2:50 PM

(7 hours and 12 minutes remaining)

He rested, stretched out on the concrete floor beneath a jumble of pipes of various sizes that ran back and forth between modern heat pumps and very old oil boilers. Now and then he thought he heard voices, but knew that was impossible; the boiler-room door was closed, and according to the drawings it was far from the basement entrance. It was easy to imagine life when your own life didn’t feel real. Just a few days ago, he’d set the kitchen table in his family’s home, opened the window, and called out to two boys to come inside and eat their snacks. Now that home no longer existed, the boys were hidden with their mother and little sister, and he was in a disguise, armed, lying in a basement in northern Albania.

3:15 PM

(6 hours and 47 minutes remaining)

He jumped a little when the text arrived. The phone buzzing in his palm. It was time. Latifi, who was watching from the roof of the warehouse, wrote that Hamid Cana had just driven away from the house, accompanied by his personal bodyguards, which usually meant an overnight trip to the woman in the mountains. Two guards remained outside, and inside, a man cleaning upstairs. Piet Hoffmann left the boiler room and headed for the stairs, then up to the ground floor. New message from Latifi. The guards were facing the gate and the cleaner was in one of the bedrooms. Hoffmann hurried through the kitchen and living room to the next staircase, toward the upper floor, and could now see the guards’ backs, hear the vacuum cleaner.

Quick steps to the tower room, he pushed the handle down.

Locked.

He continued into the next room, probably the master bedroom, careful to close the door behind him. He stabbed the plaster ceiling with his knife, and then slid a small battery-operated jigsaw, not much larger than a screwdriver, in where it could now grab hold. He pushed a chair over, and lifted himself up through the hole. The attic space between the roof and the ceiling was smaller than he expected, but large enough to be able to crawl. When he estimated he was in the middle of the tower room, he sawed open a new hole, dropped his backpack, and then jumped down himself, landing on a handmade rug.

3:45 PM

(6 hours and 17 minutes remaining)

Piet Hoffmann snuck over to the window, carefully peeking out—the guards’ attention was still directed toward the iron gate and the surrounding wall. Attacks from outside, not in.

He’d turned the tower room upside down and still couldn’t find what he was looking for.

What he needed to survive.

Nowhere in the Albanian arms dealer’s office were there any documents that revealed the Swedish members of the organization.

Nor did the phone, which he found in a now broken-open desk drawer, lead him any further—all communication had been encrypted.