The Nightmare (40 page)

“We would have…” she says, panting. “We would have written it off as an accident. The hit man would have gotten the photograph, cleaned out all the computers, left the country without a trace.”

“Though I think that he’s not the kind to be afraid of being discovered. He’s practical,” Joona says. “It’s easier to solve the problem without getting the police involved, but solving the problem is what he’s all about … otherwise, he wouldn’t bother to burn the apartments. This draws attention. He’s just being thorough and he prioritizes thoroughness above all.”

Saga steadies herself with her hands on her thighs. Sweat drops from her face.

“Of course, we’d put the apartment fires and the boat accident together sooner or later,” she says. She straightens up.

“But then it would be too late,” he says. “The hit man’s job is to erase the evidence and eliminate the witnesses.”

“But now we have the photograph and Penelope,” Saga says with a smile. “That hit man hasn’t solved the problem.”

“Not yet…”

Saga gives a few random blows to the boxing bag hanging from the ceiling and then looks Joona over. “During my training, I saw a film of a bank robbery and how you rendered the suspect harmless with a broken pistol.”

“I was lucky,” Joona says.

“Right.”

He laughs and she comes up to him, circles him with fancy footwork and then stops. She reaches out with open hands and meets his eyes. She waves at him to come on, waggling her fingers. She’s wanting him to take her on for a round. He smiles as he understands her reference to Bruce Lee: the waving hand. He shakes his head but doesn’t break eye contact.

“I’ve seen how you move,” he says.

“Then you know,” she says shortly.

“You’re quick and you’ll get in the first blow, but after that—”

“I’m cooked,” she answers.

“It’s a good thought, but—”

She makes the same gesture again, a bit more impatiently.

“But you will come in much too hard,” he says, amused.

“No, I won’t,” she says.

“Try it and you’ll find out,” Joona says calmly.

She waves once more, but he doesn’t seem to care. He gets up and turns his back to her as he heads for the door. She goes straight for him to land a right hook. He bends his neck slightly and the blow sails over his head. As a smooth continuation, Joona spins around and draws his pistol while taking her down to the ground with a kick to the kneecap.

“I have to tell you something,” Saga says.

“That I was right, right?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” She glares at him as she gets up.

“If you head in too hard—”

“I wasn’t heading in hard,” she says. “I held back because I’d just thought of something important.”

“I get it!” He laughs.

“I don’t give a shit what you think you get or don’t get,” she says. “My idea is to use Penelope as bait.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I started to think about how she wants to go somewhere else and then at the moment I was about to hit you, I got an idea. I couldn’t knock you out if I had to talk to you.”

“So talk,” he says.

“I realized that Penelope would be bait anyway, whether we’d be involved or not. She’d lure the hit man to her.”

Joona stops smiling and nods slowly.

“Keep talking,” he says.

“We don’t know for sure if the hit man can listen in to our communication, if he can hear everything we say via RAKEL … but it’s probable since he found Penelope on Kymmendö,” Saga says.

“Right.”

“He’ll find her one way or another, that’s what I think. He doesn’t care if she’s under police protection or not. We’ll do everything we can to keep her placement a secret, but it’s hellish to protect her without radio communication.”

“He will find her,” Joona says.

“That’s what I was thinking. Penelope will be bait, no matter what. The question is: Are we going to be ready when he comes? She gets just as much protection as planned, but if we put the stakeout guys from Span to watch the place as well, maybe we can catch this guy.”

“That’s entirely possible. You’re thinking in the right direction,” Joona says.

76

the safe apartment

Carlos, Saga, and Joona are heading down the long hallway to Säpo headquarters. Verner Zandén is already waiting for them, and without unnecessary greetings, he speaks the minute they’ve shut the door behind them.

“Klara Olofsdotter at the International Prosecutor’s Office is in on this. I don’t have to tell you, this is a big stakeout for CID and Säpo. But who the hell are we trying to catch?”

“We know next to nothing about him,” Saga says. “We don’t even know if he’s working alone or if he’s part of a team of professional killers from Belgium, or Brazil, or even leftover operatives from the KGB or from the former Eastern bloc.”

