Could Erik be the police officer who had shared papers that were more dangerous than weapons?

No.

Piet Hoffmann didn’t even have to take that fleeting thought any further, didn’t need to confront him—he just knew it wasn’t him. Erik Wilson, after more than ten years of close collaboration, where each day literally separated life from death, was one of only two police officers he trusted. There were thirty thousand people employed by that police authority, and there were twenty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight of them that he didn’t trust.

They were acting and thinking as he would have.

Even the mission they were trying to get him to carry out seemed familiar.

In fact it was almost exactly the same as one he came up with—use a weapon no one in the criminal underworld of Stockholm had access to—several years ago for completely different reasons, when he’d planned to destroy another organization in a single stroke. He’d infiltrated a biker gang that was considered one of Sweden’s most dangerous at the time. The members who slowly accepted him, entrusted him with tasks, eventually elevating him to “hanger-on” and then “prospect,” had suddenly started showing suspicion. He remembered one evening, during one of his secret meetings with Erik Wilson, when he was supposed to share information but was just as likely to share his joy or sorrow or fear or frustration or whatever feeling filled him at the moment, he had described to his handler exactly how he planned to survive if the gang members ever found out who he was. If they ever decided to kill the snitch.

My God.

That was why. That’s where it came from.

With the blackbird singing in the tree outside, and the unsolved crossword lying in front of him on the kitchen table, he suddenly saw it all so clearly.

That’s how this all went down, that’s why this still anonymous organization threatening to destroy his family had chosen him.

They’d read those old classified documents, copied them, and sent them to him to let him know. His meetings with Wilson—the conversations where they found the inspiration, which they adapted for their own purposes: taking over the Swedish illegal arms trade.

It was his idea all along.

The infiltrator Piet Hoffmann, code name Paula, had realized how simple it would be to knock out a large criminal organization and in a single move completely change the balance of power in Stockholm’s underworld.