He had to stop again. His heart was about to crack his already injured ribs. Taking his seat once more, he forced himself to breathe evenly and felt the eyes of his colleagues boring into the back of his head.
“I … had … nothing … to do … with … the bombs,” Alexander stammered. The tears that had been glittering in his eyes were now streaming down his cheeks. He reached for the picture of the nun and brushed his fingertips across it. “The angel! He has to be the one!”
“Which angel?” Faris’s voice sounded breathless and flat. He stood up. The whistling in his ears masked the sound of the door opening.
“Take a break,” Marc suggested. “I’ll take over for a while.”
Faris nodded at him gratefully. Out in the hallway, he leaned against the wall and tipped his head back so that he could feel the rough plaster. Images flashed through his mind, one after the other for only a fraction of a second. The old nun with the pale eyes. The remains of the homeless man. Paul’s disfigured face. He heard the child at the Klersch Museum sobbing. It cried and cried until Faris didn’t think he could take it anymore. Until he almost lost his mind, until he turned around. He balled his hand up and punched the plastered wall – once, twice.
“Let it be!” Tromsdorff was beside him, grasping his arm. “Come on.”
As Faris followed him into the observation room next to the interview space, Marc was just in the process of asking: “Where are the bombs, Alexander?”
Chapter 27
“I had nothing to do with the bombs.”
Alexander’s hoarse voice almost cracked as Marc fired over and over again at him the same question about the bombs.
Marc had activated the recorder Faris had ignored and was sitting on the edge of the table. This posture, which at first glance looked relaxed and casual, actually made the interviewee feel threatened because the detective was two heads taller than him.
“Don’t lie to me!” Marc said quietly but resolutely.
“I … I didn’t …”
Without missing a beat, Marc changed tactics. “Who did then, Alexander?” The question struck like a shot from a pistol.
The young man was no longer crying, but his words contained a sob. “I told you already – the angel!”
“What kind of angel?”
Alexander’s eyes darted over to the mirror. Faris read despair and fear in his wide eyes. He instantly felt a connection with the young man, whose loneliness was palpable, even through the glass pane.
“The angel of the Lord,” Alexander whispered. “He came.” His words ended in a trembling breath.
Marc waited for a moment. “Where did he come from?” he asked.
Alexander closed his eyes. His chest rose and fell violently, as if he was under extreme duress. “I haven’t been able to remember. The angel kept blinding me with this bright light. Bright angelic light, you know.”
Marc shook his head gently.
“You forget everything when it’s so bright and hot. Heavenly light, and the angel always stood inside it. I wondered why he didn’t have any wings. But that was after my father …” He fell silent.
Marc waited patiently. When Alexander showed no indication of picking up where he had stopped, Marc finished the sentence. “After you crucified your father.”
“Yes. He ordered me to do that.”
“Who? The angel or your father?”
“The angel. After Father admitted to him that he wanted to be crucified, I mean. The angel told me that it was a good thing.”
“Let’s go back to the day the angel first appeared. Can you describe him for me?”
“He looked human. I’m sure you know that angels can take human form. That was why he didn’t have any wings.”
Marc nodded thoughtfully. “Describe him.”
At this, Alexander abruptly put on the brakes. “No!”
Marc didn’t make the mistake of putting too much pressure on him. Seemingly relaxed, he simply changed the subject. “But can you tell me what happened when he came?”
Alexander lifted his chin. “He rang the doorbell. I remember that because I thought it was strange. Angels don’t have to knock when they enter a room, do they?”
“No, Alexander, they don’t have to.” Without moving, Marc gazed down at Alexander. “Keep talking. What happened next?”
“The angel sat down in the living room with my father. They talked for a long time, and I listened in. But that was a sin.”
“Did you understand anything they were talking about?”
“Just that they were talking about a woman.”
“A woman. Did you catch her name?”
Alexander shook his head.
*
“That angel he was talking about.” Faris leaned forward to get a better look at Alexander. “Do you think he’s imagining him, or is this angel our culprit?”
Shannon tilted her head thoughtfully. “Whenever somebody talks about hearing voices, the first thing you think of is schizophrenia, but in this case, that doesn’t fit. Alexander isn’t showing any signs of losing touch with reality. He lacks the madness element.” Through the pane, she studied Alexander, who had lowered his head again. “No, I’m positive that he hasn’t just imagined this angel. That is definitely our second culprit.”
Faris was about to ask something when the door swung open and Gitta rushed in. She looked agitated and was holding a single piece of paper that looked like a printout from a DigA A file. “This just came in!” she exclaimed, waving the paper in the air.
Tromsdorff took the page from her and skimmed it. “This is …” The color drained from his face, and he handed the sheet to Faris and Shannon.
The memo came from an officer in the explosives unit.
In the meantime, Marc had decided to change tactics in the interrogation room. “Alexander, I am sure that you would agree with me that murder is a grave sin.” He didn’t wait for Alexander to say anything. “We have to find out where the next bomb is located, the one that is supposed to go off in the Olympic Stadium tonight. The angel you saw might be able to help us to save the lives of many, many people.”
