At this point he smiled, his eyes smiled too, and the press corps and his press advisers smiled along with him as he continued.
“That’s what happens when you send the best. US Special Forces—Delta Force.”
The camera now moved to the man in uniform. Major General Cook, who stayed silent, just nodding, inspiring confidence.
“It doesn’t add up!” Hoffmann banged his hand on the table and overturned both the coffee mugs and slightly larger teacups. And when he stood up all signs of fatigue had vanished, he was as furious as Grens had ever seen anyone—except for himself.
And then he left. Toward the exit. Hoffmann’s determined steps whipped the floor.
Meanwhile the TV image changed. From the president’s face to a prerecorded feature in a helicopter, in the darkness, above an endless sea, with the muffled sound of a rotor blade. When the lens turned in toward the cabin, it revealed a man reclining on some sort of stretcher. Tormented, haunted, but at the same time a kind of peace in the depths of that gaze. Speaker Timothy D. Crouse.
“Thank you.” His voice was weak but composed. “I’m alive. And will soon be back in the service of the American people—that’s my mission. From the bottom of my heart, I’m so very grateful to my colleagues for their patient work, for the skills of the Crouse Force, and a special thank-you to the Delta Force member who found me and who led the mission to free me and bring me back to safety again.”
The speaker closed his eyes, and the picture cut back to the White House and the press conference, whose focus had shifted from celebrating the rescue mission to images of the continued war to root out terrorism. And only when those ten names who still stood on the kill list were projected diagonally across the vice president’s shoulder did Grens realize what Hoffmann had been aware of from the outset.
That the agreement they’d both negotiated had been betrayed. That the representatives of the world’s most powerful democracy had changed history, to keep a bad decision from ever having to be revealed to the public. That their employee, the informant Piet Hoffmann, was still on the kill list of his employer. And they would continue hunting him until he was killed.
THIS AFTERNOON’S MEETING with Domenico José Peralta was crucial. And she succeeded. The final wording in a unique agreement that none of her predecessors ever came close to completing. Sue Masterson was rarely satisfied with herself or what she did, but just now she was—from the moment the head of the Policía Federal signed the bottom of that white paper and shook her hand, American and Mexican agents would be working together on both sides of the border. Both officially and undercover. With the joint forces they’d previously lacked, they could now identify, confiscate, and diminish the Mexican drug cartels. The Crouse Force targeted its expertise at production—this was focused on distribution.
Then she looked at the clock. Damn.
The press conference. Hoffmann’s agreement—a life for a life. Which she’d negotiated just a few days earlier. She excused herself as she threw documents and pens into her briefcase and Peralta nodded, waved, and smiled, just as pleased.
She hurried, almost ran, out of the conference room on the second floor of the DEA. To the stairs. They were probably quickest. She climbed the three floors easily—she was so happy. Cocaine production’s broad base would remain in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, that’s why Hoffmann and other informants had been placed there—if you cut the throat it gets a lot harder to breathe. But now she’d started to cut another main artery—the geographical link between producer and consumer.
Fifth floor. Her office was seven doors away. The press conference had already started, but probably wasn’t over yet.
The TV screen hung on the wall between the door and the bookcase. She pointed the remote and sat down at her desk, unsure if what was pounding fiercely in her chest was the unexpected run or the feeling of leaping joy caused by moving from one successfully completed agreement to another.
She was in luck. The press conference wasn’t over. But most everything had been said. Maybe they’d even shown Crouse, he was supposed to be there, but she didn’t see him. The image was now filled by an illustration of a kill list projected diagonally across the vice president’s shoulder. Ten names.
Masterson counted again. Ten remaining names. There should have been nine. She leaned forward, trying to focus on the list as it slowly scrolled by. And there he was. The Seven of Hearts.
They’d made a mistake. Forgotten to take him off.
The list disappeared and the broadcast ended with a slow pan over the podium. And she remembered when Vice President Thompson and Chief of Staff Perry emerged from the Situation Room and returned with a flash drive and a promise. When she’d repeated that promise to Detective Grens in a dark little dive bar. When both, without having to say it, shared that same feeling, which is always most intense before you repay a debt.
“Yes?”
She’d called the vice president’s private cell phone without being quite aware of it.
“Hello. This is Sue Masterson.” And she realized that Thompson was of course still in the same room as the cameras, but a bit behind them and standing with the chief of staff, who was directing everything.
“Masterson? Wait a second.”
She heard the vice president moving with phone in hand, the background noise subsided, it was almost quiet. She wondered which room she’d slipped into. “I’m watching TV.”
“Yes, and?” She sounded normal. Neutral.
“And that image. The list. There’s been a mistake. You forgot to cross off the Seven of Hearts.”
“No.”
“Well, I saw it just now on the news. And his name is still there.”
“The list was correct.”
It sounded as if a door opened and closed. As if the vice president might be switching to another room.
“We had an agreement.”
“What agreement?”
