Sanderson took it. “They’re letting me keep it?”

“Not exactly—they’ve pulled the sim card. You’ll need to pick up a new one.”

“I’ll take care of it right away.”

“Call me as soon as you’re reconnected.”

“Thank you again.”

Blix left, closing the door behind.

Sanderson sat down at his dining room table. He pushed aside a bowl of stale potato crisps and set down his disabled phone. The room was still and silent. He closed his eyes and slipped off his shoes, and with cold seeping through his socks from the bare stone floor, Arne Sanderson wondered what on earth was wrong with him.

*   *   *

The Stockholm police were paying a great deal of overtime. Officers who’d spent their afternoons swarming over three triangulated locations looking for an elusive American, only to come up empty, had been kept on duty. By sunset teams were stationed at each of the three sites, walking arm-in-arm with bright flashlights in search of evidence. Others were committed to patrol subway and ferry terminals. A dozen officers spent their Tuesday evening watching travelers at Arlanda Airport, and two men had been posted, rather hopefully, in the lobby of the Strand Hotel. Neighboring counties had been alerted, and immigration counters across Sweden received notice to watch for an American, possibly traveling under the name of Edmund Deadmarsh, who was suspected of shooting a police officer.

Anna Forsten gave two news conferences that evening. The first provided a terse overview of the recent Strandvägen attacks, a dry and procedural account that was trumped on most news stations by sensational eyewitness video, taken with a mobile phone, that had a certain Blair Witch production quality. People could be seen running and screaming, and shots were clearly audible as a young man crashed his scooter and went skidding across the pavement in front of the Renaissance Tea Room. The police acquired a copy of the video, but quickly declared it to hold little evidentiary value.

Sensing her grasp on things slipping, Commissioner Forsten held an impromptu second act on the sidewalk outside her office. In a brief but well-articulated statement she emphasized that things were firmly in control, her legions of crack investigators making significant progress toward capturing the fugitive. Dozens of questions were lobbed, like so many verbal grenades, as Forsten backed into the fortress that was National Police Headquarters. She answered not a single one.

Chapter 26

TWENTY-SIX

At the very moment Commissioner Forsten was backpedaling across a Stockholm sidewalk, the man she was looking for was standing on a more quiet slab of concrete some three hundred miles south in the port of Sassnitz, Germany. From his arrival point, Slaton had hiked the width of Jasmund National Park, a four-mile excursion through the brooding heaths and moors of northern Rügen Island. Where the park gave way to a narrow road, Slaton turned left toward a glow of lights in the distance. Twenty minutes later he arrived in Sassnitz.