“But Prague…” he said.
“What about Prague?” Miles wondered.
“The ambassador there is that woman, that old Social Democrat cow, what’s her name? Solveig Svensson.”
“OK…”
“Well, she’s useless, of course, and her number two is that moron from Småland who’s trailed after her for years, used to write all her speeches. But if I remember rightly, the third in command is a good guy. Wessman. Clued up, made of the right stuff, Foreign Office down to his core, an old hand, makes sure things that need doing get done in that embassy. He’s been to dinner several times at Mom and Dad’s. You’ve met him.”
Clued up, the right stuff, Foreign Office…Miles thought. That was how the Ingmarssons talked about their colleagues.
“Can he be trusted?”
“Yes, if you can give him something he wants.”
“What does he want?”
“Money and influence, just like everyone else.”
“In what order?”
“Influence first, then, if that doesn’t work, money.”
“Can we give him both?”
“We?”
“Yes, we,” Miles said firmly. “Is there anyone else I know at that embassy?”
“No, not as far as I know. I don’t think so.”
“I want a job there, at the Swedish embassy in Prague, as soon as possible, under a fake name with a fake CV, mid-level, no diplomatic crap, no public role, just a guy no one really cares about. Get it sorted out with Wessman.”
Joyless laughter from his brother.
“Hang on, Miles, what the fuck do you think—”
Miles interrupted him.
“No, none of that crap, just show me that you’re made of the right stuff, Ian, and that you can pull off something like this.”
Miles could see his little brother in his mind’s eye, sitting there trying not to explode.
“One more thing, Ian,” Miles said.
“What?”
“There’s a woman in intensive care at Södermalm Hospital, Sanna Renberg. Go see her, make sure she’s got everything she needs.”
Miles opened up a bit.
“I really need your help this time.”
Ian heard the change in Miles’s voice and suddenly understood the situation.
“OK, Miles. I’ll see what I can do.”
They ended the call.
Miles lit a cigarette and wound the window down slightly.
Antonia was dead. He took another drag on the cigarette, his hand shaking.
Tommy Jansson…
Miles took his cell phone, wallet, and packet of cigarettes from his jacket, opened the car door, and put them on the ground.
A few deep drags, then he shut the door and revved the engine.
Tommy Jansson…You fucking, fucking bastard.
Miles pressed the pedal to the floor, the Jaguar’s six-cylinder engine roared, the car accelerated hard, and he veered out onto the jetty, the tires clattering over the planks. He was rapidly approaching the end.
The Jaguar flew over the edge, heavy after a moment of sudden weightlessness, and hit the water front first. A cascade of water over the windshield. Miles hit his head on the hard steering wheel. The car was floating but was taking in water fast.
He got the door open, slid out into the cold water, and swam away from the car. It sank behind him, lit up for a moment beneath the water before the water short-circuited the electrics and the car disappeared into the depths.
He emerged from the water, picked up his cell phone, wallet, and cigarettes, and started to walk through the woods toward Jens’s house.
Miles called Ulf, Antonia’s boyfriend, to tell him that Antonia was dead, murdered.
Ulf cried.
A paramedic in a fluorescent jacket was sitting by Sophie’s side. The water-resistant Gore-Tex was wet with rain, sparkling in the light.
There was a muffled high-frequency noise—the ambulance siren. Blasting into the dark night along with a harsh, cold blue light that found its way into the back of the vehicle where Sophie lay. She was strapped onto a gurney, rocking in time with the motion of the ambulance.
A voice somewhere inside the ambulance penetrated her consciousness. The shape of a man sitting on a fold-down seat. Jens.
“What did you say?” she whispered.
He moved closer to her.
“I’m here with you. Try not to worry.”
“Aron,” she whispered. “Aron Geisler stabbed me.”
Jens stroked her cheek with his hand. He hushed her. His eyes looked sad.
