The Nightmare (45 page)

“Where is he?” Penelope asks with a haunted voice. “I have to look at him!”

“It’s dangerous for you here,” Joona says. “The fire could get here in just seconds.”

Penelope pushes past Joona and steps across the littered floor of the men’s bathroom. Staring around, she sees the man on the floor still flailing about with the chewed-up remains of a face. She whimpers and rushes back out to lean for support against the wall. A framed letter from former chancellor Willy Brandt slides to the floor and the glass cracks, but the letter rests upright against the wall.

Penelope’s stomach lurches. She swallows and feels Saga trying to put her arms around her to move her back toward the stairs.

“That’s not him!” Penelope whimpers.

“We have to get out,” Saga says urgently, and leads her away.

Medical personnel have come running in. They load the blond soldier onto a stretcher. A new heat explosion can be heard. Glass shards and wooden splinters are in the air. A man stumbles along the hallway, slips, and gets back up. Smoke pours from an open door. A huge man stands silently in the hallway with blood running from his nose and over his shirt and tie. The military police herd everyone toward the emergency exits, shouting at them to move quickly. Flames suddenly shoot out from an open office door. The protecting paper on the floor catches fire and twists around as it burns. Two people are running hand in hand. A woman’s summer dress has caught fire. She’s screaming. An officer covers her with foam from his extinguisher.

Joona is choking from the smoke but doggedly returns to witness the devastation from the hand grenade. The hit man lies absolutely still now. Someone has wrapped his face with temporary bandages and gauze. Through the bullet wound in his forearm, dark red blood trickles down the sleeve of his jacket. A first-aid kit once attached to the wall is now on the floor and bandages have fallen out and are scattered with the dust onto the white tiles. The walls are blackened and most of the tiles have been blown loose. A toilet stall is demolished. Water pours across the floor from a broken pipe.

In the sink, there is a Heckler & Koch pistol with seven magazines of ammunition. Behind the door of another stall lies the black shape of a rough nylon backpack. It looks flattened and empty.

Yells, frightened voices, and barked orders come from the hallway outside. Karl Mann leads medical personnel in.

“I want a guard over him,” Joona says, gesturing toward the hit man as the men lift him onto a stretcher and strap him down.

“He’ll probably be dead before he gets to the hospital,” Karl Mann says, coughing up smoke against his hand.

“Even so, I want your word he’ll be guarded as long as he’s on embassy property.”

Karl Mann squints at Joona and then designates one of his men to take responsibility for the prisoner until they hand him over to the Swedish police.

Heavy black smoke now belches through the hallway with the sounds of loud roars and crackling coming nearer. Everyone is racing to get outside. Karl Mann squats below the layer of smoke and says shortly, “Someone from this floor is still missing.”

Joona walks across a door that’s lying on the floor and then to one still closed in its frame. He presses down the handle. Light shines for a second and then disappears. Only fire illuminates the smoky hallway and sparks are flying through open doors.

There’s roaring and sparking and banging and crackling as metal heats and begins to writhe.

Joona gestures Karl Mann to move back. He draws his pistol, opens the door a few more centimeters, moves aside, waits a moment, and then looks in.

There’s nothing but the black silhouettes of office furniture. The curtains are closed. But the eddy of air close to the floor makes Joona move away from a possible line of fire.

“Evacuate!” someone yells behind them.

Joona turns and sees four firemen who specialize in rescue work coming up through the hallway. They spread out and systematically search through the rooms.

Before Joona can give them any warning, one of the rescuers shines his strong flashlight into the room, and two eyes reflect back. A Labrador retriever begins to bark loudly.

“We’ll take it from here,” one of the men laughs. “Can you get out on your own?”

“There’s still one missing,” Karl Mann says.

“Be really careful.” Joona warns them as much as he can.

“Come on!” Karl Mann shouts urgently behind him.

“I need to get just one more thing.”

Joona, coughing heavily, runs once more into the men’s bathroom, noticing the pattern of blood on the floor and on the walls, and hurries to snatch up the black backpack.

