Three Minutes

by Anders Roslund

  Hoffmann held a lifeless head in his hands, whispered no, not him just as he had when he examined the last one and shut off his camera. Twenty-five, twenty-eight, maybe thirty, it was hard to tell the age of an extinguished person. Two left. One in the hole under the trapdoor and one below the window, who El Mestizo strangled with a piece of rope—Hoffmann walked over to that body now, turned off the third camera, pulling down his mask, checking like before. And whispered maybe . . . yes, yes . . . he’ll work well enough.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” El Mestizo had been waiting in the darkness, now he reached the first body and started dragging it toward the open trapdoor in order to push it into the black hole in front of the bar. “Peter?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You’re mumbling!”

  “It wasn’t important.”

  “Then shut up. You know they’re dead, right?”

  A dull thud as the next body hit the ground far below, two men now lay eight meters below that wooden floor. And El Mestizo hurried to the next, the one Hoffmann had just approved.

  “Wait.”

  His employer wasn’t waiting. He pulled and tore at the body, which was heavier than the last one, it seemed as if the blood and body fluids increased the friction against the floor.

  “Hey, I told you to wait.” Hoffmann ran the last few steps, grabbed hold of El Mestizo’s shoulder. “I wanna hang on to that body.”

  His employer indicated he didn’t like having any fucking hands put on his shoulders. And he didn’t stop, kept dragging it toward that deep hole with focused energy.

  “I’m just putting them down there for a day or so, we’ve got staff and customers coming soon, and El Cavo can’t clean up until after closing time.”

  Hoffmann followed after him, his hand still on that wide shoulder and a little on that thick dark hair, and he pressed even harder—he’d never even touched El Mestizo before. “No. I want it just like it is. Whole.”

  El Mestizo stopped. Equally surprised by the strange request as by the hand that wouldn’t release him. “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  There is always a first time. Even for doubt. They’d made it through the shipment disappearing in the Netherlands, those photographs they’d just looked at. The second time is worse. Because it reminds you of the first time.

  “Why?”

  “You have your secrets; I have mine.”

  El Mestizo scrutinized him with those critical eyes that so many around him avoided and feared. That kind of doubt that didn’t end, but rather grew, nourished by what was left unconfirmed. Hoffmann had seen it up close. But only directed at others.

  “Okay. Okay. But in that case . . .” Now he was the one El Mestizo was appraising. And despite the fact that he abandoned the lifeless body and threw up his arms, the doubt still danced between them. “. . . you, Peter, are responsible for getting rid of it.”

  “I will.”

  El Mestizo was already on his way to the other window to retrieve the last body, dragging, cursing as one arm got stuck in a houseplant in the middle of the room, pulled and coaxed at it until it came loose, nudged eighty-five kilos down the hole, listened for the thud, and closed the trapdoor. He stood there, silent, drying sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. Then he drew his revolver from its holster, spinning the barrel, fingers accustomed to rolling death between their tips.

  “Who called?” He bent down, grabbed hold of the ring, and opened the door again. And pointed the loaded weapon, steadily, at Hoffmann. “You and I were sitting here, Peter, looking at some photos of people in Holland who tried to betray me. And some elite American soldiers are looking in on us. And you’re . . . tipped off? Warned? What kind of fucking contacts do you have, anyway?”

  They’d just been targeted for death, just like the others on that thirteen-name list. But the man standing on the floor of a brothel, pointing a gun at the one he’d just survived it all with, didn’t think like that. He lived in violence, by violence. So used to people dying, to the fact that he too would die like that, that he thought that was the way life worked. But suspicion, paranoia, fear of being betrayed—those he had never really become accustomed to.

  “Johnny, the gun—what the hell are you doing?”

  “Somebody warned you! And I want to know who!”

  Two and a half years at his side. It had been Hoffmann’s job to protect this man, and he’d done such a good job that trust had slowly started to build.

  This time he’d had just one minute and forty seconds. They’d grabbed the automatic weapons Hoffmann kept in a secret compartment he’d had built into the bar. They’d picked up the masks and noise-canceling headphones from a hidden compartment under the stage. They’d positioned themselves so they’d had a good view of the respective windows and looked away when the stun grenades exploded.

  Two and a half years. And it didn’t matter. Doubts easily hollowed out any painstakingly built trust.

  “Who?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “Who the fuck knew my brothel was about to be attacked by American soldiers?” El Mestizo cocked his gun. “Answer me, goddammit!”

  Hoffmann hated him. He did. And knew exactly when all his sympathy for the man he was informing on had ceased. The moment he left a five-year-old girl hanging like a rag doll in her father’s arms. So now, with a gun pointed at him, he felt so much more than fear. Frustration. That’s what he felt. Amid all the hatred, whatever admiration was there had also shifted. El Mestizo didn’t just like violence, didn’t just work with it—he used it intelligently. Capably. That was the best word Hoffmann could think of. They’d just fought for their lives, and he’d used one shot, one single shot, and killed the other with a noose. Terribly capable. And thus a formidable enemy.

