Piet Hoffmann hurried to the conference room, as a soda crisis is a serious thing. He passed by his two boys, sitting at the conference table like the most serious board members imaginable. Hugo, no longer sighing, was deeply engrossed in a game on his iPad, and Rasmus was in front of the TV watching a cartoon, which was paused. Hoffmann opened the mini-fridge and like Rasmus he saw—nothing. At the corner of his eye, his youngest son threw his hands up in a wordless gesture of I told you so, Dad, and then Piet continued to the kitchen. There were cans of soda in that refrigerator, and he grabbed two, put them in front of his satisfied boys, then returned to his desk and the pile of letters.

Seven pieces of mail—he flipped through them, searching for information about a shipment of Kevlar vests that should have arrived from a UK retailer a while ago. The kind of vests his well-to-do clients preferred, and which you couldn’t buy in Sweden, even though they were far superior to what the Swedish cops were running around in.

It lay in the middle of the pile.

And it wasn’t what he was looking for.

But it was what he’d feared was coming since yesterday, in one way or another.

A padded package, the kind you can buy at the post office. Same font, same typewriter as yesterday. No stamp, no return address.

To Piet Koslow Hoffmann

You found me here, too. In this place that was once my protective facade.

Who are you? What do you want?

A quick glance at the conference room. There were his beloved boys, each one lost in his own world, so far away from what they didn’t need to know.

He felt the padding, pushed his thumbs against its rough surface. Thick. Glued shut, unlike the other one. Only paper inside. Much more paper than in the last one.

There was a penknife in his desk drawer, and he used it to slit open the package that marked the beginning of the most awful, the most overwhelming, and the absolutely shittiest days of his family’s life, despite having some pretty tough competition.

He knew immediately what it was and what it meant.

Documents that no one should have access to. Papers more dangerous than firearms.

What Piet Hoffmann held in his hand were copies of logbooks and intelligence reports and code names from the Swedish police’s unofficial infiltration program. Documentation that existed in only one copy, locked in a safe in the most secure archive in the Kronoberg Police Station.

It was impossible.

But there it was, lying on his desk.