The Nightmare (42 page)

The hit man doesn’t pause. He’s running as fast as he can toward the center of the building and automatically calculates lines of fire. A police officer must be hiding behind a tiled wall next to the fish counter. Another is approaching through the hallway of wild game. The hit man whirls around and fires two quick shots while he heads for the kitchen of the fish restaurant.

*   *   *

Mira hears two more shots. Her young partner crumples, and blood spurts from the exit wound between his shoulder blades. His automatic rifle smacks the ground, and he falls back so hard that his helmet shakes loose and rolls across the floor. The barrel of his fallen gun points toward Mira. She moves away fast and crawls along the floor next to the fruit counter. Then chaos as twenty-four police officers storm the Saluhall—six pouring through each door. She tries to radio in, but can’t contact anyone. With an astonished blink, she sees the hit man less than ten meters away. He’s going toward the fish restaurant. Mira steadies her Glock in two hands, aims, and fires three shots at him.

*   *   *

A bullet plows through the hit man’s left forearm as he’s storming through the swinging doors to the kitchen. He keeps going along the grill, blundering through some hanging steel pans and toward a narrow metal door. Warm blood runs over the back of his hand. He knows there’s some serious damage, especially to the back of his arm. This was hollow-point ammunition, after all. But he can also tell the artery is untouched. Without looking down at his wound, he opens the door to the warehouse elevator, scrambles through and out the facing door. He finds himself in a narrow hallway and kicks open another gray metal door, heading toward morning light beyond. Eight cars are parked on an asphalt inner courtyard. Rising around him are the high, smooth walls of the Saluhall like the backside of a yellow theater curtain. He folds up the accessories to his weapon and runs to an older-model red Volvo that has no automatic ignition. He kicks out the back passenger window on the driver’s side and reaches in to open the door. The sound of automatic rifle fire still resounds inside the Saluhall. He sits down behind the steering wheel, breaks open the column and then the lock, pulls open the ignition, and, with his knife blade, starts the car.

80

the shock wave

Stewe Billgren has just watched twelve heavily armed police officers split up to run through two doors into the Saluhall. He’s been frozen with his pistol aimed at the closest door since Mira ran inside with Group 5 less than ten minutes ago. Now she finally has some backup. He stands stiffly up, relieved, and goes to sit in the driver’s seat of Alpha Car. Blue lights flash on walls all the way down to Sturegatan. A new movement in his rearview mirror makes him glance up. The hood of a red Volvo pokes out from an entrance to the building beside the Saluhall. It comes slowly forward across the sidewalk and turns right onto Humlegårdsgatan, nearing his own car. It passes and turns onto Majorsgatan right in front of him. The early-morning light reflects back from the windows and he can make out only a vague impression of the man behind the wheel. He looks away toward the square and watches an officer shout urgently into his radio. Stewe feels the urge to go over and ask about Mira when several things click into place in his mind. The man in the red Volvo had to let go of the wheel in order to shift. His black jacket looked shiny, as if it were wet. Stewe’s heart stutters. The left arm was wet. He couldn’t see the driver’s face through the reflections, but there were no reflections in the back side window because the window was gone. And the glitter around its edge was broken glass. The hit man had broken into the Volvo to escape and his left arm was bloody.

Stewe reacts immediately. He radios the leader of the operation even while the red Volvo is driving up Majorsgatan. He gets no answer. He starts his engine and shifts his car into gear without a thought for his own safety. The moment he turns onto Majorsgatan, the Volvo speeds up. The hit man realizes immediately that Stewe is on his trail. Both cars now speed up. They are on a narrow street past the neo-Gothic Holy Trinity Church and approaching a T intersection. Stewe is shifting into fourth gear and closing on the Volvo. He plans to force the driver to stop by swerving into its side. The light façade of the church seems to approach too fast. The Volvo swings right on Linnégatan so rapidly his wheels swerve up onto the sidewalk beneath a red awning to crash through some café tables. Splintered wood and metal scraps fly up. His left fender is torn loose and sparks on the concrete. Stewe slides around the curve and so gains a few seconds. He shifts up and closes in on the Volvo even as they are speeding down Linnégatan. The fender tears loose from the Volvo and smacks into Stewe’s windshield. He involuntarily ducks, slows a second, but speeds up again. A taxi honks at them from a side street. They both swerve into the opposite lane to pass two slower cars. There’s hardly time to see the roadblocks around Östermalm Square. Gawkers have begun to gather.