Sophie felt the speed of the vehicle again. The ambulance was driving very fast. Unbelievably fast.
She looked down at herself for the first time. Blood on her chest, arms, stomach, blood everywhere. Cold and damp.
“How bad is it?”
The paramedic leaned in front of her face and looked into her eyes.
“Just take it easy, don’t try to talk,” he said in Danish.
Don’t try to talk….
Then she understood. She had said the same thing to countless patients. Don’t try to talk. That’s what you said to patients who were on the way out, to the ones whose life force was draining away uncontrollably.
The vehicle braked hard. The siren started again. This time it seemed louder, pressing in on her consciousness.
A prickling cold embraced her, nausea weighed down by a physical weakness that spread out from her neck. Then a sense of being upside down, weightless. That she was about to topple over the edge of a cliff and lose everything. She couldn’t hold on. The cold got worse, cutting through her entire body. Then shaking, hard and remorselessly.
The paramedic was suddenly standing over her, holding her body to the gurney, trying to hold her still. She looked into his eyes and saw fear.
She heard her own voice cry out “No!” several times. No, she thought, dear God, I can’t die now!
“I bet you a thousand kronor my cock’s bigger than yours, Tommy,” Ove said.
They had stopped to have a piss in a patch of woodland.
“I’m not going to take you up on that,” Tommy muttered, pulling his zipper down.
“No, very sensible,” Ove said. “Because then you’d have lost a thousand kronor. And who wants to lose a grand just because they’ve got a tiny cock?”
“At a guess, no one,” Tommy said.
“Quite right. No one!” Ove said, then started to pee.
“I’ve stopped drinking,” Tommy said.
“Way to go, Captain Jansson! Very sensible for a handsome man like you. You do know that you’re very handsome, don’t you, Tommy?”
“So I’ve been told plenty of times.”
Ove lit up.
“Tommy! You’re joining in the joke! Jesus Christ! This is getting better and better. You and me, Tommy, shit, we have a good time together.”
Ove chuckled, whistled the theme to Rocky, and concentrated on peeing.
Tommy put his right hand inside his jacket, took out the snub-nosed .38 from the hidden pocket, and weighed it in his hand.
“In the winter I usually piss ‘Ove’ in the snow. Big or small letters, joined-up or not.”
Tommy took a firm grip of the revolver, raised his arm, and shot Ove in the cheek. The blast was incredibly loud. Ove’s head shook from the force of the bullet and he fell where he stood. With his pride and joy still hanging out of his fly.
Tommy finished pissing, shook his cock, put it away, then went over to Ove, who was lying on his side staring up at Tommy. He was breathing fast and shallow, with a gaping hole in his cheek. His upper jaw was shattered, loose teeth scattered in his blood-filled mouth.
Tommy Jansson looked at him without saying anything, raised the gun, and emptied the magazine into Negerson, into his crotch, chest, shoulder, neck, and forehead. Six shots in total.
The water in the washbasin turned a grisly pale pink. Aron washed Sophie’s blood from his hands. He had checked into a mo
tel beside the motorway at the Danish-German border.
In the bedroom he opened the bag he had taken with him from Jens’s house, emptied its contents onto the bed, and started to go through everything. It was all about Sophie, and the fact that she had been under surveillance, that the police who had been watching her had been corrupt. All of which he already knew. But it was possible to discern something else now too: that she might have talked to the police, or had at least been in contact with Gunilla Strandberg, who had been hunting Hector. It wasn’t all clear, and she could have been innocent. But there was enough material to give a general impression that Sophie couldn’t be trusted. A good enough impression to make Hector understand, help him let her go.
Aron divided the contents of the bag into two piles. The first was filled with compromising material about Sophie. The next was for everything else.
He put the first pile back in the bag. Then he sat down on the bed and destroyed everything in the second pile, shredding paper, destroying storage devices, tearing up photographs and pictures until they were unrecognizable. Removing every shred of evidence against Hector and his organization that Gunilla Strandberg had committed to paper.
