She ran up the stairs, passing Bohr’s old office. The door was ajar. She peeked inside. It was like sticking her head through a time warp. The oval table. The bust of Einstein. For a moment she felt overcome with emotion. That surprised her, since she’d been here so many times. She took a deep breath. As if childishly hoping that she might draw into her lungs even a milligram of Bohr’s genius. That was something she could really use right now.
Lunchtime. Not a sound in the corridors. She went into the lecture hall. It looked exactly as it had during Bohr’s day. With the rock-hard wooden benches and the typical blackboard designed like a clever Chinese box, new boards constantly appearing, one behind the other. The lecture hall had been designated and preserved as one of Denmark’s cultural treasures. Photographs taken in the auditorium now hung on the walls, including a famous picture of Bohr sitting with some of the biggest stars in science: Oskar Klein, Lev Davidovich Landau, Wolfgang Pauli, and Werner Heisenberg.
Hannah set her box on a long table and took out the materials, placing everything in front of her. She stared at all the pieces of paper. And at the world map, which seemed to be laughing up at her. You mean you really can’t figure it out? the map seemed to be saying. All you have to do is find the system. The rest will follow.
She could hear the faint sound of traffic outside. She moved all of the case materials aside and focused her attention on the map. She stared at the X’s showing the location of the crime scenes, which apparently had been selected at random. Some on the coasts, others inland. She looked at the dates of the murders. Could she find some kind of pattern in the sequence? The same distance apart? The same . . . She went over to the window. It looked like it was going to snow. The sky was covered with pale gray clouds, and frost had settled on the small spikes that were meant to keep the pigeons away from the window ledge. People were walking past on the street below. An elderly woman was approaching. A bus pulled to a stop and passengers got out. The elderly woman fell on the slippery sidewalk. People immediately gathered to help her up. She smiled her gratitude. She was fine. Hannah stood in the window, a spectator staring at . . . human beings.
People. The myth had to do with human beings. Thirty-six people who were supposed to take care of everyone else. All the rest of us. People—as opposed to what? earth? water? Hannah strode out of the room and went into the secretary’s deserted office to look for a pair of scissors, which she found in a desk drawer. Back in the lecture hall, Hannah was just about to cut into the map when she changed her mind. Instead, she pulled down the big world map at the front of the room, shoved a small bookshelf underneath, and climbed up on top of it. There was no alternative—she needed big continents if there was going to be enough room for all the X’s. As she began cutting down the map, she thought, What am I doing? Here I am, cutting Niels Bohr’s map into pieces. At the same time, she had a feeling that he would approve. Practical details shouldn’t be allowed to stand in the way if you felt that you were on to something.
39
Helligåndskirke—Copenhagen
The door of the church was locked. Niels pounded on the tiny little leaded glass panes. “Rosenberg?” he shouted.
Niels gave up any idea of kicking in the door and concentrated on finding another entrance. He couldn’t get hold of the pastor. Something Rosenberg had said kept going through Niels’s mind: Is this the punishment? The punishment for what? he asked himself as he ran around the side of the church. Another door. It might lead down to the basement. Niels grabbed the handle. This door was locked, too. Then he caught sight of a window that stood partway open. A window high up, above a small ledge. But it was December and bitterly cold. No one would keep a window open.
How had the intruder gotten up there? Several abandoned bicycles were leaning against a tree. Niels grabbed two and set them against the wall of the church. He placed one foot on the saddle, steadied himself, then launched himself upward. He managed to reach the ledge of a window four feet below the open window. He was just able to grab the ledge with the tips of his fingers and pull himself up.
He found a foothold on a brick jutting out of the wall and hoisted himself into a better position. From here it might be doable. He had to press his body against the wall to keep his balance. He could feel blood on his knee. He must have scraped it without noticing. He allowed himself two seconds to catch his breath. Come on, now. Then he used both hands to grab the ledge underneath the open window. His feet dangled in the air. If he fell now, he would hit the bicycles or some bishop’s headstone in the shape of a marble angel. Panic was about to take over. Niels couldn’t pull himself up. He closed his eyes. Tried to muster all his forces for one last attempt. Considered giving up and trying to grab the bars on the other window so he could get down.
“Come on, Niels!” he said out loud.
Using every last ounce of strength, he tried again.
This time he succeeded. He had one arm inside. Strangely enough, it was his free arm that was shaking. If his adversary had really gotten in through this window, it was bad news.
Niels was inside. He assumed he was in the corridors of the old cloister. The ceiling rose in a vault toward the sky. He was aware of the traffic noise outside. And a faint murmuring from the people moving along Strøget. But nothing inside the building.
“Rosenberg!”
He shouted again, adding, “Copenhagen Police!” On the plus side, his shouts would give the pastor hope. Maybe they would enable Rosenberg to hold out longer. But the shouts would also tell the intruder that the police were on the scene.
Niels didn’t switch on the lights. The dark could be both his friend and his enemy. He stepped into a small passageway. From here, steps led up to another hall. A loud bang. Then another. And another. Something hard striking something else hard. The bathroom door? The intruder must be trying to bash in a door.
