The Andalucian Friend (10 page)

Dorota looked at Anders as if she hadn’t heard what he said, then fumbled nervously in her handbag until she found her wallet. Anders took it, pulled out an ID card, and glanced quickly at it.

“Where do you live?”

“Spånga,” she replied in a whisper. Her mouth was completely dry.

Lars looked at the woman, suddenly feeling very sorry for her. Anders put Dorota’s ID card in his pocket.

“We’ll keep this. You never saw us here.”

Dorota was staring at the floor.

Anders leaned closer to her.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

She nodded.

Anders turned toward Lars, a dark look on his face, then started to walk toward the terrace door. Lars didn’t move for a moment, looking at Dorota, who was still staring down at the floor.

Anders was striding
toward the car, Lars jogged behind him to catch up.

They sat in silence as Lars drove out of the suburb, making sure he kept to the speed limit. Suddenly Anders grabbed Lars’s collar, slapping him across the face with the palm of his hand. Lars braked sharply and made an attempt to defend himself. Anders kept on slapping him.

“You fucking idiot. … Are you completely fucking useless?” Anders was shouting now. Then he stopped abruptly, sat back in his seat and sighed as his rage subsided.

Lars stared ahead of him, huddled up, unsure whether the abuse had stopped. His ear was stinging and his legs felt like jelly.

“What would you have done if I wasn’t there? Given up, told her what you were doing? You introduced yourself to her with your real name. … Haven’t you understood anything about what we do?”

Lars didn’t answer.

“Fucking idiot,” Anders muttered to himself.

Lars was incapable of figuring out what to do.

Anders looked at him, then pointed ahead at the windshield. “Go on then, drive!”

They drove into the city in total silence, Anders still furious, Lars suffering terribly.

“We don’t have to tell Gunilla any of this,” Anders said eventually. “It all went fine, the microphones are in place. You’ll have to test that everything’s working next time you’re out there. If not, I’ll go in on my own next time. Just keep quiet about the cleaner.”

He got out at Eastern Station, leaving a bag containing the receiver in the footwell. He pointed at it.

“Test that as soon as you can.”

Then he slammed the car door and vanished into the crowd of people.

Lars didn’t move. His whole body was full of fear and anxiety. His thoughts didn’t dare venture back to what had just happened, and instead a fury found its way into him, a fury that told him that he hated Anders Ask more than he had hated anyone in his entire life.

The stranger who had spoken Swedish
to him was gone. Jens was sitting and listening from his position by the hull of the ship, his eyes darting about, the submachine gun ready to fire at any moment. The sound he had just heard had come from over near the open part of the hold. Otherwise everything was quiet. The men working on the quayside and the Vietnamese crew must have fled when the first shots were fired. That felt like a lifetime ago, but it was really only a few minutes. Long, tough, elastic bloody minutes. He hated minutes. Minutes were always when the shit happened.

He was starting to hear things that weren’t there again. Someone getting closer, a quick whisper, footsteps, a gust of wind … His body was pumping sweat and adrenaline, and his shirt was stuck to him.

Once again he was filled by a sudden and intense desire to get away from there, a feeling of panic that he could remember from childhood — the urge to run.

He was debating with himself whether he should stay hidden or fight. Then he heard a movement and a shape flashed quickly across the deck some distance away. Instinctively Jens raised the Bizon to his shoulder and fired a few shots toward the shadow. Then he took cover. The question he had been pondering just now had gotten its answer, he was going to fight. There was no going back now. Jens waited, no sound apart from his own heartbeat pounding inside him. He would have to move, but got no farther than standing up. The weapon sounded like a chainsaw as it rattled off bullets toward Jens. He threw himself to the ground. The bullets hit all around him and the sound was deafening, followed by absolute silence. He could hear a weapon being reloaded some distance away. Jens got up and threw himself over the crates, moving forward, trying to find the person who was shooting at him … There, up ahead, movement! He could make out half of a body behind a stack of crates, just visible. Then a submachine gun, like the one he was holding, being raised in his direction. But Jens was quicker, firing a salvo at the man, who ducked behind the crates. Jens kept moving. The man peeped out quickly again, Jens was some thirty feet away, fired, hit the man in the shoulder; he spun around but still managed to raise his weapon toward Jens, who was now in the middle of the deck with no chance of any cover.

Two guns aimed at each other. And then time stopped, as if someone had grabbed the second hand measuring the movement of the universe. Jens had time to see the man’s empty eyes, the barrel aimed toward him. Was he about to die? He couldn’t accept that. No fleeting images of his childhood, no mom smiling at him in the light of creation. Just a dark, empty sense of pointlessness about the whole situation. Was this ugly bastard going to kill him?

The thoughts went through his mind during the long moments as he sank to one knee with the butt of the gun to his shoulder, the Russian in the crosshairs.

Jens fired, the Russian fired.