Then he put it all in a plastic bag, tied it up, and threw it in a Dumpster behind the motel restaurant.
“Are you sitting comfortably?” Christian asked.
Albert nodded.
The private plane, a Bombardier Challenger, furnished in beige leather and walnut wood, had room for eight passengers but was carrying only four. Albert, Christian, and, behind them, Ernst and Roland.
“Do you need anything?” Christian went on.
Albert shook his head.
“Are you thirsty?”
“No,” Albert said gruffly.
“Hungry?”
Christian was smiling. Albert looked away.
—
The Challenger cruised sedately at 12,000 meters, carried by the jet stream. Albert ate, read, tried to kill time. Night came and he fell asleep, and drifted off into a dream. He was back in the farmhouse, in the room where he had been held captive. The door was open. Albert stood up from the wheelchair and walked out of the room, on foot. He walked outside, the sun was shining. Then he started to run away from there. His legs were strong, carrying him at high speed, his shoes pounding on the ground. He was on his way home, home to his mom, to his girlfriend and his friends. On his way home to his old life…
He was torn from the dream as the plane touched the ground. Albert tried to figure out where he was as he looked out the window. They had landed somewhere in the darkness to refuel, and took off again. He didn’t go back to sleep, and just sat there in the darkness, alone with his thoughts, which told him it was highly unlikely that he would ever go home again.
Daylight came and the plane sank through the clouds, looped around a city, found the right course, and descended for landing. It was a private airstrip, with a small control tower from a bygone age. The plane landed, braked hard, and taxied toward two waiting silver Cadillac Escalades.
The sun was white gold, and was shining mercilessly; the heat shimmered. It was a long way from home.
“Where are we?” Albert asked.
“Come on, let me help you get out,” Christian said.
—
They drove through open countryside, then into a jungle-like forest. A barrier across the road, an armed guard, then more forest. Snipers among the trees with their barrels trained on the vehicles as they passed. Then the forest opened out to reveal a castle, an animal park, pools, waterfalls, tennis courts.
The car turned and pulled up outside the main entrance.
When Albert’s door opened there was already a wheelchair waiting. Christian lifted him out.
A man came down the steps, a radiant, broad smile on his face. His shirt was loose, his jeans new, his hair black and shiny.
“Christian!” he said. “Welcome! And you too, Albert.”
The man stopped in front of Albert.
“I know your mother. My name is Alfonse Ramirez. My uncle is Don Ignacio; this is his house, and he asked me to say that you are all very welcome here.”
Alfonse studied Albert’s face carefully.
“You’re very similar, you and your mother. You’re lucky.”
He laughed. Then he pointed at Christian to indicate that he should join in. Then, standing on either side of the wheelchair, they carried Albert up the steps and in through the main door.
They brought Albert to a large, open hallway. It was marble and gold, with life-size porcelain animals. Over-the-top. There was a cage up by the ceiling containing a chimpanzee that ran around nervously and shouting. A couple of servants in livery went past, as did some guards. It was like a film. A bad one.
A man walked toward them. He was about fifty-five, black hair, pale skin, poor posture.
“Uncle, this is Christian Hanke and Albert Brinkmann,” Alfonse said.
The chimpanzee screamed again.
Don Ignacio looked at Christian and then at Alfonse.
“What’s this?”
He pointed at Albert.
“This is Albert,” Christian replied.
“A kidnapped child in a wheelchair in my house? Where’s Hector Guzman’s child?”
“We no longer have him,” Christian said.
“I see. So what are we going to do with him?”
“He’s with me, until further notice,” Christian said.
“ ‘Until further notice’?”
The chimpanzee was shrieking and running around its cage. Don Ignacio ignored it, but Christian couldn’t. The animal unsettled him.
“Yes, until further notice,” he said, almost irritably.
