The Other Son (45 page)

“Are you sick?”

“No, not me.”

Kennet Wessman didn't ask anything else.

“I'll see what I can do,” he said.

“That's not enough.”

A pause.

“I'll find a doctor,” Kennet said. “When, and for how long?”

“I'll get back to you about that.”

They stopped talking, and everything else just lay there unsaid.

“Do you have your passport, Miles? The fake one?”

Miles handed him the passport. Kennet tucked it away in the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Good, I'll employ you under this name. You're an IT technician, and will have access to pretty much everything in the embassy.”

“I don't know anything about computers; what do I do if anyone asks?”

“You used to be a diplomat, didn't you?”

Miles nodded.

“Then lie, for fuck's sake. That's what we do best.”

The Swedish embassy
was just a few blocks north from the pub. They walked up the cobbled streets toward the Castle District.

Kennet pointed to a building to their right.

“You'll be living there; a friend of mine has an empty apartment, I've booked it for you.”

Everything was nice and close. Miles liked Prague.

Kennet Wessman led him into the embassy, then sorted out the details of his employment, and a pass card. Everything was prepared, and went very smoothly. Miles was starting to like him.

Then down into the basement, a dark corridor with a room at the end. No windows, three computers, standard-issue Swedish public-authority furniture, several servers, a kettle, and some instant coffee.

“Will this be OK?” Kennet asked.

The room was claustrophobic and nondescript.

“Couldn't be better,” Miles said as he hung up his coat.

Jens and Mikhail strode into the hospital at twenty minutes past three in the morning. The blue-shirted policeman outside Sophie's room was pouring coffee from the flask he'd brought with him. In his lap were a pen and a book:
Kamikaze Sudoku.

He started to get to his feet when he saw the two big men rapidly approaching him.

“Stop,” he said loudly, fumbling for his holstered pistol. He went for his radio instead and tried to press it, realized that time was running out, and switched to the pepper spray kept in a leather pouch on his belt. His panic was the cause of his downfall. Mikhail grabbed him and dragged the police constable into the sickroom and laid him down on his stomach, taped his hands and mouth with electrical tape, then took him into the bathroom. He removed his pistol and radio, then closed the door.

Jens had released the brakes under Sophie's bed and they rolled her out into the corridor and set off toward the rear entrance of the hospital.

Dr. Steen bumped into them as she emerged from the staff room.

“Stand still,” Jens said in Danish.

Vibeke froze, and looked first at Mikhail's huge bulk, and then at the policeman's pistol in his hand. Jens took her by the arm and led her to a medicine storeroom.

“Unlock it,” he said.

She did as she was told, her hand trembling as she found the right key on her key ring, put it in the lock, and opened the door.

Jens grabbed the keys from her hand and shoved her into the storeroom.

He was about to close the door when Vibeke said, “She's in a very weak condition; she won't make it if she doesn't get treatment.”

“She's going to get treatment,” he said.

Jens began to close the door.

“When?”

“In ten, fifteen hours,” he said.

“That could be too late….”

Jens studied the doctor. She seemed genuinely concerned.

“We're going to take her away from here, come what may,” he said.

“She mustn't wake up for the next twelve hours,” Vibeke said, and began to take things off the shelves in the medicine storeroom, still talking as she read the labels and put the medication into an empty box.

“Make sure you keep her sedated the whole time. And she absolutely mustn't lose any more blood. Keep her on a drip, and monitor her pulse.”

She went on giving him instructions about how to care for Sophie: what medication to give her, how often, and by what means. Jens picked up the box of medication and drip bags and walked out of the storeroom.

“Someone will come and let you out in a while,” Jens said, then shut the door on her, locking it with a loud click.

They rolled the bed through the corridor, following their preplanned route, toward the fire escape stairs, where they folded the wheels under the bed and carried it down two floors and rolled it out on to a loading dock in back of the hospital.

A Chevrolet Express was standing there with its back doors open. Lothar was waiting in the back of the van. Sophie was pushed inside. They locked the bed, fixed it to the floor and walls with cables, then drove off, quietly and carefully.

