“You get one more try. Before I shoot.”
That deep, strange voice.
Hugo felt it stabbing in his stomach and chest.
He understood—this was real. They weren’t just threatening Mom, they were going to kill her. And he didn’t think, he just did it. He shouted at the hole in the ceiling that was also the hole in the floor.
“We’re here!”
As loud as he could.
“Don’t shoot our mom!”
Silence. They’d heard him. They’d been listening. They weren’t going to shoot.
Until it wasn’t quiet anymore.
He jerked at the first shot. He lost his balance and fell down from the iron stand on the second shot. Then he screamed, and Luiza screamed, awake now.
Zofia had kept her promise to herself. She had protected her children. And she didn’t close her eyes when the shots went off.
In the midst of everything she imagined Hugo’s voice. Imagined he was screaming, revealing where they hid.
As if death were playing a joke on her.
It took a while for her to realize it wasn’t the man with the predator eyes who was shooting. Because he was the one who fell. And after him, the other man landed on top of him, his equally masked colleague.
They were the ones death was playing with.
Blood was still flowing from her forehead as she raised herself up. She wasn’t the only person here. Not the only one alive. There was someone else in the room, she sensed someone breathing, just behind her.
A woman. Young. She held her weapon so confidently, a gun that looked like the ones the Swedish police used.
“Where are your children?”
The woman’s voice was just as confident. Warm and safe. As if she hadn’t just shot two people.
“In the closet. Are you with the police?”
The young woman looked into the empty closet, then at Zofia, then back at the closet.
“Yes. I’m with the police. But I think . . . you must be in shock. Surely you see they’re not in here. But I can hear a small child crying, somewhere. Please try to remember where you saw them last?”
“If you lift the floor of the closet. Underneath it. In the basement. An air raid shelter.”
The young policewoman kneeled down as she searched across the square board, while Zofia stayed on the bedroom floor, her legs didn’t really want to follow her up.
“What’s your name?”
“Under it, you said?”
“Who do you work with?”
She was beautiful, Zofia hadn’t noticed at first glance, but she turned to the side in the closet and her profile emerged. Her face was finely drawn, her hair dark and shiny, and her eyes seemed intelligent, full of experience even though she was so young.
“Sorry, I just wanted to know if your kids were okay. My name is Amelia, and I’m doing my training period for six months with a detective superintendent named Ewert Grens, and being supervised by another police officer named Mariana Hermansson. Answer me now—this bottom part, does it lift as well? Are you sure about that?”
“I just saw it. My son pulled it up from the top right corner.”
The policewoman whose name was Amelia found what she was looking for. She pulled on the knob and the hatch went straight up. She stared down into a hole and caught a glimpse of three children.
“Hello . . . everything is okay up here. There’s no danger anymore. I’m a police officer, and I’m helping your mom. Do you know how I can get down to you? Is there any other way besides through the hole?”
A boy who looked to be about nine, ten years old answered.
“I’m Hugo. You can go out into the stairwell and down to the basement and all the way until you reach a metal door with two wheels that you have to spin. We’re in there. I’m here and my little brother Rasmus and my little sister Luiza. And now I want to know . . . is Mom okay?”
“I’m fine, honey!”
Zofia had heard his question, and it felt so good to shout out an answer, as if she were following her own voice all the way to her three wonderful children.
“Good. Then I’ll come down to you while your mom waits up here.”
Amelia winked at Hugo as she left the closet, and Hugo winked back. She went out into the stairwell as he told her to, but didn’t go directly to the basement. She had another errand first, which involved two cars.
In her own car—still unlocked, she’d only had seconds—a folder lay on the passenger seat. She grabbed it and headed over to a black BMW parked across the street. The car of the masked men. She opened it with the key she took from Zaravic’s jacket, while Zofia Hoffmann was still lying there unaware of what happened. Now she placed the folder on the passenger seat of his car. As she headed back toward the building and the basement where the children were, she wondered how long it would take before Ewert Grens, Mariana Hermansson, and Sven Sundkvist arrived in one of their police cars with sirens blaring and lights flashing. And which version of events she would give them—because the truth was the only story that couldn’t be told.
PART
8
The truth is that I was supposed to die.
Die for real this time—I had no cupboard to hide in.
I even heard the gun fire.
We’d been driving to the airport through the densest darkness, along the most winding roads, and our car was stopped by the brightest headlights, and a dark silhouette had approached us.
Why are you calling yourself Lilaj?
Lorik pointed a gun through the car window and used a voice I didn’t recognize.
Answer me—why!
I tried to hide myself and for the first time wished I was just Hannah Ohlsson.
Because he . . .
My aunt was trembling with fear, for my sake, I saw the gun was pointed at me and knew he was going to shoot.
. . . was my father.
And then.
Then the same thing happened that just happened here.
