The Other Son (42 page)

Sophie lay there immobile, saw his shoes as he moved silently through the kitchen, then his whole body as he stopped at the kitchen table, still covered with photographs. Aron quickly gathered them in the sports bag and left the house.

Blood filled her eyes and she was sucked backward into something dense and empty.

The wind and mixture of snow and rain made for poor visibility. Jens was making his way through the vegetation of the garden. Miles was off somewhere to his right. They were planning to flank their target from both sides.

A sound, a short distance away, Jens stopped, crouched down, listened. His heartbeat was pounding in his ears.

A gash in time. A powerful car started up in the distance and drove off. Jens remained still, saw movement to his right, and Miles emerged from the storm, calm and ice cold.

He squatted down beside Jens and they listened together.

“There's no one here anymore,” Jens whispered.

Jens saw Sophie
as soon as they got back, the blood, her eyes closed. Mikhail was crouched beside her at the foot of the stairs.

“No, no, no,” he muttered to himself as he rushed over.

Mikhail was working fast, trying to stop the bleeding. A pale and frightened Lothar appeared, bringing towels.

“She needs medical attention urgently,” Mikhail said.

“I'll call an ambulance; carry her out to the car and I'll drive and meet them,” Miles said.

Mikhail and Jens carried Sophie out to the Jaguar and laid her in the backseat, and Lothar followed with the towels. Jens got in beside her, and pressed the towels over the wound that was still pumping out blood. Miles hurried over, his phone clutched to his ear, got in behind the wheel, and drove off.

Mikhail and Lothar watched the car as it disappeared at high speed. They stood there until they could no longer see or hear it. It was completely quiet. They knew what they had to do. Mikhail patted Lothar on the shoulder.

“Come on,” he said.

In a shed behind the house they found a couple of spades. They strode out onto the lawn, dug their spades into the ground, and began to dig a grave for Antonia Miller.

The Jaguar sped
along the road.

Miles was hunched over the steering wheel, and Antonia's handbag was on the seat next to him. He stuck his hand in, dug around, and found the forged passport that Marianne had given her, then passed it to Jens.

“Will this work?” he asked.

Jens took the passport and glanced at the photograph.

“Yes,” he said, and stuck the passport in the pocket of Sophie's jeans.

Swirling blue lights from an emergency vehicle ahead of them. Miles flashed it down as it got closer.

The exchange happened quickly. The paramedics put Sophie on a gurney and wheeled her into the back of the ambulance. Jens followed her in and the doors closed. The ambulance drove off with its sirens blaring.

Miles stood there watching it until it disappeared from view. The storm had died down.

He looked back at the Jaguar. Open doors, blood on the backseat.

He jumped in, turned the car around, and drove off, looking for a lake on the map application on his cell phone.

There was one very close.

Miles sat behind
the wheel as the Jaguar purred in neutral. A sandy beach and a long jetty stretching out into the water. The sun was going down. Darkness came quickly at this time of year.

Antonia
…Miles could see her in front of him. She shouldn't have died. She shouldn't have taken that bullet….

Miles called his brother. Ian Ingmarsson answered.

“
Hello?
”

“Listen, now, little brother. I don't exist, I've disappeared, gone missing. I need your help, I really do. Can you do that?”

“
Tell me what's happened.
”

“No. I want to know if you'll help me.”

The sound of Ian breathing.

“
Yes, I will.
”

“Good. Who runs the embassy in Copenhagen?”

“
An idiot, that dyslexic bastard who was on the Defense Committee and molested that intern—
”

Miles interrupted him.

“I need to get ahold of someone in authority at one of the nearby embassies, someone good, trustworthy, someone who's prepared to bend the rules and won't talk.”

“
I don't get it
…”

“Berlin, Warsaw, the Hague, Brussels, Prague, Vienna? Second and third in command would do as well.”

“
I don't follow, Miles.
”

“Someone decent! What don't you understand about that?”

Ian ran through a list of names; most of them he claimed were idiots. Like most people, in his view of the world.

“
But Prague
…” he said.

“What about Prague?” Miles wondered.

“
The ambassador there is that woman, that old Social Democrat cow, what's her name? Solveig Svensson
.”

