“OK, give me the number.”
Tommy read the number out. It was a little while before Stefan spoke again.
“I’m not getting much. The GPS is switched off.”
“So what have you got?”
“That the phone is probably somewhere in Vasastan. But it’s a big area. I’m localizing it from the towers used to make the last call.”
“You can’t say where it is, then?”
“No, not at the moment. But I’ll keep an eye on it, Tommy, in case the GPS gets switched back on. Then I’ll be able to locate it, down to the nearest meter. I’ll be in touch.”
“OK, thanks, Stefan,” Tommy said.
“Good luck this weekend.”
“With what?” Tommy wondered.
“The races.”
“Sure.”
Leszek was sitting on the roof of an apartment block, taking the pieces of the dismantled rifle out of his bag, fitting them back together, and unfolding the little two-legged support at the end of the barrel. He lay flat on his stomach next to an air vent and tucked the rifle in against his right shoulder. Through the telescopic sight he had a full view of the multistory garage.
To his right, fifty meters away, Hasani was busy putting his own rifle together.
“Two?” The voice in Leszek’s earpiece belonged to Aron.
“Two,” Leszek said into the microphone by his cheek.
“Three?”
“Three,” Hasani replied.
“Start looking,” Aron whispered.
Leszek looked. The garage, cars, nearby buildings, every floor, every window. Every nook and cranny he could reach with the telescopic sight. But there were a lot of blind spots, places he couldn’t see, places where snipers could have been posted.
At the sight of the first flare from a barrel, all three of them were to aim their weapons at that point. But by then it might be too late. And it wasn’t even certain that things were going to turn out like that anyway. The Hankes’ intention could be to take Hector with them….
Leszek didn’t have a clue. Neither did Aron or Hasani. And Hector certainly didn’t.
This was a crazy idea. But Hector had been impossible to talk to as soon as Lothar’s name was mentioned. It was as if he were no longer governed by common sense….
They were traveling in a new Outback, stolen by Jens on a test drive from a Subaru dealer in Jägersro.
Sophie and Lothar got out of the vehicle on the street outside the parking garage. As they walked through the intersection, Sophie glanced over her shoulder and saw Jens and the car disappear.
Sophie had been surprised by how few questions Lothar had when she told him about Hector. Instead, he had asked if he could have some new clothes. So they had gone shopping. It had all happened in silence. A bizarre experience. She had a feeling that she was dressing him for his funeral. That he was sick and was going to die, but that she couldn’t tell him.
Sophie felt terrible when she was around Lothar. She was forced to behave neutrally toward him. But he was still going to be sacrificed. And she had been the person who made that decision. He sought her out occasionally, trying to talk, and had even managed to slip in a joke or two. But she kept her distance—a cold, inhuman distance from an innocent boy who was in an appalling position, having seen his mother murdered, and now left entirely alone to be used in a game he didn’t understand. And Sophie wasn’t helping him. Quite the reverse….
The ground floor of the garage was damp, dark, and full of cars. The elevator that slowly ground its way upward was cramped, made of shiny aluminum.
Her nerves were eating her up from inside. Lothar was nervous as well, but in an entirely different way. He was cheerful, in a restrained way, happy. He was going to see his dad, after all.
He had chosen his new clothes with care. Jeans, sneakers, a striped shirt, a dark-blue V-neck cashmere sweater.
“You look very smart,” she said.
“ ‘Smart’?”
“You look fine, Lothar.”
He gave her a clenched smile. Sophie looked away.
The air was cold and raw when they got out at the open-air top floor of the garage.
Lothar’s face was anxious and tense. He was quiet and introspective now. She stayed close to him, unconsciously protective.
Sophie looked at her watch. It was twenty minutes past the arranged time. There was a rumbling sound beneath them. A car drove up the ramp and out to where they were standing, and found a free space a short distance away. A man got out. He was wearing a jacket, opened the trunk, pulled out a leather briefcase, and walked away. She followed him with her eyes until he disappeared toward the elevator.
“Hello.”
A voice, off to one side behind her.
She turned around. Hector was sitting there, leaning between two parked cars.
She looked him right in the eye. He looked calm, almost amused.
“Hector?” she said.
He was thinner than when she had last seen him, his hair longer, and he was wearing far too few clothes for the climate. In spite of the circumstances she felt happiness bubbling up inside her. A warm giddiness that shouldn’t be there, not now. But she remembered it, recognized the color and shape of a feeling she had only ever shared with Hector. And she imagined she could see something similar in him, the same sort of warmth, the same recognition of something gone but not finished. But there was also indifference and coolness, sorrow, perhaps. But with that as a sort of bedrock for his personality, he also radiated certainty, as if he owned this situation in spite of the fact that he was completely exposed on the roof. But he had come, nonetheless. As if he were happy to be there. As if he had realized more about the nature of life since they last met.
“I think it’s probably safest if you both sit down too,” he said.
They did so, between two cars, just a few meters away from Hector.
“Hello, Sophie,” he said. His voice was rough and deep.
“Hello, Hector,” she replied quietly.
