Chain of Events

by Fredrik T. Olsson

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve been having those exact same thoughts for a year now.’

  They sat amid the constant buzz of voices, the rattle of trains that arrived and braked and left, tracks and times that were announced over speakers and died away in echoes long before anyone heard what had been said.

  Albert leaned forward.

  ‘Could there be anything else you know? Perhaps without being aware of it?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it seems to me that’s what they’re afraid of.’

  ‘They? Afraid?’

  ‘Yes, afraid. They fear a disaster, and they think you might be holding the answer.’

  Watkins looked around him in all directions before he spoke. ‘Like I said,’ he repeated, ‘I know nothing.’

  Emphasis on nothing. His eyes sincere. And yet, something didn’t ring true.

  ‘In that case,’ said Albert, ‘why are you afraid?’

  ‘Because I don’t want them to think I know something.’

  His voice was steady, but his eyes were glued to theirs. He was leaning towards them, his hand halfway across the table.

  And there, under his fingers, his thin, skinny fingers where the joints were the only parts that hadn’t shrunk, bulging like beads on a string, under those fingers lay a shiny square of paper.

  That’s right, his eyes said. Take it.

  He removed his hand, eyes still fixed on Leo and Albert, his face dramatic and serious as if what he had handed over wasn’t just a piece of paper but something of major significance.

  And Albert placed his hand over it, pulled it towards his side of the table, a brief glance before he slipped it into his inside jacket pocket.

  A barcode. That’s all he could make out. Small, printed letters, a time and perhaps a price and perhaps something more.

  ‘I got a letter,’ Watkins said. His voice a whisper, as if he was about to tell them a secret nobody else could know. ‘Two days before they phoned me and told me she’d passed away, perhaps more, I don’t know, my days keep floating together. A thin, white envelope, messy handwriting on the outside. As if…’

  ‘As if what?’ said Albert.

  ‘As if the person who wrote it hadn’t written anything for a long, long time.’

  He hesitated. Perhaps it was an insignificant detail. But to him it was one of all the things he didn’t understand; what he knew for a fact was that someone had tried to communicate with him. And whatever that person had to say, he didn’t want to hear.

  ‘No letter. No message. Just that.’ He indicated Albert’s chest: the piece of paper.

  ‘It’s a receipt,’ said Albert. ‘Isn’t it? A receipt from a luggage locker?’

  Watkins looked at him. Avoided the question.

  And that was an obvious yes.

  ‘I’m almost seventy,’ he said. ‘My wife is dead. And I’m afraid.’

  He indicated Albert’s pocket again.

  ‘Whatever it is,’ he said, ‘it’s nothing to do with me now.’

  The man in the black suit hadn’t expected to see Saul Watkins. And yet there he was.

  Twenty minutes earlier he’d been standing in his spot at the bottom of the escalators, one floor below street level and seemingly fully occupied with the timetables and station maps but in reality scrutinising everyone who descended to his level.

  He registered every face, every encounter or change of direction, and yet at first he hadn’t noticed. As if his brain had refused to accept what it saw.

  Watkins. It really was him.

  His head had passed by among all the other heads up there, bobbing past on its way from the entrance and on into the hall, and then it had disappeared back into the crowd. And the dark-suited man had rushed up the stairs, squeezing between suitcases and shopping bags to catch another glimpse of him.

  All the time his only thought had been that it couldn’t be.

  There had to be some other explanation. It had to be a coincidence, because if not he couldn’t string it together.

  Less than a week ago they’d seen the homeless man leave the Hauptbahnhof. They’d chased him for miles until he ran into that alley they took him down.

  But the documents he should’ve had with him were gone.

  The documents that he was supposed to deliver to Saul Watkins, but that for whatever reason he hadn’t.

  And there was only one logical conclusion.

  That this had been the reason Stefan Kraus had gone to the station.

  To leave the documents in a luggage locker.

  And that left two options, as far as he could tell. The first was that he’d put them there as some sort of life insurance, perhaps intending to retrieve them later or to use them to bargain his way out of being killed. If that had been his plan, it hadn’t succeeded.

  But it also meant that things would sort themselves out. A week would pass and the locker would automatically alert the lost property department that its time had run out. And in that event the staff had clear instructions: if any locker was found to contain a bundle of documents, perhaps but not necessarily in a thick yellow envelope, and perhaps but not necessarily addressed to a Saul Watkins, there was a number for them to call, whereupon the documents would immediately be collected by himself or one of his colleagues.

  The second option was the problematic one. And that was the reason he was standing here, the reason he’d raced up the escalator, the reason he had to find out what in heaven’s name Saul Watkins was doing at the Hauptbahnhof.

  Stefan Kraus hadn’t been carrying a receipt. And that had worried them.