It wasn’t Zofia Hoffmann who was shot—it was Zaravic who fell onto the bedroom floor. It wasn’t me who was shot—it was Lorik who fell into the window and hung there with his upper body halfway inside the car, looking at me, surprised.
Aunt Vesa shook even more afterward.
She’d shot straight through the car’s metal body. My aunt, who had never killed before, didn’t even like guns, but still had one with her that night that her brother had given her, my father, and she had the presence of mind to pull it out of her left jacket pocket and angle it upward while Lorik was screaming at me.
I didn’t know it then, but that was surely when all of this really started.
Aunt Vesa’s shot was like my starting shot.
All those feelings and thoughts. Those tiny fragments of memory that would never fuse together suddenly did.
My aunt’s gunshot connected me to those very first gunshots, which up until that moment I’d lived alone with every day. The nightmares of a little girl. Who became a teenager who realized those were no nightmares, they might have happened, they might be real—there might have been a mother, a father, a big brother, a big sister, and the sound of gunshots as they disappeared.
But I never went totally under. That’s how love works. Those who took care of me, Thomas and Anette, they loved me, gave me security.
Until even that wasn’t enough.
When he fell down from the balcony.
I hadn’t planned it. I was fourteen years old, and my boyfriend took it too far, and neither he nor I could understand where my rage, strength, and brutality came from. And since I didn’t know myself, I couldn’t explain it when the police asked me their questions.
Other things had happened before. Not like that, like on the balcony, but now and then I did hit back. A little harder. If someone hurt or threatened
me or got too close. Friends and classmates knew it. But I never understood why that spontaneous rage would come to life or where it went afterward.
I remember that feeling as he lay three floors below and the party kept going as if nothing had happened. One moment there’s a person with thoughts and a life, then nothing. For the first time, the nightmares and fragments started to make sense. I started to sense why my sister had stopped crying. What happened after Mom spat in the man’s face. That it was connected to all of my questions, all my images and Albanian words that had suddenly just arrived.
* * *
—
After Zaravic’s car, she headed back to the apartment building, took the stairs down to the basement and a dim hallway, which she followed to its end. This should be it—right around here, one floor up, was the apartment with a hole in the closet floor. And exactly like the boy named Hugo had told her, there was a heavy metal door with two large wheels you had to turn to open. First she stepped into a smaller passage, as if the air raid shelter had a hall, then into its heart. They were sitting there. Together. Hugo, the eldest, holding a little girl in his arms, and his little brother next to him, leaning close.
We three. Against the world.
“Hello, nice to see you again. But this time no ceiling between us.”
The two boys responded simultaneously.
“Hello.”
And then the younger one continued.
“Are you sure?”
“What?”
“That Mom is really okay. We heard gunshots.”
“I promise—your mother is completely fine.”
She was so happy. She’d made it. They were alive. They were still three siblings on their way.
“And she’s waiting for you.”
The youngest boy glanced up at the hole in the ceiling.
“Did you save her?”
“I don’t know if . . .”
“They weren’t the ones who were shooting—it was you. Right?”
She nodded. Barely, but enough.
“Then you did save Mom.”
He got up from his brother’s side, walked over to her, his arms high in the air. His hug was long and tight.
“My name is Rasmus. One time another police officer saved us. Ewert. Do you know him?”
* * *
—
Aunt Vesa’s gunshot and Lorik’s lifeless eyes were the beginning of the answers I’d been seeking all my life.
But also new questions.
Aunt Vesa, why did we have to drive on this road? Why were we in such a hurry? Why were you so scared?
Why did he want to kill me?
We pulled Lorik’s body out of the car and pushed it down into the ditch. There was no time to bury him or cover his body with branches. We couldn’t go back to my aunt’s house. Or to Shkodër. Or the airport. Not even Tirana felt safe. We circled aimlessly on tiny mountain roads, while she made up her mind. We’d go to Pristina, Kosovo, to a man my father knew.
Aunt Vesa seemed relieved, even hopeful.
And promised to answer all my questions before we got there.
Your father, she said as we drove straight into the night with our headlights off, smuggled weapons during the Kosovo War. For him that terrible, violent conflict was positive, even meaningful—unlike for the rest of us, who hated it. It gave him status, he became somebody, he built up his profile in the criminal underworld. Then the war ended—and with it his business and his income.
My aunt stared straight ahead as she spoke, of course she had to concentrate on the narrow and harrowing roads, whose edges were invisible in the dark. But it wasn’t just that. It was as if it were easier for her to get it all out, if she didn’t meet my eyes, everything she’d held so tightly inside her that she never thought she’d share with anyone. And I was thankful for it, because I didn’t want her to see what I was thinking and feeling now that the story I was searching for was finally being told, the one that belonged to me.
