“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you,” Lasse snarled. Carl looked down at Lasse’s leg, where Assad had stabbed him. It wasn’t bleeding very heavily, not like when the big femoral artery in the thigh is severed. But it was still serious enough.
He looked up at the manometer; the pressure was dropping slowly but steadily. Where the hell was the police backup? Hadn’t the officer at Holmen called his colleagues, as he’d requested? Carl leaned against the wall and took out his cell phone. He punched in the number of the duty officer and was told help would arrive in a matter of minutes. His colleagues and the medics were going to have their hands full.
He didn’t feel the blow to his arm; he merely noticed his cell phone on the floor and how his arm fell to his side. He jerked his body around and saw the skinny creature standing behind them take aim again and slam the iron bar against Assad’s temple. He fell over without a word.
Then Lasse’s brother took a step forward and stomped on Carl’s cell phone until it was smashed to bits.
“Oh God, is it serious, my boy?” came a voice from behind them. The woman rolled toward them in her wheelchair, all life’s woes etched into her face. She paid no attention to the unconscious man lying on the floor. She saw only the blood sieving through her son’s trouser leg.
Lasse got up with difficulty, giving Carl a furious look. “It’s nothing, Mum,” he said. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, pulled off his belt, and wrapped both of them tightly around his thigh, assisted by his brother.
She wheeled past them and stared up at the manometer. “How’s it going, you miserable bitch?” she shouted at the windowpane.
Carl looked down at Assad, who was breathing weakly on the floor. Maybe he was going to survive. Carl scanned the floor in hopes of locating the switchblade. It could be underneath Assad, or maybe it would come into view if the gaunt one moved aside.
It was as if Hans was reading Carl’s mind. He turned toward Carl with a child’s expression on his face, as if Carl was going to steal something from him, or even start hitting him. The look he gave Carl was one that stemmed from the loneliness of childhood. From the taunts of other children who didn’t understand how vulnerable a simple-minded individual could be. He raised the iron bar and aimed for Carl’s throat.
“Should I kill him, Lasse? Should I? I can do it.”
“You’re not doing anything,” said the woman, rolling her wheelchair closer.
“Sit down, you bastard cop,” commanded Lasse as he straightened up to his full height. “Go get the battery, Hans. We’re going to blow this building sky-high. It’s the only thing we can do now. Hurry up. In ten minutes we’re out of here.”
He reloaded the shotgun, keeping his eyes fixed on Carl, who slid down the wall until he was sitting with his back against the airlock door.
Then Lasse ripped the duct tape off the windowpanes and grabbed the explosive charges. With one swift movement he wrapped the deadly mix of wires and detonators around Carl’s neck like a scarf.
“You won’t feel anything, so don’t be scared. But for her in there things will be different. That’s the way it has to be,” Lasse said coldly, dragging the gas cylinders over toward the wall of the pressure chamber behind Carl.
Then his brother came back with the battery and a coil of wire.
“No, we’re going to do it in a different way, Hans. We’ll take the battery outside with us. You just have to connect it like this,” said Lasse, showing him how the explosives around Carl’s neck should be connected to the detonation cords and then to the battery. “Cut off a really long piece. It has to reach all the way out to the yard.” He laughed and looked straight at Carl. “We’ll connect the current outside, and the explosion will take this fucker’s head off and blow up the gas cylinders.”
“But what about before that? What about him?” asked his brother, pointing at Carl. “He could just tear off the wires.”
“Him?!” Lasse smiled and pulled the battery farther away from Carl. “You’re entirely right. In a minute I’m going to let you beat him senseless.”
Then his voice changed, and he turned again to look at Carl, a grave expression on his face. “How the hell did you find me? You said it was because of Dennis Knudsen and Uffe. But I don’t understand. How did you link them to me?”
“You made thousands of mistakes, you clown. That’s how!”
Lasse backed up a bit with what could only be interpreted as insanity rooted deep in his eyes. He was sure to shoot Carl a moment from now. Just take careful aim and pull the trigger. Then good-bye, Carl. No matter what, Lasse wasn’t going to let this cop stop him from blowing up the place. As if Carl didn’t know.
With peace in his soul, Carl looked up at Lasse’s brother. He was fumbling. Couldn’t get the wires to lie properly. They kept curling together as he unrolled them.
At that instant Carl felt Assad’s wounded arm trembling against his leg. Maybe he wasn’t hurt that badly. Small consolation in this situation, because in a moment they’d both lie dead.
Carl closed his eyes and tried to recall a couple of significant moments in his life. After a few seconds of nothingness, he opened them again. Even that solace was denied him.
Had his life really had so few high points to offer?
“You need to leave the room now, Mother,” he heard Lasse say. “Go out to the yard, far away from the outer walls. We’ll join you in a minute. Then we’ll all disappear.”
She nodded, took one last look at the porthole, and spat on the glass.
As she passed her sons, she looked down with disdain at Carl and the man lying next to him. She would have kicked them if she could. They had stolen her life, just as others had stolen it before them. She was in a permanent state of bitterness and hatred. No other emotion would be allowed to penetrate the protective glass bubble in which she lived.
There’s no room for you to get past, you witch, thought Carl, noticing how awkwardly Assad’s leg was stretched out to the side.
When her wheelchair drove into Assad’s leg, he uttered a roar. In one movement he leaped to his feet and was standing between the woman and the door. The two men standing next to the windows whirled around. Lasse raised the shotgun as Assad, blood pouring from his temple, crouched down behind the wheelchair, grabbed the woman’s bony knees, and stormed toward the men, using the chair as a battering ram. The cacophony of sounds was infernal. Assad roaring, the woman screaming, the whistling from the pressure chamber, and the warning shouts of the two men that was cut off by the chaos caused by the wheelchair as it knocked them down.
The woman lay with her legs in the air as Assad jumped on top of her and threw himself at the shotgun, which Lasse was trying to aim at him. The brother started wailing when Assad got hold of the barrel with one hand and began pounding Lasse’s larynx with the other. In a few seconds it was all over.
Assad moved away, holding on to the shotgun. He shoved the wheelchair aside, forced a coughing Lasse to his feet, and stood there for a moment, staring at him.
“Tell us how to stop this shit then!” he shouted as Carl stood up as well.
Carl spied the switchblade over by the wall. He unwrapped the wires and detonators from around his neck and went over to get the knife as Hans tried to pick up his mother.
“Tell us. Now!” Carl stuck the knife against Lasse’s cheek.
They both saw it in Lasse’s eyes. He didn’t believe them. In his mind, only one thing was important: Merete Lynggaard had to die inside the room behind them. Alone, slowly and painfully. That was Lasse’s goal. He would take whatever punishment they gave him afterward. At that point, what did it matter?
“We will blow up him and his family, Carl,” said Assad, his eyes narrowed. “Merete Lynggaard is finished soon anyway. We cannot do anything for her more then.” He pointed up at the manometer that now showed well under four atmospheres. “We do the same to them that they wanted to do to us. And we do Merete a favor.”
Carl looked intently at his partner. Inside those warm, brown eyes he saw a glint of genuine hatred that wouldn’t need much coaxing.
Carl shook his head. “We can’t do that, Assad.”
“Yes, Carl, we can,” answered Assad. He reached out and slowly pulled the wires and detonators out of Carl’s hand. Then he wrapped them around Lasse’s neck.
As Lasse glanced over at his imploring mother and his brother, who was shaking as he stood behind her