Niels moved faster, taking the last steps at a run. He entered another corridor. Now he could see the outline of a man—a shape—trying to kick in the bathroom door.
“Stop!” Niels already had his gun out.
The man turned around, and for a second he didn’t move.
“Drop your weapon!” Niels yelled.
The man took off running. It was at this point that Niels was supposed to fire; that was his duty. Before he’d finished the thought, the intruder was gone. Niels ran down the corridor. The bathroom door frame had been smashed. The hinges were about to fall off. Two more minutes and the man would have been inside.
“You came!”
Rosenberg was down on the tile floor. On his knees. He was preparing himself, ready to face whatever the afterlife had to offer. If the intruder had been able to get in, the pastor would not have put up any resistance. That much Niels could see at once. He helped the pastor to his feet. “Are you okay?” Niels caught sight of the broken cell phone lying on the floor.
“I dropped it. I was scared and . . . Where did he go?”
“Stay here. No. Lock yourself in your office.” Niels pointed to the room across the hall.
“Did you see where he went?”
Niels didn’t answer. With a rough hand, he shoved Rosenberg inside his office. “Lock the door and call this number.” Niels handed him a note. “Say, ‘Officer needs backup.’ Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Rosenberg didn’t reply. Standing there, he seemed almost disappointed. Maybe because he’d been robbed of facing the moment for which he’d spent his whole life preparing. Niels grabbed his arm hard. “ ‘Officer needs backup’—do you hear me? That’ll bring the cavalry.”
“Yes. All right.”
Niels took off.
The man could have gone in only one direction. Niels set off in pursuit. Around a corner. A door was ajar. Niels paused. No sound to give anything away. Niels raised his gun and stepped into the room. Nothing. Hymn books. Ledgers. A dusty old computer.
Back out to the hallway. Keep going. Up some stairs. Narrow corridors, an endless number of doors, more
stairs. What the hell was behind all those doors? The sound of a faint bump. Was that Rosenberg? Or . . .
Niels took a deep breath. The man had vanished. Maybe he’d given up and was on his way through the city. At that very instant Niels instinctively put his arm up in front of his face. The knife ripped through his jacket and for a second got caught in the heavy leather. Niels lost his footing. His gun fell out of his hand. Then the man was on him, hitting him hard in the jaw. Niels felt his teeth slam together before he landed on his back with a thud. He tasted blood. He couldn’t tell whether he’d been stabbed. Using his knee, the man pinned Niels’s arm to the floor. Niels flailed his hands, caught hold of a lock of hair, an ear, and yanked. The man screamed and lost his breath. Niels struck again, this time aiming for the man’s head. He hit him in the mouth, splitting his lip and making blood gush out. With a shriek, the man threw himself at Niels. It was the shriek that cost him his momentum. An unnecessary expenditure of energy. Niels grabbed hold of the man’s wrist and twisted, intending to break it. The intruder spun around and kicked backward, and Niels had to let go. They stood and faced each other, panting with exertion. Blood was running into Niels’s eyes as he grabbed his gun from the floor. He was having a hard time seeing. The man just watched. Waiting.
Niels wanted to shout, but he managed only a whisper: “Put down the knife.”
The man shook his head. They stared at each other. Niels recognized him now. Abdul Hadi. The Yemeni terrorist who had slipped into Denmark. He was standing right in front of Niels. With a manic, desperate look in his eyes. Maybe it was because he recognized the intruder that Niels was able to muster the strength to shout, “Put the knife down!”
Nothing happened. Niels knew that it was now he should shoot the man. He raised his gun. Took aim. “Do as I say and drop the knife.”
Abdul Hadi screamed again as he threw himself at Niels, who landed on his side. Hadi looked in surprise at Niels. And at the gun. Niels could see the thoughts racing through the man’s mind. Why didn’t the policeman shoot? Was the gun even loaded? At any rate, it gave Hadi renewed energy as he leaned forward, putting all his weight behind the thrust of his knife. He missed, and at the last second Niels banged his head hard against the Yemeni’s face. Blood was dripping down on Niels from the terrorist’s broken nose. Desperately, Niels wriggled free and turned. Still lying on his back, he kicked upward and felt both of his feet strike Hadi hard in the abdomen and groin. The man collapsed.
Niels was instantly on his feet, though his gun had slid across the floor. Niels kicked Hadi again. Twice. Once in the face. As Hadi lay on the floor, groaning, Niels tried to get out his handcuffs. At the police academy he’d been trained in karate and jiujitsu, but where the hell was all that training when he needed it? Rosenberg must have put in the call several minutes ago. The message “Officer needs backup” would be given highest priority at police headquarters. They should be here by now. Hadi was trying to crawl over to where the gun lay, but Niels beat him to it. He picked up the weapon, turned around, and . . . Hadi was gone.
Niels took off after him. Down the stairs, taking them two at a time. More stairs. Hadi was standing in front of a door, fumbling with the lock. Niels caught up with him. Then they were outside. A couple of café tables. Where the hell was his backup? That was as much as Niels was able to think before he ran into some sort of advertising sign and just about lost his balance. Out onto Strøget where there were throngs of people. But Hadi was the only one running.
