Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

Penelope scrambles back, coughing, into the sunlight. She gets up to stare down at the dead man. Joona walks over to the body, kicks away the pistol, and kneels to put his finger against the man’s throat. He wants to make absolutely sure this man is dead.

Penelope unlatches the bulletproof vest and lets it fall to the ground. Joona gets up and comes to her as she walks toward him, staggering, as if she is about to faint. He catches her exhausted body as her face falls to rest against his chest.

The man with the mutilated face died one hour after his trip from the German embassy to the hospital. He was identified as Dieter Gramma, the cultural attache’s secretary. During the autopsy investigation, the chief medical officer, Nils Ahlen, found the remains of tape on his clothing and abrasions and wounds on his wrists and neck, which indicated that he’d been tied up at the time of the explosion. When the initial crime-scene investigation was completed and tapes from the security cameras were analyzed, a reconstruction of events could be made: After arriving at his office on the second floor of the building, Dieter Gramma logged on to his computer and read some e-mail messages. He didn’t answer any but flagged three of them. Then he went to the lunchroom and turned on the espresso machine before going to the men’s bathroom. He was just about to enter one of the stalls when a man turned away from the mirror over the sink. His face was covered by a ski mask. The man, dressed in black, was the wounded hit man who had gotten into the German embassy with his German passport. He’d just escaped police pursuit and had blocked surveillance of the men’s bathroom by taping over the security camera.

The hit man estimated Dieter Gramma’s body proportions through the mirror. Dieter Gramma probably didn’t have time to say much before the hit man pressed a gun to his chest and forced him to his knees to tape his mouth shut. The hit man switched his black jacket with Dieter Gramma’s suit coat, and then tied him in a squatting position to a water pipe with his back to the security camera and plunged the double-edged knife through the bullet hole of the leather jacket.

Probably Dieter Gramma was so confused by the pain, fear, and release of endorphins that he couldn’t comprehend much of what was happening. The hit man fashioned a piece of wire around Dieter Gramma’s throat with a loop at the back. Through this loop, he threaded a long wire, took out a hand grenade, a Sprang 2000, and attached one end of the wire to the grenade, pulled the pin, but kept the handle down. If he’d let go of the handle, the grenade would have exploded within three seconds. Instead, he taped the grenade to Dieter Gramma’s chest with its handle pressed down. Next, he pulled the end of the wire through a loop around Dieter Gramma’s neck, wrapped it around the sink trap, and stretched it across the floor to become a trip wire.

Of course, he meant to have someone enter the bathroom, release the grenade to mutilate Dieter Gramma, and in all the chaos Gramma’s mutilated body would be identified as his. Then he could just walk away.

The hit man was probably slowed by his wound and blood loss, but the priming of the trap wouldn’t have taken more than four minutes from the moment Dieter Gramma entered the bathroom to the moment when the hit man dumped his gun and magazines into the sink, left his backpack with the bloody knife in a stall, peeled the tape off the security camera, stepped over the trip wire, and left the room.

He then went along the hallway, entered the meeting room through its double doors, and ignited a quick fire. After that, he went to Davida Meyer’s office and was just starting to tell her the reason for his visit when the alarm went off.

For the next twenty-five minutes, Dieter Gramma was tied on his knees with a hand grenade strapped to his chest before he was noticed by the security camera. He probably tried to cry out without dislodging the grenade. The autopsy revealed that he’d broken a blood vessel in his throat and the inside of his mouth was bitten.

The door to the men’s bathroom was opened and a shock grenade was tossed inside over the tiled floor. Instead of a release of shrapnel, as happens with normal grenades, a huge pressure wave slammed through the small room. Dieter Gramma hit his head on the pipe and tiled wall and passed out. A young police officer named Uli Schnieder ran into the room with his weapon drawn. The smoke made it difficult to see so it took the young man a few seconds to realize what stumbling over the trip wire meant.

The handle on the grenade on Dieter Gramma’s chest had been released. The hand grenade stopped at the loop around Dieter Gramma’s neck, slipped down slightly since the man was unconscious, and then exploded with horrible effect.

Joona Linna, Saga Bauer, and Penelope Fernandez are in an armored police van being driven away from Diplomat City and along Strandvagen and, beside it, the glittering water.

“I knew his face,” Penelope says in a monotone. “I knew he would keep after me and after me until…”

She stops speaking and stares straight ahead.

“… until he killed me,” she finally says.

“Yes,” Saga answers.

Penelope shuts her eyes and lets herself rock with the gentle motion of the police van. They’re passing the remarkable monument to Raoul Wallenberg, which is formed like white-capped waves or Hebrew letters blowing in the wind.

“Who was he? The man who was after me?” Penelope asks.

“He was a professional hit man,” Joona explains. “Also called a problem solver or a grob.”

“Neither Europol nor Interpol has anything on him,” Saga says.

“A professional killer,” Penelope says. “So someone had to send for him.”

“Yes,” Saga says. “But any leads back to who did will be well hidden.”

“Raphael Guidi?” Penelope asks softly. “Is he behind this? Or is it Agathe al-Haji?”

“We believe it has to be Raphael Guidi,” Saga says. “It doesn’t make sense for Agathe al-Haji to be behind it. As far as she’s concerned, it wouldn’t matter if she was seen buying ammunition-”

“It’s not a secret what she does,” Joona says.

“So Raphael Guidi sent a hit man, but… what does he really want? Do you know? Is all of this just about the photograph? Really?”

“Perhaps he assumed you were the photographer and a witness-you may have seen or heard something that would implicate him.”

“Does he still think so?”

“Probably.”

“So he’ll just find another hit man?”

“That’s what we’re afraid of,” Saga answers honestly.

“How long will I have police protection? Will I be in hiding forever?”

“Well,” says Saga, “we’ll have to plan the next steps, but-”

“I’m going to be hunted down until I can’t run any longer,” Penelope says.

They’re driving past NK and see three young people on a sit-in strike outside the elegant department store.

“He won’t give up,” Joona confirms. His voice is serious. “So we will expose this whole deal. Then there won’t be any reason to silence you.”

“We know we probably can’t do much to Raphael Guidi himself,” Saga says. “But here in Sweden-”

“What could you do here?”

“Primarily, we can stop the arms deal,” Saga says. “The container ship can’t leave Gothenburg Harbor without Axel Riessen’s signature.”

“And why wouldn’t he sign?”

“He will never sign it,” Joona says. “He knows what’s going on.”

“That’s good,” whispers Penelope.

“So we stop the deal and arrest Pontus Salman and all the other Swedes involved,” Saga concludes.