“I’m gonna go out to the mailbox. Take a look for myself. Tell me once more, Rasmus, exactly what it looked like when you came home and opened the mailbox. Before you took out what you thought was for you.”
“I didn’t just think that. It was for me.”
“Rasmus?”
Rasmus sighed. A little too loudly and dramatic. The way he thought you were supposed to sigh when something obvious had to be explained. Hoffmann loved that sigh. His youngest son had already started to recover.
“It looked just like it always does. Letters. Junk mail, I guess.”
“And?”
“I was looking through it. Everything else was for you. Or Mom. And then I saw it, kind of over to the side. An open envelope. It was brown. And . . .”
“Open, Rasmus?”
“As if someone peeked into it. Or didn’t close it up very well? I saw the action figure right away. But I read the envelope first. My name and Hugo’s name. That’s all. So I was allowed to take it out.”
“Was there anything else? Next to it?”
“Aren’t you listening to me, Dad? You get lots of stuff, like letters, catalogs, all the time, and I want that too someday when I get my own mailbox, and . . .”
“That’s not what I meant. Was there anything else in the envelope?”
“Other than my action figure?”
“Yes.”
Rasmus fell silent, thinking hard, staring at the mailbox and trying to remember something he didn’t know he was going to have to remember. He was really trying. While Hoffmann fought everything tearing him up inside, trying not to show his son how fucking scared or angry or whatever else it felt like all at the same time.
“I don’t know.”
“A note? A letter? A message? Next to the toy?”
“Don’t know.”
“Are you sure, Rasmus?”
“I just took the action figure. That’s what I wanted. Okay?”
Piet Hoffmann carried the hand grenade with him as he walked the garden path of square flagstones toward the rusty gate and black mailbox with white text. Away from his little boy. Even though he didn’t need to. He knew that now. He’d examined it more closely and realized it lacked its explosive heart. The person who’d transformed this into a toy and put it into their mailbox did so to scare them. The fuse and pin had been unscrewed and the explosives removed. Without them it wasn’t a hand grenade. Just a little pile of pressed TNT.
Scare them. That was its purpose.
Remove the heart before delivering—he’d done that himself in another life. A warning to someone who was supposed to pay, or who better not testify, or who better consider getting out of the drug business.
Hoffmann squeezed the oval metal ball in his hand.
A warning.
Why?
The gate creaked like usual, then just a few long strides to the fence. The mailbox hung there. In the very place he’d nailed it to with the help of a then four-year-old Hugo, who had proudly sounded out their last name over and over again to anyone who might listen.
He should maybe secure the area.
But scaring someone like, sending them a warning, has a purpose. It’s supposed to make the recipient start to think, weighing the message, becoming willing to do whatever’s needed.
He lifted the top of the mailbox and peered inside.
It looked just as Rasmus had described. Four letters. A free newspaper. A bunch of junk mail.
And at the very back an open brown envelope.
Hoffmann took out the flyers, the paper, the four letters from the city, the tax agency, their electricity bill, and something from Ikea. Then it was only the brown envelope. He’d grabbed his winter gloves from the hall shelf on the way out, and he pulled them on now. A bit too thick, clumsy, but just in case he wanted to dust for prints later.
To Rasmus and Hugo
That’s what it said on the envelope. Just as Rasmus told him.
No stamp or postage, and nothing on the back.
He widened the gap with his gloved fingers.
There was something inside. A piece of white paper. Typed in the same style as on the outside of the envelope.
He fished it out, carefully, and read the sentence, which contained only five short words.
We know who you are.
He’d slept a bit between two and three o’clock. Slept some more around half past four. A long night. The kind he thought he was done with. Tense. Completely prepared. His humanity reduced to instinct. Wait, watch, protect. While making sure that the people he was protecting neither noticed nor understood.
After finding the grenade on the kitchen table and the typed note in the mailbox, Piet Hoffmann had used the rest of the afternoon and evening to inspect the house, the garden, and its immediate surroundings. But he didn’t find anything else out of the ordinary. Meanwhile he’d gotten in touch with every contact he had left from a life spent in the criminal underworld, questioning the ones who always knew, those that made the threats and those who received them, but still he’d gotten no closer to an answer. He’d held Zofia like he always did when she came home, played with Luiza, who’d passed all the tests at her six-month checkup, quizzed Hugo on his English test, and listened to Rasmus practice the first part of a play that he was in. And then he lay down next to both his boys and read to them until they fell asleep. Not a word about his fury or his fear. Zofia, of course, had noticed what she wasn’t supposed to, and asked him what was wrong, but he avoided answering her. Later when it was just the two of them on the sofa, a glass of wine in hand, she’d looked at him as only she could, and he’d hidden behind the excuse that he and Rasmus had an argument about a toy, and that’s probably what she noticed, and they were both sorry, as always after that kind of conflict. He’d promised never to lie to her again, but he met her eyes anyway, and she’s seen through him, he was sure of it.
