Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

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 amp; 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.

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 attache, 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 Gardesgatan.

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 Gardet, 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 Bjorn 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 Gardesgatan 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.