Karol couldn’t, or maybe lacked the skill to, bring the Ferrari out of this desperate maneuver, and it went into a crazy spin; his attempts to counter it only made it spin the other way. Once he’d finally managed to calm it down and glanced in the mirror, the three ATVs’ headlights were sitting on his bumper, close enough for him to hear the sound of their engines, despite the roaring Ferrari.
“Go left,” said Lisa, her eyes fixed on the GPS. “Let’s go into the sea; there are lots of small islands there. Strong light. Get me?”
“Right,” muttered Karol. “We’ll lose them in the asteroid belt. They’d be crazy to follow us, wouldn’t they?” He smiled at Zofia, but she was terrified, her eyes wide open.
He accelerated, instantly leaving their pursuers behind, but he knew the strategy would only work until the next skid. Every time he had a struggle on the ice, the stable ATVs, adapted for winter conditions, would catch up in a flash.
“Is it far?” he asked Lisa, who was staring at the satellite map.
For a second he lost control of the steering wheel, then quickly regained it, but the three headlights appeared again right behind them. Gunfire rattled from the left. Karol cringed, but none of the bullets hit their mark. He sped up and raced clear of them again. No, this game couldn’t last much longer.
“Now,” said Lisa.
For a split second he switched on the high beams, squinting. He understood her idea. It was impossible to use the full lights for longer than the blink of an eye, because the harsh light reflected off the snowflakes, burning holes in the retina. But for that short burst he could detect the obstacles hiding ahead in the dark.
He put them on again. Counted to three. And again. On the left-hand side an islet flashed by, protruding from the ice. Too far off.
One, two, three. And again. Nothing.
One, two, three. And again. There.
Some three hundred yards ahead loomed a boulder protruding from the rock. Gently he turned left, then right again, driving around the islet as if it were an obstacle lying in the road. So now it was smack in the middle between the Ferrari and the ATVs, riding in line formation.
Karol was watching the headlights of the approaching ATVs in the rearview mirror when one of them hit the rock. At first it looked as if it had vanished, because the light simply went out—only to reappear a few yards above the ground. The vehicle must have shot off the sloping rock, and it flew vertically into the air, gradually rotating, carving a twisting cone of light into the snow like an insane lighthouse. It soon reached its peak and plummeted, smashing through the ice with a loud crack.
The other two riders didn’t stop or even slow down.
“They won’t get caught like that a second time,” said Anatol. “Let’s try some conventional methods.”
Anatol pulled the pistol from his jacket pocket and opened the car window. Along with some ice-cold air and a cloud of snow, a whistle of wind and the roar of three engines forced their way inside; the Ferrari’s was low and gurgling, the ATVs’ shriller.
“Let them ride up closer. Heads down, girls.”
Karol didn’t have to do much to let them catch up. They drove out of the “asteroid belt” and found themselves almost on the open sea, where a powerful wind was blowing the snow away; in the headlights they could see a dark sheet of ice disappearing into the black night. Though it was equipped with good winter tires, things were getting worse. The engine whined, and the speedometer showed 155 miles per hour, though that wasn’t the speed they were going, but the speed the wheels were turning. It was a big waste of power—in reality they were going about eighty-five or ninety. Too slow.
“All right, Mr. Rally Driver!” cried Anatol over the wind. “Turn sideways on them so I can take them out.”
Karol downshifted, turned the steering wheel to the right, gently stepped on the gas to lose traction, and turned the steering wheel back in the opposite direction, sending the car into a nice sideways slide.
“Got it!” he shouted. He’d never managed a drift like that before.
The perfect maneuver presented Anatol with a clear shot at an ATV rider. His pistol coughed three times, throwing the rider back. The driverless ATV turned violently and vanished in the dark. Anatol was about to take aim at the other one when suddenly the Ferrari jumped on the uneven surface of the ice. Anatol hit the window frame and dropped the pistol onto the ice because of the injury he’d suffered in the Tatras. He screamed in pain.