“I don’t want to, Dad.”
Hugo was only ten, but he already seemed like a teenager. Big, small. Clear, unclear. Sure, unsure. Right now he was lying in bed with his blanket over his head, and he didn’t want to get up.
“Hugo, you have to.”
“No I don’t. I stay home by myself all the time. We have a half-day off today. That means I get to sleep in as long as I want.”
“Not today. You and Rasmus are coming to work with me, and then I’ll drive you to school after lunch.”
“Why?”
“I can’t explain. But that’s just the way it is.”
“Does Mom know?”
“Mom already left. With Luiza. Headed to some parenting group—they won’t be back until tonight. And today you can’t stay home alone. Ten minutes. Then I better see you dressed and downstairs next to Rasmus.”
He pulled the blanket down until he caught a glimpse of Hugo’s forehead. He kissed it, then headed down two flights to the basement.
He wanted to scream it.
No.
Mom doesn’t know.
Because I won’t force her to have to deal with my past ever again.
Zofia was on maternity leave right now but usually spent her weekdays at the same school as the boys teaching Spanish, French, and—when it was needed—Polish. Zofia, who had wedged a new note with a big red heart into the doorframe of his workroom, just a little bit of love that slowly drifted to the floor as he opened and stepped in. He picked it up, kissed it as he kissed Hugo’s forehead, and put it in the chest pocket of his shirt. Close to his own heart.
The workroom consisted of a desk, a chair, and a small closet in one corner—which is where he headed now. It was there among the winter coats and dress shirts he never used that he stretched up to a shelf with some storage boxes. And when he reached a little to the right behind one of the drawers, he felt it. A lever. He pressed down and a faint hiss was audible as the back of the cl
oset slid away to reveal another room. A hidden room. Daylight seeped in from a small crack near the ceiling, illuminating a space big enough for a weapon cabinet, a safe, a clothing rack with bulletproof vests hanging on it, and a row of filing cabinets.
A secret room left over from his days as an infiltrator and a liar. Which he should get rid of to prove it was truly over.
He’d hidden the hand grenade on the lower shelf of his weapon cabinet next to his Polish Radom gun. He closed his hand around it, just like Rasmus. A weapon designed to spread death. He opened one of the briefcases and slid it into an inner pocket. It wasn’t going to stay in this house.
Back to the ground floor and the hall. And only one son. Rasmus. Dressed, just like he should be.
“Where’s Hugo?”
“Don’t know.”
“Wait here.”
“I’m tired of waiting. The keys, Dad. I’ll go wait in the car.”
“You stay where you are! Do you understand? You don’t go anywhere alone!”
Hoffmann regretted it immediately when he saw the fear in his son’s eyes. He shouldn’t have raised his voice, let his own worry affect someone else. He kissed Rasmus’s forehead and hurried upstairs.
“Hugo? Come down now.”
“Not until you tell me why.”
“I don’t need to explain.”
“Yes. Because it doesn’t feel right. And every time it doesn’t feel right, it’s because of you, not us.”
Two little boys who lived on the run for so long. A life they never asked for—the consequences of their father’s life. They handled it so differently. Rasmus, so secure in himself, had just accepted their living conditions in another part of the world, and just as quickly adjusted when they came back here. But Hugo needed routines and transparency in order to handle his thoughts, and he never really got used to South America. And then when they returned to Sweden and the house he grew up in, it took him a long time to start trusting the fact that they were there to stay.
“That’s not what’s happening now, Hugo. This isn’t about me.”
“Then what’s it about? Why can’t we stay home like we usually do?”
Piet Hoffmann understood. This was a boy who’d been forced to have a bodyguard because his father told him to, a boy who’d listened to his parents talking about the threat of life in prison when they didn’t know he was there, a boy who knew very well that an infiltrator risked his life every day, so it wasn’t strange that this boy would sense when something was off and draw his own conclusions.
Not strange that such a boy would be afraid. Just like his father was.
“It’s . . . a surprise.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“Something for Mom. Which I have to take care of. And Hugo—you can’t say anything to her.”
Lying to his children was easier. As long as he didn’t meet their eyes.
