Now.
Now was that time.
He could hear the phone ringing in his inner pocket.
“Good afternoon.”
The distorted voice. An unknown number on the display screen.
“You’re going to start a small war for us.”
Piet Hoffmann had just turned off the lights in his office and turned on the alarm, and he was stepping out into the hall when the phone rang. He glanced around quickly. Finding a camera, a controlling eye just a centimeter wide, which could be placed basically anywhere, was as impossible here as on the streets around his house in Enskede. He hurried to the stairs. Was that fucking voice sitting somewhere studying him on a computer screen? Were they across the street in some window? Were they hiding inside a parked car? Was he being watched this whole time and didn’t know it?
“Mmm. You said that yesterday. Start a war? What the hell does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. And you’re going to do it on your own. With a weapon called a FN BRG-15.”
An already bizarre conversation was now even more so.
He knew most of what there was to know about weapons. It was still part of his profession. But this? The FN BRG-15? He’d only ever heard rumors about it. Because it didn’t exist. Had never been manufactured.
“War? FN BRG-15? Is this a joke? Has this whole fucking week been a practical joke? All your typewritten letters and your little toys?”
It was supposed to be the most powerful machine gun ever built, designed and manufactured by Fabrique Nationale in Belgium, which already made machine guns for the Swedish defense force and twenty other militaries. So powerful it could knock out an armored vehicle a mile away, slice through steel armor like nothing else. In order to do that, it needed a bigger caliber and a new kind of cartridge. But when it was finally ready to go into production, there were no buyers. Someone had done some pretty rotten market research, or probably none at all. Production stopped before it even started.
“Hand grenades, Hoffmann, are never a joke. A dead child will never laugh again. And what if, maybe, just maybe there’s a lovely new toy waiting in a side pocket of that bright red backpack? What if we let your son carry it around for a couple of days? So many books in the main compartment, what difference would the extra weight make to a little boy. So if you believe us, it’s time to stop asking questions and start listening a lot more carefully.”
He understood what the voice was saying.
What it was really saying.
And all of sudden he felt like he was falling right there in that stairwell.
This was no empty threat.
Rasmus had a new grenade in his backpack. Which he’d carried around with him, into their home, their car, and now into his classroom where he was surrounded by so many other children.
“You fuckers . . .”
“Shhhh . . . what did I just say? Listen. You’re going to initiate a small gang war. You’re going to do it with an FN BRG-15. You can decide which criminal organization you find the most suitable to start with. As long as it has . . . how should I put this . . . significant influence in the underworld. You choose. You knock them out. And then, using your contacts, let it be known which weapon was used in the attack. Then make sure people know where they can get one of their own.”
And then that gruesome distorted voice with its distorted reality hung up, ending the conversation. Piet Hoffmann stood in a stairwell in the center of the city with electronic silence.
Then he started to run.
Down the stairs and out into the traffic and the hysterical honking as he zigzagged across the street toward his car parked on the other side. It had been a long time since he felt this way, an anxiety that was so pitch black. He thought he’d worked through it for good.
Rasmus’s backpack.
He should call Juan and Nic who were already in the area.
But this was a hand grenade, and he wanted to disarm it himself to avoid any chance of an accident.
A quick U-turn in front of a taxi as the driver slammed on the brakes, then he sped down Vasa Street, up onto the Central Bridge, and headed south, all the while forcing his thoughts away from his anguish, away from images he couldn’t bear, while trying his best to focus on the second part of their conversation. Had he heard correctly? Understood right? Did the distorted voice really mention that weapon? Of course he’d heard the rumors. Heard that despite the official version of events, it had gone into production. That there was a buyer who ordered ten thousand, but then backed out. The rumors had circulated down many paths. But in every version there was a buyer who didn’t follow through, and ten thousand guns that disappeared. Now and then, you’d hear that one popped up in various battles during the Yugoslav wars. Other gossip placed them in South America in the hands of drug lords or in Afghanistan with the Taliban. He’d always dismissed it as just talk. But what if they really did exist? Even the much simpler Ksp 58 machine gun that the Swedish military used went for around five thousand euros the last time he checked. And on the black market it would be even more expensive, probably at least seventy-five hundred—and more advanced models probably as much as a cool ten thousand. He didn’t need a calculator to figure out the rest. Ten thousand machine guns with a price of ten thousand euros—one hundred million euros.
At Gullmarsplan, the traffic got heavier, almost slowed to a stop. An accident. Lanes closed. His car was wedged in bumper to bumper with no chance of escape.
He considered getting out of the car and making a run for it. There were only a few kilometers left—it wouldn’t take him long. But he had to calm down. Calm down. Someone wanted him to do something. If they hurt his sons now, they wouldn’t get a goddamn thing out of him. That’s just how the game is played. Push your victim but don’t remove their motivation, push them until they’re bent over and ready to get fucked.
“Hello, this is Rasmus’s father—I’m sorry to bother you in the middle of class time but . . . is he with you?”
