“You realize what this means, the next time they try to contact you? All hell will break loose.”

“They don’t know where my family is. Where I am.”

“Yet, Hoffmann. Yet!”

“And if we figure out what we need to, it will stay that way.”

Grens grabbed a trash bag out of the cleaning closet, held it while Hoffmann filled it up.

“Since this was obviously more than one phone, I guess you changed your number. I’ll need it. If we’re going to keep working together.”

“I’ll be changing it two times a day. Six different numbers. You’ll get a list of all of them.”

Ewert Grens’s coffee cup was joined by another on the kitchen table, one for himself and one for his guest.

“I want you to sit down.”

“Time for an investigation meeting, Detective Superintendent?”

“You could call it that. At the world’s smallest police station.”

Grens smiled as he put two envelopes in front of Hoffmann.

“Congratulations on your new job.”

“What, Grens?”

“Open it.”

Piet Hoffmann ripped the first envelope open with his index finger and took out the contents. A black leather case. He opened it. In the plastic pocket on the left was an ID card. POLICE stood in red letters and Police Department of Stockholm in smaller text beneath a photograph of himself in his current disguised state, a social security number he’d never seen before, and a name he’d never used. In the plastic case to the right was a real police badge, STOCKHOLM 4514 on a brass plate and the coat of arms with the golden crown.

“Verner Larsson?”

“Just as good as any of your other undercover names.”

“Pretty strange, right, Grens? All these years as an infiltrator on behalf of the City Police—with no rights despite contributing to your formal and very real investigations. And now, when the investigation is at your kitchen table, you turn me into a real police officer.”

“Yes. And you need a police badge for that. And this.”

The next envelope contained a flight ticket and the kind of letter of introduction that usually begins To Whom It May Concern, but which was now addressed to one Gezim Latifi and explained that Verner Larsson had been educated at the police academy and, during his years as an officer at the Swedish police authority, had been considered both reliable and capable, a model officer.

“Latifi?”

“A police officer working in the city where that call was picked up—Shkodër, Albania. That’s where you’re headed.”

“And why him?”