person who forced the camera around on its fixture.
One left. They stared at the monitor, waiting, then both jumped. A face.
Close up, as close as you could get, a nose and a mouth, that was all. A mouth that screamed something before it disappeared.
Hoffmann.
He had said something.
He was cold.
It wasn't a chill from the cold floor, it came from fear, from losing the will to fight thoughts of his own death.
The prisoner beside him had made a threat again-more hate, more scorn-until Hoffmann got a rag from one of the workbenches and stuffed it in his mouth and his words were swallowed.
They both lay still, even when he left them every now and then, purposeful steps over to the far glass wall, a window into the office. When he turned his head, Martin Jacobson could see him go into the small room, bend down over the desk and lift something that from a distance looked like a telephone receiver.
The mouth moved slowly. Narrow, tight lips that looked chapped, almost split.
They looked at each other, nodded.
They had both recognized the movements of the mouth that formed the words.
'Next.'
Oscarsson was sitting beside Bergh in the cramped security office and eager fingers pressed the play button, one frame at a time. The mouth filled the whole screen, the next word, the lips wide and stretched.
'Did you see?'
'Yes.'
'One more time.'
It was so clear.
The words, the message from the lips, said with such aggression that they were an attack.
His hand was shaking-it happened so suddenly he had been forced to let go of the telephone receiver.
What if he got an answer?
What if he didn't get an answer?
A quick look out through the internal window into the workshop and the naked men; they were still lying there, without moving. A porcelain cup in the middle of the desk, half full of day-old coffee, which he downed, cold and bitter but the caffeine would stay in his body for a while.
He dialed the number again. The first ring, the second, he waited. Was she still there, did she still have the same number, he didn't know, he hoped, maybe she-
Her voice.
'You?'
It had been so long.
'I want you to do exactly what we agreed.'
'Piet, I-'
He hung up. He missed her. He missed her so much.
And now he wondered if she was still there, for him.
The blue, flashing light got stronger, clearer, and would soon push its way through the woods that separated the country road from the drive up to Aspsas prison. Lennart Oscarsson was standing next to Sergeant Ryden in the parking place by the main gate when two heavy, square, black cars approached. The national task force duty troops had left their headquarters at Sorentorp and Solna twenty-four minutes earlier and dropped off-while the heavy vehicles were still moving-nine identically clad men in black boots, navy blue overalls, balaclavas, protective visors, helmets, fireproof gloves, and flak jackets. Ryden rushed forward and greeted the tall thin man who got out of the passenger seat of the first car. Head of the task force, John Edvardson.
'There. The black roof. Top floor.'
Four windows in the building nearest the outer wall. Edvardson nodded, he was already heading over there and Oscarsson and Ryden had almost to run to keep up. They looked around and saw the eight others following, submachine guns in hand, two of them with long-distance sniper guns.
They passed central security and the administration block, continued through an open gate in the next wall which was slightly lower and divided the prison up into different sectors, identical squares with identical three-story L-shaped buildings.
'G Block and H Block.'
Lennart Oscarsson kept close to the inner wall where they had an overview but were still protected.
'E Block and F Block.'
He pointed at the buildings one by one, the home of long-term prisoners.
'C Block and D Block.'
Sixty-four cells and sixty-four prisoners in each complex.
'Normal prisoners. The special sex offenders' unit is in a separate part of the prison, as we had a few problems some years ago when several prisoners crossed paths.'
They continued sprinting along meter after meter of thick concrete, getting closer to the last L-shaped building. Oscarsson was flagging a bit, but he kept up.
'Blocks A and B. One in each arm. Block B faces the other way. He's been spotted a few times in the big window, the one that looks out over the fields, toward the church over there, Aspsas church. I've had sightings from two separate wardens and they're absolutely certain.'
A gray concrete bunker, a Lego brick, an ugly and hard and silent building.
'At the bottom, the isolation unit. Solitary confinement. Bl. That's where he took the hostages. That's where he escaped from.'
They stopped for the first time since the armed task force had arrived in their vehicles a couple of minutes earlier.
'One floor up, B2 left and B2 right. Sixteen cells on each side. Normal prisoners, thirty-two of them.'
Lennart Oscarsson waited for a few seconds, still speaking in short bursts-he hadn't caught his breath back yet.
He lowered his voice a bit.
'There, at the top. B3. The workshops. One of the prisoners' workplaces. You see that window? The one that faces the yard?'
He stopped talking. The big window, it felt so strange-it was beautiful outside, the sun and the green fields and the blue sky, and inside, behind the glass, death.
'Armed?'
While he waited for Ryden's answer, Edvardson ordered six of the national task force men to position themselves at the three entrances to Block B and the two snipers to check out the roofs of the nearby buildings.
'I've asked the guards who saw his weapon twice. They're still confused, in shock, but I'm fairly certain that what they're describing is a kind of miniature revolver that can take six bullets. I've only ever seen one in real life, a SwissMiniGun, made in Switzerland and marketed as the world's smallest gun.'
'Six bullets?'
'According to the guards he's fired at least two.'
John Edvardson looked at the prison chief warden.
'Oscarsson… how the hell did a prisoner who's locked up manage to get hold of a deadly weapon in the hole, in one of Sweden's high-security prisons?'
Lennart Oscarsson couldn't bear to answer, not right now. He just shook his head in despair. The national task force chief turned toward Ryden.
'A miniature revolver. I don't know anything about it. But you reckon it's powerful enough to kill?'
'He's already done it once.'