85

hunting the hunter

Penelope’s legs shake. She clings to the fence surrounding the embassy and stares down at the black asphalt. She is fighting the impulse to vomit. The sight she’d seen in the men’s bathroom still vibrates before her eyes: the face blown to bits, teeth all over, blood.

The weight of the bulletproof vest seems to drag her down toward the ground. Noise around her forms a cacophony. Sirens warn of approaching ambulances. Police officers shout, even scream, at one another and into their radios. She watches medical personnel hurry over with a stretcher. It’s the man from the bathroom. Blood has soaked through the bandages covering his head.

Saga comes over to Penelope with a nurse in tow; she says that she’s worried Penelope is going into shock.

“It wasn’t him,” Penelope repeats as they wrap her in a blanket.

“A doctor will be here soon,” the nurse says soothingly. “Meanwhile do you need something to calm down? I can give you something if you’re in good health…” She hesitates. “No liver problems, for instance?”

Penelope shakes her head and the nurse gives her a blue capsule.

“Swallow it whole,” she explains. “It’s half a milligram of Xanax.”

“Xanax,” Penelope repeats dully as she looks at the capsule in her hand.

“It’s not dangerous and it’ll calm you down,” the nurse explains even as she hurries away.

“Let me get you some water,” Saga says, and goes to the police van.

Penelope’s fingers feel numb. She looks at the little blue capsule in her hand.

Joona Linna is still in the building. More people are stumbling outside. They’re smudged with soot and reek of smoke. The cluster of shocked diplomats is collecting by the fence that separates their grounds from those of the Japanese embassy. Everyone is waiting for transportation to Karolinska Hospital. A woman in a dark blue business suit sinks to the ground and weeps openly. A policeman comes up to her and puts his hand on her shoulders as he talks to her. One of the diplomats licks his lips and rubs his hands over and over with a handkerchief. An older man in a wrinkled suit is standing and talking on a cell phone. His face is stiff. The military attaché, a middle-aged woman with hair that’s dyed red, has dried her tears and is trying to help the others, but she moves like a sleepwalker. She is asked to hold up a bag for an IV drip and she does so with no emotion at all. A man with burns on his hands has been huddled in a blanket, patiently sitting, his bandaged hands over his face. Now he gets up slowly, the blanket falling to the ground and he starts to walk quietly, almost dreamily, over the pavement toward the fence.

A military policeman holds on to a nearby flagpole. He is weeping.

The man with the burned hands walks gently in the bright morning sunshine beyond the fence. He turns the corner and heads down the right side of Gärdesgatan.

Penelope draws in a sudden breath. As if drenched in cold water, she’s jabbed with sudden insight. She’d never seen his face clearly, but she has seen his back. That man with the burned hands is her pursuer. He’s heading toward Gärdet, the large open field near the television tower. He’s heading away from the police and the ambulances. She doesn’t need to see his face; she’s seen his back when he sat on the boat beneath Skuru Sound Bridge. When Viola and Björn were still alive.

Penelope’s hand opens and the blue capsule falls to the ground.

Penelope begins to walk after him, her heart racing. She turns onto Gärdesgatan and lets the blanket fall away from her body just as he had done. She picks up speed. She starts to hurry faster as he makes his way between the trees, moving slowly. He looks tired and weak. Penelope remembers he might have been shot. That would explain it. She thinks triumphantly that he will not be able to run away from her. Some jackdaws lift from the trees and flap away. Penelope feels filled with power. She’s striding quickly over the meadow grass and sees him less than forty meters away. He’s staggering and he has to hold on to a tree trunk to stay upright. The bandages are unwinding from his fingers. She’s running now and watching him leave his cover in the small grove of trees to limp into the sunshine of the large, open field. Without pausing, Penelope reaches back for the pistol Joona Linna had so providentially secured to her back. She glances down long enough to release the safety as she goes on through the trees. She slows and aims at his leg with her arm straight out.

“Stop!” she whispers as she pulls the trigger.

The shot fires and the recoil jerks her arm and shoulder. The gunpowder burns across the back of her hand.

The bullet seems to disappear but Penelope sees him try to run faster.