Rasmus’s teacher’s name was Marie, and she reminded him a little of Zofia. Same age, same determination, both soft and demanding. She didn’t like it when parents called during class time. This was her and the children’s workplace. She didn’t say it with words exactly as she handed over the phone to his son, but he heard it in there anyway.
“Dad!”
That voice. As far from distorted as you could get. It was sincere, spontaneous, trusting.
“Hey, sweetie pie.”
“We’re writing, Dad.”
Surely Marie and her whole class were listening to his conversation with his son. Or at least to Rasmus’s half of it.
“What are you writing?”
“Letters.”
“That’s great. Letters are a great thing to have in case you need to use them later. Listen . . . Sweetie?”
“Yeah?”
“Where’s your backpack?”
“Why?”
“Please, Rasmus, just answer the question.”
“On my hook.”
“Out in the hallway?”
“You have to hang it there. Otherwise, M . . .”
Hoffmann could see the scene in front of him. How Rasmus looked up, met Marie’s eyes, and realized she wouldn’t like him wasting the class’s time talking about her.
“. . . Mom gets angry.”
Nicely done. Good save.
Hoffmann smiled, grateful for any emotion other than the pitch-black anxiety in his chest.
“Why, Dad?”
“I was just wondering . . . See you soon. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again.”
“Hugo’s not gonna like that.”
Piet Hoffmann kissed his phone twice before saying goodbye to his son and hanging up.
Take out a criminal o
rganization.
He was trapped in a car with his windows rolled down, in thirty-degree heat, and slowly he was starting to understand.
With a weapon that was far more powerful than anything else on the Swedish market.
What the hell this was about.
Then let other criminal organizations know.
What it was they were forcing him to do. What it would lead to.
And make sure they know where they can get more of the same kind.
This was about a new player trying to take over the weapons trade in the criminal underworld of Stockholm. Of Sweden. And they were doing it in the same way it was always done.
Create a need that doesn’t exist.
Change the balance of terror.
Be the only one who’s offering a new product.
He knew what things were like out there. Knew gun violence had increased in Sweden’s largest cities. Knew five times as many people were shot and four times as many killed in this country compared to all the other Nordic countries combined. He knew that in Europe only southern Italy was comparable to Sweden when it came to the number of shootings per capita, and grenade attacks here were comparable to the rates in Mexico. Back when he was part of that world, gangsters kept their shootings in certain circles, well-planned and for the specific purpose of disrupting a competitor’s activities—but these days shootings were more likely to be the work of very young men with very bad impulse control. And these days the number of guns in circulation was constantly rising, and guns were no longer seen as disposable after one use. Once they were smuggled here, they stayed here, no longer dumped after a shooting.
And besides, most organizations worthy of the name criminal had long since made arrangements with their gun suppliers. They had their own smuggling channels—there was no urgent need for new actors in an already functioning and saturated market.
So.
That’s where he came in.
Piet Hoffmann, for the sake of a still nameless someone, had to create a need that didn’t exist, make sure the already well-armed wanted more powerful guns.
Piet Hoffmann would alter, maybe even destroy, the balance of terror by creating a new predator with no natural enemy, therefore forcing everyone else to buy the weapons they believed everyone else was buying.
Who?
What organization was trying to enter the illegal gun trade?
And why didn’t they take care of this themselves? Why pull him into it—an outsider who everyone knew had already gone straight?
Two ambulances and a tow truck later and traffic finally started to inch forward. In that slow and confusing way of commuters, ten meters at a time. Until he finally reached an off ramp and could exit the chaos of the highway.
He parked with a wheel up on the sidewalk in the zone intended for school taxis. It wasn’t pretty but it would have to do. He started to run across the schoolyard, but soon slowed—he had to calm down—and he started to walk with long, firm strides toward the white building where the lower grades had their classrooms. As soon as he stepped inside he realized that he’d never been here during the daytime. The PTO meetings and parent-teacher conferences that he’d been to were all held in the evening when the building was empty of children. As he walked through the hallway, he noticed how absence had been replaced by presence, dullness by energy, silence by all those voices leaking through closed doors. He passed three classrooms and stopped in the corridor near the fourth. He saw a long line of hooks bearing the bags and backpacks of twenty-four pupils who were spending their afternoon learning to write letters that might come in handy some day. And above each hook stood a small rectangular sign, made by the students themselves and then laminated. RASMUS in handwriting that Hoffmann knew well, and it made him smile. And next to the name—a drawing of a blue crocodile with glasses and a top hat. Or at least that’s what Hoffmann thought it was. A crocodile with its mouth wide open, showing off sharp green teeth. Hoffmann snuck over to the door and peered through its round window. Marie was walking around the classroom with her back to him while her students sat at their desks writing in a concentrated way. She was able to get her two dozen eight-year-olds to simultaneously and throughout a long lesson do what he found so impossible to do with just one eight-year-old—make them focus for more than two minutes in a row.