  It worried them because on his way from the lockers to the street he’d passed at least three postboxes. It was perfectly possible that he could have mailed the receipt to someone, and that was why they’d been keeping the station under surveillance.

  In case that someone would show up.

  In case that someone would walk down to the lockers and remove something that looked like a bundle of documents.

  It was just so unthinkable that that someone would be Watkins.

  They’d been monitoring his mail, both at home and in his department at the university, and there was no way any communication had slipped below their radar. He couldn’t have received a receipt. It was utterly inconceivable.

  Of course it could all be a coincidence. He might just be here to do some shopping, or to buy a ticket, but coincidences rarely happened by chance, as the man used to say. And whatever the reason, Saul Watkins was at Berlin Hauptbahnhof. That, in itself, was enough.

  His instructions were clear and there was only one thing to do.

  The man in the suit had taken out his phone. Called the first number on his speed dial.

  The others would arrive in a couple of minutes, and then they would take it from there.

  40

  She expected to find him in his workroom, but not until Janine gave up and knocked on the door to William’s bedroom did he open the door and let her in.

  Janine was breathless. She closed the door behind her, scanned the area from wall to wall to make sure they were alone.

  It took her a moment to notice that William was only half-dressed. Jeans, T-shirt, he’d had a shower but he hadn’t shaved, and that was when she knew. Something had happened within him. He was on the verge of giving up, the energy she’d seen in his eyes was fading, and she couldn’t allow that to happen, not now.

  ‘Put on a jacket,’ she said. ‘We need to talk.’

  She leaned towards the window, lifted the clasps that held it closed, and the moment the wind grabbed the window and swung it open he realised she was right. It was freezing.

  The air was full of tiny crystals that might well have piled up into snow if only the wind hadn’t been so strong. They whirled into the room instead, dancing past the windows with a whine that went from toneless rumble to a whistle and back to a toneless rumble again.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said.

  �
��I don’t know if they can hear us in here,’ she said, gesturing for him to come closer. She kept her voice low enough that the wind would drown her words, so that if there was anyone listening they would only hear the sounds of someone being stupid enough to open a window.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he said, still in his T-shirt.

  ‘Not happened,’ she said. ‘Happening. It’s happening right now.’

  The door had been open for only a couple of seconds, long enough to admit one of the guards. But that was enough for Janine to catch a glimpse of the buzz of activity going on in the high-security corridor.

  Crates were being loaded on to carts, uniformed men were taking inventory, checking off lists. The door had closed again before she could see more, but she’d been at the castle long enough to know all the daily routines.

  And what she’d seen this morning was entirely new.

  She’d run up the stairs to William’s room with one thought in her mind.

  That this must be exactly what Helena Watkins had warned her about.

  Standing in front of the open window, Janine told all this to William, going on to explain what Helena had told her that night when she’d stood outside her room. The night Helena slid her key card under Janine’s door. The last time Janine had seen her alive before finding her dying in her glass coffin.

  ‘She said there was a plan B.’

  ‘Explain,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t. I should have asked, but she was terrified and incoherent and I didn’t know what to say. She didn’t say plan B, it had a name, I don’t remember what. But she said it was just around the corner. I didn’t understand a word of it. Until now.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘They’re not going to fight till the end.’

  She paused, looked at William.

  ‘And of course it makes sense. They’ve had decades to plan for this, so why wouldn’t they have a plan B? They anticipated that there might come a point where it had gone too far and they couldn’t stop it. I think that’s where we are. I think they’re about to get themselves to safety.’

  He looked at her in disbelief. ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ she said. ‘The point is, they’re going to let the virus spread. They don’t believe in us any more.’

  ‘And what are we going to do about that?’

  ‘We have to tell them.’

  A subconscious gesture at the open window, her hand pointing into the wind to show who she meant by them. Everyone. The world. The people on the outside, the ones who were dying without anyone telling them why.

  ‘Perhaps it’s too late for you and me to save them. But we have to give them a chance to save themselves.’

  ‘How?’ he asked.

  ‘We need to get out.’

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘We have to try.’ And then: ‘We can’t give up.’

  And William shrugged. It made him feel like a stubborn child, but he knew he was right, and that what she suggested wouldn’t make a difference.

  ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Why not just give up, if there’s nothing we can do anyway?’

  ‘Because no one else is going to try.’

  She looked at him defiantly.

  ‘They are going to stand by and let the world die. We can’t let that happen.’

  After she’d gone, William remained standing by the window for a long time. He looked out at the lake, saw it ripple in the wind, saw the ice crystals melt against the window pane and form into tiny rivers, streaming down the panes and meandering around, constantly changing direction in the strong wind. And he didn’t move, just stood there looking, wishing that the images would bring him peace.

  But there was no peace to be found.

  Just uncertainty and sorrow and fear.

  Janine was desperate, and he could empathise with that. She had presented a strategy that was surprisingly well thought out and that would definitely buy them some time. But no matter how optimistically he tried to look at it, he couldn’t see that they would make it.

