“I found an application for a name change—three years ago.”

“Yes?”

“Hannah Ohlsson.”

“Excuse me?”

“Hannah Ohlsson. That was her name. The same social security number, but both the first and last name were changed. I never approved of that new law for name changes, makes it so easy, I mean . . .”

“And if you follow the social security number?”

Ewert Grens felt like he was freezing. In the middle of a warm summer night.

“Then I end up . . .”

Those hard clacking sounds. The tax officer really slammed his fingertips when he typed.

“. . . nowhere. Hannah Ohlsson is nowhere to be found in the records. Has no history.”

“Yes. She does. But only in paper form.”

“There’s nothing here about it when I . . .”

“Because that was the name you helped me find last time. Zana Lilaj. She was the one who became Hannah Ohlsson.”

He never said the last part aloud.

Who then became Amelia Schmidt.

But he thought it.

Just before she applied to the police academy.

Chapter 54

So magnificent. The pristine shores of Lake Shkodër looked like something out of a glossy travel magazine—the dark green vegetation, the soaring rocks, sky and water in that same intense shade of blue. Like stepping into a fairy tale.

The simple motorboat huffed and puffed its way along surrounded by bird cries. It had been a while since they’d glided over the border to Montenegro, and according to the coordinates in Hamid Cana’s computer, which were now loaded in Piet Hoffmann’s telephone, they were getting close to their destination. Latifi had asked him many times what this was about and where they were going, but he never received an answer. He would, soon.

Piet Hoffmann turned off the engine and the boat floated that last bit into a crevice that formed the narrow entrance to a beach. He jumped out, then up onto a stone with a rope in his hand, then to the next stone and a tree branch hanging there, which met him like an outstretched arm. He tied the boat to a knotty tree trunk and asked Latifi—who was still keeping his distance with his gun easily accessible—to follow him toward the mountain through dense, impenetrable bushes. Not even wild animals moved through here.

The coordinates were no longer helpful, not precise enough. To reach their final destination, he would have to follow the instructions stored in the same document on Cana’s computer.

Seventy-four steps north from the stone shaped like a head until you reach the split tree.

Thirty-nine steps southwest from the split tree to the cliff’s edge.

Fifteen steps south from the cliff’s edge along the foot of the mountain, stop at the protrusion of rock.

There it is. The entrance.