He ran through every room of the house again. Emptied closets and turned drawers over. Until he opened a cabinet that looked like a broom closet. There it stood, on the shelf at the top. A router.

He remembered now. Passwords often sat on the bottom of the router, a factory code with small and large letters and numbers.

He lifted up the square black device and turned it over.

And there—there it was.

zfqbgs3dwv

He looked for the local network, entered the code.

Waiting.

Waiting.

And . . . yes.

Yes!

He was connected again, sent the pictures of the dead man again.

The only thing left was enduring the wait—for a signal to reach where it was going, out there, up there.

He counted seconds until that became too much, instead he started to pace uneasily back and forth in the house—stacked firewood in the fireplace, ran his hand over the sofa’s fabric, which reminded him of a pair of armchairs his grandparents once had, crouched under the glittering chandeliers and stood in front of a bookshelf with few books, but many photographs in golden frames. He looked at the one that was closest to him. The woman who owned the house, whose name was Vesa Lilaj, she was just a child in this picture, he was sure of it, dressed up in fine clothes at a photographer’s studio. In the next, she sat with a tiara in her hair at a fancy restaurant, probably together with her big brother, mother, and father, a glass of juice in her hand, toasting a life that seemed so obvious.

Now she was lying on the floor, shot in one arm and one leg, holding onto a life partner who had stopped breathing.

Piet Hoffmann put down the picture of the past doing its best inside a gold frame, walked from room to room, was about to give up, stop his meaningless search and send the message again, when he finally heard a weak buzz. He hurried to the table where he’d put the phone, picked it up, but suddenly hesitated, unable to push the message symbol.

If the photographs of a dead man hadn’t made it. If they hadn’t arrived in a telephone in Stockholm.

It would be too late.

9:56 PM

(6 minutes remaining)

He wept.

Not like the woman on the floor who had lost her love.

This was the same pitiful little cry as the first time he balanced Rasmus’s new toy in his hand and realized he was holding a lethal weapon, the kind that stuck fast somewhere at the bottom of the throat before it finally decided to ooze down into the gut.

But this time it was a cry of relief. The photos had made it. The proof that his mission was completed, and that Zofia and the children were still hidden in safety.

PART
7

Chapter 42