“Jens? Can you hear me?”
Now he could see her clearly, and realized that he wasn’t dreaming.
“Sophie?”
A quick smile flickered behind her concern. She helped him sit up, crouching in front of him and reading something in his eyes. He looked back, remembering those eyes, remembering the way she looked, the revelation.
“You’ve got a concussion,” she said.
He looked at her. “What are you doing here?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she replied.
He was finding the whole situation utterly absurd. The door behind them opened and Aron came in, with blood drying on a split eyebrow and bruises on his cheek and around his right eye. He looked focused and stressed at the same time.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Jens stood up unsteadily.
“Get your car, Sophie. We’ll meet you ’round the back,” Aron went on.
Sophie left the room.
“We need your help now, Jens,” Aron said. “They took Hector, I can follow him with the GPS. Have you got anything with you?”
Jens shook his head.
Aron fetched a revolver from a cupboard, a snub-nosed .45. “This is part of clearing the debt.”
Jens took the gun, checked that it was loaded. They hurried out through a rear door and found themselves in a courtyard, walked across it, through another building, and out into the next street. The Land Cruiser came driving up between the buildings at high speed and stopped sharply. Aron opened the passenger door.
“Sophie, stay here for a while. We need to borrow your car.”
“You need me,” she said. “You and Jens will have your hands free if I drive.”
Aron didn’t have time to argue. They jumped in the car, Aron in the front, Jens in the back. The car accelerated away.
“The E4, northbound,” Aron said, staring at the GPS on his phone.
Sophie drove quickly past Norrtull and pulled onto the northern link road, accelerating hard when she hit the highway.
That was when she noticed the same Volvo that she had passed on the road when she left the house. It was a little behind her, in the left-hand lane of the otherwise empty highway. The Volvo got closer in the rearview mirror. Sophie debated with herself. Should she let him follow her … help them rescue Hector … Then what would happen?
The Volvo was getting closer.
Sophie maneuvered the Land Cruiser into the right-hand lane as they approached the exit ramp by Haga Park. When they had almost passed the turn-off she waited till the very last minute before wrenching the wheel to the right and accelerating up the exit ramp. The Volvo was too slow to react and kept going, straight up the highway. She managed to get a glimpse of the man driving, she’d seen him before.
Aron looked up from his GPS.
“What are you doing?”
“Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking, I thought I was in the wrong lane!”
She got up to the junction, but instead of going straight over and down onto the highway again she turned left, toward Solna on the Frösunda link road.
“Sophie?!”
Aron sounded upset.
“Sorry, sorry … shit, I have to turn around!”
She sounded stressed and nervous. Aron stared at her, trying to understand her mistake. She went right around the roundabout and headed back the way they had come, then pulled out onto the highway again with her foot on the floor.
It had played out the way she had hoped, the Volvo had turned off at the next exit, at Frösundavik, turned around, and was coming back down the highway again. She saw it coming toward her on the opposite roadway, on its way back toward the city. She didn’t look at the driver, just increased her speed.
Common sense had been telling her to go home, to not get involved in this, but now common sense seemed to have deserted her. She hadn’t reacted logically and was governed by just one feeling: concern for Hector. Nothing else mattered at all just then.
She caught sight of Jens in the rearview mirror. She had been alarmed when he had popped up out of nowhere. Now he was sitting there, staring out the window. Older, rather larger than she remembered him. Still the same scruffy blond hair, suntanned like a big kid just back from his summer vacation. She recognized the look in his eyes, an irreconcilable mixture of thoughtful and crazy. He looked up, as if he could read her mind, and met her gaze in the mirror. Aron read out directions from the GPS on his phone.
“They’re west of us now, pull off at the next exit.”
Sophie left the highway and they emerged onto a main road that led through a patch of forest, and they went on through the darkness until they came to a gravel track leading into the trees. Sophie turned off the lights and drove on in total darkness.
“Stop.” Aron studied the GPS. “I’ll go. You wait here, keep your phones on.”
Aron screwed a silencer onto his pistol.
“I’ll come with you,” Jens said. “There are two of them.”
“No, you wait here, in case one of them comes this way.”
Aron got out of the car and disappeared quickly into the dark forest.
Jens and Sophie were left sitting there in a silence that seemed to have taken over the whole car. He felt he couldn’t just sit there, and opened the door, taking a few steps into the forest in the direction in which Aron had vanished.
Sophie watched him from behind the wheel.
Mikhail wasn’t happy. Klaus had been too brutal with the Spaniard. The plan had been to go into the restaurant, pick off anyone who happened to be around him, then have a quiet word with Hector Guzman, explaining to him that they had no chance against Hanke’s organization, forcing him to accept the changes that Ralph wanted, and then leaving. If not, they were to shoot him there and then. But Klaus had knocked Hector Guzman out and they couldn’t just sit there waiting for him to come around. And now they were in the middle of the forest, somewhere just west of the highway, you could make out the sound of cars in the distance. Mikhail realized that the situation had changed.
Hector came to after a while. He was sitting on the ground, leaning against the car, beaten up, and he noticed that the top part of the cast on his leg had cracked.