“What about you, then, how long are you going to stay? Until further notice?”
“We’ll stay until we know what’s going on with Hector.”
Ignacio gave him a disapproving look.
“You came here to hide?”
“We’re going to get Hector, sooner or later. We just need a bit of time to gather our strength.”
Don Ignacio flared up.
“ ‘Until further notice,’ ‘gather our strength’…What sort of crap is that? You and your father want to get Hector Guzman. That’s what our collaboration is based upon. We helped you to find his son, we helped you with assets and men. We helped you to the point where you actually had Hector in your sights. And even then you managed to mess things up. And now this?”
“Our collaboration goes on until we’re done with Hector; that’s how we see it.”
Don Ignacio opened his eyes exaggeratedly wide.
“That’s how you see it?”
He turned toward Alfonse.
“That’s how they see it, Alfonse.”
Albert was listening to all this. Ignacio’s voice was dripping with sarcasm. The chimpanzee screamed above them.
Christian stared at the floor.
“But that’s not how I see it,” Ignacio said. “And that’s the only thing that matters.”
The chimpanzee was rushing around.
Ignacio held up a hand, and a bodyguard walked over to Christian and indicated that he wanted to search him. Christian held his arms out. The guard found a cell phone and put it in his pocket.
“I’ve done the same to Roland and Ernst,” Ignacio said. “You are my guests, until I decide how things are going to develop. If you try to leave, I will take that as an insult and my men will hunt you through the forest and shoot you in the back. We’ll leave your bodies with the hippopotamuses. They’ll trample and piss on you until you’re beyond all recognition. And then you’ll be thrown to the pigs.”
The bodyguard took hold of Christian’s arm and led him away.
“And what about you, little boy?” Ignacio said. “What happened to you, why are you in a wheelchair?”
Albert looked at Ignacio, then at Alfonse, and then back to Ignacio.
“I was run down by a car,” he said.
There was no tra
ce of sympathy from Don Ignacio.
“When?”
“Last autumn.”
“Are you going to be stuck in it forever?”
“It looks like it,” Albert replied.
“Can you manage?”
“Yes, most of the time,” Albert replied.
Don Ignacio’s tongue moved around his mouth, a new thought.
“Did they treat you well, the Hankes?”
The questions came thick and fast.
“I’ve got nothing to compare it to,” Albert replied. “I’ve never been kidnapped before.”
Ignacio smiled, as did Alfonse, who intervened.
“Answer Don Ignacio’s question, Albert.”
“No, I can’t say that they did.”
Ignacio grunted something inaudible but wasn’t finished.
“I’ve never liked Germans,” he said.
He seemed to get caught in his thoughts, and one vein on his forehead grew as bitterness bubbled up inside him. Ignacio snapped himself out of it.
“Alfonse, I’m sick of the Hankes, I’m sick of Guzman, sick of the fact that those bastards are incapable of killing each other.”
He sighed irritably.
“See to it that the boy gets some food.”
Then Ignacio Ramirez walked away.
A hotel room. The town of Nice was shimmering outside.
They had been working all day. Angela, Gustave, and a thickset female prosecutor, as well as one of the prosecutor’s assistants.
Angela had given them what she had.
Her story had started in Marbella when she met Eduardo, Hector, and their father, Adalberto. She had realized early on that the family was engaged in illegal activities. She and Eduardo decided to make a life of their own, on their own terms. Over the years they had only sporadic contact with the rest of the family, until Hasani appeared after Hector had been run down in Stockholm. Everything had carried on as usual until, out of nowhere, Eduardo was murdered. She told them how she, the boys, and Hasani had been flown up to Sweden, where they were kept hidden and protected. Then Daphne and Thierry were murdered and they had to take refuge in the apartment on Norr Mälarstrand, until one day they had been forced to flee from there as well, when Hasani told them to go with him and they were driven down through Europe to the French Riviera and Villefranche.
The Other Son Page 31