“What exactly, Dad?”
“If you don’t know, you’re less likely to give it away. Like Rasmus did. Do you remember?”
Silence.
The lie was being judged.
Then he heard the floor next to his son’s bed creak. Then Hugo’s shuffling feet. His reluctant steps coming down the stairs.
“This is so boring.”
Hugo managed to look deeply annoyed as he laced up his old sneakers, which he refused to replace, irritated as he put on his backpack and headed out the front door.
“So we just have to sit there while you work. And wait.”
Hoffmann remembered back when his boys were curious about their parents’ jobs—those magical places they disappeared to while their children were at preschool. Back then a visit to his office meant vanilla ice cream, two big glasses of Coke, and a few episodes of Winnie the Pooh in front of the TV. He put his arm around Hugo’s thin shoulders, pulled him close, hugged him in the way Hugo would never allow when they were outside.
“Yep. Sometimes, my dear son, you just have to wait. It’s a bummer.”
On their way to his office in central Stockholm, he tried to liven things up by reintroducing a car game they liked when they were little—counting out loud in Polish, his parents’ mother tongue.
“Jeden, dwa . . .”
“Jeden, dwa . . .”
A single voice echoed behind him. Hoffmann turned to his eldest son.
“You too, Hugo.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You’re gonna make Rasmus do all the counting by himself?”
No answer. Until Rasmus saved them both.
“Don’t pay attention to him, Dad. You and me are counting, right? This time I start. And just one at a time. Trzy.”
“Trzy.”
“Cztery.”
“Cztery.”
“Pięć.”
By the time they parked on Vasa Street, they’d made it to sto trzydzieści sześć, one hundred and thirty-six—Rasmus first, then Hoffmann, punctuated by Hugo’s sighs—and just a few floors up there stood an apartment with a mail slot labeled Hoffmann Security Inc.
He unlocked the security door, then the steel gate, and pressed four digits on a control panel to turn off the alarm. A security firm. That’s how the Polish mafia he’d infiltrated on behalf of the Swedish police had worked. A facade for the rest of the world. Hoffmann Security Inc. for many years had been a branch of its parent company, Wojtek Security International. While its owner, Piet Hoffmann, over the span of years worked his way into the upper echelons of power, gaining their trust, and then exposing them, destroying the entire organization from the inside.
“How long do we have to stay here?”
“You know how long, Hugo.”
“I thought you might have changed your mind?”
“My big little man—go sit with Rasmus at the conference table. Turn on the TV. Read something. Surf the internet. Play a game. I have not changed my mind.”
During his years on the run, Erik Wilson, Hoffmann’s handler in the Swedish police, paid the rent on this empty apartment every month. Piet Hoffmann hadn’t even been sure why he felt it was so important to keep. Using his hidden money to keep the house in Enskede, the heart of his family’s life, was an obvious choice—but this expensive office space in the center of the city, whose only function had been to infiltrate the Polish mafia? He understood it later, after they returned to Sweden and after he got out of prison. Through all those years, this had become one of the places where he felt safe—though everything about its history should have meant the opposite, insecurity. But it was a reference point in the chaos. A place to begin finding his way home.
He walked through the rooms—high ceilings, white walls. Windows overlooking Norra Bantorget and Kungs Bridge. An open fireplace like the one Zofia had wanted at home, and which they’d finally recently built. His personal office was next to the kitchen, and a heavy antique desk stood in its middle, two weapons cases along the wall, identical to the one he had at home. This was where he ran the other leg of his business from, his legal business, a man who never imagined he could live a life outside the criminal world. The safe houses took up half of the time—and selling and mounting security cameras, installing alarms and bulletproof windows and doors the other half. And now and then, if Zofia approved, he’d do some extra time as a bodyguard, which paid well.
“I’m thirsty.”
Rasmus shouted from the conference room.
“Dad! Thirsty.”
“Do you see the mini-fridge in the corner?”
“Yeah?”
“Look inside and you’ll find something to your liking on the top shelf. It’s orange. Starts with an F and ends with A. You can have one each.”
When they came inside he’d stepped over a pile of mail on the floor of the hallway, but with his boys settled in now and busy with other things, he returned to the front door and
picked it up. He sorted out all the catalogs and the trade magazines for the Security branch, tucked the seven remaining letters under his arm, and carried them to his desk.
“I can’t find it.”
Rasmus again.
Desperation in his voice.
“Dad? They’re not here!”
“I’m coming, Rasmus.”
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.
Knock Knock Page 5
