Chain of Events

by Fredrik T. Olsson

  Or so he kept telling himself.

  He watched the buildings whizz by below them.

  Knew in every fibre of his being that it was wrong.

  And wondered how fate would punish him for it.

  43

  The alarm came at ten past eight that evening. Feet ran along the stone corridors, people cursed loudly and everybody asked how they’d allowed it to happen.

  They knew he’d tried before.

  But in spite of that they’d given him all his personal belongings, clothes, shoes, toiletries, everything. Everything had been checked, but apparently not thoroughly enough.

  They ran down the stairs carrying William between them, down towards the medical quarters in the depths of the mountain, Franquin on one side and Rodriguez on the other, and behind them the two guards.

  A few steps behind ran Janine.

  Her face a mask of worry.

  Grateful that the two nameless guards had finally heard her.

  Janine had found William on the floor of the bathroom, eyes blankly staring at the ceiling, awake but unreachable. Next to him lay an empty paper box and what had once been a sheet of pills, now just an array of plastic bubbles with punctured foil where the tablets should have been.

  Twenty of them. For anxiety and insomnia.

  It was impossible to tell if he’d taken them all, but things weren’t looking good.

  Janine had immediately run for help, only to discover that her key card suddenly didn’t work. The electronic lock had refused, wasting precious moments, and by the time the guards heard her and followed her back to his quarters, William was beyond contact.

  All of this the guards now reported in short bursts of information as the medical team laid him on a table, examined him and checked his vital signs, and then came the tubes and the bottles and the stainless-steel basin and Janine knew all too well what was about to happen and looked away.

  She could smell it as the contents of his stomach came back up. And she couldn’t help thinking how he must be suffering, how she hoped it was worth it. Then it was all over and they checked his blood again, before one of the nurses came and placed her hand softly on Janine’s.

  ‘It’s stopped rising,’ she said.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Janine asked, even though she knew.

  ‘Hopefully, we got most of it out. Before it got into his blood.’ She looked at Janine. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll make it.’

  Janine gave her a look of gratitude.

  It was just as rehearsed as everything else she’d been doing the past hour.

  They got out just before the gates slammed shut.

  They steered out of Berlin by the most roundabout route imaginable, not to shake followers but because that was how Leo navigated. Eventually they found their way on to the Autobahn, and once they had they didn’t dare stop.

  They adjusted their speed to the cars around them, careful not to draw attention, and they kept driving south for hours, nervously keeping an eye in the mirrors and with a jolt of fear every time they were passed by a dark, new-looking car.

  There was no doubt they were still being hunted. Either because they’d run through a military cordon and caused an accident, or because of the yellow envelope on the dashboard, or possibly – no, probably – because of both.

  Something big was going on.

  Something big that had nothing to do with them, but had coincided with their being in Berlin. And whatever it was had probably saved them.

  On the radio, it was nothing but voices. Not a single station played music, everything was news and frantic witnesses phoning in or reporters transmitting live with traffic sound in the background. And neither Leo nor Albert spoke enough German to make out more than individual words. Berlin. Hauptbahnhof. And geschlossen. They looked at each other and glanced in the mirrors and as long as the news sites hadn’t caught up they could only guess what was happening.

  They called the paper in Stockholm but nobody answered. They called William’s number but his phone was dead, just as it had been since that one call he made to them on the roof.

  There was only one thing left.

  The envelope.

  The envelope that could be an answer – but to what?

  It was still lying flat on the dashboard in front of Albert, and eventually, when they were far enough from the city, he reached for the envelope, casting a sideways glance at Leo to check that he agreed. Then he opened it, carefully, slowly, Leo beside him struggling against the urge to take his eyes off the road and see what was hiding inside.

  Papers. A huge wad of papers.

  Albert flicked through them. Once, and then again. Let his fingertips search through the entire pile, stopping here and there to try to make sense of the contents.

  ‘What is it?’ said Leo.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. Because he didn’t.

  All he could see were numbers. Endless rows of numbers, page after page, and next to them there were symbols, undecipherable Sumerian symbols, the kind that Janine used to work with. But these were blocky from pixels, and if he’d counted them he would have found them to be 23 pixels wide and 73 pixels high, and wedged in between everything else someone had jotted down long, hand-written calculations.

  None of it made any sense whatsoever. Albert wasn’t a mathematician; all he could see were endless equations with parentheses and arithmetical symbols that he vaguely recognised without understanding in the slightest.

  Here and there, the calculations were underlined or emphasised by exclamation marks. Arrows pointed from one expression to the next, trying to communicate exactly how someone had been thinking and why. All of which was totally lost on Albert van Dijk.

  ‘They’re codes,’ he said. ‘Codes and symbols and formulas.’

  ‘What does that tell us?’

  ‘It doesn’t tell us anything.’

  Silence. Albert, staring out of the passenger window.

  ‘So what do we do?’ said Leo.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Albert. Then, after a pause: ‘Well, yes. One thing. We keep hoping there are two other people who can make more out of it than us.’