Then a burst of gunfire from the remaining attacker shattered the rear window.
Things were looking very bad.
11
Stephane Breitwieser had never thought of himself as being from East Germany. Yes, he was born there, raised on the island of Rügen, also in East Germany, went to school there, and was convinced that every green crossing light in the world shows a little man in a jaunty hat. Stephane went to technical college in East Berlin. They had simply called it Berlin—it was only on the other side of the wall that they added the adjective east. And not just for Berlin but for everything beyond the Elbe River, the word east had ceased to be a neutral term for a point of the compass. It had become a synonym for shame, poverty, being potato faced, having potato style and a mustache combined with moronic bangs—in those days everyone had them. If you wanted to offend someone in Germany or express infinite contempt, you called him an “Ossi,” or “Easterner.”
But when, a month before his twentieth wedding anniversary, Stephane Breitwieser stood in the doorway of his favorite restaurant in Sassnitz, where he always reserved a table to mark a special occasion, he felt like an East German. A poor, complex-ridden, boring, deeply unimaginative Ossi.
He decided that this time was going to be different. This time their anniversary was going to be romantic, unusual, fabulous—they would renew their relationship and give themselves something to remember for the next twenty years. Instead of dinner at the same old restaurant, they’d go on a winter cruise. Without the children, without their friends, just the two of them, alone in a luxury cabin. The gentle swaying of the ship, a bottle of champagne, and wonderful sex with a view of the ice-cold sea.
And now here he was, gazing proudly at his wife, Anne-Catherine, as she lay on the huge bed, sipping champagne, looking thrilled, and unaware that the show wasn’t yet over.
“This is for you. Happy next twenty years, my darling,” he said, handing her a gift.
The gift was in a long, flat box, as if for a classy fountain pen.
“Oh, Stephane, you’re incredible!” Anne-Catherine sat cross-legged on the bed.
She opened the box and, with a surprised look on her face, extracted several small chrome balls, linked by a black thread. At the end of the thread was a ring-shaped grip.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Those are geisha balls,” he proudly replied.
“Geisha balls?”
“Yes, it’s the latest thing in sex toys; women are going crazy for them. They should write ‘orgasm guaranteed’ on each of the balls. Doesn’t sound too bad after twenty years, does it?”
“Orgasm?” Anne-Catherine was gazing at the swinging balls as if hypnotized. “Meaning . . . ?” She pointed between her legs.
Stephane nodded.
“Just to be clear. You want me to put a string of little steel balls in my vagina?”
“It doesn’t have to be your vagina.”
“Sorry?”
“I was thinking there’d be some space left in your vagina for something else.”
“So you want me to put this thing up my ass?”
“All the women are doing it these days. Then we pull them out, and you’re guaranteed an orgasm.”
Anne-Catherine’s eyes grew wide. “I’ll have an orgasm when you pull a bunch of steel balls out of my ass? Sure.”
Stephane felt hurt and ashamed. He turned, went up to the window, and stared into the darkness.
Seconds later, he turned around with a really weird look on his face.
“Look, I’m not saying no. I guess we can give it a try.”
“It’s not that,” said Stephane in a hollow tone. “I think I’m hallucinating.”
12
After losing the pistol, all they could try to do was escape. With subtle moves, Karol took control whenever the rear of the car slid away. Even if the speedometer was lying because the wheels were skating across the Baltic ice, they were still racing like mad: 155, 165, 185. He pressed the accelerator to the floor, hoping to get a little more out of the car. After all, he had a Ferrari, and the guy chasing him was on . . . what? A four-wheeled bike with a motor, what a joke.
Two hundred. And seconds later 205, with great difficulty now. All twelve cylinders were racing with great force, as if wanting to burst through the hood. Karol concentrated on keeping the car straight and not crashing into any rocks. A microsecond-long glance in the mirror confirmed that the ATV was far behind.
Something creaked ominously beneath them.
“Thin ice close to the sea,” said Lisa. “We can’t go much farther.”