“The agreement on . . . you know which fucking agreement . . . it stipulated that if the Seven of Hearts found, freed, and delivered Crouse, you would strike him from the kill list.”
“Sue, I’m sorry but I really don’t know what you’re talking about—we made no agreement.”
That voice. Just as neutral. And that’s why it penetrated straight into her skull, like a sharp blade slicing her head in two.
“In your office . . . you were there, and Perry was there!”
A part of her refused to believe it—and part of her did, the part that raged, attacked, shrieked inside her.
“Are you quite sure? Which meeting are you talking about? I have no such records. And if I were to look into the White House visitor log I doubt anything of the kind would be there. At all.”
She was moving again, it was clear because the murmur was getting closer.
“Look, Sue, I’m sorry, but I have to get back to the press conference. It turned out that one of our elite soldiers from Delta Force was able to locate, free, and deliver Speaker Crouse. So now we can focus on our continued pursuit of those responsible, who will pay with their lives, and just like before, I’ll be leading the hunt.”
IT WASN’T FAR from Gaira Café on Calle 96 to the Hospital Universitario San Ignacio in Carrera 7. Ten kilometers along Cerros de Monserrate, the lush green area that the inhabitants of the capital city used for recreation. But that’s not where they headed, not yet. First stop was a small shop about halfway there, in the neighborhood called Chapinero.
The anger was gone. At least not the kind that was afflicting Ewert Grens at the moment—the superintendent sat in the passenger seat, swearing loudly, and now and then banged a fist against the defenseless dashboard. Piet Hoffmann felt nothing, because he couldn’t allow himself to feel anything.
Always alone. Trust only yourself.
Action. That’s how he survived. A choice between giving up or continuing on, and he continued on, always.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“Grens? It’s not me you’re angry at. And you know that. I need to work with you, not against you—I need your help. You will know everything there is to know. But right now we’re in a fucking hurry.”
He stopped in front of a graffiti-covered store with a too-narrow entrance and a sign that had once been lit, but was now content to faintly display the words SUPER DELI. Hoffmann asked Grens to wait in the car while he went in to the sparsely stocked deli.
“Cesar?”
A woman nodded toward the door behind the cash register.
“In there.”
Hoffmann entered a room that was much bigger than the actual store. And there he was, in the back, sitting in a cluttered office with glass walls. Just like Hoffmann, he’d spent time behind bars, but Cesar’s time had been much longer and harder.
“My friend, welcome, my world is yours.”
They hugged each other as usual, though it had only been a couple of weeks since they’d last met—Hoffmann had needed a new Radom pistol and Cesar knew how to get ahold of one fast.
“And what can I do for you today?”
“I need your help solving a problem.”
“Peter, I’ve been following the news all week—and I always help a brother. Especially one that pays as well as you. But this, damn . . . it’s something else. When we start to talk about war, and about—”
“That I’ll take care of myself. What you’d have to do is just a small part.” Hoffmann pulled off the black cloth he’d had covering his head for the past few days. “This.”
Cesar smiled as he surveyed the scalp, rather proud of the job he’d done on it. A rare subject matter that wasn’t at all like the more aggressive ones he’d drawn using whatever primitive tools he could scrape together behind bars—it was a free, beautiful lizard with a thick, sparkling tail that disappeared down the neck. He’d never seen a tattoo that resembled it before, but Hoffmann had insisted, and it had taken him two nights to finish it, he’d drawn the whole of it freehand himself with no model.
“I recognized it even on those fuzzy video images they showed on the TV. And I realized they probably don’t have much more than that on you. But removing it . . . that will be one hell of a job. And take quite a bit of fucking time.”
“Cesar—you don’t need to remove it. You need to make another one.”
A few minutes later, the self-taught tattoo artist was waiting in the backseat of the car with his black tool bag in hand. Grens, who’d stayed in the passenger seat, turned around and greeted the man, who was in his forties, short but muscular. He reminded the detective of the lifers he’d known in Swedish prisons—not just in the way he moved, but something in his eyes, as if a feeling of confinement continued to slumber in those depths.
Hoffmann started driving, and Grens still had no idea why or where. What the hell were they up to? The only thing he knew for sure was that his mission—to ensure that Hoffmann’s family made it home alive—had been badly compromised half an hour ago when a bunch of suits at a White House press conference had broken their promises.
“Hoffmann? I’m asking you again—where the hell are we headed?”
To the backup plan. Where we go if the conditions change. If the direction of the road changes.
Grens didn’t have time to ask anything else. Hoffmann hit the brakes after taking a curve a little too fast, and stopped at a red concrete staircase in front of a nine-story building. Hospital Universitario San Ignacio. Bogotá’s University Hospital. And out of one of its side entrances a young man in a white coat ran toward the car.
“Benedicto.”
