Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (119 page)

Niko draws a ragged breath and his eyes roll back in his head. He drops his weapon and dazedly sees the massive bolts on the underside of the helicopter pad. He notices that rust has forced its way through the white paint at the cracks of the large nuts, but he doesn’t notice that his right lung is filling with blood.

He coughs weakly and fights against losing consciousness. He Spies Joona hiding behind the wall to the dining room with no weapon but a metal rod in his hand. Their eyes meet. Niko gathers his last strength and kicks his automatic rifle over the deck to Joona.

Axel is terrified. His heart races. Gunfire all around makes his ears ring. He can’t help trembling under Raphael’s knife, his body held as the man’s shield. The knife has cut into Axel’s skin and blood runs down his shirt. He can see the bodyguard getting closer to Joona Linna’s hiding spot, but he can do nothing.

Joona reaches for Niko’s carbine and pulls it towards him. The bodyguard crouching near the helicopter pad lets off a blast towards him. The bullets ricochet every which way. Joona jerks out the empty magazine and, from the corner of his eye, sees Niko rummage through his pockets. Niko looks drained of blood and he can barely move. He has to stop a moment, his hand pressing against his stomach. A bodyguard yells at Raphael to hurry and climb in the helicopter; it’s about to lift off. Niko fumbles in a pocket on the leg of his pants. A candy wrapper flutters away. Still, his fingers close over one stray bullet. Niko coughs and looks at the full metal jacket bullet in his palm, then he tosses it to Joona. The bullet rolls across the metal floor, flashing in the sunlight. Its bronze hull and tip of copper shine.

Joona grabs it and shoves it into the magazine as fast as he can.

Niko’s eyes are shut now. A bubble of blood appears between his lips, but his chest is still rising and falling with shallow breaths.

The bodyguard’s heavy steps clunk across the deck.

Joona shoves the magazine into the carbine, slips in the one bullet, lifts the weapon, waits a second, and leaps out of his hiding place.

Raphael is still pulling Axel with him. Raphael’s son yells something from within the helicopter and the pilot is waving at Raphael to get in.

“You should have kissed my hand when you had the chance,” Raphael murmurs into Axel’s ear.

The Amati gives off a deep sound as Raphael pulls it into Axel’s chest.

The bodyguard is strolling towards Niko and bends to send a bullet into his face.

“
Jonottakaa!
” yells Joona in Finnish.

He sees the bodyguard whirl to shoot at Joona instead. Joona leaps to one side to concentrate on the line of fire since his one bullet must count.

It all happens in seconds.

Behind his shield, Raphael keeps a firm grip on his knife. The increasing draft from the helicopter rips at their clothes. Rivulets of blood are sucked from Axel’s neck. They see Joona crouch slightly, shift the muzzle of the carbine slightly, and fire.

Jonottakaa!
Joona thinks.
Get in line, boys!
He feels the hard recoil bang against his shoulder. The full metal jacket bullet leaves his weapon at eight hundred metres a second. Making almost no sound, the bullet plunges into the bodyguard’s throat and exits in a spray of blood before it plunges again into Raphael’s shoulder and out to fly over the water.

Raphael’s knife arm is shocked from the hit and the knife tumbles to the deck.

Axel Riessen falls away.

The bodyguard looks at Joona in surprise as his blood spurts from his throat to pour over his chest. He tries again, groggily, to lift his weapon, but he can’t. An odd sound emanates from his throat. He coughs, and this time blood splutters from his mouth and down his chin.

He sits down abruptly. He lifts his hand to the hole in his throat. He blinks two times and then his eyes fix, wide open.

Raphael’s face has drained and he wavers in the strong, pulsing draft. He still clutches his violin. He stares malevolently at Joona.

“Pappa!” Peter yells. He throws a pistol to his father.

It strikes the deck and bounces once before landing at Raphael’s feet.

Axel has dragged himself up against the railing, his hand pressing against his throat.

“Raphael! Raphael Guidi!” Joona yells. “You’re under arrest!”

Raphael is only five metres from his helicopter. The pistol is at his feet. His gym clothes flap on his body. With effort, he bends for the gun.

