Leo nodded. But more to wave it aside than to confirm the truth of what he was hearing; he could tell where Albert was going and that was a place he didn’t want to be.
‘You’re twenty-four,’ Albert said. ‘You have an internship waiting for you. And you’ve seen enough in the last twenty-four hours to fill that paper for days on end. And if you’re good at it, and I suspect you are, then they will give you a job the moment you ask. Correct me if I’m wrong.’
Leo didn’t correct him.
‘Of course I’m grateful for what you’ve done. Without you, without your car, without that I’d never have got out of Amsterdam. But now you’ve done your part. I have to go on, I have to find Janine. You don’t have to do anything. You can go home.’
Leo may have been exhausted but there was no doubt in his mind as to what he had to do.
He got up. Took out Christina’s phone. The one that was his now, after his own disappeared with her. And he turned towards Albert.
‘I have a few calls to make. Then we should plan our next move.’
Albert watched Leo open the door to the corridor, leave it ajar, heard the young man’s soft steps as he wandered shoeless on the carpet outside. Streams of words in a language Albert couldn’t understand.
But whatever he said, his intentions were clear.
Leo Björk wasn’t going anywhere.
Albert van Dijk was quite pleased about that.
The anticipation that Lars-Erik Palmgren felt as Christina Sandberg’s name flashed up on his phone was entirely without foundation and he knew it perfectly well.
There was no way she could have survived.
Nevertheless, he felt disappointment hit like a deep hunger below his ribs when the voice at the other end wasn’t hers.
‘My name is Leo Björk,’ said the voice. ‘We spoke yesterday.’
‘Is she alive?’ said Palmgren. It was the only thing he said. It was the only thing he wanted to know.
‘No,’ said Leo. ‘No.’
There could have been better ways to say it. But Leo couldn’t think of any. And they both stood silent at their respective ends of the line, a silence that was transformed into ones and zeroes and that streamed in both directions between Stockholm and Amsterdam, filling the air with data that was unpacked at the receiving end and contained nothing.
‘I can call back, if, maybe,’ said Leo, heard his own words and hoped that logic would fill in the blanks. If this is a bad time.
‘I can talk,’ said Palmgren.
‘I tried to warn her,’ Leo said. ‘If it helps you to know.’
Palmgren understood. Christina was stubborn, and he doubted she would have listened however much the kid tried to talk her out of it. She’d probably been so intent on the story that she’d have tuned out every word he said.
‘Thanks,’ he said. For telling me, he meant, and for trying. And maybe he also meant for calling, for not letting him be alone with his feelings, for allowing him to share them over the phone with someone he’d never met but who made things feel a little bit better.
‘There’s just one question,’ said Leo. ‘How did you know what was about to happen?’
‘I was given the information,’ said Palmgren.
‘By whom?’
‘I don’t know. He works in the military. He’s high up. Beyond that, I have no idea.’
‘And how did he know?’
‘He works for them.’
‘For who?’
‘He didn’t know,’ said Palmgren. Then he corrected himself. ‘At least he said he didn’t know. For what it’s worth, I believe him.’
He paused for a moment, wondering how much detail he should go into. It wasn’t his job to keep the black-clad man’s secrets; if he’d said too much, disclosed confidential information during their conversation in his basement, that was his problem and not Palmgren’s. But at the same time he didn’t want to put anyone else in danger. He hadn’t been able to warn Christina, and that had ended in disaster. He didn’t want anyone else to get killed.
On the other hand, if the kid on the phone succeeded in finding William, maybe there was a chance he could work out what was going on, find out what was so unprecedented and terrifying and bad. Should he stand in the way of that?
‘What I know is that there is an organisation,’ he said. ‘He didn’t tell me where, because he didn’t know, not where or who was behind it or who they reported to. The one thing he was certain of was that he wasn’t the only one.’
‘The only one who what?’
‘Who is at their disposal. Those were his precise words. They’ve got people everywhere. High up. The police. Defence ministries. Probably in governments.’
‘And what do they do?’
Palmgren hesitated. ‘Leo, right? I want you to listen to me. This man came to me to warn you.’
‘But why?’ asked Leo. ‘Why would he warn us? If he is, you know. One of them?’
Palmgren’s answer was simple.
‘He was afraid.’
He waited to hear what Leo had to say, but nothing came. What Palmgren said next came out as a plea, which was almost what it was.
‘You have to get out of Amsterdam. As far away as possible. Something’s happening. That’s all I know. Whatever is going on, yesterday was only the beginning.’
‘We’re already out of Amsterdam,’ said Leo.
‘I’m not sure that’s enough.’
‘We’ll see.’
It felt like the conversation was over, and it felt like nothing had changed.
The older man had tried to issue a warning but didn’t know what he was warning against, the younger man had heard but didn’t listen. And if Palmgren were honest with himself he wouldn’t have either if their roles had been reversed.