Marvelous, thought Karol. A killer with a machine gun behind us, the Baltic Sea ahead, and I’m fucking around on thin ice bristling with rocks at nearly two hundred and fifteen miles per hour. Simply marvelous. And on top of that I’m hallucinating, he thought.
Because suddenly, out of the snow and darkness, a city emerged. No exaggeration—a city. A wall of houses, or rather solid apartment blocks, several hundred yards wide, windows towering eight stories high, bright lights—in one of the windows he could even see a couple staring in his direction. The man was wearing a suit, the woman a low-cut evening gown.
Compared to the wall of the phantom city rising out of the ice, their Ferrari seemed the size of a Matchbox car, with the small hand of a cruel child pushing it toward destruction.
“A cruise ship! It’s a cruise ship!” screamed Zofia, grabbing his hand, as suddenly the wail of the ship’s siren cut through the howl of the wind and the roar of the engine. “Do something!”
He raced down through the gears, hoping the engine could withstand it, but in these conditions it made no sense to step on the brake. The rev counter arrow sprang to the end of the red field and stuck there. In third, Karol abruptly turned the steering wheel; the car did a 180-degree turn, and they were tossed around inside.
Now they had the ship behind them. And although the wheels were still pushing them forward at a speed of seventy miles an hour, they were still sliding backward, toward the shipping channel, the huge vessel, and the icy waters of the Baltic Sea, which would suck the life out of them in minutes, even if they managed to escape the sinking car.
Traction, please give me a little traction, Karol begged.
And suddenly the wheels got a grip, and the car moved forward.
“Go right!” cried Lisa.
Karol did as she said. He turned right, now moving in the same direction as the ship, and in the mirror saw its lights disappearing in the blizzard and the darkness.
Meanwhile on the left-hand side, a strong new light appeared. A lighthouse.
“That’s Huvudskär!” cried Lisa. “Go! Faster!”
He glanced in the mirror. The ATV’s headlight had made up a considerable distance during their close encounter with the floating hotel. A rattle of gunfire, and a stray bullet entered the gap where the rear window had been, smashing the rearview mirror. Slivers of glass showered onto Karol and Zofia’s knees.
He accelerated, leaving the headlight slightly behind in a cloud of snow.
“When we pass the lighthouse,” said Lisa, “switch off the lights, the car, everything, and go left. Got it?”
He nodded, once again focused on keeping the rear of his station wagon in check. He had no idea what Lisa was planning, but after all, she was from here. You had to have some faith in the natives. Especially when it came to local bars, shortcuts, and madcap chases across the frozen sea.
As soon as they came level with the lighthouse, he gently turned left and switched off the engine. The lights went out, the car went into a skid, and they glided in silence and darkness, as if a black hole were engulfing them. Overhead, the beam of the lighthouse kept breaking through the curtain of snowflakes at regular intervals.
The ATV leaped out of the blizzard before they’d stopped. It was close, too close for Karol’s liking, but the rider raced onward. He must have realized something was wrong, because he soon slowed down.
“He’ll find us,” whispered Zofia, with a note of hysteria in her voice.
“No, he won’t,” replied Lisa. “House of light.”
The ATV suddenly stopped, and the glow cast by its headlight disappeared. And Karol understood what Lisa had meant. The lighthouse was positioned at a point marking a bend in the shipping channel, to help ships navigate through the archipelago. By day, in good visibility, the way in which the black river flowing through the ice turned a corner toward the Swedish capital could probably be seen from afar. In the daytime anyone would have realized he had to turn if he didn’t want to end up in that river. But at night? In a snowstorm?
The last ATV had fallen into the Baltic Sea. Rest in peace, thought Karol, breathing a sigh of relief as he reached for the ignition. Just then the ice under the Ferrari emitted a loud crack.
They all opened their doors and jumped out. Karol wailed, as he banged his bad knee on the ice. He quickly stood and stared at his beloved car. With its doors open and the rear window shattered it looked rather wistful, as if trying to say You didn’t look after me, Karol. I’m a collector’s item, but you treated me like dirt.
