boys to school, and nodded to each other again when he came back.
And through it all they never spoke until they were forced to.
“Piet?”
He heard Zofia open the creaking door of the basement and shout his name.
“You need to come up.”
He’d just gone down to his workroom and then to the even smaller room inside it and was opening the safe. But he closed it hastily. He knew that voice—serious and worried.
“What is it?”
He hurried up the basement stairs.
“Zofia, it . . . sounds important.”
She was sitting at the kitchen table. A package lay in front of her.
“This came for you.”
Not especially big, not conspicuous in any obvious way. Other than what was written on its upper side.
To Piet Koslow Hoffmann
Just like before.
Typewriter, no return address, contents that could only mean trouble.
That’s why they both glowered at it, in their own ways.
“Did it arrive . . . just now?”
“Yes.”
“But the mail never comes this . . .”
“A courier company. The messenger knocked on the door just as you were headed downstairs.”
She looked at him. Expecting him to tell her, finally.
Now that it was so obvious.
That the reason for the uneasiness of the last twenty-four hours was lying there on the table in front of her.
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Piet, I know you know.”
“I really don’t.”
And that was the truth, at last. He had no idea. Who, what, or why.
The package was left on the kitchen table. Unopened. A symbol of everything he couldn’t say. And they both avoided it, until Zofia and Luiza left for their morning walk, which Juan would follow her on, since Nic was at the school with his brother watching Hugo and Rasmus.
He waited just long enough to be sure they were out of sight.
Then he pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down.
Next to his fury. Next to his fear.
Running his fingers lightly over the brown paper.
He pressed it gently.
Something hard inside. Roughly the size of a cell phone.
He should be careful. Take the package far, far away. Absolutely not open it here, unprotected, in his own home.
He tore open the brown paper.
Ripped through the padding.
It didn’t just feel like a phone, it was one. Wrapped in even more paper with more anonymous lines of text.
You all looked so happy together. Family breakfast.
Your boys seem to like yogurt. But they want it in glasses and not in bowls. A double layer of cheese on their bread. They’ve got nice backpacks, too. Especially Rasmus, that red is so easy to spot. You can really see him. You know now that we can expose you. Kill your family.
And we will, if you don’t immediately do what we ask.
Answer when it rings.
Piet Hoffmann ran out to the hall closet where he kept some thin plastic gloves. He pulled on a pair and hurried back to the kitchen table and the phone.
It rang the moment he lifted it up.
“Good morning.”
A voice changer.
“Can you hear me?”
The voice electronic.
“I’d like you to answer me.”
A man’s voice.
“So—one more time. Do you hear . . .”
At least that’s how it sounded.
“. . . me well enough?”
It could be anybody, with any voice.
“I hear you.”
“Good. I’ll keep it short.”
Perfect Swedish.
“We know who you are and what you’ve done. And we know everything—not just what you were locked up for.”
No noticeable accent or particular dialect.
“We also know how resourceful you are.”
And through it all slow, controlled breathing.
“So we want you to start a small war.”
For as long as he could remember, Piet Hoffmann constructed mental images of whatever reality he found himself in. He kept these images in an internal album that nobody else had access to. Observations about himself in relation to other people. His movements and behaviors in relation to others’ movements and behaviors. A mirror he held up in order to track, plan, be ready. And he had no idea why or how it had begun. It just worked that way for as long as he could remember. It’s who he was, or who he’d been forced to be.
Always, always be one step ahead of anyone else around you, know more than they do, and you’ll know what’s going to happen.
&n
bsp; Never, ever let the bastards get you, if you can get them first.
Didn’t matter if he was just a kid on his way to school or a man on his way to a narcotics transaction. If they do this, I’ll do that. If they say this, I say that. It was about knowing which door would open and what he’d find on the other side. A quality that proved very useful after the Swedish police recruited him to infiltrate the mafia. He survived, and he was the best there was at keeping a step ahead, anticipating his opponent’s next move, and making sure his own move was better.
But now.
Now he knew nothing.
He had no mental images.
No mirror to hold up.
Someone was watching him, studying his family, probably doing so right now, and he had no clue who or why.
Start a small war? What the hell did that even mean?
But he recognized the MO. It reminded him of how he used to threaten people. You drive them toward what you want them to do, but you give them just one piece of information at a time. You keep a tight grip on them while pushing them in the right direction. Until your mark really starts to wonder, starts getting worried and scared, more susceptible. That’s when you deliver your message—tell them what they need to do.
He checked the time. A quarter past two. After the first call, he’d stopped by the safe houses and transitioned clients out of one of his three units, the older couple hiding behind tulle curtains, who dared to testify against a gang—in their place, an emergency installation of a young woman who had been forced to flee her family after getting pregnant with a man of the wrong ethnicity. He’d then driven to his office on Vasa Street and had a meeting with someone from a computer company in Kista, a recurring customer looking to upgrade their external security. Mechanical. That was probably the best description of how he functioned. Sure, he looked like he was smiling and talking and selling, he sounded professional and engaged, but it wasn’t him. Inside he was somewhere else. With Zofia and Luiza. With Rasmus and Hugo. With whoever was threatening them in anonymous letters, who spoke in a distorted voice, and who would soon be coming back to push him further in the direction they wanted.
Knock Knock Page 6