Hoffmann greeted him and waved to his two passengers to get out and follow along. Grens identified the smell as soon as they entered the hall, it wasn’t difficult, after decades of walking into forensic centers and morgues his policeman’s brain recognized any trace of those chemicals immediately. An elevator ride and four doors later they stood there. Stainless-steel refrigerators stacked in rows of three, each one the appropriate size and numbered. Harsh, almost blinding light bounced off the white tiles as the morgue attendant opened the compartment marked 31 and pulled out the two long rails that carried with them a metal stand and a motionless body.
“I’m relieved you’re here now, Peter. Moving this around—I couldn’t have managed much longer. I’ve saved it more than once from some knife-happy young medical students.”
“A couple more days. Then you’ll be rid of both of us.” He nodded at the body and placed a brown envelope on its motionless chest. “This is for the time that’s passed. When I come back for him, you’ll get another envelope. And if I can borrow one of those smaller autopsy rooms for four, maybe five hours, while you wait outside with the door locked, you’ll get one more—with just as much.”
“Now?”
“Now, Benedicto.”
It was easier to work on the body if you kept it on the gurney under one of the powerful lights in the middle of the autopsy room. Cesar started to shave off the dead man’s hair, twisted and turned him to get to all of it, then opened his black bag and took out his needles, ink, and a tattoo machine, which looked new, that was both easy to transport and work with—far from his homemade tools in La Picota.
“Unused, sterile needles. Pointless. I mean, this customer isn’t gonna be fussy about bacteria, is he?” Cesar smiled as he lowered the gurney—and thus the body—by pressing a foot on the pedal next to one of the front wheels. “It’s good you waited a few days, Peter. Right afterward, it wouldn’t have worked nearly so well. This corpse won’t bleed at all—absolutely no one will notice it’s been tattooed after death.”
Then he raised it up slightly again, trying to find the best working position. “Maybe everyone should be dead when they get tattooed.”
There was a side table—also stainless steel—at an arm’s length from the gurney, this was where he lined up his various paint cans and made new mixtures in small bowls. “The decomposition process is already under way, and the skin will soon become wrinkled, gray, a completely different color. But I’m absolutely sure—these shades will work.”
Grens, until now, had chosen to stand back. It was easier to study the signs of bleeding in the eyes with no one in the way.
“Who is he?”
“You don’t wanna know.”
“Just like I don’t want to know who killed him?”
Hoffmann crouched down slightly. Cesar was considerably shorter, and it was important that the wax paper lay completely still on the corpse’s head as the lizard’s contours were copied. It was also a lot easier to avoid eye contact that way too, even though it didn’t matter—the detective drew his own conclusions anyway.
“Well, I have figured out what you’re up to, Hoffmann—and it won’t work.”
“It will work. The first thing they’ll do, Grens, is to run his stats through the FBI’s CODIS database. And they won’t find shit there. This man is—unlike whatever we saw on TV just now—Delta Force. And therefore classified, and kept only in the Navy’s own register. The various departments within the US keep each other in the dark. Just like in other countries. You may remember how it worked in Sweden when you tried to kill me? When you based your decision on what was in the police records? When the reality was something quite different within same police corridor.”
Grens didn’t need to answer. They were both well aware he remembered. The detective took the last step forward and put his hand—as usual when he was in a morgue—near the bottom of one lifeless leg, pushed a bit on it, as if wanting to wake up the dead man and get him to kick back.
He’d understood what this was about. And that the body in front of him didn’t amount to a lot of evidence—height, weight, build. But it did match Hoffmann, that peculiar tattoo—which Cesar had copied from wax paper and then drew one needle prick at a time onto the dead man’s head and down his neck—yes . . . maybe. Normally, it wouldn’t su
ffice, not even as circumstantial evidence. But with a man who was as faceless as he was doomed, and a country that had to keep showing the public results—well, it might work.
When Cesar moved from the left side to the right, to have better access to what would become the lizard’s eye, Hoffmann took his place. And opened the shoulder holster that hid his hunting knife.
He took hold of the dead man’s left hand, pulled it closer, and began to cut at two of his fingers.
“You don’t need to do that.” Grens tapped Hoffmann on the shoulder.
“Yes, I do.”
“They don’t know about those fingers. If they did, they would have put it in the description. Specific characteristics are always used in investigations.”
“Crouse knows.”
“Crouse? It won’t matter to him anymore.”
“It will, Superintendent.”
Hoffmann was careful to do exactly as Zofia had once done with his two fingers. When someone cuts off part of your body, you don’t forget it, and he’d memorized every detail—it couldn’t get much closer than that, couldn’t get much stronger.
He cut gently into the skeleton with his knife until it gave in, hollowed out. From his vest pocket he took out a pair of pruning shears, the same tool she used, clipped parallel bone and tendons, a bit longer than what he really needed. He dissected loose skin until he was sure there was a little too much there—it could be lifted and folded over the stump—and finally glued the edges of the skin together with Super Glue.
In a normal amputation, the glue came loose when the healing process was complete, and the body let go of it. In this case, the healing would never happen since the person was dead. But if he glued carefully, no one would notice—a translucent surface that wasn’t visible unless you really examined it closely.
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