Their bullets must have passed each other in the air somewhere halfway between them. He could hear the whining sound as they passed him on the left, then the burning pain as one of them hit his upper arm.

The three bullets that he had managed to fire were better aimed, and hit the Russian’s chest and neck simultaneously. His carotid artery had been punctured, blood was squirting straight out, and the man fell back limply, dropping his gun and hitting a packing crate, dead before he hit the floor.

Jens stared, then heard steps behind him and spun around with his gun raised. The Swedish-speaking man had his pistol aimed at Jens’s forehead. Jens’s Bizon was aimed straight at the man.

“Lower your weapon … I’m not going to hurt you,” he said calmly.

“Lower your own weapon,” Jens said, completely foolhardy because of the adrenaline coursing through his body.

The man hesitated, then lowered his gun, and Jens did the same.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, staring at Jens’s shoulder.

Jens took a look, felt the wound, it seemed to be superficial. He shook his head.

“Come on! Leave him.”

Jens looked at the man he had just killed. Thoughts involving luck, fate, gratitude, angst, guilt, and distaste were flying around his head without finding anywhere to go.

“Come on!” the Swedish-speaking man repeated. Jens followed him.

He noted that the man had a microphone by his chin and an earpiece in his left ear. He said something in a low voice, then stopped abruptly.

“We have to wait,” he whispered.

No activity anywhere, no sound, just waiting. Jens looked at him, he was calm, evidently used to this sort of thing.

“My name’s Aron,” he said.

Jens didn’t answer.

The man put a finger to his earpiece, then stood up. “It’s clear now, we can go up.”

In the middle
of the deck Mikhail was on his knees with his hands behind his head, with Leszek standing behind him, an HK G36 with telescopic sight in his hands.

Aron gestured to Jens to follow him. They went past Mikhail and up the steps to the bridge, into the cabin, where they found the dead helmsman lying in a pool of blood. The captain was hiding under his desk, pale and shocked, clutching a large monkey wrench in his hand. He got up, looked at the dead helmsman, then out the window. He saw Mikhail kneeling on deck, and a flash of hatred crossed his eyes. The captain pushed past Jens and Aron as he hurried from the bridge, down the steps, and across the deck. Mikhail didn’t have a chance to defend himself before the captain hit him with the wrench and he collapsed. He stared down at the big Russian, who was now trying to protect himself as the captain hit him over the arms and legs again and again, all the while cursing him in his own language. Jens and Aron watched the attack from the bridge.

“What are you doing onboard?” Aron asked.

Mikhail had curled up into a ball down below. “I was getting a lift home from Paraguay.”

“What were you doing there?”

“All sorts of things.”

“How do you make a living?”

Jens looked away from the violence.

“Logistics,” he replied.

“Have you got any goods onboard?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m asking.”

The captain was working hard with the wrench.

“I think that’s enough now,” Jens said, gesturing with his thumb toward the attack below.

Aron didn’t seem to understand, then he let out a short whistle and signaled to Leszek, who intervened and put a stop to the captain’s brutal attack. The captain spat at the bleeding Mikhail, who was lying unconscious on deck. He headed back toward the bridge.

In that short instant everything seemed to relax. Leszek dropped his guard, Aron was about to repeat the question he had just asked Jens. Mikhail took the opportunity to get to his feet with some primordial force. It all happened in a flash as the body full of broken bones ran the short distance across the deck to the railing and jumped, managing somehow to heave itself over. At that moment Leszek let off a salvo with his automatic weapon. Mikhail vanished. Jens heard him hit the water below.

Aron and Leszek leaped into action. They rushed toward the railing, taking aim and moving in opposite directions, peering at the water and talking between themselves. Every now and then they fired off some shots toward the water. The search went on for ten minutes, then they realized there was no point going on. The man must have drowned. Either because of the injuries inflicted during the beating or because one of their shots had hit him.

The diesel engines
throbbed impatiently belowdecks. The ship was at the quayside, but everyone wanted to get moving. Shots had been fired, everyone had fled, and the police were probably on their way. Rotterdam was one of the world’s largest ports. If they could get away from the quay, they would be able to hide among the other traffic in the harbor.

They worked together to loosen the heavy ropes securing the ship to the quayside, then hurried onboard. The gangway fell into the water as the ship pulled away.

Lars had gone home, where he found
two bottles of red wine in one of the kitchen cupboards. He drank one immediately, then opened the other and forced himself to drink another couple of glasses. He was soon drunk, his face hot. He glanced out at the rear courtyard, feeling sorry for himself and the cleaner, wondering what she was doing now. The alcohol shifted into second gear and stopped him from cursing himself.

The sun beating down on the windows was making the apartment unbearably warm.

He pulled off his top and drank more wine. He went into the living room, where he threw his top on the floor and poured himself a glass of the vintage cognac on the bookcase, it tasted crappy but he forced himself to take several deep gulps, fighting the urge to throw up. He curled up on the sofa and stared out into thin air.