“You are under arrest for weapon smuggling, kidnapping, and murder,” Joona shouts clearly.

Raphael straightens with the gun in his shaking hand. His face is covered in sweat.

“Put down your weapon!” Joona orders.

Raphael is aiming the shaking gun. The pounding of his heart interferes. He meets Joona’s eyes.

Axel yells at Joona to run.

Joona remains absolutely still.

Everything then happens at once.

Raphael lifts the pistol towards Joona and pulls the trigger. The pistol clicks. He tries again and fails. He chokes on a ragged breath when he understands that Peter never put a new magazine in the pistol. He understands his son has thrown him an empty gun. The loneliness he has always feared wraps itself around him. And now it’s too late. He cannot drop the weapon and give himself up. He feels three soft thuds against his body as a bang sounds over the sea. Raphael feels only as if someone has struck a fist against his chest. Then he loses all sensation in his legs.

The helicopter will wait no more. It lifts straight into the air, leaving Raphael Guidi behind.

The Finnish navy’s ship has drawn alongside the yacht. The three sailors once more fire in unison; once more, all three bullets strike Raphael with one explosive bang. Raphael Guidi’s body twitches as if he wants to move but he can’t. He falls.

His back is warm, but his feet are already ice-cold.

Raphael stares up at the helicopter quickly rising into the hazy sky.

Peter looks down at the yacht growing ever smaller beneath him. His father is sprawled inside the concentric rings of the helicopter pad, which now look like a target.

Raphael Guidi holds Paganini’s violin to his bloody chest. The red pool beneath his body widens. His eyes are now blank in death. Joona is the only person still standing upright on the deck of the yacht.

He watches the helicopter fly away.

The sky is bright and empty. On the shining surface of the ocean, three vessels bob together in a moment of quiet.

Soon the rescue helicopters will arrive from Finland. Right now, though, it feels like the moment after a performance when the last note fades away, the audience is still enthralled, and the thunderous applause is about to erupt.

Joona Linna, Axel Riessen, and Niko Kapanen, along with the grey-haired bodyguard, are being transported by rescue helicopter to Surgical Hospital in Helsinki.

At the hospital, Axel is curious about why Joona did not duck when Raphael picked up the pistol from the deck.

“Didn’t you hear me yell at you?” Axel asks.

Joona tells him that he’d already spotted the navy snipers and trusted they would fire before Raphael.

“But they didn’t,” Axel says.

“You can’t be right all the time,” Joona says with a grin.

Niko happened to be awake when they looked in before they left. He joked that he felt like the hero Vanhala in the book
The Unknown Soldier
.

“Go, Sweden!” he says to them. “And brave little Finland didn’t do so badly, either!”

Niko’s injuries are no longer life-threatening, but he knows he still faces several operations over the next few days. He will grumble about having to be in a wheelchair when he is released to the care of his parents, and he will be unhappier still when he realises that it will take at least another year before he can play hockey with his sister again.

Raphael Guidi’s bodyguard was arrested and booked into Vanda jail while the judicial wheels began to grind.

Joona Linna and Axel Riessen travel home to Sweden.

The large container ship M/S
Icelus
was never allowed to sail from Gothenburg Harbour. Its cargo of ammunition was unloaded and stored in a customs facility.

Jens Svanehjälm began his proper procedures but, except for the wounded bodyguard, all the people responsible for the crimes were dead.

They never had enough proof to charge anyone else. Only Pontus Salman was found to be mixed up in the illegal export of weapons, and the only suspected criminal in the ISP was its previous general director, Carl Palmcrona.

The government official Jörgen Grünlicht was investigated, but there were never any charges levelled at him. The conclusion was unhappily reached that all the politicians in Sweden and the people working for the Export Control Committee had been in the dark themselves and had just acted in good faith.

Investigations against two Kenyan politicians were handed over to Roland Lidonde, the anticorruption general and the state secretary for Governance and Ethics. It was assumed, however, that he would find that the Kenyans had also acted in good faith.