Your dad had a few years that weren’t so great. Violence became his new tool when the smuggling business bottomed. Never turned inward, toward me or the family, but outward. Until one day. I remember it so well. He found a golden egg. How I don’t know, he never said. Or where. But he told me about the contents—and that he was the only one who knew. Somewhere along the northern shore of Lake Shkodër, where there are kilometers of almost untouched nature, there was an abandoned rock shelter. Where a completely new and unknown machine gun was stored. Ten thousand of them. Much more powerful than any other machine gun on the market. One side in the civil war, I never knew which, had ordered those weapons, and they were manufactured and delivered—but just as the war ended! A product no one needed, and a customer that didn’t want to take them or pay for them.
My aunt slowed down, two wild rabbits were sitting in the middle of the road, and as we got closer they started running in front of the car, in the shine of the headlights. After a while, at such a low speed, it started to feel awkward to stare straight ahead, so we looked at each other and it felt almost good. She was speaking of a beloved brother, and I was hearing the story of a longed-for father.
Mirza, she said as the rabbits ran out into the dark meadow and we were able to speed up again, he was impatient—status in the criminal world is an addictive drug—and he decided to use his golden egg. The key to making big money in new markets. In Sweden at that time, there was another criminal we grew up with in Shkodër, a man who called himself King Zoltan, who ran all the micro-smuggling routes from here to there. Your father had an idea—his secret weapons stash and Zoltan’s established Balkan route could be merged, together they’d expand and take over even bigger markets when the time was right. I tried to warn him, begged, but your father wasn’t always very good at listening. He moved there, to Sweden—all of you moved there. And I had no idea that a person could feel so lonely. My god, little darling, how I missed you!
My aunt stopped the car and stepped out into the darkness, jumped over the ditch and continued down a small hill. A small river ran there, I could hear it murmuring. She knelt down and rinsed off her face. She must have been tired. Or maybe it was the tension draining out of her. And that’s what continued when she came back, talking, handing over everything to me.
Your father started working for King Zoltan in Sweden; in fact it was Mirza who handled the micro-smuggling, the whole Balkan route. Not big money, five or ten weapons at a time, buy for a hundred dollars each, sell for a thousand dollars, but it was a comfortable, well-to-do living. After a few years, the time was finally right—perfect for taking over the arms trade in several countries using his golden egg. But they were no longer in complete agreement. Zoltan demanded that your father give him all the information about the secret weapons stash, the exact coordinates, before their contract was written as equal partners—he wanted to go there, investigate the place. But Mirza refused to give him more than a few samples, a couple of machine guns every now and then, until everything had been agreed on—the gun stash was his insurance policy. That’s why one day they came to your home and you saw and heard your mother and father and sister and brother be executed. When they left the apartment with your father’s computer, you were still in the closet, and they had what they came for. Or so they thought. False information. Your father had made sure that the directions on his computer weren’t the real ones—he sent them on a wild goose chase after his death. The real directions were hidden elsewhere. Still lie hidden elsewhere.
Aunt Vesa turned to me. Looked at me. It was as if she was trying to crawl into the closet toward me, take my hand, comfort me.
Then you came here, Zana. Showed up out of nowhere. Eleven years later. You started asking questions about the name Lilaj, and the ones who shouldn’t know soon found out—one daughter had survived. A witness. She also had to be killed.
It didn’t turn out
that way. I killed your would-be murderer instead.
And so that’s why we’re sitting here, in my car, in the darkness, driving down back roads, fleeing.
* * *
—
She held one of both of the boys’ hands as they walked out of the air raid shelter and through the dark basement. Rasmus was on one side, Hugo on the other, still with his little sister in his arms, he refused to let go of her.
“Amelia, is that your name?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re really a police officer?”
“Almost. I’m still learning, but I will be soon.”
“And how could you . . . how did you know we . . . ?”
“You have a lot of questions, Rasmus.”
“Yes. And I want to . . .”
“First let’s go see your mom. Then you can ask me more questions.”
Zofia Hoffmann met them in the hall, her arms held wide for a hug as they stepped inside. She’d done her best to wash away the blood on her forehead and face. Don’t worry the kids. When all four were united in a giant hug, they made a vision of love and security, and the person watching felt happy to see it, but also a little sad that she couldn’t share in it.
But after a while Zofia looked up at her and smiled with heartfelt warmth.
“Thank you.”
* * *
—
We drove all night, and as morning came we rolled into the streets of Pristina. Aunt Vesa had managed to get ahold of one of my father’s former smuggling partners, and we were able to hide out in his house temporarily. A good man around the age my father would have been. He had small, sharp eyes that reminded me of a bird, thin gold rings in his ears, and a substantial birthmark on his neck. He spoke so kindly about us, showed pictures of me as an infant on his knee, and one of him and Dad standing in front of a truck while making some weapons delivery, their arms slung proudly around each other’s shoulders.
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