  He could only see one outcome.

  And he stayed in front of the window for ten minutes, without thinking, without seeing.

  Then he went into the bathroom to fetch his toilet bag.

  41

  Everyone assumed that the cleaning lady had to be exaggerating.

  The three security guards who made their way on to the platform weren’t racing to the scene. They jogged casually with keys and chains rattling against their thighs, not because they didn’t believe her but because she was a cleaning lady and chances were she had never seen spilt blood before. When you worked security at a big-city station you got to see a lot; whatever had made the cleaner scream her head off would be nothing to them. Just one more crime scene to be secured until the police arrived.

  Then they climbed on board.

  And realised the woman was right.

  Of the four passengers very little remained. There was blood everywhere, and if this was murder it was on a scale beyond anything they’d encountered. Security guard or not, one of them had to run out on to the platform to bring his breakfast back up, while his colleague stood in a catatonic stupor, unable to think what to do. It was left to the third one to call the police and inform them that they needed backup.

  And the police arrived, and forensic teams removed the sheets, and someone decided to call disease control and the snowball began to roll from its own weight.

  It was a snowball of fear.

  And once it had started to grow there wasn’t any stopping it.

  The conversation had ended long before Watkins got to his feet. Several times he’d gathered his gloves and his scarf to leave, but each time he’d spotted something in the sea of people to worry him, an individual loitering or doubling back, and each time he’d changed his mind, put his gloves back on the table and carried on talking to them about nothing at all until he was sure the person was gone.

  Albert and Leo had chatted back. Patient and understanding. But Watkins knew scepticism when he saw it.

  ‘I’m not paranoid,’ he’d said. ‘I understand why you would think I am. But I know what I know.’

  They’d offered no argument. All the same, he’d felt the need to explain.

  ‘You can tell when somebody’s been through your mail. You can tell when envelopes have been opened and resealed. It’s been happening for almost a week, at home as well as at my office. And I’ve seen them following me.’

  Albert had given him a look. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘how come they let the receipt slip though?’

  The question made Watkins smile. It was the first smile to reach his face since the conversation started.

  ‘Because the woman I married was smarter than them.’ He nodded behind tense lips. Lips that smiled to hide his emotions, but that still couldn’t stop them from seeping through.

  There was something heartbreaking about it. Perhaps because in the middle of his emaciated face there were features that hadn’t changed: the mouth and teeth and eyes were the same size they’d always been and when he smiled he became a sad caricature of himself, two large eyes smiling gloomily out of thin, wrinkled skin.

  Or perhaps it was because he looked at them with such pride, such affection for a woman who no longer existed but whom he wanted to brag about, one last time.

  ‘They forgot that the dead can receive mail, too.’

  With that Watkins got up from his chair and disappeared into the crowd. And that was the way he wanted it.

  In Albert van Dijk’s jacket pocket lay the receipt from a luggage locker. A receipt that had been delivered in a white envelope to Potsdam University. Addressed to the mathematics department in haphazard, clumsy letters.

  To a professor named Helena Watkins.

  Albert and Leo stayed at the café for another five minutes after Watkins had left, just as he’d asked.

  In front of them on the table his coffee sat untouched, like the sandwich
next to it, sliced and buttered and wrapped in plastic to no avail.

  They didn’t speak, but then again they didn’t have to. They were both thinking the same thing.

  The receipt. The locker. And whatever was waiting there. Was this the answer Palmgren had talked about?

  And if it was, then what was the question?

  Perhaps it had something to do with the airliner and the hospital, perhaps it would lead them to William and Janine, perhaps it would mean the world – and perhaps it wouldn’t help them a bit.

  They were soon to find out.

  Their car was parked within walking distance of one of the spaces with left-luggage lockers. And from a logistical point of view it couldn’t be better; they would leave the café and head for their car, and on the way there they would take a quick detour, checking the lockers adjoining the various stairwells until they found the one they were looking for.

  And there was nothing to suggest that anyone was keeping an eye on them.

  Whatever Watkins had said.

  When five minutes had passed, they stayed seated for another two before finishing their coffees. They got up, merged into the crowd, Watkins nowhere to be seen.

  But from one of the walkways several floors up, their every step was watched by a man in a black suit.

  The men who entered the glass-covered main entrance had little to go on. The station was packed with people moving in different directions, stressed faces hurrying to catch trains or dawdling to read timetables or browse shop windows, all of them with bags and backpacks and rolling suitcases and all of them constantly getting in the way. All of them potentially the people they were looking for.

  They saw their colleague the same instant they heard him in their headsets. He was standing on the steel bridge with an overview of the entire ground floor, and he instructed them to split up: Watkins had gone in one direction and the two men in another, and there was no way of knowing which, if any of them, was carrying the receipt.