Piet Hoffmann was just about to shut the window when he changed his mind, leaned out, and shouted again.

“What about the rest of you? Are you hungry, too?”

The two other players in the improvised football match wanted checkered pancakes too, so Hoffmann made enough batter for five people.

“Can you set the table, Rasmus?”

“Mmm.”

His youngest wasn’t listening. The new plastic figure jumped around the kitchen table in his hand. Always some new character from some new cartoon. Over the two years that Piet Hoffmann spent working in West Africa, he took trips home every three months, and every time he did he made sure to bring the most popular action figure home with him.

“Okay, Rasmus. Then I’ll set the table. If you clear your stuff.”

“Just a minute.”

“Now, buddy.”

“Just gotta go to the bathroom first. Then I’ll pick up.”

Rasmus started out walking, but it turned into a run, that’s how it was with him: if he left his games and visited this world, he did so in a hurry. Hoffmann smiled. There was something so vulnerable, almost beautiful about being able to leave this reality so completely in the hands of someone else. He took five plates and drinking glasses out of the cupboard, got tired of waiting for Rasmus to come back, and started to move the toys off the table to a bench near the stove. But when he got to the new toy, the one who looked like Mr. Potato Head, who in Rasmus’s imaginary world jumped so high, Piet Hoffmann felt a stab in his chest. One he hadn’t felt in a long time. A stab in the region of his heart, which meant trouble was on the way.

The plastic figure lay in his hand.

And he felt its weight.

It wasn’t all plastic.

He lifted it a few times, weighing it in the air, guessing it was around three hectograms.

Then he inspected it more carefully.

He took off its little red hat. He pulled off the blue legs and yellow arms.

It couldn’t be. And yet—it was.

He felt furious, terrified.

This wasn’t the way he wanted to get that adrenaline rush back.

He was holding a hand grenade.

Built with a core of TNT and steel balls so as to end all life in its vicinity.

His youngest son had been playing with death dressed up like a toy, here, at their kitchen table.

Chapter 10

He was furious.

He was terrified.

Fury.

Terror.

His son, who trusted him with his safety, who trusted him with his whole world, had sat there playing with death.

A hand grenade. Transformed into a toy.