Assad sat down, bleeding, on Lasse’s chest, with the knife pressed to the man’s throat. Carl couldn’t hear, but he could see Assad shouting at the man beneath him, and he saw Lasse spitting in Assad’s face with every sentence he spoke.
Slowly Carl regained his hearing in one ear. The relay overhead had again begun releasing air from the chamber. This time the whistling sound was a notch higher than before. Or was it his hearing that was playing tricks on him?
“How do we stop this shit? How do we shut off the ventilators? Tell me!” shouted Assad for the umpteenth time, taking another wad of spit in the face. Only now did Carl notice that each time Lasse spat, the knife was pressed harder against his throat.
“I have cut throats of better men than you!” Assad yelled and made a shallow slice into the skin, deep enough for the blood to trickle down Lasse’s neck.
“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you,” Lasse snarled. Carl looked down at Lasse’s leg, where Assad had stabbed him. It wasn’t bleeding very heavily, not like when the big femoral artery in the thigh is severed. But it was still serious enough.
He looked up at the manometer; the pressure was dropping slowly but steadily. Where the hell was the police backup? Hadn’t the officer at Holmen called his colleagues, as he’d requested? Carl leaned against the wall and took out his cell phone. He punched in the number of the duty officer and was told help would arrive in a matter of minutes. His colleagues and the medics were going to have their hands full.
He didn’t feel the blow to his arm; he merely noticed his cell phone on the floor and how his arm fell to his side. He jerked his body around and saw the skinny creature standing behind them take aim again and slam the iron bar against Assad’s temple. He fell over without a word.
Then Lasse’s brother took a step forward and stomped on Carl’s cell phone until it was smashed to bits.
“Oh God, is it serious, my boy?” came a voice from behind them. The woman rolled toward them in her wheelchair, all life’s woes etched into her face. She paid no attention to the unconscious man lying on the floor. She saw only the blood sieving through her son’s trouser leg.
Lasse got up with difficulty, giving Carl a furious look. “It’s nothing, Mum,” he said. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, pulled off his belt, and wrapped both of them tightly around his thigh, assisted by his brother.
She wheeled past them and stared up at the manometer. “How’s it going, you miserable bitch?” she shouted at the windowpane.
Carl looked down at Assad, who was breathing weakly on the floor. Maybe he was going to survive. Carl scanned the floor in hopes of locating the switchblade. It could be underneath Assad, or maybe it would come into view if the gaunt one moved aside.
It was as if Hans was reading Carl’s mind. He turned toward Carl with a child’s expression on his face, as if Carl was going to steal something from him, or even start hitting him. The look he gave Carl was one that stemmed from the loneliness of childhood. From the taunts of other children who didn’t understand how vulnerable a simple-minded individual could be. He raised the iron bar and aimed for Carl’s throat.
“Should I kill him, Lasse? Should I? I can do it.”
“You’re not doing anything,” said the woman, rolling her wheelchair closer.
“Sit down, you bastard cop,” commanded Lasse as he straightened up to his full height. “Go get the battery, Hans. We’re going to blow this building sky-high. It’s the only thing we can do now. Hurry up. In ten minutes we’re out of here.”
He reloaded the shotgun, keeping his eyes fixed on Carl, who slid down the wall until he was sitting with his back against the airlock door.
Then Lasse ripped the duct tape off the windowpanes and grabbed the explosive charges. With one swift movement he wrapped the deadly mix of wires and detonators around Carl’s neck like a scarf.
“You won’t feel anything, so don’t be scared. But for her in there things will be different. That’s the way it has to be,” Lasse said coldly, dragging the gas cylinders over toward the wall of the pressure chamber behind Carl.
Then his brother came back with the battery and a coil of wire.
“No, we’re going to do it in a different way, Hans. We’ll take the battery outside with us. You just have to connect it like this,” said Lasse, showing him how the explosives around Carl’s neck should be connected to the detonation cords and then to the battery. “Cut off a really long piece. It has to reach all the way out to the yard.” He laughed and looked straight at Carl. “We’ll connect the current outside, and the explosion will take this fucker’s head off and blow up the gas cylinders.”