“It’s not very difficult to listen in on our radio communications,” Carlos admits.

“This man knows Penelope’s being protected and it will be difficult to get at her,” Joona says. “But there are always small chances: at times a door must be opened, guards change, people bring her food, she’ll have to meet her mother, confer with a psychologist, and she’s planning to meet Niklas Dent from the NHS—”

Joona stops talking when his cell phone rings. He checks the display and clicks it to voice mail.

“Of course, our first priority is Penelope,” Saga says. “But even while protecting her, we feel we might have a chance to catch this man who’s murdered so many of our colleagues.”

“I don’t have to remind you that he’s extremely dangerous,” Joona says. “None of us will meet a more dangerous human.”

*   *   *

The secure apartment, at Storgatan 1, has a window that faces Sibyllegatan with a view over Östermalm Square. There are no apartment buildings across the street and the closest building is at least one hundred meters away.

Saga Bauer holds the steel door open at street level for Dr. Daniella Richards to lead Penelope Fernandez from an iron-gray police bus. Armored Säpo guards surround them.

“This is the most secure aboveground apartment in all of Stockholm,” Saga explains.

Penelope doesn’t seem to notice her words. She just follows Dr. Richards to the elevator. Security cameras proliferate around the entry hall and the stairwell.

“We’ve put in motion detectors, an advanced alarm system, and two encrypted direct lines to Central Control,” Saga tells Penelope as the elevator heads up.

On the fourth floor, Penelope is brought through a heavy door to yet another locked door, which yet another uniformed officer opens, letting them into the apartment.

“This apartment has tremendous protection against fire,” Saga says. “It has its own electrical generator and its own ventilation system.”

“You’re safe here,” Dr. Richards says gently.

Penelope raises her face and looks at the doctor with an empty expression.

“Thanks,” she finally says, almost soundlessly.

“I can stay with you if that’s what you want.”

Penelope shakes her head. Dr. Richards and Saga wait for a long moment before they turn to leave.

Penelope locks the door behind them and then walks over to one of the bulletproof windows with a view of Östermalm Square. The window is opaque from outside. She looks down and understands that some of the people moving about on the square must be police in disguise.

She slowly touches the window. She can hear nothing from the outside world.

The doorbell rings.

Penelope jumps and her heart starts to pound.

She walks over to the monitor, finds the intercom button, and presses it. The female officer’s face appears and she says that Penelope’s mother has arrived.

“Penny? Penny?” her mother’s anxious voice asks from behind the officer.

Penelope presses the combination to the door lock and hears the mechanism tick an answer before she can open the heavy steel door.

“Mamma,” she says quietly. The sound of her own voice drops into the apartment’s oppressive silence.

Penelope lets her mother into the room, then closes and locks the door. After that, she can’t seem to move. She presses her lips together and feels her body start to tremble. She forces all feeling from her face.

She glances up at her mother but doesn’t dare meet her eyes. She waits for her mother’s tirade and accusations because she wasn’t able to protect Viola.

Claudia has stopped and takes a slow look around.

“Are they taking good care of you, Penny?” she asks.

“I’m fine now.”

“But they have to guard you.”

“They are, so I’m safe here.”

“That’s all that matters,” Claudia says in words almost beyond hearing.

Penelope tries to swallow her tears.

“There’s so much I have to take care of now,” her mother says, and turns her face away. “I … I just can’t realize that I have to arrange Viola’s funeral.”

Penelope nods slowly. Her mother reaches out her hand to touch Penelope’s cheek, but Penelope startles back and her mother jerks her hand away.

“They tell me that it will be over soon,” Penelope says. “The police think they’ll get that man … the man … who killed Viola and Björn.”

Claudia nods and looks at her daughter with a face so naked and unprotected that Penelope is surprised to see her smile. “Just think, you are alive!” Claudia says thickly. “Just think, I have you again! It’s all that matters now … It’s the only thing that matters.”

“
Mamma
.”

“My little girl.”

Claudia reaches out her hand again, and this time Penelope does not shy away.

