“You just received some information. First a link to a telephone conversation. Then an interesting picture. Just so we’re clear on where we stand with each other. Okay?”

He was shaking.

An absurd picture.

Andy, staring at him, appealing to him, with extinguished eyes. Zofia and Hugo looking out through a window without knowing they were no longer protected.

He had never understood that fear could hurt so much.

“Good. Then I need you to listen to me. We know now where your family is hiding. But, unfortunately, we heard you’re running around in northern Albania and won’t be able to do what you’re supposed to in time.”

They had tracked down his position even though no one knew where he was.

They had access to his new, secret number.

Hoffmann could see only one explanation—the police leak wasn’t just located in the police station and the homicide unit. Grens had been right the whole time. The leak was in the detective’s inner circle.

“We don’t like executing families. Hit men are no problem, a Piet Hoffmann now and then is fine, you’ve chosen to be part of this twisted world of your own free will. But a wife? Three young children? They never had a choice. So I think there might be a way. We can postpone their deaths for a short time. Because we happen to have another little job that you can do right where you are. You have three and a half hours, if I count correctly, and if you can finish in time, we won’t execute your family. Yet.”

An electronic, distorted voice with no gender, no identity, who seemed so distant and monotone. But for a moment they almost sounded personal. As if they felt something, were more than just arms dealers.

“It’s like this: You went to Albania to look for Zaravic’s former employer. Realized he was dead, and started to seek out his successor. We know that much. And we want you to continue that. You find him, kill him. If you send us proof, a picture, we won’t give Zaravic that last document when he’s released tonight. The one with your name on it.”

A new mission? With just a few hours left?

The voice that for a moment became almost personal, revealing for the very first time a glimpse of something that wasn’t just programmed confidence and inaccessibility. A tiny, tiny crack in their invulnerability. And Hoffmann thought he knew why. The insight the organization’s Swedish branch had been given into Grens’s private investigation hadn’t just revealed that the detective superintendent—via Piet Hoffmann—was on his way to the other end of the smuggling route, where everything began. It had also revealed that if the Albanian leader was located, and if he were forced to speak, the Swedish members’ identities would be revealed too. That would be the end for them. So they’d rather sacrifice one of their own, because a dead man can’t talk. But they had no idea that Hoffmann already had access to all that information. A computer and a decryption key that were already in his backpack.