Klaus was standing a few yards away relieving his bladder and quietly whistling Beethoven’s Fifth. Hector looked up at Mikhail, who was standing in front of him.
“Hanke?” he asked, his throat dry.
Mikhail nodded.
“What do you want?”
“They want the cocaine you stole, they want the Paraguay-Rotterdam route, they want the setup. They want you to sign up with them and act as a subsidiary group. And for you to do your best to fit in with their wishes as of now. They also want the name of which one of you torched Christian’s car and girlfriend. And they want to know why you’re getting hold of weapons.”
“That’s a tall order.”
Mikhail didn’t answer.
Hector scrutinized him. “Are you the one who ran me over?”
Mikhail was silent.
“Yes, of course it was you,” Hector went on, fishing a cigarillo out of his breast pocket and putting it in his mouth.
“So you were in Rotterdam as well? Who are you, Hanke’s little brother?”
Mikhail was unconcerned. Hector found a lighter in his trouser pocket, lit the cigarillo, and took a few puffs.
“You seem to be pretty much as stupid as you look. You followed the wrong boxes to Denmark, I’ve heard all about it. The man with the boxes was a passenger, nothing to do with us. Our things were in similar boxes, the boxes the captain wanted all the goods packed in. You got it wrong … again.”
Hector took a few puffs.
“Doesn’t change anything,” Mikhail said. “Give me what I want and we can get out of here.”
Hector shook his head. “Sorry, but you’re offering me the worst deal I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m not offering you anything.”
Hector met Mikhail’s gaze.
“Don’t be stupid now,” Mikhail said.
Hector almost smiled.
“How would you respond to the kind of offer you’ve just made me?” he whispered.
Mikhail didn’t answer, turned to Klaus, asked him in German if they ought to shoot him now.
“I’ve just had a piss here, and they’ll do all that DNA shit.…”
“Doesn’t matter if we shoot him here, then drive somewhere else and burn him and the car there,” Mikhail muttered.
Hector looked down at the ground and stubbed out the cigarillo, which had started to taste bad while he listened to the exchange.
“Why not come over to us, I can offer you twice what you’re getting from Hanke.” Hector turned to Mikhail. “Besides, you must have noticed that everything you’ve tried has gone to hell?”
Mikhail didn’t answer, just nodded to Klaus, who went back to the car, took out the Sig Sauer, slid the bolt action, and went over to Hector, aiming the pistol at his head.
“You still have a choice…,” mumbled Mikhail.
Hector looked up at the big man. The leaves of the trees above him were moving gently.
“Go to hell …,” Hector said in a low voice.
The metallic popping sound that followed was unmistakable. It was the first of a series of three. Louder than in films, but still a popping, clicking sound. Hector heard the sound of bullets coming from somewhere behind him, and saw one of them hit Klaus in the stomach, and the look of astonishment on the man’s face as he put his hand to the entry hole. He dropped the pistol and screamed in a mixture of surprise and pain. At that moment, out of the dark forest, came Aron, holding his pistol in front of him.
“Back away!” he shouted, aiming the weapon at Mikhail. He hurried over and picked up Klaus’s gun from the ground.
“I’ve been shot, for fuck’s sake!” Klaus sobbed.
Aron approached Mikhail and gestured to him to get down on his knees. Mikhail did as he was ordered and Aron kicked him in the throat. The Russian lost the ability to breathe and collapsed, knocked out for a while. Aron checked him over quickly.
He walked over to Hector, holding out his hand. Hector took it and pulled himself up. They looked at the men, then at each other, and Aron asked the unspoken question. Hector thought, then shook his head.
“No, let them go home again with another failure.”
A car engine could be heard through the night. The headlights lit up the forest before they saw the vehicle itself. It appeared over a slight ridge and drove up to them fast, stopping in front of Hector.
Sophie hurried over to him.
“I’m OK,” he said.
She led him back to the car.
Jens was standing beside the Land Cruiser, staring at the pistol hanging in his hand.
“Can you drive?” she asked Jens without waiting for an answer.
He opened the door for her and Hector.
“He’s going to die!” Mikhail shouted.
Sophie stopped and turned toward Mikhail, who was sitting on the ground.
“Is someone hurt?” she asked.
“No, no one’s hurt. Let’s go,” Aron said.
Sophie looked at Hector. He tried to follow Aron’s lie, but it didn’t work.
“Yes, the man on the ground is hurt but his friend will take care of him. Come on, it’ll all be fine, let’s go.”
Sophie let go of Hector and ran over toward Klaus.
“Sophie!”
Aron, Hector, and Jens called after her in chorus. She didn’t listen, and Aron caught up with her, aiming his pistol at Mikhail. Sophie kneeled down beside Klaus. He was clutching his stomach. She began to examine him, and told Mikhail that she wanted his shirt. Mikhail pulled it off and tossed it over to her.
Jens and Hector looked on as Sophie calmly told Klaus to lie on his back, ignoring his screams of pain, then examined his injury with a steady concentration.
“He needs to get to the hospital, he’s losing blood. Help me get him in the car.”
Silence among the men.
“Help me, he’s going to die!” she shouted.