The wider road next to the National Historical Museum gives Stewe a breather and he tries to reach the leader of the operation again.

“Alpha Car!” he yells.

“Roger,” a voice says.

“Suspect is in a red Volvo on Linnégatan heading toward Djurgården,” Stewe calls into the radio.

He drops the radio and it bounces on the floor as his car hits a wooden barrier in front of a sandpile. His right front tire lifts off the ground and he slides to the left, passing the hole where the asphalt has been broken up. He disengages the clutch and matches the drift in the other direction, slides past the opposite lane, and is in control of the car again. He hits the gas.

He’s pursuing the Volvo down tree-lined Narvavägen Boulevard, which had crossed Linnégatan. A bus brakes hard to miss the Volvo. It slides into the intersection and the back end swings around to hit a light pole. Another car swerves to avoid the bus and helplessly drives right into a bus shelter. Glass splinters rain down onto the sidewalk. A woman throws herself away from the car and falls down. The brakes of the bus are still squealing, its tires thunder up onto the safety island, and the roof of the bus knocks off a large, overhanging tree branch.

Stewe keeps following the racing Volvo past Berwald Concert Hall. He’s coming closer just in time to see that the driver is managing to aim a pistol at him. He stamps down on the brake at the same moment the shot goes through the window near his head. The interior of Stewe’s car instantly fills with flying glass. The Volvo drives over a parked bike with a placard advertising Linda’s Café. There’s a big bang as the bike bounces up, then over the hood and roof and on into the air. It lands directly in front of Stewe to be crushed beneath his wheels and thwack up momentarily against his undercarriage.

They’re speeding through the sharp curve to Strandvägen, right over the safety island between the trees. Stewe hits the gas as he pulls out of the turn and his tires spin. They’re racing through early rush-hour traffic, leaving the sounds of squealing brakes and the thud of minor collisions behind. They come up to the left by Berwald Concert Hall, over the grass-covered safety island and onto Dag Hammarskjölds väg.

Stewe pulls out his pistol and puts it down next to him. He reasons that he’ll reach the other car at Djurgårdsbrunnsvägen. At that point he’ll try to head him off, and then it will be time to take the man out. They’re passing the American embassy, hidden behind a high gray fence, at about 130 kilometers an hour. The Volvo, its tires smoking now, jerks from the road and turns to the left just past the Norwegian embassy. It goes up over the sidewalk and between the trees. Stewe reacts a touch too late and is forced to swing wide, right in front of a bus, over the sidewalk, up onto the lawn, and through some low bushes. His tires whack on the curbstones of the Italian Cultural Institute. He crosses the sidewalk and slides to the left on Gärdesgatan, where he immediately spots the Volvo.

It’s stopped in the center of the Skarpögatan crossway.

Stewe believes he sees a glimpse of the driver through the back window. He grabs up his pistol from the seat and releases the safety. He drives slowly up to the Volvo. Blue lights flash from all the police cars streaming from Valhallavägen beyond the Sveriges Television Building. The Volvo driver bails quickly from his vehicle and then he is only a black-clad figure running down the road between the two stately embassies of Germany and Japan. Stewe is almost out of his car when the Volvo explodes into a fireball. The shock wave hits his face and the blast deafens him. He hears the world as if cotton wool were stuffed into his ears, but he drives on into the unbelievable quiet, up onto the sidewalk, even directly across the smoking hulk, but he can no longer see the suspect. There is no other place to go. He speeds up, crashes through a high fence, stops as the street dead ends, leaves the car, and runs back with his pistol ready.

The man is gone. The world is still unbelievably silent, except for an odd high-pitched whistle as if a strong wind were blowing. Stewe scans the street quickly up and down. The embassy buildings sit behind gray steel wire. There was nowhere the man could go except into one of these buildings by using a code or even climbing over one of the high fences.