The back of the van rocked as Lothar and Jens worked to attach the drip, while Jens gave Lothar the information he had just been given inside the hospital by the doctor.

“I'll manage,” Lothar said.

“Good,” Jens said. He stopped for a moment. “You're a good kid,” he said, and patted Lothar on his shoulder.

Lothar didn't reply, and arranged the medicines in a plastic tray on the floor.

Jens made his way to the front of the van and slipped into the seat next to Mikhail.

Ejnar Larsen was confused. His tied-up colleague had been found early that morning by his replacement. The female patient with no identity was missing. As was the bed she had been lying in.

None of the surveillance cameras had registered anything.

Ejnar was reading a computer printout from Sweden. The DNA hadn't brought up any matches, and neither had the fingerprints. The woman was still anonymous.

He scratched his head, the way he sometimes did when he needed to think. And there was something else bothering him.

Ejnar went through the events of the past few days—the reports and investigations. He had seen something, noticed something in passing…recently…very recently.

Something about the Copenhagen Police working on a report from the Malmö Police on the other side of the Sound. They'd asked for help….

What the hell was it, again?

Ejnar searched his papers. The piles were large and unsorted. He cursed himself for being so untidy. But eventually he found what he was looking for.

He skimmed through the report. A remarkable gunfight at a multistory parking garage in Malmö. No witnesses to speak of, the Swedish police suspected the use of guns with silencers. It was all very sketchy….But it wasn't the shootout itself that caught Ejnar Larsen's interest. It was an occurrence at the hospital shortly afterward….

He searched his desk again and found a report of a man with a gunshot wound being admitted to the University Hospital in Malmö. The man, who hadn't had any ID on him, was operated on, then was picked up by two men and disappeared.

Exactly what had happened here?…

He scratched his head again.

“
Hello!
”

Ejnar looked up from his desk. Vibeke Steen was standing in front of him. He made an attempt to stand up.

“Please, have a seat. Did you get on OK with the artist?”

She sat down.

“I don't know. The memory cheats….But I hope the pictures will help you.”

Ejnar interviewed her. Vibeke told him about the men, how they had looked when she encountered them.

“They cared about the patient,” she said.

“Friends of hers?”

“Maybe.”

“Did they say anything?”

Vibeke thought.

“They said she'd be looked after in ten, fifteen hours.”

“Anything else?”

“The one who talked to me spoke Danish. But it felt a bit odd.”

“How?”

“You know when someone's lived abroad for a long time, the way they speak…their mother tongue is a bit old-fashioned?”

Ejnar Larsen made a note on his pad.

“I've got one more question,” he said.

“Fire away.”

“Why would someone do that? Take someone from a hospital?”

“How do you mean?”

“Has it happened before? Someone doing this sort of thing?”

She almost laughed. “Yes, it's the third time this week.”

He smiled at the joke.

“No, it hasn't happened before,” she said.

But it had, only the other day, on the Swedish side of the Öresund. Exactly the same thing.

He said goodbye to Vibeke Steen, then sat down and continued thinking.

Why would anyone do that, and take such a risk?

Presumably if you were on the run, or if there was a warrant out for you.

A warrant…

Ejnar Larsen dug around on his computer. He couldn't get into the Swedish system, so he started with the Danish one. That was fairly straightforward, because there weren't that many women on it. But there was no one who looked like the missing patient. He moved on to Europol, then Interpol.

After scrolling down for a good half hour, staring at far too many pictures of women who had warrants out for them, he recognized her straightaway. The warrant had been issued by the French police, and was marked as low priority.

The woman was Sophie Brinkmann, and she was Swedish, registered in Stockholm.

Ejnar picked up his phone and dialed the number of the detective in charge of the case, Gustave Peltier at the Police Nationale in Nice.

Dressed in a black Benedictine habit, Hector was sitting on a bench under a cypress tree, looking out at the world in front of him.

The monastery was on a plateau. The view from the garden was immense: rolling landscape, forests, villages, farms, mountains, the horizon.

Next to him was a small patch of garden, where two monks were working, pulling out dried-up plants and turning the soil.

Aron walked toward him; he had a bag in his hand, a black sports bag. He sat down beside Hector.

