“Well, I had a great many more questions to ask you, regarding the drugging of officials of Stockholm District Court. Unfortunately, we’ll never get to ask them. The Security Service has exclusive rights to you from now on.”
“Don’t worry,” said Leo calmly, tearing his eyes away from the windows. “I’ll confess to all of my crimes and you’ll get the whole truth.”
“Sounds good,” Walter said, without really meaning it. He couldn’t tell if what he had just heard was a pack of lies – and now he would never know for sure.
“My biggest wish is that you catch my kidnappers,” Leo said. “Not for what they have done to me, but to stop them before it’s too late. They want more than simply to stop the spread of Islam.”
“Islam?” Walter repeated, just as Thomas Kokk opened the door.
“Jeanette Kessel has been found, seriously injured, in her home outside Uppsala,” Kokk said. “The police officers from the patrol car that we sent there found her unconscious on the floor. Probably knocked out with a drug.”
“Is there a surveillance team still at BGR?” Walter wondered.
“No, of course not. We pulled it in as soon as we caught Brageler.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Over an hour,” Kokk said. “I’ve ordered them back there, together with some units from the Uppsala police. If it takes them less than forty minutes to do the job at BGR, then we might have missed them.”
“Damn it.”
“What can they do with the material from BGR?” Jonna asked.
“Without expertise, nothing,” Leo said. “But with the right people, there’s a risk . . .”
Leo was interrupted by the arrival of a doctor. He ordered everybody firmly out of the room so that the patient could be taken to X-ray. Not even Kokk could persuade the doctor otherwise. Security Service or not, the health of his patient was more important.
“He can identify the kidnappers after his operation,” Kokk said, turning to both SÄPO agents. “We still have to get hold of a computer, to connect to the NBI databases.”
“It will be at least seven to eight hours before you can talk to the patient,” the doctor said firmly, “and only if I give my permission.”
Jonna watched as two nurses rolled Brageler away on a trolley. There were so many questions she wanted to ask him. How he had been able to develop that awful compound. What did the kidnappers look like? Why had he helped Günter Himmelmann? The number of her questions grew all the time and her curiosity was killing her. But she would never know the answers. This was her first and last meeting with Leo Brageler.
On the horizon
, the sun was slowly starting to light up the skies in a pale blue hue that reminded him of home. Mjasník looked at the time. Seven thirty. Soon the daylight would make it impossible to see through the glass. Reflections were his enemy. He would get just one opportunity and it was here and now. Soon he would be down to the last target on his list. He could finally see the toughest mission of his career coming to an end.
The sturdy tripod was assembled and locked. The SV-98 sniper rifle was fixed and aimed at the building. He took pride in his patience and felt proud of his cool nerve. All his efforts had paid off. Both the woman police officer and the detective had led him to his target. Their postures were easy to identify at a distance. Parts of their telephone conversations had also been translated by an intermediary.
He was on the roof of a skyscraper, approximately six hundred metres from his target. The rifle’s digital display showed a wind speed of four metres per second. He compensated for the distance and the northerly wind.
In addition, he had to calculate the ballistic deviation caused by the bullet penetrating the window glass. Sweden was a modern country, so the window was almost certainly made of multiple glass panes with gas insulation. The angle of penetration was sixteen degrees. If the glass was hardened, it would explode into thousands of splinters, so he would need to discount about one degree of the elevation angle.
He gently squeezed the trigger and a thin laser beam cut almost invisibly through the early morning gloom. It hit the corner of the window. Now he needed to adjust his rifle. He slowly moved the beam onto the target. He could see the man in the bed clearly. The lamp was lit and the body was tucked under a blanket. All that he saw was the head. He would place the shot on the face, close to the base of the nose. After the bullet had gone through the glass, it would be deformed and start to rotate. The kinetic energy from the soft lead bullet would literally make his skull explode.