‘Can I ask a favour?’ he said instead.
Leo waited.
‘If you find him. If you find William. Tell him she never gave up on him.’ He paused, and then: ‘Not because it’s what he wants to hear. But because it’s true.’
Leo swallowed. ‘I know.’
They stood at either end of a telephone line, listening to the breaths of someone they’d never met.
And Palmgren hesitated. There was one more thing. But he’d already said too much.
‘The man who visited me,’ he said at last. ‘He heard them talk about the disaster.’
‘Amsterdam?’ said Leo.
‘I don’t know. All I know is that they’re afraid. Afraid that the solution has gone… astray.’ No. He stopped again. Wanted to relay the man’s words as accurately as possible. ‘They’re afraid that Watkins has the answer.’
It took a moment for Leo to pull the name from the depths of his brain.
It came from the letter. Janine’s letter.
‘Helena Watkins?’ said Leo.
‘No,’ said Palmgren. ‘Saul.’
Someone had seen Stefan Kraus as he exited the station concourse. And the alarm had been raised but it was too late.
His image had been wired out with top priority; nobody knew what he’d done but he must be caught, and his details were forwarded to the right people and the men who were sent out were trained to do as they were told without question.
Stefan Kraus, meanwhile, had carefully avoided human contact.
He knew all the city’s alleys and passages, he’d spent most of his life hiding away to protect himself from people. But now the roles were reversed, he was protecting others from himself.
He’d been close to dying before, but this was the first time it scared him. She’d given him two tasks. And he wanted so badly to complete them both.
The heartbreaking message was no longer his problem, he’d given it to the driver of the Toyota and all he could do was to hope the man would keep his promise.
But the yellow envelope remained his responsibility. And nothing was the way it should be; Kraus was back where he’d always been, a man with no options and no future, and someone was chasing him and time was r
unning out faster than ever.
And since he couldn’t do what she’d asked him, this was the best alternative.
He ran, empty-handed, zigzagging between the rows of parked cars.
He had left the envelope behind.
It was safe now, perhaps not for ever but at least for the time being, and on his way out of the parking garage he took out the thin, white card he’d stolen from a news stand, dropped it into a mailbox, and when that was done the only thing he could do was to hope. Hope that his shaky writing could be read, that he’d remembered the address correctly, that he hadn’t let her down after all and his final act would be something good. That in the end his life would have been meaningful.
The cough and the fever had been possible to explain away.
The itch on his back was maybe just an itch.
But when the blood had come and his skin started to weep as if turning to liquid, he couldn’t deny it any longer.
He’d seen them in the long rows of hospital beds. And now he was one of them; he didn’t want to die but it wasn’t his choice.
That same evening Stefan Kraus was going to be chased into an alley in Berlin, shot by men disguised as paramedics and taken away in an ambulance that wasn’t an ambulance.
His body was to be incinerated at an abandoned military firing range at the foot of the Alps.
And the yellow envelope that was supposed to save the world would be locked inside a luggage locker in the basement of Berlin Hauptbahnhof.
And nobody would have a clue.
35
The sounds of the whirring fans echoed with a life past.
That was how it used to sound, every morning when he started up his computers in the imposing stone building in Kungsängen, and here and now the hum from his desk brought everything back.
Sitting down in a battered office chair. Steering its complaining wheels across the plastic floor, taking a careful sip of the white-hot coffee that smelled of morning and possibilities but that only tasted bitter. The sense that he was doing something important, that he was good at what he did, and that even though there was a massive responsibility resting on his shoulders, he was confident he’d be able to do his part.
For a second that’s where he was.
And he knew that as soon as he opened his eyes again he’d be far, far away.
William stood in his workroom in the castle. It had only been hours since the last time he was there, but it felt as if he’d just returned from a long trip. He had left the room believing there was a future, and then he’d seen things that rocked the foundations of who he was, now he was back here and he knew that the thing he needed the most was the one thing they didn’t have. Time.
He wouldn’t be able to work the way he wanted. He would have to cut corners, to push himself through the material, to skip steps in his process and keep his fingers crossed that he would sort it out all the same.
He would have to let the machines do the calculations and it was much too soon for that. He would have wanted to become one with the codes, to spend time with them, working by hand, making them his, getting to know the sequences inside out, and to use the machines as tools instead of unknown black holes that took over and spat out results he couldn’t verify.
But there was no time.
In front of him, hard disks whizzed away as the computers started reading, operating systems were loaded and launched and prepared to receive reams of numbers and turn them into something logical.
Last of all, he booted up the heavy, grey-green box at the edge of the table.
Sara.
The familiar crackle from the screen as the cathode-ray tube fired up, shooting its electrons at the curved monitor surface, feeding line after line of text in glowing green as a signal that the machine was gearing up.
It was archaic, to say the least. And yet, this was the machine he was putting most of his trust in. She was old, no doubt, but she was designed for one purpose, and he was the one who’d designed her. If there wasn’t time for him to crunch the numbers himself, the next best thing was to give them to her.