Alexander gave a horrified scream and shouted: “I don’t know where it is!”
As he said this, Faris finished reading the memo.
And knew where the bomb was located.
“Shit!” he said, tonelessly.
At that moment, his phone started to chirp. Fishing it rapidly out of his pocket, he answered the call.
“Now do you believe me, that I’m not Alexander?”
How Faris loathed this distorted, cool voice. A veil slipped down over his eyes, and the world around him turned blood red. Nonetheless, he had enough presence of mind to push his speaker phone button. Shannon and Tromsdorff could now listen in. And in the War Room, he knew that Ben was recording every word.
“You’re not saying anything, Faris,” the caller remarked. “Tell me, are you tired already?”
“Just fuck off!” The words were out before Faris could even try to hold them back. Shannon, who was standing right next to him at the mirror, stared at him in shock.
But the caller just laughed. “You’re upset, I get that. Want to tell me what you’ve been asking Alexander about?”
“How do you know that he’s here?” Faris fired back and realized the answer to that himself. “You hacked the DigA A again.”
“Right. Your computer experts thought they plugged that little hole I made in your firewall. They managed to do that, but they stupidly missed the back entrance that I used this time. It looks like I might be just a little better than they are.”
“What do you want?” Faris asked through clenched teeth.
“I answered your question,” the caller replied sweetly. “Now, please be so kind as to answer mine.”
“What were you asking about?”
“Don’t jerk me around, Faris!” the stranger hissed. “Remember that I’m the one who has the trigger.”
Faris closed his eyes
. “We asked Alexander where the cross is.”
“You want to take my father down, don’t you?”
My father. There it was again!
“We looked into it,” Faris said. “Werner Ellwanger has only one son, Alexander.”
“There’s a chance you weren’t thorough enough, you know.”
Faris’s eyes fell on the printout he was still holding, and then he glanced through the glass to where Marc was just in the process of leaning over Alexander and whispering something in his ear. They now knew why the bomb dogs hadn’t found anything at the stadium.
“The bomb isn’t in the stadium, is it?” he asked.
The caller said, “That’s right.”
Faris once again skimmed the lines in the memo. A local man had brought one of the church conference glow sticks to the police, because his son had taken it apart out of curiosity and found something odd inside. Officers from the explosives unit had examined the stick and immediately posted their findings.
Detonator cap was written on the sheet. Nanothermite. Radio detonator.
All at once, everything made horrifying sense.
“You now know where the bombs are, right, Faris?” the caller asked softly.
“In the conference glow sticks.”
The glow sticks were intended for use at tonight’s worship service. The people would pour into the stadium, bringing with them the very bombs that would kill them there.
“How many of them are there?”
The caller didn’t respond.
“You’ve taken a huge risk!” Faris rubbed his eyes. He had to somehow convince the bomber to share information that would help them catch him.
“How is that?”
“What if someone snaps the glow stick before the service begins?”
“Oh, that!” The caller chuckled. “People do that so often that of course I took that into consideration. If someone snaps one of them beforehand, nothing will happen. The stick won’t glow, but that’s all.”
“It won’t explode if it’s snapped?”
“No, if I’d done that, you would’ve figured everything out too early, and I wanted to keep the game going a bit longer. By the way, whatever you’re thinking, I didn’t connect all the glow sticks with the heart monitor.”
“Oh?”
“I can set some of them off directly by remote signal. Separately. As with that homeless man.”
Faris pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids. The red veil in front of his eyes unraveled into a shower of sparks but returned as soon as he lowered his hand. “And on the subway.”
“Ah.” The caller hesitated. “I hid a larger charge down there. A glow stick bomb wouldn’t have caused as much damage.” His tone was relaxed; it was as if he were chatting about a Sunday drive or a child’s birthday party, completely unemotional.
“And the summer house?” Faris’s voice cracked on the last word.
“Yeah, the summer house …”
Was Faris mistaken or was there a twinge of regret in the caller’s words? He had already sensed earlier that the caller was shaken by Paul’s death. This impression was now reinforced.
A long, unpleasant silence extended between them.
“How much damage are you going to cause?” Faris finally asked when it was clear to him that the caller wouldn’t continue.
“Imagine a hand grenade enhanced with nanothermite. Immediately fatal for a radius of ten to twelve meters, and extreme burns up to forty meters – burns which will also lead swiftly to death. Beyond that point … You have enough imagination to figure out the rest.”
Faris was already imagining what it would be like if several such bombs blew up in the packed stadium. “How many of these things have you distributed around Berlin?”
“About five hundred.”
In Faris’s mind, a gigantic fireball appeared and engulfed the stadium completely.
“How many of those can you set off individually?”
“A few. I gave one of those to a businessman, but he obviously handed it off to someone else. Bobby wasn’t my target, but what would you think about a sweet blonde girl over on Ahornstraße …”
“You bastard!” Faris didn’t realize that he had shouted until he caught sight of Shannon’s and Tromsdorff’s startled faces. He had balled his hand into a fist and raised it as if he could somehow stop whatever was coming next. “Don’t you dare do anything to Lilly …”
But it was too late. The caller had hung up.