“Easy does it,” he said. “I’ll get in and drive slowly toward the island, toward the lighthouse. The ice by the shore is stronger, everything’s going to be OK.”
The end of his sentence was drowned out by loud cracking. Networks of cracks appeared by the wheels.
“That’s nothing; it’s a long way from a few cracks to a hole in the ice.” He went up to the car, and closed all the doors except for the driver’s side. “The main thing is for it to be in motion, the worst thing is standing still. Walk toward the island; we’ll meet there, OK?”
“Karol . . . ,” said Zofia, laying a hand on his arm.
“I know,” he said, raking his wet hair. “Of course I know.”
He leaned forward and switched on the headlights, then slammed the door shut on the driver’s side; the loud clang merged with the cacophony of breaking ice.
“Goodbye, you heap of junk. May the memory of you remind me to love only people.”
He felt Zofia gently squeeze his hand, and he reciprocated.
There was another loud crack as the ice under the hot, heavy engine gave way, and the Ferrari slid into the Baltic Sea, accompanied by a gurgle. For a while the headlights went on shining, giving the scene a fantastical sense of mystery, like something out of Jules Verne.
The moment demanded contemplation, but it was too cold for that. Without a word they began to walk toward the nearby lighthouse to find shelter. After a few paces Anatol stopped.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
He turned and walked toward the spot where they’d last seen the ATV.
The rider hadn’t drowned. He’d managed to swim to the jagged edge of the channel, scramble to the surface, and cover a few dozen yards toward the lighthouse before the cold killed him. And all this in full motorcycle gear, including a helmet.
Casting light with his cell phone, Anatol leaned over the man and raised his visor. The others leaned forward too. The man was about thirty, with prominent cheekbones, dark hair, and a few days’ stubble.
“Is that him?” Anatol asked Zofia.
Zofia shook her head. Her teeth were chattering from the cold.
For no reason, Anatol held his fingers to the man’s neck, checking his pulse. He was shaking, freezing cold like the rest of them, but something was clearly bothering him.
“Just a second,” he said, and undid the ATV rider’s jacket.
The others exchanged confused looks. Anatol didn’t stop at the jacket. He removed the attacker’s helmet, then pulled off his bulletproof vest, turtleneck, and black thermal undershirt. Anatol turned him onto his belly; evidently he hadn’t found what he was looking for, because then he took off the man’s boots, pants, and long johns.
“Have you gone crazy?” asked Karol.
“I have to check on something; it’s just a stupid hunch. Look.”
The attacker had a small tattoo on his calf consisting of some illegible symbols, letters that looked like Gothic script. Zofia tried to decipher the inscription.
“Semper,” she read.
Anatol turned the corpse over so she could inspect the inscription upside down, where the same symbols formed a different word.
“Fidelis,” she said.
“Semper fidelis, always faithful, the motto of the Marines. Now you’ve got a new riddle to solve, eggheads—what’s so special about you that the US sent its commandos to Sweden to rub us out?”
CHAPTER FIVE
The Zoo
1
In the middle of the night, Captain Clifton Patridge was roused from his sleep at the living quarters for the US Sixty-Sixth Military Intelligence Brigade in Wiesbaden and received two pieces of information from Washington, one good and one bad.
The good was that the assistance he’d given Gmitruk and his team in New Rochelle had gone unnoticed. Otherwise they’d have hauled him out of bed, handcuffed him, and dragged him off to the US for interrogation on the next transport plane. But instead they’d woken him up to impart some top secret information, and to ask him to save their bureaucratic butts. As usual.
The bad news was that the leaders of his country had gone totally batshit crazy. The wise man who said that absolute power corrupts absolutely was right. The United States authorities were convinced that they were the masters of the universe, legally exempt, and that was how they were behaving. Only three days ago he’d been sure they couldn’t do anything worse than sending those mercenaries to wipe out civilians from an allied country. He was wrong.
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