It, he corrected himself. It was a computer. And nothing more.
Because if there wasn’t time for manual calculations there was even less time to dwell on the past, and he shrugged his thoughts off, stood against the wall, let his eyes wander across the papers one last time.
The codes.
And the verses.
Plague. The end. A huge and violent fire.
He tried not to lose his hope, but it wasn’t easy.
He’d seen the circles, the circles and the dots on Connors’ map, he knew what was written in the predictions and it all made perfect sense. It had begun. And if everything was predetermined, who was he to do anything about it?
There were no answers, all he had was questions, and no matter how many times he asked them he kept coming back to the same conclusion. It’s just the way it is.
The more he asked, the more childish were the questions, and the more he tried to answer, the clearer it got that it was pointless.
Why? Why were there codes in human DNA?
Who put them there?
Nobody.
It is what it is.
William had seen how it was going to end.
And there was no why.
The cold observation room had become the regular venue for their informal meetings.
Now they found themselves standing there again, Connors and Franquin, staring at the hospital beds on the other side of the glass. Fewer bleeding bodies than yesterday, more than there would be tomorrow. Time was running out in front of their eyes, running in red trickles on to the floor, and there was nothing they could do about it.
There was a question hanging in the air, waiting for an answer, but Connors avoided it, his gaze straight ahead.
‘We shouldn’t have brought in civilians,’ Connors said. ‘That was our first mistake.’
Franquin said nothing.
‘We should’ve brought in professionals,’ he continued. ‘Should have let them work directly with us, given them the details, let them know what they were here to do —’
Franquin raised his hand. Five fingers and a palm, telling Connors to shut up.
‘Did you just get here?’ he asked. ‘What would you call Helena Watkins?’
‘Helena Watkins was a gamble,’ said Connors.
‘Quite. And how do you think that went?’ He didn’t wait for Connors to answer. ‘She couldn’t handle it. She was a big mistake. If it hadn’t been for her —’
He broke off mid-sentence. A moment’s insecurity. And Connors pounced.
‘Are you sure about that?’ he said. ‘If it hadn’t been for her?’
Franquin turned away. But Connors wouldn’t let him go:
‘If only it hadn’t been for us! If it hadn’t been for you and for me, then she would never have come here. There wouldn’t have been a homeless man to release, and he wouldn’t have been infected, because nobody would have manufactured a virus and tested it on him in the hope that the exact thing she started could be stopped.’
His voice had risen, frustrated as much by the reality as the constant need to use it as an argument.
And Franquin shook his head. It was irrelevant.
It was her who broke the protocols, predetermined or not. She was the one who’d taken advantage of her freedom, abused her knowledge of routines and schedules and security, and as a result, she had released the virus. Even if that hadn’t been her intention, even if she hadn’t known that he was sick, she’d still broken every single rule in the book. And that was her doing.
Then she’d given Haynes her key card, enabling her to send a letter to her boyfriend. And who knew what more she could have done if they hadn’t stopped her in time.
All this he said to Connors.
‘And if that doesn’t prove that Watkins was one massive mistake?’ Franquin said. ‘If that doesn’t prove the danger of giving people knowledge and freedom and respons
ibility? Then I don’t know what kind of proof you need.’
Connors gave a deep sigh.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said. ‘Because even if she managed to find something out, even if she found a solution, she took it to her grave.’
‘Hopefully,’ said Franquin. And then: ‘We’ll see about that.’
With that, their discussion ended. They both knew what she had done, and there was little point in arguing about it.
And when Franquin started talking again, he was talking as much to himself as to Connors:
‘We’re not where we used to be. We’re in a hurry. If this had been ten years ago, or twenty, we could have kept going. But we can’t. What we need is results. And not a happy workplace.’
Then he turned to Connors. ‘So, do I have your approval?’
‘Do I have a choice?’ said Connors.
‘No,’ said Franquin. There was sadness in his eyes too. ‘No, not any more.’
Connors didn’t move. Not a yes, not a no.
And that was enough.
They didn’t part as friends, but on the other hand, they’d never been friends. They’d been colleagues, and there’d been times when they’d been colleagues who pulled in the same direction, but they’d always looked at the world through different lenses. And in times of crisis that was clearer than ever.
The message would go out the following night.
Connors had given his unspoken approval. And now he remained in the room, staring at the rows of beds beyond the glass. And he knew.
Knew that none of the people in there had much time left.
Unless William could come up with something, unless they could devise a new virus to test and to place their hope in, unless that happened, everything was lost.
All previous attempts had ended in failure. What Franquin had said before he left was undeniably true.
‘In three days we’ll know if the virus is still out there.’ That’s what he’d said. ‘And if Sandberg hasn’t found a cipher key by then?’
His voice had been dry. Underlining what they both knew already. That the chances of that were slim to none.
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