  Rodriguez left Sandberg behind in his room, asleep and well, the drama over. Walking back through the corridors he saw her from a distance, but it wasn’t until he came close that he could she how sad she looked.

  Janine glanced up when she heard his steps. She stood by one of the doors, as if she’d suddenly become paralysed, standing there and waiting for someone to show up.

  ‘I forgot,’ she said. ‘In all the chaos. I forgot I couldn’t get through.’

  At first he didn’t understand what she meant.

  The key card. That’s how it had all started. For some reason her card had stopped working, and it didn’t surprise him. Not that the cards had a habit of causing them troubles, but computers were computers and sooner or later things happen.

  ‘It’s my own corridor,’ she said. ‘As you know.’

  He nodded. It was a part of the castle where she should definitely be allowed to go, and so he took out his own card, walked towards the door to let her through. But instead of opening the door, he stopped.

  He saw her tired eyes, and he couldn’t help thinking it was all his fault. Not what just happened, with Sandberg trying to end his life, he couldn’t help that. But if it hadn’t been for him she wouldn’t have been there in the first place. He was responsible, and he didn’t like it, and here he stood with the key in his hand. And the moment lingered.

  ‘He’ll be okay,’ he said.

  ‘So I heard,’ she replied. Not sounding any happier.

  That, somehow, made it worse. He wanted to comfort her but couldn’t. That’s not why I’m sad, she seemed to be saying, which in turn meant only one thing: It’s because I’m here.

  ‘I’ll let you through,’ he said.

  And yet he didn’t move. Hesitated. Didn’t open the door, bit his lower lip as if searching for something more to say.

&nb
sp; ‘Here’s how it is,’ he said. Honesty in his voice. ‘You can take this however you want to. And I know it’s not going to help.’

  Here we go. Too late to turn back. He was heading into an awkward conversation, but so be it, it was the truth and they were probably all about to die and so who cared if he made a fool of himself ?

  ‘I wish I hadn’t,’ he said. He continued, avoiding her eyes: ‘When we sat there, in Amsterdam, this spring. When you went from being a mission to actually being someone, someone who sat there in front of me and… who was irritable and snappy and irresistibly funny.’ He shrugged. ‘Then and there, I wished I wouldn’t have to put you through all this. That I could just let it be.’ And, after a pause: ‘That I could stay and sit there and have a glass of wine and be insulted for a little bit longer.’

  That was it. He was done, and he lapsed into silence. Didn’t know if he should say anything more, or if he should simply open the door and let her through. Then again, maybe he should have kept his mouth shut and said nothing.

  ‘You were lucky,’ she said. ‘Ten minutes more and I would have disappeared with your wallet.’

  He hadn’t expected that.

  He looked up to see her smiling. Or rather she was looking at him with an unmoving, blank face, and behind that there was the same suppressed smile that had charmed him at the restaurant in Amsterdam. It was forgiveness transformed into action. And he looked at her with the same stone-faced sincerity, picked up the ball where it had landed.

  ‘You’d be disappointed by the contents,’ he said. ‘Governmental employee, you know.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ she replied. An over-acted understanding. ‘Trial period, is it? Labour market measure? Or did they feel sorry for you and decide to give you something to do?’

  ‘They stopped feeling sorry for me when they saw I was smarter than you.’

  You have no idea, she thought. But she didn’t say.

  Instead, she allowed herself to give him a look, a friendly, sorrowful look between two people who’d met at the same level and who were about to share the same destiny.

  She sighed. ‘It’s fucked up, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘This.’

  He couldn’t have put it better himself.

  ‘Bottom line,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ll let you be.’

  They stood there, looked at each other, and in another world it would have been the silence before the kiss. But that world was far away, and perhaps none of them would get to see it again, and even if they were two lonely people they weren’t lonely enough for it to happen.

  She let the silence linger until it became uncomfortable. And then she broke it.

  ‘If we’re waiting for me to open that door we’ll be standing here for quite some time.’

  He smiled apologetically, as if he’d forgotten why she was standing there in the first place. He took out his piece of plastic again, and she moved her hand away from the door to let him past, just as he approached it with his card.

  The collision was inevitable.

  The key card slid through his fingers, they both backed up instinctively, and there it lay on the floor.

  And Janine gave him a look. Bent down, picked it up, handed it to him.

  Nothing more than that. Simply and candidly and with the non-smile on her face, the one that told him she was about to say something ambiguous.

  ‘If that was an invitation, I’m going to look like an idiot for giving this back to you.’

  He looked at her – was she coming on to him or pulling his leg? It was impossible to tell.

  He took the card from her. Looked for an answer.

  ‘I promise to be more obvious next time,’ he said. ‘I know you can be a bit slow.’

  Her face cracked into a half-involuntary smile. And it felt like an acknowledgement: he had just won a victory. He had apologised, and she had accepted.