People are emerging from their buildings to see what caused the explosion. Stewe looks around, takes a few steps, then quickly turns around again. This time, he spots the suspect immediately, on the grounds of the German embassy. He walks casually, matter-of-factly, to the main entrance. The door swings open and the man steps inside. Stewe Billgren lowers his arm and tries to calm down from a feeling of total frustration. He tries to control his breathing. The German embassy sits on a piece of land that is diplomatically considered part of Germany itself. He cannot enter without an express invitation. Swedish jurisdiction stops at the gate.

81

the german embassy

A uniformed officer is stationed ten meters in front of the barrier on Sturegatan by Humlegårdsgatan when Joona Linna drives up. The policeman tries to direct him away, but Joona ignores him and parks at the edge of the road. He shows his ID, bends underneath the plastic tape barrier, and then starts to jog toward the Saluhall.

He’d received the call only eighteen minutes ago, but the gunfight is over and the ambulances have begun to arrive.

The leader of the operation, Jenny Göransson, is receiving a detailed report regarding the police pursuit of the suspect, which has concluded in the part of town called Diplomat City. It appears that the suspect has entered the German embassy. Saga Bauer is talking to a colleague outside the Saluhall. The officer is wrapped in a blanket. Saga catches Joona’s eye and waves him over. He walks toward the women and nods a greeting.

“I was sure I’d get here before you,” Joona says.

“Too slow, Joona, you’re too slow.”

“Yes, I am.” He grins as he replies.

The policewoman in the blanket looks at Joona and says hello.

“This is Mira Carlsson from Span,” Saga says. “She was one of the first into the Saluhall and she thinks she hit our man.”

“But you didn’t see his face,” Joona states.

“No, I didn’t,” Mira confirms.

Joona looks at the entrance to the Saluhall and then turns to Saga.

“They assured me that all the buildings nearby were secure,” he mutters bitterly.

“They assumed these were too far away—”

“They assumed wrong,” Joona says.

“Yes,” Saga agrees, and gestures at the building. “He was behind the fence of this entrance and he was able to fire a shot through Penelope’s window.”

“So I heard. She was lucky,” Joona says softly.

Barriers were up in the area around Östermalms Saluhall and small numbered signs marked the first findings: a shoe print and an empty cartridge from a full metal jacket American-made precision bullet.

Farther inside the open doors, Joona can see some tomatoes scattered across the floor along with a battered-looking magazine from a Swedish AK-5.

“Stewe Billgren, our colleague from Span,” Saga continues, “followed the suspect to Diplomat City and reports that he walked into the German embassy through the front door.”

“Any possibility he could be mistaken?”

“Maybe … we’re in contact with the embassy and … wait”—she quotes from her notebook—“they say that they have not ‘registered any unusual activity within the embassy grounds.’”

“Have you talked to Billgren yourself?”

“Yes.” Saga looks at Joona seriously. “His hearing was damaged when the suspect blew up the stolen car. He can hardly hear a thing. However, he’s absolutely certain what he saw. He clearly saw the suspect enter the German embassy.”

“And perhaps he went on through and back out on the other side.”

“Well, we have our people surrounding it now and a helicopter in the air. We just need permission to enter the building.”

Joona takes a quick look at the Saluhall. “That can take a while.” He takes out his cell phone and says, almost to himself, “I’m going to have a chat with Klara Olofsdotter.”

Klara Olofsdotter, the main prosecutor for the International Prosecutor’s Office, picks up the phone on the second ring.

“I know it’s you, Joona,” she says without a greeting. “And I know what’s going on.”

“Then you also know we must get inside that embassy.”

“That’s not so easy. This is always a damned sensitive area, excuse my language. I’ve talked with the ambassador’s secretary by phone,” Klara Olofsdotter explains. “She insists that everything is absolutely normal at the embassy.”

“We know the suspect is inside,” Joona says.

“How could he have gotten in?”

“He might be a German citizen demanding his right for help from the embassy. They’ve just opened. He could also be a Swedish part-time employee or he has the pass code or … some kind of diplomatic status. Maybe he has immunity or he’s being protected by someone. We just don’t know. He might even be a close relative to the defense attaché or the ambassador, Joachim Rücker, himself.”

“But you don’t even know what he looks like,” she says. “How could we identify him even if they let us inside?”