The house that Piet Hoffmann had broken into lay opposite the white two-story house, and according to Latifi it too was built for one of the Communist Party’s political commissars. Today, it was owned just like the two-story house, by a member of the nouveau riche, but it had neither armed guards nor a forest of antennas on its roof. After a couple of hours watching the house from his car, he was certain the owners weren’t at home, and he could break a window on the backside and move freely inside as he followed the path on the drawings that led down the stairs to the basement and then to the boiler room at its far end, which was warm, narrow, and whose air smelled like old oil, but he didn’t notice. He focused on the brick wall behind the big furnace, trying to read it, running his hand over it, letting his fingers wander across each seam. That wall—according to the secret documents that his new Albanian cop friend had dug up—was the key. He checked the right half, from floor to ceiling, and he was approaching the middle of the brick wall when his phone rang. A phone that only four people had the number to. Zofia—who knew not to call for the next few hours. Grens—who had agreed to wait until Hoffmann contacted him. Latifi—who was going to call only when the two-story house was empty, which could take a while. And Andy—who sat in a studio apartment with its blinds drawn watching images of people who needed protection, and who was only supposed to call about one of the families he was guarding—the one that had seven cameras pointed toward them, who were hidden in a ground-floor apartment in Gamla Sickla.

Hoffmann’s family.

“One of the kids just disappeared.”

“What?”

“Camera 6, on the apartment’s front door. One of the kids, the older boy I think, went out into the stairwell. And didn’t come back.”

“Andy—went where?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t go out the front door. And he’s not visible in the stairwell.”

“My boy.”

Hoffmann had whispered that, and it was difficult to make out over a long-distance line.

“What did you say?”

“I said we have to take care of it.”

“What do you want me to do? Drive over there? If so, no one will be guarding the others. Or should I call Carlos, who’s probably asleep before tonight? Boss, this is what I warned you about, a protective target that’s so far away from the others, I . . .”

“You sit tight. I’m glad you called me. I got this.”

•   •   •

The floor had opened up, and he had stared down into a hole. A secret exit. Hugo had just managed to put it back down and closed the closet door, when Mom and Rasmus and Luiza came out of the bathroom after the diaper change. Then he had waited. And waited. Until the right moment, when Mom was busy with the others.