77

the stakeout

Jenny Göransson is in charge of the stakeout. She’s positioned in the bay window of an apartment three floors up on Nybrogatan 4A. She’s waiting. The hours pass. No one has reported anything. All seems quiet. Routinely, her eyes sweep in surveillance of the square and up to the roof of Sibyllegatan 27. Some pigeons startle and fly up and away.

Sonny Jansson is positioned on that roof. He must have shifted and scared the birds.

Jenny contacts him and finds out that he had moved to look into another apartment.

“I thought they were in the middle of a fight, but then I realized they’re actually playing Wii and jumping around in front of the television.”

“Return to your position,” Jenny says drily.

She lifts her binoculars to peer at the dark area between the kiosk and the elm trees again. She’s decided it could be a potential hot spot.

Blomberg calls in. He’s undercover as a jogger running down Sibyllegatan.

“I see something in the cemetery,” he says in a low voice.

“What?”

“Someone is under the trees, about ten meters from the gate.”

“Check it out, Blomberg, but be careful,” she says.

He jogs past the horse stairs by the Military Museum’s gable and on into the cemetery. The night is warm and green. He moves silently onto the grass next to the gravel path and thinks that he’ll soon stop and pretend to stretch. Right now, he just keeps going. There’s a rustling among the leaves. The light left in the sky is blocked by branches and it’s dark between the gravestones. He is startled by seeing a face near the ground. A woman of about twenty. Her hair is stubby and dyed red and her green military backpack is lying next to her head. Blomberg begins to see more clearly as another person, a black-clad, laughing woman, pulls up the other woman’s sweater and begins kissing her breasts.

Blomberg carefully moves away and reports back to Jenny Göransson: “False alarm. Lovers.”

*   *   *

Three hours have passed. Blomberg shivers. It’s getting chilly. The dew is forming on the grass as the temperature drops. He rounds a corner and pulls up abruptly in front of a middle-aged woman with a well-worn face. She seems extremely drunk as she wobbles on her feet. She’s walking two poodles on a leash, jerking back angrily as the dogs eagerly sniff the ground and want to pull away.

Near the edge of the cemetery, an airline attendant passes by. The wheels on her blue carry-on clatter against the asphalt. She gives Blomberg a disinterested glance and he hardly glances back although they’ve been colleagues for more than seven years.

Maria Ristonen hears the sound of her own heels echo along the wall. She’s pulling her carry-on toward the entrance of the subway to check on someone almost hidden near the entrance. The carry-on gets stuck in a cobblestone and skitters sideways. She has to stop and as she bends down, she checks out the person in the shadows. He’s very well-dressed but he has an odd look on his face. He seems to be waiting for someone and he eyes her intently. Maria Ristonen’s heart begins to beat harder and she hears Jenny Göransson’s voice in her earpiece.

“Blomberg has seen him, too, and he’s on the way,” Jenny says. “Wait for Blomberg, Maria. Wait for Blomberg.”

Maria feels she can’t hesitate too long. The normal thing would be to walk along again. She tries to move more slowly and now she’s nearing the man with the odd look. She’ll have to walk past him and then her back would be to him. The man draws back farther in the shadows as she approaches. He has a hand inside his jacket. Maria Ristonen feels the adrenaline pump through her veins when the man suddenly steps toward her and pulls something out that he’s had hidden. Beyond the man’s shoulder, Maria sees Blomberg take a stance, weapon suddenly in his hand. Jenny shouts that it’s a false alarm. The man holds only a beer can.

“Bitch!” The man spits beer toward her.

“Oh God,” sighs Jenny in Maria’s earpiece. “Just keep on going to the subway, Maria.”

*   *   *

The rest of the night passes without incident. The last nightclubs close and then only a few dog owners and aluminum-can collectors go by. Then the newspaper delivery people. Then more dog owners and a few joggers. Jenny Göransson can hardly wait for her relief at eight a.m. She gazes at Hedvig Eleonora Church and then at Penelope Fernandez’s blank window. She looks down at Storgatan and then back toward the priory, where the film director Ingmar Bergman grew up. She pulls out a stick of nicotine gum and studies the square, the park benches, the trees, and the sculptures of the hunched woman and the man with the slab of meat on his shoulder.