Tightly written pages from a secret black binder. Details of meetings held in temporarily abandoned apartments in properties undergoing renovation that could be accessed from two different addresses. In the first column, the infiltrator’s code name. Then date and time. Then a summary of the information exchanged between the infiltrator and his or her handler. He didn’t have to read much to see that these pages, the ones he was staring at, were from his handler Erik Wilson, and they were about him, Piet Hoffmann. About his ten years as a secret employee.

Because there was his code name.

Paula.

That’s the only name the police—his employers—knew him by. It was how he remained anonymous while exposing the innermost workings of violent organized crime. In that safe, together with the logbook, there stood a white envelope, which stored the infiltrator’s real name, written on a single piece of paper—sealed by their handler on the first day of a mission with a red lacquer seal. In that pile of documents sitting on his desk, there was also a copy of that piece of paper. The answer to who Paula was.

Even that.

Piet Hoffmann breathed in, out, like always when he was seeking calm.

If the wrong person read this. If the wrong person had access to the infiltrator’s true identity and previous missions, it meant an immediate death sentence. If any criminal network or mafia organization becomes aware of an infiltrator, a snitch, there’s no public trial, only ruthless action.

Death.

It was as simple as that.

“What are you doing, Dad?”

Hoffmann jerked. He hadn’t noticed Rasmus sneaking in behind him, and now leaning over the desk and this dangerous pile of papers.

“What are you doing, Rasmus? In here? Shouldn’t you be watching your show?”

“The episode’s over. And I’m out of soda.”

Hoffmann stood up, carefully pushing his youngest son in front of him across the wooden floor of his office.

“That’s not good. Because I have more work to do.”

“But I can help you.”

“Unfortunately, Rasmus, this is something I have to do on my own. But what do you say about . . . another soda? And another episode?”

“Another soda? Does Mom know?”

“If you want one, it’ll be our secret.”

A new drink, a new episode.

He ruffled Rasmus’s hair, brushed Hugo’s cheek, left them to their fictional worlds for one that hardly seemed real.

Someone had gotten inside a safe that nobody had access to.

Someone had opened a sealed envelope and copied the information inside, and knew who he was.

Someone had taken the secret logbook of disclosures he made during his time as an infiltrator and made a copy of it.

Piet Hoffmann breathed in, breathed out, in, out.