The supposedly innocent owners of Intersafe Shipping did not know that the ammunition was supposed to go on to Sudan from Mombasa Harbour, and the Kenyan transportation company, Trans Continent, was also unaware that trucks scheduled to travel to Sudan would be loaded with ammunition. Everyone had acted in good faith.

Axel Riessen feels the stitches in his shoulder as he climbs out of the taxi to walk the last steps up Bragevägen. Under the bright sun, the asphalt appears pale, almost white. As he puts his hand to the gate, the outer door of the house opens and Robert comes out. He’d been waiting at the window.

“God, what you’ve been through!” Robert says, shaking his head. “I’ve been on the phone to Joona Linna and he was telling me this crazy story—”

“You know how tough your big brother is,” Axel says, smiling.

They hug and for a moment hold each other tightly. Then they walk together to the house.

“We’ve set the table for lunch in the garden,” Robert says.

“How’s your heart? It hasn’t given you further trouble, has it?” Axel asks as he follows his brother.

“Actually, I was scheduled for surgery next week,” Robert answers gravely.

“I didn’t know that,” Axel whispers.

“I’m getting a pacemaker instead. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it to you—”

“So, an operation.”

“Well, anyway, it was cancelled.”

Axel looks at his brother and he feels a dark twist in his soul. He understands who had booked Robert’s operation and that it was meant never to succeed. The details of the patient in a coma had come from Robert’s medical data. He would have gone into an induced coma on the operating table. Axel would have been given the donation from his own brother.

Axel has to sit abruptly on a hall chair. He feels the flush of guilt. Tears come to his eyes.

“Aren’t you coming?” Robert says easily.

“Yes, of course.”

Axel takes a deep breath, stands up, and follows his younger brother through the house and into the garden. Underneath the shade of the big tree in the centre of the garden, a table set with their finest tableware is waiting on the marble paving.

Axel starts towards Robert’s wife, Anette, to greet her, but Robert takes his arm to steer him away.

“Remember when we were kids? We had fun together,” he says quietly, looking serious. “Why did we grow apart and stop talking? What happened?”

Axel looks at his brother in surprise. He notices the wrinkles in Robert’s face and the stubbly hair around a large bald spot.

“Life happens—”

“No, there’s something else,” Robert says. “We must talk about something I could not discuss over the phone.”

“What could that be?”

“Beverly told me that you blame yourself for Greta’s death,” Robert says.

“I refuse to discuss that.”

“But you must listen,” Robert insists. “I was backstage at the competition. I heard everything. I heard Greta with her father. She was crying the whole time. She’d played a passage incorrectly and her father was furious she’d lost the competition.”

Axel breaks free of Robert’s hold.

“I already know—”

“Let me tell you what I have to tell you,” he says.

“Go ahead, then.”

“Axel … if only you’d just said something. If only I’d known you blamed yourself for Greta’s suicide. I was the one who overheard her father. It was his fault, his fault and only his fault. They had a horrible fight, and he said horrible things to her. He told her he was completely humiliated. He said that she’d shamed him and that he didn’t want her as his daughter any longer. She was to leave his house. He would no longer finance her at the music academy. She was to drop her whole world here and go back to her drug-addicted mother in Mora.”

“How could he ever have said such a thing!”

“I’ll never forget Greta’s voice,” Robert continues bitterly. “How frightened she sounded. She pleaded that she’d done her best. She said that everyone makes mistakes and there’d be other competitions … That this was the only life she knew, the only one she loved.”

“I always told her there would be other competitions,” Axel says slowly.

He looks around, dazed, and doesn’t know what to do. He slowly sits down on the marble patio and holds his face in his hands.

“She was crying and said she’d kill herself if he didn’t let her keep her life in music, let her stay at the academy and continue to play.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Axel whispers.

“You should thank Beverly,” Robert replies.

It’s drizzling as Beverly stands on the train platform inside Central Station. Her journey south will be in a summer landscape wrapped in grey fog. It’s not until she reaches Hässleholm that the sky will clear again. She changes trains in Lund. Then from Landskrona, she takes the bus to Svalöv.

It’s been a long time since she was last home.