  But the conversation was over. She wanted to leave. And he held up his card against the wall again, as he’d been about to a minute ago, and the door buzzed open exactly as it should.

  The card worked perfectly, the diode turned green and the door opened, and there was no reason whatsoever for suspecting he hadn’t just opened the door with his own card. Before long, he would hate himself for being stupid enough not to think further. But not now.

  ‘I’ll have Keyes talk to you,’ he said. ‘She must have forgotten to activate it.’

  He indicated the key card in her hand.

  And she smiled her wry smile.

  ‘I should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to help, yourself.’

  ‘I think I’m more able than you can imagine,’ he replied.

  ‘If only you knew what I can imagine.’

  And with that, they parted.

  Rodriguez stayed on his side of the door as Janine backed into the next corridor. And when the door closed between them they still hadn’t let go of each other’s eyes.

  Seconds later, as she was racing down the hallway towards her room and with only hours to get everything ready, she could hear the sound of her own heart beating.

  Seven months ago he’d charmed her and made her drop her guard and then everything had been over. She hated him for what he’d done, and herself for letting him do it.

  And now she’d tricked him back.

  In his pocket he had Franquin’s key card.

  With the exact same clearance as the one she’d just taken from him.

  Which meant that hopefully he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Not until it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  Thirty minutes earlier, William Sandberg had felt the sour aftertaste of medical tubing lingering in his throat as they carefully placed him on his bed.

  His gaze had been distant, but only because he wanted it to be.

  Inside, his brain was hard at work, registering all that was happening around him, assessing the situation and deciding that everything seemed to be under control. He had completed his part of the mission. Now he was back in his room, surrounded by three more men – Rodriguez and two others whose names he didn’t know – and by one of the walls stood Janine, watching them take his pulse and check that he was okay.

  She watched them without talking. Worried but not overwhelmed, a perfectly balanced choice considering that they hadn’t known each other for more than a week, and considering how easy it would have been to overact.

  The two men had pulled his cover over him, and Rodriguez had combed his bathroom for any pills they might have missed, but they wouldn’t find any and eventually they would be satisfied and leave him alone.

  Two pills. That’s how many he’d taken.

  The other eighteen were currently travelling down a sewage pipe, and the stupor he’d been in as he reached the treatment room hadn’t been more than a vague tiredness. In fact, it had been rather pleasant. And not in the least life-threatening.

  But it had made the illusion complete.

  The two tablets had been given enough time to enter his bloodstream, and that had showed up on their tests. And when the treatment-room staff had shoved the tube down his throat to empty him, when the concentration had stopped rising, they had all deduced that they had managed to get to him in time.

  And they had sighed with relief, the medical staff and the guards and Franquin, everyone had exchanged exhausted glances, his pulse had been taken and they had monitored him as they waited for the levels to go down. And everyone had kept talking with careful voices and eventually they had turned their backs on him because sooner or later you do.

  As soon as the chance came, he had taken it.

  Franquin had hung his jacket over a chair, and that in itself was a blessing. It made William’s job so much easier; all he had to do was to reach out from his bunk. It was the one moment everything depended on. If anyone turned around, saw him reaching out from his mattress, neither dizzy nor unconscious but with his hand in Franquin’s jacket, then his entire adventure would be over and with it their last cha
nce.

  But nobody turned around.

  Nobody saw him drop his own piece of plastic straight down into the open pocket, nobody saw him take out the other one instead.

  Because nobody expects an unconscious man to steal a key card.

  Not even Maurice Franquin.

  After William had been tucked up under the soft duvet in his own room, Janine had stayed there watching until it was time for her to leave.

  Not until she was certain that Rodriguez was about to leave the room as well, and that she would be able to wait for him in the corridor and do her part of the job, not until then did she excuse herself and exit.

  It was a fragile plan, but it couldn’t have turned out better.

  The card in Franquin’s pocket was William’s.

  And Janine had taken over Franquin’s card, elegantly and invisibly, when she held William’s hand to ask how he was doing.

  It had all been her idea, and he had to admit it was a good one.

  If she succeeded, it would buy them valuable extra time in case things went awry.

  The only obstacle that remained was Rodriguez, and Janine had told him she knew exactly how to deal with that.

  William shut his eyes under his duvet and thought he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  Another ten minutes passed before Rodriguez decided that Sandberg was sleeping a calm, healthy sleep and that nothing more was going to happen to him. He got up from his chair, took William’s pulse one final time, and left the room.

  In the hallway he ran into Janine, and though he obviously didn’t know it, she was about to replace his key card with Franquin’s.

  And in his room, William lay in his bed and knew that this was it.

  They would only have one chance to get out.

  And that chance had to be taken tonight.

  44

  It had been dark outside their windows when they left their rooms, and it would stay dark for many hours more.

  It was night. And if only they could get down to the entrance, to the areas they had never seen but that they hoped would be there, if only they made it there then perhaps they’d be able to melt into the darkness and escape.