Hector turned to Mikhail. “We’ll look after your friend if you go back to your employers and tell them to drop this whole business, if you swear never to take part in anything like this again.…”
Mikhail was silent.
“And tell me where my guns are!” Jens said.
Hector shrugged. “And tell this man where his guns are.”
Jens and Mikhail helped lay Klaus in the back of the car. Sophie hurried them along, then got in alongside Klaus, pressing the fabric against the bullet wound.
“Drive!”
Jens got behind the wheel. A cloud of dust flew up as they drove off.
Mikhail waited a few minutes before getting in the rental car and heading for Arlanda.
He cleaned the inside of the car at a twenty-four-hour gas station, left it at a rental parking lot at the airport, dropping the keys in the box, then spent the night on a bench in the departure hall of Terminal 5. He passed the time wondering what was going on, who he worked for, what they wanted, what they intended.… Their enemies and friends.
He felt guilty in a way he hadn’t for many years. Klaus shouldn’t have gotten wounded, that wasn’t in the plan. He couldn’t figure out if the Guzman group was scared or just heavy-handed, they shot first every time.
He would remember that.
“Drive faster!”
She looked down at the bloodstained man, checked his condition again, his shallow pulse, his pale face—blood loss. She couldn’t tell how badly injured he was, but the blood was pumping out of his body at a steady rate. He would die if he didn’t get medical attention soon. Klaus opened his eyes slightly, but they soon closed again. She slapped him hard on the cheek to keep him awake. The man was going to die in her lap. She would be partly responsible. Another person’s life. For what? For Hector? Everything she had ever learned, everything she held dear was the exact opposite of this.
“Jens,” Hector said. “You have to let me and Aron out before you get to the hospital.”
He met Hector’s gaze in the rearview mirror.
“We need to clean the car, have you got anyone who can help us?”
Hector and Aron thought, and talked quickly in Spanish. Aron tapped a number into his phone, then, without saying who he was, said a few words about a friend’s car needing to be looked at, and that it needed some new trimmings, mainly in the baggage compartment.
“Sköndal, Semmelvägen,” Aron told Jens.
Hector said nothing when he got out of the car, followed by Aron. Sophie watched them walk across Solna Kyrkväg, just outside the Karolinska Hospital.
Jens turned the car and drove quickly up toward the hospital.
“Sophie! We can’t go in with him, we have to leave him in the ambulance bay and get away fast. OK?”
She didn’t answer, and checked Klaus’s pulse.
Jens entered the hospital grounds and found the ambulance bay, which happened to be empty. He drove in and sounded the horn.
“Stay hidden,” he said, opening the door.
Sophie left Klaus, clambered over the seat from the baggage compartment, and slid onto the floor behind the front seats, her clothes covered in blood. Jens ran around and opened the back door.
Two male nurses came running out with a trolley, followed by a female doctor. Jens got behind the wheel again.
“Gunshot wound to the abdomen,” he shouted to them.
The nurses and doctor pulled out the unconscious Klaus and put him on the trolley. As soon as they had cleared the vehicle Jens put the car into reverse and drove away from the ambulance bay with the back door open. Once they were out of sight he stopped, jumped out, and closed the back door, then got back in. Sophie climbed forward to sit beside him. He looked at her.
“Are you OK?”
“No,” she said, her hands and clothes covered in blo
od.
They drove calmly through the city in silence. He glanced at her. She was pale, deep in thought.
“He’ll be OK …,” Jens said.
She didn’t answer.
“Why did you do this, why didn’t you just let me and Aron go?”
“Can you just be quiet?” she said.
The Land Cruiser drove slowly past the houses. He found the right number and drove down the asphalt drive to the garage, and waited a few seconds as the garage door opened. Thierry waved them inside. Jens drove the car in and got out.
“No need to explain,” Thierry said. “I’ve spoken to Aron. Good thing none of us is hurt.”
Us, Jens thought.
Sophie got out of the passenger side. Thierry saw the blood on her hands and clothes.
“Hello, Sophie … Come with me, my wife will help you.” Thierry looked over the car quickly. “This should be OK.”
A door connected the garage to the house. Daphne met them.
“Come here, my dear, let me help you.”
She took Sophie by the hand and led her to the bathroom.
Daphne left her alone and Sophie got out of her bloody clothes, leaving them on the floor.
She turned the water on and let it heat up before getting under it. The shower wasn’t nice but it wasn’t unpleasant either, it was just water running down her body. She soaped herself all over, the blood turned pale red by her feet before running down the drain in the floor.
Afterward she put on the clothes Daphne had laid out on a chair in the bathroom. She wiped the steam from the mirror and looked at herself. The clothes were OK, although the arms of the sweater were too long.
Daphne looked in. “I’ve made some tea, come.”
Jens had new clothes too, in Thierry’s size. He was also wearing a shower cap, dishwashing gloves, and shoe covers. He was wiping the dashboard, the front seats, everything he could reach. Thierry was doing the same in the back.
“Was it the same man who was on the boat?” Thierry asked.
“Yes …”
Thierry drenched the leather seats with disinfectant.
The Andalucian Friend: A Novel Page 16