You never should have touched my sister
, she thinks.

The man is running along a path. He stops for a second, grabbing his arm, then he veers off across the grass.

Penelope runs into the open field and the sunshine. She’s getting closer. She crosses the pedestrian path and lifts the weapon again.

“Stop!” she yells.

She fires and she sees a furrow of grass ripped from the ground ten meters in front of the man. Penelope feels adrenaline shoot throughout her body but she’s clearheaded and focused. She aims at his leg and shoots again. She hears the bang again, feels the recoil, and sees the back of his knee punctured with debris blown around his leg from his kneecap. He screams in pain as he falls onto the grass, but he keeps trying to crawl away. She’s coming closer, striding forward while he tries to pull himself upright to lean against a birch tree.

Stop
, Penelope thinks. She lifts the pistol again.
You killed Viola. You drowned her and you killed Björn.

“You killed my baby sister!” she yells out loud. She shoots.

The bullet goes into his left foot and blood spatters over the grass.

As Penelope comes up to him, he slides down, completely still, his head hanging forward with his chin resting on his chest. He’s bleeding heavily and is panting like an animal.

She stops in front of him, the shadow of the birch tree covering them both. She aims the pistol again right at him.

“Why?” she asks. “Why is my sister dead? Why is…”

She falls silent, swallows, and gets on her knees to look directly into his face.

“I want you to look at me when I kill you.”

The man licks his lips and seems to try to raise his head. It’s too heavy. He can’t manage it. He’s about to lose consciousness. She aims the gun again, but she hesitates and pulls his head up with her other hand. She stares right into his face. She clenches her teeth as she sees again the tired features lit up by lightning over Kymmendö. Now she remembers every detail: his calm eyes after he killed people and the deep scar on his lip. He’s just as calm now. Penelope has hardly time to think how strange this is before he attacks. He is so very strong and unbelievably quick. He grabs her hair and pulls her toward him. There is so much power behind his move that she bangs her forehead against his chest. She cannot move fast enough to evade him when he shifts his grip to grab her wrist and wring the gun from her hand. With all her strength, Penelope pushes and kicks her way free, but he already has her gun. She looks up at him as he aims it at her and releases two quick shots.

86

the white trunk of the birch tree

Only when Joona has left the stairwell and is hurrying through the main floor of the German embassy does he realize how his lungs are heaving and how much his eyes sting. He has to get out for some clear air. He coughs heavily and remains close to the wall as he jogs on. He can hear new explosions above him, and a ceiling lamp falls to the ground. He can hear many sirens. He walks out through the main entrance of the embassy with relief. Six German military policemen are deployed on the asphalt outside the door. They make up the provisional security team. Joona draws fresh, clean air into his lungs, coughing and looking around. Two fire trucks have set up ladders against the wall of the embassy. Outside the fence, there are crowds of police officers and ambulance personnel. Karl Mann lies on the grass and a doctor is leaning over him listening to his lungs. Penelope Fernandez is walking along the fence that separates this building from the Japanese embassy. Her shoulders are covered by a blanket.

At the last minute, Joona had gone back into the men’s bathroom to retrieve this battered backpack. It was an impulse. He couldn’t understand why the hit man had wanted to hide an empty backpack with the pistol and magazine in full sight in the sink.

He has a fit of coughing again. He opens the black nylon and looks inside. The backpack is not empty. It contains three different passports and a short attack knife with fresh blood on the blade.

Who did you cut?
Joona wonders.

He peers closely at the knife blade. The blood is just starting to coagulate. He looks out over the busy people and ambulances on the other side of the gate. The woman with the burned dress is now bundled in a blanket and is being helped into an ambulance. She holds another woman’s hand. An older man with a soot streak on his forehead is talking on the phone. His expression is empty.

Joona realizes his mistake. He drops the backpack and the bloody knife to the ground and runs to the fence to yell at the guard to let him out.

He rushes past police and other personnel, jumps the plastic tape barricade, and forces his way past journalists who seem to have sprung up out of the ground like weeds. He stands on the road, blocking a yellow ambulance just ready to leave.