The glaring red backpack was hanging exactly where it should be, beneath the crocodile in the top hat. A stab in his chest. Rage. Fear. If that voice really had done what it claimed, there was a deadly weapon lying inside. And if it was triggered in the vicinity of twenty-four children, it would take their lives.
He coaxed up the Velcro straps that kept the opening of the backpack together and folded up the flap. Five books. Some math homework. A pen case, striped in Manchester United’s red and yellow colors, with happy footballs on its sides. Then the side pocket. And, just as the voice had told him, there it was. Metal, oval, compact. The hand grenade. Masquerading as a toy, with plastic arms and legs and eyes and a big plastic nose above a bushy plastic mustache. Just like last time. And yet not.
Last time was an indeterminate warning, but this was a death threat.
Because this time the fucking voice had left in that explosive heart.
Piet Hoffmann was holding a live hand grenade.
“Dad?”
He spun around. Hugo. With his hands on his hips and eyes that were anything but happy.
“I thought so! I thought that was you out in the schoolyard! What are you doing here? Inside the school? Class isn’t over?”
“Hugo, I . . .”
“First you pick us up and now you’re coming inside! Here!”
Hoffmann closed his left hand around the grenade, slowly moving it behind his back. If he just stood there normally, then Hugo wouldn’t see it.
“And what are you doing here? Don’t you have class?”
“I saw you through the window. And I said I had to go to the bathroom. Answer me, Dad. I asked first!”
The scene was so absurd that for once he couldn’t watch himself from the outside; this was a mental image he had no wish to save. A father. Across from his eldest son. In a school hallway outside his youngest son’s classroom. And in that father’s hand—a live grenade.
“One of your little brother’s schoolbooks. He forgot it at home. You know how Rasmus is, right? Loses everything. So I was bringing it to him. You two got it pretty good, right? Your mom works here, and when she’s gone, your dad stops by if you lose something.”
Hugo dropped his hands from his hips. And his eyes took on another variation of unhappy. He had accused his dad, scolded his father, for no reason. Piet Hoffmann felt ashamed letting his son stand there feeling embarrassed because of his white lie.
“I’ll be outside in the car. My usual spot.”
“Dad? Come on!”
“Just a few more days. I promise. See you soon.”
Then he bent forward, looked around in such a way that Hugo knew there were no other students in the hallway, and that no one, absolutely no one, could see what was about to happen—then his dad pulled him close and hugged him, even gave him a quick kiss on his worried forehead.
They slept with the window open. He’d protested when Zofia pushed it up, but had trouble explaining to her why she shouldn’t let in the cool night air after three days of almost Mediterranean heat. He didn’t want to risk any more discussions of what couldn’t be discussed. That they weren’t just sending threats, they were sending death threats to their children. And somehow it was connected to him—to a past he’d promised they’d never have to deal with again.
He lay twisted in their sheet staring into the dim night sky outside, not quite dark but as close as it came in the summer. In the distance he could hear church bells strike three, and he wondered where the wind had carried the ringing from.
Zofia slept quietly beside him,
her hand resting lightly on his shoulder, her legs draped over his knees, her lips just slightly parted like usual. Her sleep was always calm, her breathing regular, no matter where she was or what the circumstances they were in. It was a deep sense of security that he envied and knew he’d never possess. He always slept anxiously, tossing and turning and waking up from the slightest amount of light or sound. Or, quite often, like this night—he didn’t sleep at all.
He kept close to Zofia’s warm skin until the clock bells were struck again, twice, which meant it was three-thirty. And he gave up. It was impossible to rest. His body screamed for sleep, but lost out every time to a mind spinning with unsorted questions.
He caressed her cheek and gently rolled over the edge of the bed so as not to disturb her any more than necessary. The early morning birds had already landed in the apple trees, the great tit with its keen chirp, the blackbirds with their beautiful songs.
Life as it should be.
He stopped for a moment by Luiza, whom they’d recently moved into the tiny room closest to theirs. She was asleep on her back in the crib both Hugo and Rasmus had used, the fingers of one small hand wrapped around one of its posts. Rasmus was snoring in his room, lying on his left side taking deep even breaths, so convinced that no danger could touch him here, just like Zofia, a song that was so different from the blackbirds. Hoffmann closed his window—that he could explain without lying—and then he closed the big ventilation hatch in Hugo’s room. Hugo slept like his father, his sheets wet with sweat, his pillow on the floor, always tossing and turning.
The stairs to the ground floor squeaked a bit less if he kept close to the handrail. He avoided Rasmus’s plastic action figures, which were scattered throughout the hall in a pattern that would be impossible to re-create. He turned off the alarm and sat down at the kitchen table with a glass of water. So good when those ice-cold drops found their way.
A newspaper stood open at Zofia’s spot. Sunday’s crossword. Almost completely filled in. Her way of relaxing, always had been. He pulled the paper close and its rustle seemed loud in the silence. She usually liked it when he’d settle down beside her and try to help her solve whatever was left. Tonight that didn’t work. The weave of words didn’t seem to fit together or make any sense. The letters must have ended up somewhere in Rasmus’s workbook.
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