“But what about before that? What about him?” asked his brother, pointing at Carl. “He could just tear off the wires.”
“Him?!” Lasse smiled and pulled the battery farther away from Carl. “You’re entirely right. In a minute I’m going to let you beat him senseless.”
Then his voice changed, and he turned again to look at Carl, a grave expression on his face. “How the hell did you find me? You said it was because of Dennis Knudsen and Uffe. But I don’t understand. How did you link them to me?”
“You made thousands of mistakes, you clown. That’s how!”
Lasse backed up a bit with what could only be interpreted as insanity rooted deep in his eyes. He was sure to shoot Carl a moment from now. Just take careful aim and pull the trigger. Then good-bye, Carl. No matter what, Lasse wasn’t going to let this cop stop him from blowing up the place. As if Carl didn’t know.
With peace in his soul, Carl looked up at Lasse’s brother. He was fumbling. Couldn’t get the wires to lie properly. They kept curling together as he unrolled them.
At that instant Carl felt Assad’s wounded arm trembling against his leg. Maybe he wasn’t hurt that badly. Small consolation in this situation, because in a moment they’d both lie dead.
Carl closed his eyes and tried to recall a couple of significant moments in his life. After a few seconds of nothingness, he opened them again. Even that solace was denied him.
Had his life really had so few high points to offer?
“You need to leave the room now, Mother,” he heard Lasse say. “Go out to the yard, far away from the outer walls. We’ll join you in a minute. Then we’ll all disappear.”
She nodded, took one last look at the porthole, and spat on the glass.
As she passed her sons, she looked down with disdain at Carl and the man lying next to him. She would have kicked them if she could. They had stolen her life, just as others had stolen it before them. She was in a permanent state of bitterness and hatred. No other emotion would be allowed to penetrate the protective glass bubble in which she lived.
There’s no room for you to get past, you witch, thought Carl, noticing how awkwardly Assad’s leg was stretched out to the side.
When her wheelchair drove into Assad’s leg, he uttered a roar. In one movement he leaped to his feet and was standing between the woman and the door. The two men standing next to the windows whirled around. Lasse raised the shotgun as Assad, blood pouring from his temple, crouched down behind the wheelchair, grabbed the woman’s bony knees, and stormed toward the men, using the chair as a battering ram. The cacophony of sounds was infernal. Assad roaring, the woman screaming, the whistling from the pressure chamber, and the warning shouts of the two men that was cut off by the chaos caused by the wheelchair as it knocked them down.
The woman lay with her legs in the air as Assad jumped on top of her and threw himself at the shotgun, which Lasse was trying to aim at him. The brother started wailing when Assad got hold of the barrel with one hand and began pounding Lasse’s larynx with the other. In a few seconds it was all over.
Assad moved away, holding on to the shotgun. He shoved the wheelchair aside, forced a coughing Lasse to his feet, and stood there for a moment, staring at him.
“Tell us how to stop this shit then!” he shouted as Carl stood up as well.
Carl spied the switchblade over by the wall. He unwrapped the wires and detonators from around his neck and went over to get the knife as Hans tried to pick up his mother.
“Tell us. Now!” Carl stuck the knife against Lasse’s cheek.
They both saw it in Lasse’s eyes. He didn’t believe them. In his mind, only one thing was important: Merete Lynggaard had to die inside the room behind them. Alone, slowly and painfully. That was Lasse’s goal. He would take whatever punishment they gave him afterward. At that point, what did it matter?
“We will blow up him and his family, Carl,” said Assad, his eyes narrowed. “Merete Lynggaard is finished soon anyway. We cannot do anything for her more then.” He pointed up at the manometer that now showed well under four atmospheres. “We do the same to them that they wanted to do to us. And we do Merete a favor.”
Carl looked intently at his partner. Inside those warm, brown eyes he saw a glint of genuine hatred that wouldn’t need much coaxing.
Carl shook his head. “We can’t do that, Assad.”
“Yes, Carl, we can,” answered Assad. He reached out and slowly pulled the wires and detonators out of Carl’s hand. Then he wrapped them around Lasse’s neck.
