And the notes, which he placed back onto the safe shelf now, were from that very person. One who wouldn’t let him go. Who found his way back in. No matter how many times Piet pushed him away. This Piet Hoffmann had been forced to run for his life over and over again, because of the infiltrator Paula.

He closed the safe door, then the door to his secret room, then the closet and his office, then the basement door. In the kitchen he put a dented and discolored kettle on the stove to boil some water, the one they’d bought the day they moved into this house, which they could never quite give up. He poured hot water into a big glass and mixed in some instant coffee.

Suddenly he felt so dizzy he had to lean against the wall.

He’d been expecting this moment for most of his adult life.

The final death threat.

That someone would get a hold of those secret documents, learn his identity. That it would be made public and his family would become a target.

Time to choose.

Carry out this mission—or refuse and wait for a death sentence, because any former mafia associates of his would lose all credibility if they didn’t kill him now.

He looked down again at Zofia’s crossword puzzle, picked up her pencil. She’d sensed it, of course—knew him better than he knew himself—and knew this night was approaching. He counted a total of nine empty squares scattered throughout the puzzle. But solving them was still just as impossible. No answer made sense. He couldn’t focus his thoughts—they danced around him, laughing at him.

As empty as those crossword squares.

Until, after a while, not yet sure why, he stretched over to the counter between the refrigerator and the stove and pulled some white napkins out of a drawer. He unfolded one over the puzzle and drew some aimless straight lines, which soon turned into squares. The first was in the napkin’s upper left corner. The next one right next to it. He continued, scribbling them down one at a time, a long chain from one side to the other.

And suddenly he knew why.

He started writing with that blunt lead pencil. It was a bit cramped, the long row was a little too close to the napkin’s edge, but the words fit exactly in the first box.

Survive, eleven letters

He filled it in. He could solve this.

P—H—O—N—E—T—O—G—R—A—M

The next row of penciled-in boxes was not quite as straight, and a little shorter with less room to write.

Survive, eleven letters

He knew that one, too.

G—R—O—U—N—D—F—L—O—O—R

He kept going.

Still dizzy, but his mind was crystal clear.