Mjasník filled his lungs with air, closed his eyes and concentrated for the last time. Then he exhaled, opened his eyes and carefully squeezed the trigger a bit harder. Just as he was about to take the shot, the room lit up. A man walked in and obscured the target with his back. Mjasník let go of the trigger and the laser beam went out.
Thomas Kokk stood
next to Leo Brageler and studied him while he woke up. Kokk was also tired and would have preferred to be at home with his family around the breakfast table, rather than spending the entire night at the hospital. But the organization they were hunting was dangerous and had tentacles deep inside the police authorities. Some were probably police officers.
They were still one step ahead of Kokk, who had missed them at BGR. They had succeeded and their expertise scared him. He was up against the sort of skilled professional that he had encountered only within his own organization. Never had a mission been so important and he felt a heavy burden on his shoulders. Failure would be catastrophic.
Brageler was the only individual who had seen these people. Their best witness was a person who himself was wanted for accessory to murder. The two Lithuanians who had driven the van had only been given orders to drive the vehicle onto the ferry at the Värtahamn docks, for further transport to Riga. Once there, they would meet at an address thirty kilometres from the port. That was all they knew. Kokk was convinced that they had not told them everything, but he also understood that their employer was cautious.
If it were not for the witness in Södertälje, he would probably never have caught Brageler. Two observant colleagues and a witness. Random chance never ceased to surprise Thomas Kokk.
A Security Service officer with a laptop sat down beside the sleepy Brageler. He lifted the screen and started up a program.
“We have over thirty thousand pictures,” Kokk said. “If you give us a rough description of the faces you have seen, we can screen the most likely matches.”
Leo tried to sit up, but fell back onto his bed.
“How many were there?” the officer with the laptop asked.
Leo tried to clear his throat. He reached for a glass of water on the bedside table and put it to his mouth.
Kokk watched Brageler as he tried to drink with a trembling hand. Water trickled down his chin, onto his shoulder and then the pillow. Something red lit up the thick bottom of the glass. Kokk didn’t understand what it was at first. Then he saw a small, red dot moving upwards onto Brageler’s face. Like a small, luminous fly, it stopped in the middle of his forehead. An icy shiver rushed through Kokk’s body in the one-hundredth of a second after he realized what it was.
Kokk was just getting up from his chair and screaming a warning when the room seemed to explode. Not a roaring blast or a blazing inferno. The sound of Brageler’s exploding head was muffled, almost soundless. The police officer by the bed was painted red by the blood and it took several seconds before he threw himself on the floor. Glass splinters fell on the floor like a crystal-rain cloud. Kokk stared at the wall behind Brageler, paralyzed. Blood ran like tears down the white, woven glass-fibre wallpaper onto the floor and the headless body jerked spasmodically on the bed. Kokk felt his stomach turn and threw himself on his side. He fumbled for his personal radio, but had to crouch and retch. Somehow, in the chaos, he managed to retain enough presence of mind to press the correct buttons. He entered the emergency code and, after a few seconds, the door flew open and armed Security Service agents flooded in.
“The window!” he yelled, between retches. “Find out where the shot came from.”
One of the Security Service officers crawled across the bloody floor towards the window. Another followed the wall to the edge of the window frame.
“There’s just one location that the shot could have come from,” one of the officers said. “The skyscraper on the other side of the road. The white building. But it’s a helluva distance.”
“Alert all units,” Kokk ordered, trying to stifle yet another retch. “Alert everybody. I want a nationwide alert and all of South Solna and Norrtull locked down!”
Kokk sank to the floor. He was hyperventilating from all the adrenaline pumping around his body. “What’s going on,” he mumbled to himself, “what the fuck is going on?” He put his hands over his face and tried to regain his self-control.
The image replayed itself like a movie. And the sound, the dull thud as Leo Brageler’s skull was spread all over the room. It would haunt him for a long time.
Chapter 24
Jörgen Blad had
just finished his online copy about the capture of Leo Brageler when he heard the news.
Brageler was dead. Shot in the head while he was in his bed at Karolinska University Hospital.
