in the sealed pipe had risen and felt like a fever. In the last few hours he had just aimed at a couple of minutes at a time, but that didn't work anymore, he couldn't stand much more.
He should have left the pipe yesterday.
That was what he had planned: three days for the adrenaline and full alert to die down.
But yesterday afternoon someone had opened the door, come in, and walked around in the substation. He had lain petrified and listened to the footsteps and breathing of a guard or electrician or plumber only half a meter below him. The control room for the prison's water and electricity was only checked a few times a week, he knew that, but still he waited for another twenty-four hours to be on the safe side.
He pulled his left arm up toward his face, looked at the watch that had belonged to the elderly warden.
Quarter to seven. Another hour to lock-up.
Then an hour and a quarter for the staff to change shifts, when the day guards became the night guards.
It was time.
He checked that the scissors were still in his trouser pocket, the ones that had been in a pen holder on the desk in the workshop office and that he had cut his long hair with on the first day, his arm and hand movements restricted by the inside of the pipe, but he had plenty of time to do it and it had been a good way to forget the sound of people looking for body parts. He teased them out of his pocket again and, arm back, hit the inside of the pipe hard with the point until his fingertips felt a hole and he could slash the soft metal with the blades. He braced his body directly above the cut and pushed back, feet against the base, both hands against the sharp edges of the metal. He was bleeding heavily when the pipe finally gave way and he sank through the aluminum and fell onto the stone floor of the substation.
He counted fifty-seven small red and yellow and green lights on panels that controlled the water and electricity; counted them one more time.
No steps, no voices.
He was certain that no one had heard a body landing on the floor in one of the rooms with a door straight out into the passage that linked Block G and central security. He grabbed hold of a washbasin with his hands and hauled himself up. He was dizzy but the sensation crawling around his body disappeared after a while and he trusted it again.
He searched around in the unnerving darkness.
There was a flashlight on a hook on the wall under a fuse box. He chose that rather than the ceiling light-he could turn on the flashlight and let his eyes slowly adjust to the light. It hurt more than he'd imagined when the dark became light and it's possible he cried our when it was thrown back at him by the mirror above the washbasin.
He closed his eyes and waited.
The mirror didn't attack him anymore.
He saw a head with hair of varying lengths, big tangles that hung loose. He picked the scissors up from the floor and straightened it, cut it as short as he could, only a few millimeters left. The razorblade had also been in one of the desk drawers and later in the same trouser pocket. He leaned down and gulped some water from the tap and then wet his face and bit by bit peeled off the beard he had started to cultivate on his way out of the meeting in Rosenbad, following the decision to infiltrate inside Aspsas's high prison walls.
He looked in the mirror again.
Four days earlier, he had had long, fair hair and a three-week beard. Now he was cropped and clean- shaven.
Another face.
He let the water run, got undressed, and rubbed the piece of dirty soap that was lying on the washbasin. He washed his body and waited until it had dried in the warm room. He went back to the pipe and the sharp metal edges and with his hands felt around and caught the pile of clothes that a few days earlier had been worn by a principal prison officer called Jacobson, before becoming a makeshift pillow to save his neck and prevent the clothes from being soiled by body fluids.
They were about the same height and the uniform fit almost perfectly. The trousers were perhaps a bit too short, the shoes perhaps a bit too tight, but it didn't matter, it didn't show.
He stood by the door and waited.
He should be frightened, stressed, anxious. He felt nothing. He had been forced to adopt this life state when the ability not to feel meant the same as survival: no thoughts and no longings, no Zofia and Hugo and Rasmus, everything he had to remind him of life.
He had stepped into it as he passed through the prison gate.
Only dropped it for two seconds.
When the shot was about to be fired.
He had stood by the window and adjusted the earpiece and for the last time looked over at the church tower. He had glanced at the rug that concealed a body covered with explosives and the barrel of diesel and gas close to their feet and the fuse that was resting in his hand. He had checked his position, he had to stand in profile, he had to force them to aim at his head so no forensic scientist would later question the absence of a skull bone.
Two seconds of pure fear.
He had heard the order to fire on the receiver. He had to stand there and wait. But his legs had somehow moved too early, they had moved without him intending to do so.
Twice he had not managed.
But the third time, the state of control had returned, no thoughts and no feelings and no longings, he was protected again.
The shot was fired.
He stood firm.
He had exactly three seconds.
The time it would take for the ammunition, in a wind strength of seven meters per second and a temperature of eighteen degrees celsius, to leave the church tower and at a distance of fifteen hundred three meters hit a head in a workshop window.
The shot had been fired and it was no longer possible to see the object through a window that had been seriously damaged.
He now had two seconds left.
The time it would take for the fuse to burn down to the detonator, pentyl and nitroglycerine.
He had been lying on the floor with the howling pain in his ears when the heat from the explosion reached the diesel barrel and black smoke assaulted the room.