As Lasse glanced over at his imploring mother and his brother, who was shaking as he stood behind her wheelchair, Assad gave Carl a look that was unmistakable. They had to press Lasse to the point where he would start to take them seriously. Lasse might not fight to save his own skin, but he would fight to save his mother’s and brother’s. Assad had seen it in his eyes, and he was right.
Then Carl raised Lasse’s arms and attached the stripped ends of the wires to the detonation cords, as Lasse had prescribed.
“Go sit in the corner,” Carl ordered the woman and her younger son. “Hans, take your mother over there and set her on your lap.”
He looked at Carl with frightened eyes; then he picked up his mother in his arms as if she were a piece of fluff and sat down on the floor with his back against the far wall.
“We’re going to blow up all three of you along with Merete Lynggaard, if you don’t tell us how to shut off your infernal machine,” said Carl as he twisted a detonation cord on to one of the battery terminals.
Lasse turned his gaze away from his mother and looked at Carl. Hatred burned in his eyes. “I don’t know how to stop it,” he said calmly. “I could find out by reading the manuals, but there’s no time for that.”
“That’s a lie! You’re just stalling for time!” shouted Carl. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Assad was considering striking Lasse.
“Believe whatever you like,” said Lasse and turned his head to give Assad a smile.
Carl nodded. The man wasn’t lying. He was ice cold, but he wasn’t lying. Years of experience told Carl that. Lasse didn’t know how to stop the system without reading the manual. Very bad luck.
He turned to Assad. “Are you OK?” he asked, placing his hand on the barrel of the shotgun only seconds before Assad would have smashed the butt end into Lasse’s face.
Assad nodded angrily. The buckshot in his arm hadn’t done any significant damage, nor had the blow to his head. He was made of solid stuff.
Carl carefully took the shotgun out of his hands. “I can’t go that far. I’m taking the gun, Assad, and I want you to run over and get the manual. You saw where it was. The handwritten manual in the inside room. It’s in the pile at the very end. On top, I think. Go get it, Assad. And hurry!”
Lasse smiled as soon as Assad left and Carl stuck the barrel of the shotgun under his chin. Like a gladiator, Lasse was weighing his opponents’ strengths to choose the one who matched him best. It was clear he figured Carl was a better choice than Assad. And it was equally clear to Carl that he was wrong.
Lasse began backing toward the door. “You don’t dare shoot me. The other guy would have done it. I’m going now, and you can’t stop me.”
“Is that what you think?” Carl stepped forward and grabbed him hard by the throat. The next time the man made a move, he was going to slam the gun in his face.
Then they heard the police sirens in the distance.
“Run!” screamed Lasse’s brother as he abruptly stood up, clutching his mother, and kicked the wheelchair at Carl.
Lasse was gone in a second. Carl wanted to run after him, but he couldn’t. He was apparently in worse shape than Lasse; his wounded leg simply refused to obey.
He aimed the gun at the woman and her son as he let the wheelchair roll past and crash into the wall.
“Look!” yelled Hans, pointing at the long cord that Lasse was trailing after him.
They all watched as the cord slid across the floor. Lasse was obviously trying to tear the explosives from his neck as he ran down the corridor. They saw the slack in the cord being taken up as he made his way out of the building, until at last the wires wouldn’t reach any farther and the battery toppled over and was dragged toward the door. When it reached the corner and ran into the doorframe, the loose wire slipped underneath the battery and touched the other terminal.
They felt the explosion only as a faint tremor, along with a muffled thud in the distance.
Merete lay on her back in the dark and listened to the whistling as she tried to arrange the position of her arms so that she could press hard on both wrists at the same time.
It wasn’t long before her skin began to itch, but nothing else happened. For a moment she felt as if the greatest possible miracle was going to shine upon her, and she screamed at the nozzles in the ceiling that they weren’t going to get her.
But she knew the miracle wasn’t going to happen when the first filling began loosening in her mouth. During the next few minutes she considered letting go of her wrists as the headache and joint pains and the pressure on all her internal organs worsened and began to spread. By the time she decided to let go of her wrists, she couldn’t even feel her hands.