  “Johnny, they weren’t warning me. Somebody warned us. That’s what you pay for. And now you’re threatening me for doing my job?”

  “Just fucking answer me!” The cocked gun. The index finger on the trigger.

  “I’ve respected your sources, Johnny, the ones you wanted to keep secret.”

  If I answer wrong. I’m sure of it. Johnny, who is now only El Mestizo, will fire that shot.

  “And now I need you to respect mine. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Stop talking shit! I want to know who! Delta Force, that’s the best they have! So whoever warned you is an American! A very powerful fucking American! And damn few high-ranking Americans know about secret Delta Force operations! That call, that information, means you’re a snitch, a fucking informant!”

  His index finger. Turning white. The slightest pull—the hammer would snap forward, the spark would unite, an explosion would propel the bullet.

  “For the last time—who? Convince me of your loyalty, Peter! This was exactly what we were talking about over those Dutch photographs, this is how it ends for people I can’t trust!”

  Either he believes in me. And lowers the weapon. Or he thinks I am what I really am, an informant, a snitch, his most dangerous enemy, who he let get closer than anyone else ever had.

  “Johnny, look at me. If that phone call—which saved both our lives—was tantamount to being exposed as an informant, why would I have warned you? I could have killed you. And handed myself over to them, the Americans, because I’m their man. Right?”

  The finger. Whitening.

  “Why, Johnny, why would I choose to take part in a gun battle that might end my own life—those weren’t fucking pretend guns they came in here with—why would I choose to risk dying, why would I choose to take the lives of my own people?”

  They looked at each other, very close, breaths met and mingled.

  “And why, Johnny, would I be attacked by my own? Why would my own people put me on a kill list and then try to do just that, kill me?”

  And they did it through this lie—a double lie.

  “So my answer, Johnny, remains the same. You can point that at me as long as you want.
You have your secrets, I have mine. I respect your confidential sources, you respect mine.”

  The finger lacked color. Until now. Its healthy red color rushed back. As he pressed even harder. All the way.

  The shot ricocheted, echoed, cried out. El Mestizo had let off the shot right next to Piet’s left ear, near the temple. And Hoffmann remained standing there because he had to. Even though his legs wanted to run. Or sink, or lie down.

  “And my sources, Johnny, seem to be quite a bit better than yours. Right?”

  Now the gun was cocked again, the click that meant the calm before the explosion.

  “And that’s why, Johnny . . .” As they scrutinized each other, while a lie was tested. “. . . we’re standing here, alive.”

  Then he loosened his finger and lowered his weapon.

  THE CAR JUST fit beneath the slanted red concrete stairs that constituted the first steps toward an unobtrusive entrance. A building like the apartment buildings in the Stockholm suburbs. Oblong concrete. Nine stories high. The kind of building he grew up in.

  Hoffmann turned off the engine, waited in the driver’s seat.

  But this was no apartment building. He wasn’t in Stockholm, not at home, where they wanted and needed to go. This was evening in Bogotá. And what reminded him of a Swedish apartment building was actually the Hospital Universitario San Ignacio.

  During the last stretch, passing by Cerros de Monserrate and the side road between Circunvalar and Carrera 7, his passenger had started to move, sliding both down and to the side at each new turn. Hoffmann had eased up on the pedal, slowing until he was absolutely sure no one would be falling out of their seats. Now his companion was sitting there peacefully again. His hat tilted far down over his blue, puffy face. A beautiful silk scarf around his bruised neck. New clothes—a light suit over a white dress shirt had replaced his camouflage uniform—and quite a bit of alcohol had been splashed here and there. A very drunk man, sleeping deeply, on his way home after a night out. If the authorities were to stop him, ask to take a look in his car, the trunk would be the first place they’d go. A gentleman reeking of alcohol and clearly visible was therefore much less of a risk. Hoffmann loosened the thin nylon cord he’d fastened around his passenger’s chest to keep him sitting up properly, then cut the wire he’d tied around his waist and knees—it was important to keep the legs from flapping back and forth, lifeless legs that had yet to develop rigor mortis were so unruly.

  The digital clock on the far left of the dashboard didn’t actually tick, of course. Yet he seemed to hear it anyway, monotonously counting down time he would never get back. Ten to eleven. He was early. And while he waited, his thoughts caught up with him.

  I was one phone call away from death. Erik Wilson, Ewert Grens, El Mestizo—they all keep talking about a slow war. But the kill list is getting shorter every day, and this morning my name was supposed to be crossed off. I survived. And next time? If I find myself somewhere else and maybe with Zofia? With Rasmus, with Hugo?

  Over there. The side entrance. It was opening now, a raspy squeaking sound came through the car’s rolled-down window, and soon another, the scrape of a gurney with small wheels rolling sluggishly over uneven pavement.

  “Benedicto.”

  He was wearing a porter’s uniform, which was unusual. But he moved as slowly as usual, and smiled as widely. “Peter. It’s been a while.”

  Peter Haraldsson had been here before, but only in the company of El Mestizo, after other late evenings when El Cavo had been too far away and bodies needed to disappear quickly. Hoffmann stepped out of the car and they shook hands, and Benedicto, his hand still in Hoffmann’s, leaned forward and peered into the car.

