MemoRandom. Литагент HarperCollins USD

fan on his desk to a standstill more than an hour ago, and the air in the shabby little room was almost still.

      He opened the can, drank greedily, and then went back to his lookout post at the dirty, half-covered window.

      Outside, everything was going on pretty much as usual. A dozen parked trucks, all with their rear doors or covers open, between which various goods slowly circulated. Half of the vehicles were military green. Their uniformed drivers were standing by the little café, smoking while the workmen unloaded their trucks. A few scabby stray dogs were wandering about in the shadows between the vehicles. They kept their distance as they occasionally sniffed the air, as if to check whether any of the many crates being unloaded contained anything edible.

      By now Atif was very familiar with everything that was going on in this dusty square. What brand of cigarettes the truck drivers preferred, the name of the café owner’s sullen daughter, which of the drivers smuggled hash, which one of the mangy animals was top dog. The one the others feared.

      The cell phone in his breast pocket began to vibrate. Atif inserted the hands-free earpiece, then raised the binoculars. He zoomed in on the sentry box beside the only real entrance to the square. The man was leaning against a wall, smoking, his Kalashnikov nonchalantly slung over his shoulder.

      His cell phone vibrated again and Atif pressed the Answer button.

      ‘Hello.’

      ‘It’s me. How’s it going?’

      ‘Pretty much the same as usual.’

      ‘Still no sign?’

      ‘This is where the trail brought me.’

      ‘And how long have you been sitting there now, Atif?’

      ‘Almost three weeks.’

      ‘Right. You don’t think it’s time to give up yet?’

      ‘He’ll be here.’

      The line was silent for a few seconds. Atif scanned the rest of the square through the binoculars, then went back to the guard. The man was standing up straight now, stubbing his cigarette out on the red earth.

      ‘A woman called,’ the voice in his ear said. ‘From Sweden. Said she was your sister-in-law, she wanted you to call back as soon as you could. Something to do with your brother …’

      ‘Half brother,’ Atif muttered, without taking his eyes off the guard.

      The man’s body language had suddenly changed. He had taken his gun off and was now holding it in both hands, and all of a sudden seemed to be taking his duties more seriously. The man let out a whistle and the sound brought all activity in the square to a halt.

      A dark-coloured car with military registration plates and tinted windows was slowly approaching. The guard raised a hand to his forehead, in a sort of hybrid between a salute and a wave. The atmosphere in the square was transformed in a matter of seconds. The drivers dropped their cigarettes and stubbed them out, and exchanged nervous glances. The workmen quickened their pace.

      Even the dogs seemed to realize that something was going on. They drew back further into the shadows as they warily followed the dark car with their eyes. It stopped and a man in uniform and dark glasses got out. Atif didn’t need to look through the binoculars; the reaction of the other people in the square was enough to tell him who it was.

      The man he had been looking for.

      The top dog.

      Atif reached out his hand and picked up the pistol from the wobbly little table and tucked it into the back of his trousers. He tugged his shirt looser to make sure the gun couldn’t be seen.

      ‘I’ve got to go,’ he muttered into his cell.

      ‘Atif, wait,’ the voice said. ‘It sounded important. Properly important. You should probably call home.’

       Saturday, November 23

      The inner city seems to be full of blue lights. They bounce between the facades of the buildings, only slightly muted by the falling snow before reflecting off the dark water under the bridges. Some of the emergency vehicles have their sirens on, but most of them race through the night in silence.

      The six students walking north along Skeppsbron are already bored of the commotion. They had stood for a while at a good vantage point up at Slussen, watching the circus down on the long highway bridge. Loads of ambulances, fire engines, marked and unmarked police cars, so whatever it was that had happened inside the tunnel had to be something serious.

      A couple of the students had held their cell phones over the ice-cold railing in the hope of capturing some of the action. But when several minutes passed without anything much happening, they quickly lost interest. The intense cold and falling snow persuaded the group to carry on toward the city centre.

      The snowball fight starts somewhere near halfway along Skeppsbron. One of the boys, it isn’t clear which one, stops and picks up an armful of snow from the windshield of a parked car. He quickly forms an uneven snowball and throws it at the backs of his friends, and then everything kicks off. All six of them are running along the sidewalk, dodging one another’s snowballs and stopping to make new ones.

      The young woman in the red woolly hat is the one who makes the discovery.

      ‘Look, there’s someone sitting in here asleep,’ she cries, pointing at one of the parked cars, from whose windshield she’s just swept an armful of snow.

      ‘Hello, wake up! He looks like he’s passed out.’ She laughs as her boyfriend catches up with her. Through the black hole in the snow he can make out a large, fair-haired man. The man is sitting in the front passenger seat, with his head resting on the dashboard. It looks as if he’s asleep.

      The young man on the sidewalk knocks on the windshield as well, and when there’s no reaction he starts clearing the snow that’s still obscuring the view. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, until at last almost the entire windshield is clear. He clears the side window as well. The man in the car still hasn’t moved.

      In the distance they can hear the sound of motors and the pulsing roar of a helicopter approaching. Something makes the others stop their snowball fight and approach the car. Cautiously, as if they’re not really sure they want to see who or what is concealed inside the car. But the girl in the red woolly hat hasn’t noticed the change in mood.

      ‘Come on, leave it,’ she says, with laughter in her voice. ‘I’m freezing, let him sleep.’

      She tugs at her boyfriend’s arm, trying to pull him with her. But the young man doesn’t move. As soon as the snow on the side window is gone he presses his nose to the glass.

      ‘Shit,’ he mutters.

      ‘What is it …?’ Suddenly the girl’s voice doesn’t sound so amused. More like scared. The noise of the helicopter’s rotor blades is getting louder.

      ‘Shit,’ the young man repeats, mostly to himself.

      Frost on the inside of the glass is obscuring the view, and the inside of the car is dark. But the sleeping man is no more than an arm’s length away and the young man has no problem seeing enough details. The leather jacket, the embroidered logo on the back, the tribal tattoo curling up from the man’s collar like a snake, across his thick neck.

      But it’s the dark patch at the back of the sleeping man’s head that catches the young man’s interest. A little hole, full of black ice crystals, each one just a millimetre across, forming a thin pattern of pearls over the stubble at the back of his neck.

      The sound of the rotors is deafening, echoing between the buildings and rising to a howl as the helicopter passes straight over them.

      ‘Shit …’ the young man says, for the third time,