His eyes turned to the boy beside her.
“This is Lothar,” she said.
Hector soaked up the boy’s appearance.
“Hello, Lothar,” he said.
Lothar didn’t answer.
“You know who I am?” Hector went on.
Lothar nodded.
Hector read Lothar’s face, then said, “I’m sorry about everything, about your mother. About the way everything has turned out.”
Lothar looked down.
There was a sudden rise in air pressure. Sophie looked up at the sky; it was bright blue. Then she did as she had been told.
“Stay here, Lothar, and keep down,” she said.
She stood up and started to walk away. Left the two of them to their fate. She steeled herself and didn’t look back.
Lothar’s voice behind her.
“Sophie?”
She speeded up as she crossed the open roof of the garage, toward the elevator they had arrived in.
Then she heard him behind her, and turned around. He was standing up.
“Where are you going?” His voice was uncertain, lost.
“Stay there, Lothar, and sit down! Do as I say!”
She sounded strict, but without conviction.
“Why?”
“Lothar!” Hector said. “Sit down!”
He turned toward his father. Sophie hurried away, her eyes fixed to the floor, with pain in her heart.
A rapid whining sound flew past her, followed by something hard hitting flesh and tissue with a heavy thump.
Hector collapsed and lay flat on the ground. More shots followed, all from guns with silencers, quiet before the bullets hammered into the car that Hector was lying next to.
She took cover behind a parked car.
The shooting stopped. There was silence.
Sophie stared down into the ground as if she was frozen solid there for a moment. Reality came back suddenly. She looked up.
Lothar was ly
ing in the same place, curled up by a car tire. Some ten meters beyond him she could see Hector. He’d been hit. It looked like his left leg, the side of his thigh. Blood was pumping hard from the wound, a lot of blood. She realized he had been hit in an artery, and that he would die unless he…
Then the same sound again, but somehow different. Weapons with silencers, spluttering some distance away. But no more bullets came in their direction. Instead the projectiles were whining above their heads, in the blue sky, passing above them in two different directions.
She looked over at Hector. He was still lying in the same position, now with a pistol in his hand as blood pumped from his thigh.
“You need to bind the wound, stop the bleeding!” she called to him.
Hector pulled his belt from his trousers and fastened it around the top of his thigh.
“Pull as hard as you can,” she said.
More bullets hit the car where Hector was hiding. Then more from a different direction, thudding into the metal, in a regular pattern and in long bursts.
He stayed down, completely still, trapped from two directions, the slightest movement and he’d be hit.
The shooting stopped, leaving a strange silence.
Everyone caught their breath and stayed very still.
“Lothar!” Hector called hoarsely.
“Yes!”
“Are you OK?”
“Yes…”
“Just stay down, and keep still, do you understand?”
“Yes,” Lothar replied.
She looked around cautiously. She couldn’t see where the shots were coming from.
“Sophie?” Hector went on.
“Yes?” she replied.
“How are you?”
“What do you want me to say to that, Hector?”
He said nothing for a moment, then said, “I was thinking of you when I woke up from the coma.”
She looked down at the ground.
“I’ve missed you too, Hector,” she said.
Lothar was in between them, listening, even though he didn’t understand a word of their Swedish.
“What are you doing here, Sophie?” Hector asked.
She just sat there.
“Have you betrayed me?” he went on.
“What does that mean?” was all she could manage to say.
“Have you betrayed me?” he asked again, this time stressing the word me.
“No, Hector,” she replied. “I haven’t betrayed you.”
“What are we doing here?” he asked.
The question hung in the air.
“Our children, Hector,” she replied.
“Albert? Is he OK?”
“I don’t know.”
Hector could hear how helpless she was.
“Where is he?”
A fresh shower of bullets slammed into the car where Hector was sitting. From two directions. Gunmen working together. It stopped abruptly. Then, as before, someone shooting at the gunmen. Once again, there was a muffled exchange of fire above their heads.
Hector curled up as much as he could and seemed to understand his fate. He wasn’t going to get out of there alive.
“Take Lothar and get out of here, now!” he cried.
Then more bullets hit the car, still not reaching Hector. It was unlikely to stay that way, Sophie knew that. The snipers just needed to find the right position.
“Can you get up and run?” she asked Lothar.
A car windshield exploded above her. A bullet flew past from behind, brushing against her hair and thudding into the tarmac.
She froze, unable to move at all.
Aron lay with his sniper’s rifle on the roof of a building on the other side of the multistory garage, opposite Leszek and Hasani. He was higher up than they, had a better view, and was searching the buildings around the garage through his sights.
The man who had shot Hector was hidden in a church tower. Aron told Leszek and Hasani to fire in that direction. They blew him to pieces. But it was too late, Hector was hit, and they had revealed their positions. After that it was almost impossible to find the Hankes’ men. They were intelligently deployed and kept moving, trying to get closer to Hector. The Hankes had the upper hand, and Aron had to change his aim many times, as well as his location. Every second, every shot fired, could mean the difference between life or death.
