“The answer to that is simple,” said Jan Kleyn. “We have to.”
That fatalism again, thought Franz Malan. He glanced surreptitiously at the man standing a few meters away from him. Was Jan Kleyn crazy? A psychopath hiding the violent truth about himself behind a public mask that was always under control?
He did not like the thought. All he could do was suppress it.
The whole committee gathered at two o’clock. Franz Malan and Jan Kleyn showed the videotape and presented their summary. There were not many questions, and objections were easily fended off. The whole thing lasted less than an hour. They took a vote shortly before three. The decision was made.
Twenty-eight days later Nelson Mandela would be killed while speaking at a stadium near Cape Town.
The members of the committee left Hammanskraal at intervals of a few minutes. Jan Kleyn was the last to leave.
The countdown had started.
Chapter Twenty-two
The attack came just after midnight.
Victor Mabasha was asleep on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket. Wallander was standing by the kitchen window, trying to decide whether he was hungry or should just have a cup of tea. At the same time he was wondering whether his father and daughter were still up. He assumed so. They always had a surprising number of things to talk about.
As he was waiting for the water to boil it occurred to him it was three weeks since they had started looking for Louise Akerblom. Now, three weeks later, they knew she had been killed by a guy called Konovalenko. The same guy who had most probably killed the cop Tengblad as well.
In a few more hours, when Victor Mabasha was out of the country, he would be able to tell people what had happened. But he would do so anonymously, even though he realized hardly anybody would believe the unsigned letter he intended to send to the police. In the end everything depended on what they could make Konovalenko confess to. And it was doubtful whether even he would be believed either.
Wallander poured the boiling water into the pot and left it to brew. Then he pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down.
As he did so the apartment door and hall blew up. Wallander was thrown backwards by the blast, and hit his head against the refrigerator. The kitchen started to fill up rapidly with smoke, and he groped his way to the bedroom door. Just as he got to his bed and was fumbling for his pistol on the bedside table he heard four shots in rapid succession behind him. He flung himself flat on the floor. The shots came from the living room.
Konovalenko, he thought frantically. Now he’s coming for me.
He wriggled under the bed as fast as he could. He was so scared, he wasn’t sure his heart could cope with the strain. Looking back later on, he would recall being struck by how degrading it would be, having to die under one’s own bed.
He heard some thuds and breathless groans from the living room. Somebody came into the bedroom, stood motionless for a moment, then went out again. Wallander heard Victor Mabasha shouting something. So he was still alive. Then came footsteps fading away into the stairway. At the same time somebody started yelling, though he could not tell if it came from the street or from one of the neighboring apartments.
He crept out from under the bed and hoisted himself up carefully so he could see the street through the window. The smoke was choking, and he had difficulty in making anything out. But then he saw two men dragging Victor Mabasha between them. One of them was Rykoff. Without thinking Wallander flung open the bedroom window and fired straight up into the air. Rykoff let go of Victor Mabasha and turned around. Wallander just managed to hit the floor before a salvo from an automatic weapon shattered the window pane. Splinters showered down over his face. He heard people shrieking and a car starting. He just had time to see it was a black Audi before it disappeared down the street. Wallander rushed downstairs and onto the sidewalk, where half-dressed people were starting to gather. When they saw Wallander with a pistol in his hand, they jumped aside screaming. Wallander opened the door of his car with fumbling fingers, cursed as he stabbed at the ignition lock with his key before getting it right, then set off after the Audi. He could hear the sound of sirens approaching from a distance. He decided to head for the Osterleden highway and got lucky. The Audi came skidding around the corner from Regementsgatan and took off bearing east. Wallander thought they might not realize it was him in the car. The only reason the man in the bedroom had not looked under the bed must have been the fact that it was still made, indicating Wallander was not at home.
Wallander did not normally bother to make his bed in the morning, but that day his daughter, upset by all the mess, had cleaned up the apartment and changed his bed linen.
They left the town at high speed. Wallander kept his distance, and felt like he was in the middle of a nightmare. No doubt he was breaking all the rules for how to arrest dangerous criminals. He started to brake, intending to stop and turn back. Then he changed his mind and kept going. They had already passed Sandskogen, with the golf course on the left, and Wallander began to wonder if the Audi would take a left towards Sandhammaren or keep going straight on towards Simrishamn and Kristianstad.
He suddenly noticed the back lights on the car in front shuddering, and getting closer. The Audi must have a flat. He watched the car slide into a ditch and come to rest on its side. Wallander hit the brakes outside the driveway to a house by the roadside, and turned in. When he got out of the car he saw a man standing in the doorway with a light on.
Wallander had his pistol in his hand. When he started talking he made an effort to sound friendly and firm at the same time.
“My name’s Wallander and I’m a cop,” he said, noticing how breathless he was. “Call the police and tell them I’m chasing a guy called Konovalenko. Explain where you live and tell them to start searching the military training ground. Is that clear?”
The man nodded. He seemed to be in his thirties.
“I recognize you,” he said. “I’ve seen you in the papers.”
“Call right away,” said Wallander. “You do have a telephone?”
“Sure I have a phone,” said the man. “Don’t you need a better weapon than that pistol?”
“Of course I do,” said Wallander. “But I don’t have time to change right now.”
Then he ran out onto the road.
He could see the Audi some way ahead. He tried to stick to the shadows as he approached cautiously. He was still wondering how long his heart would cope with the strain. All the same, he was glad he hadn’t died under his bed. Now it seemed as if his fear was driving him on. He paused behind a road sign and listened. There was nobody left in the car. Then he noticed that a section of the fence around the military training ground had been destroyed. Fog was drifting in rapidly from the sea and settling densely over the artillery range. He could see a group of sheep lying motionless on the ground. Then he suddenly heard a bleat from a sheep he could not see through the fog, and another answering restlessly.
There, he thought. The sheep can guide me. He crouched down and ran toward the hole in the fence, then lay down staring into the fog. He could see and hear nothing. A car approached from the direction of Ystad and slowed to a halt. A man got out. Wallander saw it was the man who had promised to call the police. He had a shotgun in his hand. Wallander crept back through the fence.
“Stay here,” he said. “Back the car up about a hundred meters. Stay there and wait till the police arrive. Show them this hole in the fence. Say there are at least two guys with weapons out there. One of them has some kind of automatic. Can you remember all that?”
The man nodded.
“I brought this shotgun,” he said.
Wallander hesitated a moment.
“Show me how it works,” he said. “I know next to nothing about shotguns.”
The guy looked at him in surprise. Then he showed him the safety catch and how to load. Wallander could see it was a pumpaction model. He grabbed it and stuffed a handful of spare cartridges in his pocket.