40
Niels Bohr Institute—Copenhagen
People, thought Hannah as she carefully cut away the oceans so that only the continents lay on the table side by side. The myth about the thirty-six righteous men is about people. Not water.
She moved away all the seas and stared at the landmasses. It looked like a jigsaw puzzle. The mere thought made it hard for her to breathe. She was reminded of her son, Johannes. And the first time that she and Gustav realized that he was an extraordinarily gifted child. He had put together a jigsaw puzzle meant for adults in under an hour. Seven hundred pieces making up a picture of the Eiffel Tower. He was only four years old. At first they were thrilled, but later on the boy’s brilliance began to cause problems. He seemed sad. He was constantly seeking new challenges that never materialized. Hannah had tried to keep up—to do the opposite of what her own parents had done. They had always wanted her to be normal. They told her not to do her homework so quickly and to stay on the same level with her classmates. That had actually had the opposite effect. Hannah had felt more and more alienated from the world for every day that passed. This feeling was strengthened by the fact that her parents were clearly embarrassed by her intelligence. They wanted her to be like all the other children. They wanted her to be normal.
When Hannah was admitted to the Niels Bohr Institute at the age of seventeen, it was like finally coming home. She could still recall how she felt on that first day when she stepped inside the door. This was where she belonged. That was why Hannah had done everything possible to make sure that Johannes wouldn’t feel abnormal or like an outsider. Everything to ensure that his intellectual gifts wouldn’t isolate him from the rest of the world. But Johannes wasn’t normal. He was sick. And he got worse every day.
Hannah lit a cigarette. Smoking in here was not allowed anymore. If Niels Bohr came back from Mount Olympus, even he wouldn’t be allowed to light his pipe indoors. But that wasn’t important. The only thing that mattered was the jigsaw puzzle of continents that she’d cut out of the map and placed on the table.
“Little Johannes,” she whispered to herself. “It’s about people.”
She’d spent her life dealing with numbers, calculations, light from space. But this had to do with people—people who were part of a specific pattern, not just the usual chaos; people who were part of a bigger plan. That was what appealed to her.
She moved one of the continent pieces so that it was lying in a better position. Human beings. Life. The origins of life. Back to the time when the continents were formed.
41
City Center—Copenhagen
Terrorists are well prepared, thought Niels. That was still one of the points where the intelligence services failed time after time. They underestimated who they were up against. They forgot that the terrorists had spent years preparing to carry out their actions. Why wouldn’t they have thought through all the various scenarios? Why wouldn’t this man fleeing from Niels have considered the possibility that he might be discovered? Of course he had. Of course he’d planned where he would hide.
Niels kept running.
Al-Qaeda sat over there in caves in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, studying Google Earth. They had brought in IT experts who had no trouble outsmarting the experts in the West. That was a known fact. Every time a large-scale terrorist action had been carried out—in Madrid, London, Mumbai, Moscow, New York—the intelligence services had been left asking: How could this happen? It had happened because they were up against someone who was intelligent and well prepared. The events of September 11, 2001, resulted from years of meticulous preparation. Logistically, it was a stroke of genius. The same was true of the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and the massacre at Hatshepsut Temple in Luxor in 1997, which caught the Egyptian authorities completely off guard. The actions were planned down to the smallest detail.
Niels was all too familiar with the latter case. Kathrine had a friend who had visited the temple two days before the attack. It was a horrific bloodbath. Sixty-two tourists were murdered. Most of them were first shot in the legs so they wouldn’t be able to flee, and then, one by one, they were ritually butchered with long knives. The terrorists took their time. The European tourists lay there helplessly, both inside and outside the temple, awaiting their turn. It was thought that the slaughter took at least forty-five minutes. Among the dead was a five-year-old boy. A woman from Switzerland watched as her father was beheaded. No tourists to Egypt, said a note found on the stomach of an
elderly Japanese man. The terrorists had cut out his intestines.
“Watch where you’re going!” a woman shouted angrily at Niels as he brushed past her, making her drop the package she was carrying. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
People have no clue, thought Niels. They went about in their fairy-tale world beneath the pine boughs and garlands, buying Christmas presents. Nowhere else was it as easy for people to forget all about the dangers in the world than in Copenhagen at Christmastime.
The Round Tower. Niels couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw Abdul Hadi turn right and enter the tower. Was the man attempting to hide in the crowds? Niels raced past the ticket booth, ignoring the boy behind the glass who was calling after him. Continued upward. He almost lost his footing on the slippery stone incline. He kept going up the spiral ramp. People protested as Niels barged into them. He was gasping for air. His chest felt like it would burst, and he could feel the lactic acid announcing its presence in his lower calf muscles. Upward. The man in front of him never turned around to look at his pursuer. He just kept on going. Apparently unaffected by the slope. Niels refused to give up. In a moment they would be face-to-face. And the other officers would arrive. They would have been able to follow Niels on their GPS. All the police cell phones could be traced to within a square yard. And then this whole thing would be over.
Shouts and screams. Niels emerged on the viewing platform at the top of the tower. He was holding his gun in his hand. People around him were screaming in panic. Some dropped to the floor.
The Last Good Man Page 19