“How did you manage to pull this off?” he asked.

“Roberto, a cousin of Dad's,” Hector said.

“It is secure?”

Hector looked around at the tranquil scene.

“This is the safest place right now.”

He turned toward Aron. “Where have you been?”

“Denmark.”

“Did you find them?”

“Sort of,” Aron replied.

“Lothar?”

“I don't know, he wasn't there when I got there,” Aron said.

“What happened?”

A breeze blew through the trees around them.

“Sophie's dead,” he said.

Hector flinched, albeit slightly.

“I found her on the floor inside the house. They'd been attacked.”

“Lothar?” he asked again.

“No one else there. It was empty.”

Hector was trying not to feel anything, but somewhere in his chest…

“Apart from…” Aron began.

“Apart from what?”

“Another body, a woman.”

“Who?”

“I'm not sure, but I think it was the detective who was investigating the Trasten case; we read about her in the papers, if you remember?”

Hector thought, and remembered.

“Yes. Miller?”

“Mm-hm. Antonia Miller.”

“What was she doing there?”

Aron passed the bag to Hector.

“Look through this.”

Hector glanced warily at Aron, then opened the bag.

What he read gave him an indistinct impression that Sophie had been in contact with the police ever since their first meeting, that she had been supplying them with information.

“She betrayed us very early on,” Aron said. “She betrayed us, Hector. And she continued to betray us, right to the end.”

Hector leafed quickly through the photographs and notes, but couldn't deal with it and handed the bag back to Aron.

“Who was at the house, who killed Sophie and Miller?”

“Difficult to say. Jens, Mikhail, and Lothar were gone. I don't know.”

Hector looked at Aron. He had fought tirelessly for their survival, but there was something odd about him, something different. The conviction in his eyes was gone. As if he were hiding something. As if he were trying to hide that fact too, by keeping his eyes steady, not blinking, overemphasizing that he was exactly the same as usual. But on the other hand, he was exhausted, just like everyone else.

“Thanks, Aron,” Hector said.

“What for?”

“For everything.”

Some church bells started to ring a short distance away. Hector stood up and walked toward the monastery. The two monks in the garden were already on their way. More were approaching from other directions.

Aron remained seated and watched him go.

Hector walked into
the chapel and sat down on a wooden bench. The monks started to sing. It was beautiful—melancholic.

Sophie was dead. He was seized by longing and despair, a sense of incredible loss and loneliness.

The monks' singing echoed around the cool stone vaults of the chapel.

Hector could see her clearly in his mind, as if she were right in front of him, and he dared to let himself hold on to that.

One thing grew clearer to him. A dream, almost unconscious, but a dream that had grown inside him since the very first time he met her. That she was the woman, his salvation, his life, that she was the one who would bring to pass everything he hadn't managed to achieve on his own. Finding happiness, and sharing it.

A sob escaped from his throat. He clamped his hand over his mouth. He could feel the wracked sobbing that was on its way, could feel despair welling up and threatening to turn everything upside down. But Hector fought against it, struggling to hold the tears and anguish at bay.

It worked. After a while he was able to remove his hand from his mouth.

She betrayed us.
Aron's words came back to him. Yes, she had. But had she betrayed him? Did he really care, when it came down to it?

She was dead.

Gone.

And he would never see her again.

The monks' singing rolled back and forth through the room.

If he had believed in what they believed in, he would have prayed for her soul. But Hector didn't know how.

The only thing he had in common with the men in front of him was that he, like them, was penniless, didn't even own the clothes he was wearing. But the men singing had made an active choice to become penniless. Hector had made an active choice to be the exact opposite.

Alongside his grief was rage. It had carried him through life, deeply embedded in a black little world he had kept hidden ever since he was a child. And it took hold of him now. Oddly enough, the rage kept him calm, fended off his grief, helped him to think and make decisions. And that's what he did. He made the decision that he was going to find his son Lothar, that he was going to take back what was his, with interest, and that he'd kill all the fuckers who had had the nerve to fuck with him.

But most of all he planned what he was going to do to the person who had killed Sophie. And thereby also his dream.