Андерс де ла Мотт – MemoRandom (страница 17)

Atif looked at his watch. Three hours and twenty-five minutes left, still no real hurry. He looked cautiously around the little room. The floor was only a couple of metres square, and obviously there was no window. The smell of ammonia and disinfectant was already making his eyes water.

Dino belched again, then came a groan and the sound of a long, wet fart. Atif peered through the crack in the door and saw the man squirm in his chair. Suddenly he flew up and took a couple of quick steps, reaching out his hand toward Atif. But before Atif had time to react, the man disappeared from view and a moment later the toilet door slammed shut again. He heard the toilet lid being lifted, then a loud splash followed by a groan of relief.

Atif slipped silently out of the cleaning cupboard, hurried across the reception area, and left the premises the same way he had come.

He found a good lookout post on a neighboring plot. In the middle of a row of parked trucks, with a wire-mesh fence that didn’t really impede his view but would make his car almost invisible. Three hours and nineteen minutes until his plane left. The drive to Arlanda would take an hour, so he still had plenty of time. He leaned his seat back and tried to stretch out as best he could. He wished he had his army binoculars with him.

His window of time had shrunk by another twenty-five minutes before anything happened. Abu Hamsa emerged first, lit a fat cigar, then jumped into the Audi. Atif had guessed right. The tone of voice the old man had used when he spoke about Cassandra had given him away. His promise to look after the family and the fact that Cassandra had his cell number only made things clearer. The only question was how long the old man had waited after Adnan’s death before taking on the role of Cassandra’s protector. Or had he already done so before Adnan was killed? But Atif reminded himself once again that it was none of his business. Cassandra made her own decisions, and maybe having an affair with Abu Hamsa was a cheap price to pay for having her family looked after.

The bowlegged man who emerged after Abu Hamsa was big, and considerably more lardy than gym-pumped. Leather waistcoat, long goatee, blond hair in a plait down his back. Swedish biker thug, model 1A. Atif recognized him as Micke Lund: seven years ago he had just been appointed sergeant at arms in the Hells Angels. By now Lund must be close to fifty. A padded jacket hid most of his leather waistcoat, but Atif could made out red lettering on a red background. Still with the Hells Angels, then.

The lard-ass stopped to insert a dose of chewing tobacco, waiting for the man following him out. Another biker, one who evidently didn’t feel the cold, wearing a waistcoat in the yellow and red of the Bandidos. Short hair, younger, fitter than Micke Lund, and far less the blond, blue-eyed stereotype. But the two men no longer seemed to have anything against each other. They stood and chatted for a few minutes as two more men came out to join them. They were wearing tracksuits and had closely cropped hair, with broad foreheads and defined cheekbones. Typical Eastern Europeans, probably Russian.

The two tracksuits lit cigarettes and offered one to the Bandidos biker, while Micke Lund made do with his chewing tobacco. The men stood and talked for a few minutes, stamping in the snow. When another man with a face like a death’s head emerged from the door the four of them exchanged glances, then quickly shook hands with one another and slid away to their respective cars.

The death’s head stood still as he lit a cigar. The man gave a suitably mocking wave to the others’ cars, then strolled over to a big Porsche Cayenne. Atif studied the man and concluded that he had heard correctly inside the gym. His appearance – bald head, hook nose, and sunken eyes – was unmistakable. It was his old friend and colleague Sasha. A war hero from the Balkans, capable of anything, a man with no inhibitions. On their first job together Sasha had cut off a man’s fingers with a pair of garden shears. He carried on until only the forefingers were left, even though the man had long since crumbled and told them what they wanted to know. Violence was one thing, but Sasha was a full-blown sadist, and eventually Atif had asked not to work with him any longer. Evidently this information had found its way back to Sasha, and as thanks he had held a gun to Atif’s head in the middle of a nightclub. He had told him that the next time they met he was going to pull the trigger, no matter how many witnesses there might be. Shortly after that Atif’s mother had fallen ill. And once Atif accompanied her back to Iraq, the matter had seemed irrelevant. But to judge by the conversation in there, and the looks the bikers and Russians had exchanged out in the parking lot, Atif wasn’t the only one who had a problem with Sasha. His presence at the meeting, his suit, and the expensive car clearly suggested that he had risen through the ranks. And was now someone to be reckoned with.

Two different biker gangs, some Eastern Europeans, Abu Hamsa, and Sasha. The discussion he had overheard had been a top-level meeting. The gangster version of Who’s Who.

The last man didn’t emerge until after Sasha had left. About thirty-five, suit, overcoat, short, dark hair, and a wary look in his eyes. It was impossible to see more from a distance. The man moved smoothly and exuded more genuine self-confidence than the others, more control. He was also considerably calmer than the men who had come out before him. Considerably less nervous.

In all likelihood, this was the consultant Abu Hamsa had talked about. Although the man actually looked as if he was in the military. Or the police.

The consultant stopped outside the back door for a moment and put on a pair of aviator sunglasses. Then he walked slowly toward a dark Range Rover as he let his eyes roam across the surroundings. The man stopped beside his car and for a few moments Atif was sure he was staring straight at him. But then the gym door opened again and Dino, or whatever the lunk was called, came out. He said something that made the consultant turn around and waved his short arms excitedly in a way that looked almost comical. The consultant said something in reply, then the two men hurried back inside the building.

Atif wondered about the security cameras in the gym, and how easy it was to rewind the recording just a matter of minutes. A couple of mouse clicks and he’d be there on the screen.

He turned the key in the ignition and put the car in gear. Just less than three hours before his plane took off.

10

When Sarac woke up he noticed two things immediately. First: it was pitch black. Not even a tiny light on a monitor, nothing to focus on. So he wasn’t in his usual room. Second: there was someone else there in the darkness. He could sense movement of some sort, and then someone taking a deep breath.

‘Can you hear me, Sarac?’ a low male voice asked.

He turned his head toward the voice as he searched his memory for something to match to the hoarse voice. A name, a place, anything at all. But he couldn’t find anything.

‘You’re not an easy person to get a little chat with, Sarac. There are lots of people keeping an eye on you. A lot of people worried about what you might reveal.’

Sarac tried to raise himself to a sitting position, but got tangled in the tubes sticking out of his body.

‘You know who I am, don’t you?’ the man said.

‘N-no …’ Sarac said. But that wasn’t entirely true. They had met, he was almost certain of that. He just couldn’t remember where and when. His eyes were gradually getting used to the darkness, and the man began to appear as a dark shadow just a few metres away from him.

‘We had an agreement, you and me, remember?’ the man said.

Sarac shook his head, once again without really managing to convince himself. Was this all a dream, a hallucination playing out in his head? He clenched his hands tightly under the covers. He felt the back of one hand touch something. A plastic object connected to a cable. The alarm button.

The man came closer and stopped right next to the bed. He smelled strongly of tobacco. Sarac could make out a furrowed face, the mouth a black hole in which a gold tooth glinted. His sense of unease slid into fear, making Sarac’s heart race. He fumbled for the alarm, but his hand slipped off it.

‘An agreement is an agreement. You know what the consequences will be if you break it,’ the man said.

Sarac shut his eyes, screwing them shut as hard as he could, and pressed the alarm button. Once, twice, again …

‘Get out!’ he roared. ‘Go to hell!’

There were voices in the distance. Then steps as someone approached along the corridor. Any moment now the door would open.

‘You can’t hide forever,’ the man hissed in his ear. ‘You’re going to stick to our agreement, do you hear?’

Sarac went on shouting, yelling out loud until the door opened and the light was switched on. He blinked against the sudden glare and saw the woman in white who was gently shaking his arm.