But now he abandoned his primary task for a while to carry out the second thing he had planned for, without anyone else’s knowledge.
Aron switched off his radio, made himself unreachable. He lay there stretched out on his stomach, his eye glued to the telescopic sight, examining the car behind which Sophie was hiding, and found her head.
He breathed out, held his breath, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle lurched, the car window exploded. He couldn’t see Sophie, didn’t know if he’d hit her. He kept the rifle aimed at the car, waiting for her to show herself.
Aron switched the radio on again. Leszek’s voice in his ear.
“Come in, One, come in, One! Require assistance! Number Three shot. Unable to hold them.”
Aron aimed his sights at the rooftop opposite and saw Leszek disappear from his post. Aron swung the rifle to the left. Through the telescopic sight he could see Hasani lying flat on his stomach beside his rifle, blood everywhere, badly shot up, dead.
“One here. Must have been interference,” Aron said into the microphone.
Leszek’s voice, breathless.
“I’m getting out of here, I’m going to try to reach Hector.”
Aron looked toward the roof of the garage again. He could see firing around Hector’s location. He couldn’t see the gunmen. Quickly he tried to find Sophie. She wasn’t visible anywhere.
A car came driving up the ramp at high speed, a Subaru. Aron looked at the driver through the sights.
Jens Vall.
Sophie was lying down. A car was heading up the ramp fast, its engine revving hard. It stopped, doors opened.
She felt her panic growing. Her stomach clenched. There was a shrill screech as the car reversed at high speed behind her, rounded a corner, hit some parked cars, and dragged them with it. She glanced out quickly.
Jens’s Subaru was heading toward her with its hatchback door open. Sophie didn’t think, just stood up and threw herself into the trunk; the seats were folded down and she rolled forward, hitting her shoulder but without feeling any pain. Jens carried on in reverse, toward Lothar. He did the same as Sophie, and threw himself in.
“Keep going back!” Lothar yelled.
Jens hesitated.
“Do as he says!” Sophie cried.
Shots hit the car.
Jens reversed at high speed toward Hector and crashed into the shot-up wreck. Hector was lying there, curled up.
Lothar lay on his stomach; Sophie held on to his legs and he reached out a hand to his father.
Hector grasped it and pushed off. Lothar dragged him into the car, then screamed something to Jens, who accelerated forward at high speed.
Hector was lying half inside the car as Jens aimed for the downward ramp. Bullets were still slamming into the roof and sides, shattering the windows. Each moment seemed endless.
Jens swerved onto the ramp, got under cover, and kept on going down at high speed.
“Albert?” Sophie shouted to Jens.
“He’s not here. No one is…just shooters.”
Koen de Graaf was dressed as a bicycle courier. He’d been following the drama from his position on the top floor of an office building.
Koen was feeling the after-effects of the smack. He worked well like that. His emotions were contained, the world was soft and manageable. Everything had gone well to start with. Then he had lost control, both of the situation and of his men.
Hector’s men had stayed well away from their boss. Koen had been counting on the exact opposite—that because they knew Hector, and Hector alone, was the target, they’d try to protect him as closely as possible.
Instead Hect
or had stood there alone, with the woman and the boy. One shot seemed to have hit him. But that wasn’t enough.
A car had burst in on the situation. Sucking up Sophie, Lothar, and Hector like a fucking vacuum cleaner.
Koen’s gunmen had opened fire on it, but it had disappeared down the ramp.
Koen scratched his cheek hard, watching developments with deep concentration. When he realized they weren’t going to stop the car, he left the office, took the elevator down, walked out, and went around to the back of the building. His bicycle was parked there. It was pale blue, with drop handlebars and studded tires—very advanced, and very fast.
He zigzagged between the cars, cycled through the middle of a traffic jam, went through red lights, rode on the sidewalk for a while, predicting other people’s behavior. Heroin was made for cyclists….
He had studied in this city. The University Hospital was up ahead. That was Koen’s only chance. He took it.
Jens forced his way through the traffic in the shot-up car. It was too light, too everyday. People were staring at them. He called Mikhail on his phone.
“Meet us at the University Hospital.”
He hung up.
Sophie bound Hector’s wound as well as she could. He was suffering badly, losing a lot of blood, and getting weaker. Lothar was holding his father’s hand.
“Hanke’s people are after us,” Hector said weakly. “Call Aron.”
“No, not now.”
Hector didn’t understand.
“We’ll drop you at the hospital, then we’ll call Aron.”
Now he understood.
“Lothar comes with me,” he said, trying to sound stern.
“Lothar comes with me,” she said.
He looked at his son, and was at the point of asking him in English.
Sophie noticed.
“No, Hector. That’s not going to happen, don’t make it any worse than it already is.”
The car stopped abruptly in front of the main entrance to the hospital. The back door opened. Mikhail was standing there, big and solid. He took hold of Hector, who whimpered and flashed an icy look at Sophie.
“He’s my son! Do you understand what I’m saying?” Hector said.
She looked away. Mikhail pulled Hector out, and he let out a scream of pain. Mikhail put him down on the ground.
The Other Son Page 27