“OK…”

“
Well, she's useless, of course, and her number two is that moron from Småland who's trailed after her for years, used to write all her speeches. But if I remember rightly, the third in command is a good guy. Wessman. Clued up, made of the right stuff, Foreign Office down to his core, an old hand, makes sure things that need doing get done in that embassy. He's been to dinner several times at Mom and Dad's. You've met him.
”

Clued up, the right stuff, Foreign Office…Miles thought. That was how the Ingmarssons talked about their colleagues.

“Can he be trusted?”

“
Yes, if you can give him something he wants.
”

“What does he want?”

“
Money and influence, just like everyone else.
”

“In what order?”

“
Influence first, then, if that doesn't work, money.
”

“Can we give him both?”

“
We?
”

“Yes, we,” Miles said firmly. “Is there anyone else I know at that embassy?”

“
No, not as far as I know. I don't think so.
”

“I want a job there, at the Swedish embassy in Prague, as soon as possible, under a fake name with a fake CV, mid-level, no diplomatic crap, no public role, just a guy no one really cares about. Get it sorted out with Wessman.”

Joyless laughter from his brother.

“
Hang on, Miles, what the fuck do you think—
”

Miles interrupted him.

“No, none of that crap, just show me that
you're
made of the
right stuff
, Ian, and that you can pull off something like this.”

Miles could see his little brother in his mind's eye, sitting there trying not to explode.

“One more thing, Ian,” Miles said.

“
What?
”

“There's a woman in intensive care at Södermalm Hospital, Sanna Renberg. Go see her, make sure she's got everything she needs.”

Miles opened up a bit.

“I really need your help this time.”

Ian heard the change in Miles's voice and suddenly understood the situation.

“
OK, Miles. I'll see what I can do.
”

They ended the call.

Miles lit a cigarette and wound the window down slightly.

Antonia was dead.
He took another drag on the cigarette, his hand shaking.

Tommy Jansson…

Miles took his cell phone, wallet, and packet of cigarettes from his jacket, opened the car door, and put them on the ground.

A few deep drags, then he shut the door and revved the engine.

Tommy Jansson…You fucking, fucking bastard.

Miles pressed the pedal to the floor, the Jaguar's six-cylinder engine roared, the car accelerated hard, and he veered out onto the jetty, the tires clattering over the planks. He was rapidly approaching the end.

The Jaguar flew over the edge, heavy after a moment of sudden weightlessness, and hit the water front first. A cascade of water over the windshield. Miles hit his head on the hard steering wheel. The car was floating but was taking in water fast.

He got the door open, slid out into the cold water, and swam away from the car. It sank behind him, lit up for a moment beneath the water before the water short-circuited the electrics and the car disappeared into the depths.

He emerged from the water, picked up his cell phone, wallet, and cigarettes, and started to walk through the woods toward Jens's house.

Miles called Ulf, Antonia's boyfriend, to tell him that Antonia was dead, murdered.

Ulf cried.

A paramedic in a fluorescent jacket was sitting by Sophie's side. The water-resistant Gore-Tex was wet with rain, sparkling in the light.

There was a muffled high-frequency noise—the ambulance siren. Blasting into the dark night along with a harsh, cold blue light that found its way into the back of the vehicle where Sophie lay. She was strapped onto a gurney, rocking in time with the motion of the ambulance.

A voice somewhere inside the ambulance penetrated her consciousness. The shape of a man sitting on a fold-down seat. Jens.

“What did you say?” she whispered.

He moved closer to her.

“I'm here with you. Try not to worry.”

“Aron,” she whispered. “Aron Geisler stabbed me.”

Jens stroked her cheek with his hand. He hushed her. His eyes looked sad.

Sophie felt the speed of the vehicle again. The ambulance was driving very fast. Unbelievably fast.

She looked down at herself for the first time. Blood on her chest, arms, stomach, blood everywhere. Cold and damp.

“How bad is it?”

The paramedic leaned in front of her face and looked into her eyes.

“Just take it easy, don't try to talk,” he said in Danish.

Don't try to talk….

Then she understood. She had said the same thing to countless patients.
Don't try to talk.
That's what you said to patients who were on the way out, to the ones whose life force was draining away uncontrollably.