Hoffmann remembered back when his boys were curious about their parents’ jobs—those magical places they disappeared to while their children were at preschool. Back then a visit to his office meant vanilla ice cream, two big glasses of Coke, and a few episodes of Winnie the Pooh in front of the TV. He put his arm around Hugo’s thin shoulders, pulled him close, hugged him in the way Hugo would never allow when they were outside.

“Yep. Sometimes, my dear son, you just have to wait. It’s a bummer.”

On their way to his office in central Stockholm, he tried to liven things up by reintroducing a car game they liked when they were little—counting out loud in Polish, his parents’ mother tongue.

“Jeden, dwa . . .”

“Jeden, dwa . . .”

A single voice echoed behind him. Hoffmann turned to his eldest son.

“You too, Hugo.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You’re gonna make Rasmus do all the counting by himself?”

No answer. Until Rasmus saved them both.

“Don’t pay attention to him, Dad. You and me are counting, right? This time I start. And just one at a time. Trzy.”

“Trzy.”

“Cztery.”

“Cztery.”

“Pięć.”

By the time they parked on Vasa Street, they’d made it to sto trzydzieści sześć, one hundred and thirty-six—Rasmus first, then Hoffmann, punctuated by Hugo’s sighs—and just a few floors up there stood an apartment with a mail slot labeled Hoffmann Security Inc.

He unlocked the security door, then the steel gate, and pressed four digits on a control panel to turn off the alarm. A security firm. That’s how the Polish mafia he’d infiltrated on behalf of the Swedish police had worked. A facade for the rest of the world. Hoffmann Security Inc. for many years had been a branch of its parent company, Wojtek Security International. While its owner, Piet Hoffmann, over the span of years worked his way into the upper echelons of power, gaining their trust, and then exposing them, destroying the entire organization from the inside.

“How long do we have to stay here?”

“You know how long, Hugo.”

“I thought you might have changed your mind?”

“My big little man—go sit with Rasmus at the conference table. Turn on the TV. Read something. Surf the internet. Play a game. I have not changed my mind.”