  “So my job got a ride here today?” The morgue attendant smiled as broadly as before, expecting a clever reply about death, some banter, that was how they usually talked over corpses neither of them cared about. That’s how they managed their own fear—laughing at it, minimizing it.

  “Sorry, not today, Benedicto.”

  The body in the passenger seat didn’t mean anything to him, a man he’d never seen before, a voice he’d never heard. But it represented his own death. The one that had been scheduled and attempted just a few hours before, and which he was only now starting to absorb.

  They’d decided he should die. So maybe to avoid it, he’d have to do just that. Again.

  Benedicto rolled the gurney toward the car’s passenger side, gleaming, rattling metal. Hoffmann grabbed the sitting body’s shoulders, while the morgue attendant held his feet, and they both lifted, moved, then dropped it.

  That could have been my body on that fucking gurney.

  Covered by the dark patches of livor mortis, blood no longer circulating, just turning into black clumps. Joints stiffening, muscle tissue forever locked into place.

  But you, who tried to take my life, are lying here instead.

  They walked on either side of the gurney, steering it to the side entrance. Sometimes he envisioned his own death, Zofia’s death, Rasmus’s and Hugo’s deaths, sometimes he tried to imagine it as a way of getting used to it, preparing for it, of dealing with his fears. That’s how you protect yourself. His fear of death drove him, forcing him to act, function, survive.

  A man who has everything to lose is at his most dangerous. Not the opposite, which was what many thought. A man without fear becomes careless, negligent, can be surprised, caught. Unlike the man who can’t lose, who has everything to lose.

  “El Mestizo?” Benedicto opened the hospital’s side entrance, and they rolled the gurney through a gray, desolate corridor.

  “He’s not with me today.”

  “Give him my regards.”

  The gurney just barely fit into the elevator, two floors down, a small jerk as they stopped.

  A new corridor, equally desolate, and a strong, distinctive smell as they opened the heavy door to the morgue. Education. That’s what these donated bodies would be used for. Teaching materials to be dissected. Benedicto had once demonstrated for them, theatrically, how it happened—students begin with a finger, then a hand, then an arm, gradually facing death. The professors and medical students, without being aware of it, were helping out by maiming those who needed to disappear bit by bit.

  White tiles on the walls. White tiles on the floor, but in slightly smaller squares. Cold fluorescent light coming from tubes on the ceiling. Stainless steel divided into rectangular compartments, room for three in each row, eighty by fifty centimeters, all numbered.

  Thirty-nine refrigerators. Twenty-two occupied. Seventeen vacant—and it was one of those that Benedicto unlocked.

  They held on tightly to each end as they moved the metal stand the body rested on from the gurney to compartment 31. Benedicto rolled it inside along long rails, locked the door, and tied a thin plastic cord around the handle, the identification documents were already completed.

  It was around this time they usually started talking about compensation. Once the body was in place. Hoffmann pulled out a white envelope for the morgue attendant.

  “This time I don’t want it to disappear.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I want to keep him here. Whole. In case I have to pick him up again.”

  “Damn, Peter, you never mentioned that.”

  “I’m mentioning it now.”

  “That, my friend, will cost you a helluva lot more. It’s one thing to roll out the wrong corpse for tomorrow’s med students. But moving him around in here, from slot to slot, avoiding my colleagues . . . I’ll have to come here every night. That’s a two-hour bus ride.”

  Hoffmann didn’t have much time. And besides, he realized the attendant’s argument was reasonable. Benedicto wasn’t one to squabble about money just because he could.

  “A helluva lot more? Okay. You get everything that’s in that envelope right now—the same as what you always get. And the same amount every week until I pick him up. Or until I tell you to get rid of it.”

  The short, slender
man in the oversize white uniform held the envelope, flipped through it, as if weighing it in the air between them. Then stuffed it into a breast pocket with the hospital’s blue logo on it. “Okay.”

  Afterward, there was just the smell. It followed him down the corridor, shadowed him closely as he exited into fresh air, sat down beside him in the motionless car. Hoffmann pushed an arm to his face and sank his nose into the shirt fabric. Yes, that’s where it lingered. Embracing the cotton fibers of his clothes. The smell of death.

  He turned the key, started the engine. But turned it off again. It had been a long day. He’d gone from a carefully prepared attack through the basement windows of a sleepy brothel to a locked refrigerator this evening in an empty morgue. But it had also taken care of the very last row on one of the two pieces of paper he kept folded at the bottom of his knife’s leather holster.

  The one written by hand on toilet paper. And which he unfolded now.

  Coordinates

  Low Earth Orbit

  Time window

  Cesium-137

  Prism bomb

  Magnets sled

  Suitcase

  Things were moving in the right direction—down the road that would lead them home, to living, to surviving. But there was room for one more item. In case conditions changed. A single word. If the direction of the road changed.

  The pen was in the glove compartment. He wrote the word at the bottom.

  Body

  He knew, of course. Always alone. Trust only yourself.