*
Laura was in a hurry. She had to get to the hospital. Her shift started in less than half an hour, and before that, she had to drop her daughter off at day care. Lilly wasn’t making any of this easy. The goodbye ritual always took at least ten minutes, and if Laura added that to the amount of time it took her to reach the hospital, she was already late.
She set the little girl down outside the front door, and the child dashed off toward the street.
“Be careful, Lilly!” Laura cried. “Not out on the street!” But as she watched, she noticed what had attracted her daughter’s attention.
On the path, right in front of the gate, an object was lying on the ground. Lilly leaned over and picked it up.
“What do you have there?” Laura walked over, curious. “Show me.” It was one of those glow sticks from the conference. Laura picked it up, and Lilly stuck out her hands. “Have it!” she demanded. She held out her chubby hands expectantly.
“You want to have it back, right?” Laura considered this. The thing was totally clean and looked brand new. One of their fellow apartment dwellers had probably lost it out here recently. If she was lucky, Lilly would remain interested in the glow stick long enough for Laura to make a hasty departure without any theatrics and get to work on time. She weighed the stick in her hand. She wondered fleetingly why it felt so heavy, but her thoughts moved on.
“Why not?” She handed the glow stick to the girl. “But don’t put it in your mouth, alright?”
*
For a moment, Faris listened to the emptiness on the line, then leaned back against the wall. It felt as if the last bit of strength was trickling out of him. He watched as Shannon joined Marc and Alexander in the interview room, and he knew that she was about to apply all of her psychological skills to getting something out of the boy.
“Come with me.” Tromsdorff took Faris’s elbow and steered him back to the War Room, where he maneuvered him to one of the chairs. Within Faris’s mind circled a single, horrible thought.
Lilly with one of those glow sticks. And wherever Lilly was, Laura wouldn’t be far away. In his mind’s eye, he saw an explosion and heard a child weeping, but this time it wasn’t the boy from the Klersch Museum. It was Lilly. The child who should have been his. Laura’s child.
He became aware that he was still holding his phone, and with flying fingers, he dialed Laura’s number. Hopefully she would actually pick up this time.
It rang three times, and she did indeed pick up this time. “This is Laura.” She seemed to be in her car. He could hear engine sounds.
“Laura!” he cried. “Thanks for picking up! I …”
“Faris.” She interrupted him impatiently. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”
“No, Laura, listen. It’s important. You …”
She hung up. He stared at his phone, stunned with incomprehension. He dialed again, but this time she rejected his call.
“Dammit all!” he cursed.
“Faris?” The voice penetrated the cotton that seemed to surround him. Something came to rest heavily on his shoulder. He blinked and saw that Tromsdorff was standing in front of him. “Everything okay?”
Faris nodded. “Yes. No.” He leaned his head back, and his muscles ached. “Sorry about that.”
Tromsdorff removed his hand from Faris’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I ordered a patrol car to go to Laura’s hospital and warn her. Calm down now. The boys will make sure that nothing happens to her or the child.”
Faris took a deep breath. “Thanks.”
“Hey!” Ben called. He had just been chatting with Gitta about the DigA A’s firewall. “Look at that!” He pointed at the television, which was showing channel N24.
A reporter with medium-length, hennaed hair was explaining that the Berlin bomber had apparently contacted the press and made a statement.
“This video,” she said,” was sent to us a few minutes ago.” On the lower part of the screen, words streamed by.
The Berlin bomber’s confession video +++ Still no demands +++ Another bomb has gone off
The video began, opening with footage from the papal visit to Berlin in 2011. Faris saw the former Pope holding a Mass in the Olympic Stadium, followed by a short video of him saying goodbye to various church dignitaries at the Tegel Airport runway and then flying off. The pictures from the video dissolved into the first few words from the motto for the current conference, which appeared in blood red letters against a black background.
SPEAKING THE WORD OF GOD
These were followed by images of medieval crusaders conquering the city of Jerusalem and slaughtering their enemies. After that came a long-distant shot of the Kaaba in Mecca. Thousands of pilgrims surrounded the holy site, which was the destination of their Hajj, the pilgrimage prescribed for every Muslim. Right after that, the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed. The picture then shifted to a video of Orthodox Jews at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, each making the same rocking movement as they prayed, and after that, the footage switched to the tall Israeli wall, at the foot of which people were standing and crying.
Finally, in conclusion, the rest of the conference motto, red on black.
BOLDLY.
The screen went black for a moment, before more text appeared.
WHY ARE YOUR GODS LETTING THIS HAPPEN?
For a couple of seconds, these words remained on the screen before disappearing as the video ended. The reporter reappeared.
“This video was made by the bomber,” she said. She turned toward a gray-haired man with a prominent overbite who was standing beside her. “We have here our expert, Horst Reichenau. Mr. Reichenau, what do you think the attacker is trying to tell us with these images?”
Forty Hours: A breath-taking thriller Page 27