He stared at the message and re-read it, to be sure. A few hours ago, Jonna had informed him that Brageler was in custody. Captured in an operation in which two Balts were also arrested. Now Brageler was dead. Assassinated in a Swedish hospital at eight o’clock in the morning.
The confusion in the newsroom was total. According to the news editor, it was tantamount to a declaration of war. Someone had declared war on Swedish society by means of the unprecedented act of sniping at hospital patients as they lay in their beds. It was the responsibility of the press to do all they could to catch this psychopath. If the headlines sold more newspapers, it would also make the owners happy, thought Jörgen.
Jörgen needed more details about the incident. He called Jonna a number of times, but she still didn’t answer his calls. She was dictating the terms of their collaboration, an attitude that Jörgen was beginning to tire of. Tina and two investigative reporters had started to research Palmryd and one juicy headline banner after another was rolling across the newspaper’s website. For the first time, Jörgen was the focus for all related news coming in, and all the material had to be cleared by him before it could be published. He knew this was a temporary situation, but he was in journalist’s heaven.
The news editor and chief editor did anything Jörgen asked, or rather told, them to do.
Only Bosse G had a dissenting view on Jörgen’s new role. Jörgen was gay and therefore a member of the homesexual mafia running the country. They had started by infiltrating the Eurovision music industry and were well on the way to brainwashing the nation with their liberal values about gay marriages.
Jörgen brushed off Bosse G’s hostilities with a sweet smile. There were worst things in life than being hated by a thin-haired, heterosexual fifty-year-old with liver spots on his face.
Jörgen turned around and waved at the editorial secretary. She came quietly, like an obedient pet, and he could not help but relish this rush of power. This was how his job should feel, yet he knew that he would never experience it again. The situation would return to normal by next week.
The bullet had
done its job. He would have preferred to use a knife, but that was impossible this time. Just finding the target’s room had taken a long time. Also, the ward had been closed off and guarded by police.
He had been lucky. It had been easy to follow a uniformed policeman through the building to the correct ward. Using the big map at the hospital entrance, it had been a simple task, first to locate correctly the window of the target’s room and then to pick his sniper’s vantage point. Uniformed officers had been moving about in the room, which had also made his job easier. This time, he would have to leave the weapon. If the Swedish police reacted properly, it would take less than ten minutes before they reached his building. It would have taken him at least fifteen minutes to dismantle the rifle and to leave the skyscraper. He had not had time. So he had climbed back down through the skylight, taking a last look at the rifle. Then he had closed the skylight. As he had left the lift on the ground floor, he met an elderly couple with a dog. They greeted him politely and Mjasník nodded back, keeping his head low. He swore silently over the unexpected encounter. The police would now have a rough description. He had to leave Sweden fast, in less than two hours. He would be forced to leave the hire car in the covered car park. If the police found the car parked at the airport, it would create a trail unnecessarily. It was already bad enough that he left them his weapon to find.
He hurried towards a high street and tried to flag down a taxi. In the distance, he heard the sirens of emergency vehicles. They were on their way to the hospital. The hunt was on and he felt a twinge of nerves for the first time. A taxi with a lit sign approached him at high speed. He waved and the driver slammed on the brakes, tyres screeching. Mjasník asked to be taken to the airport and the driver made an illegal U-turn.
There was only one name left on his list. Soon his mission would be complete and the rest of the money would be paid to him. Despite the knowledge that financial independence was within his reach, he didn’t want to give up his profession. The last target was an easy one, but the client had indicated that it was important that he eliminated this target after all the others were dead. Mjasník didn’t know the reason, nor did he ask. However, the unusual request made him a little uneasy.
Harald Morell walked
into the Vete-Katten bakery on Kungsgatan at eight thirty-five in the morning. He glanced briefly at the empty tables and saw Walter sitting at the back, with a cup of coffee and the morning paper.
“Hello, old friend,” Morell greeted him, sitting down.
Walter put down his newspaper. “Coffee?”