Three Seconds

'I can't do this.'

As they walked over to the church and then went up the stairs and the aluminum ladder, Ewen Grens had described a hostage drama that was out of control and might culminate in a shot from the church tower.

'Can't? What the hell do you mean?'

The military marksman who, for another five hours and thirty-eight minutes would legally serve as a policeman, had emerged onto the narrow balcony and switched places with one of the two men already lying there.

'This is not a normal sniper rifle. It's an M107. It's a heavier, more powerful, anti-materiel rifle. For targeting buses. Or boats. Exploding mines.

He had greeted the colleague who was still there and would function as an observer.

'Long distance. That was the information I was given. That was what I should be prepared for. But this- I can't shoot at a soft target.'

Holding the binoculars, he had observed Piet Hoffmann in one corner of the window and realized what this was all about.

Now he looked at Grens.

'I'm sorry, so he-that man there-is a soft target?'

'Yes.'

'And… what exactly does that mean?'

'It means that the ammunition that I have with me is fire and explosive ammo, and can't be used for a person.'

Grens laughed-at least that was what it sounded like: a short, irritated laugh.

'So… what the hell are you doing here?'

'The firing distance is fifteen hundred and three meters. That was the job I was given.'

'The job you were given was to prevent someone from taking the lives of two other people. Or, if you prefer it-one soft target taking the life of another soft target.'

Sterner focused the binoculars on the hostage taker, he was still standing in the same place by the window, exposing himself, and it was hard to understand why.

'I'm just complying with international law.'

'A law… for Christ's sake, Sterner… they're made up by people who hide behind desks! But this… this is reality. And if the guy who is standing there, the soft target, the one who is our reality right now, if he's not stopped, other people will die. And both of them and their nearest and dearest will presumably be extremely pleased to know that you are complying with… what was it now… international law.'

The binoculars' zoom was powerful and despite the fact that his hands were moving in the wind, it was easy to follow the man who had long fair hair and sometimes turned and looked down at something-the hostages, Sterner was sure of it-that was lying on the floor close to him; that was where they were.

'If I do what you want me to, if I fire at this sniper, with the ammo I've got here, he'll lose his arms and legs. They'll be blown clear off the body. There will be nothing left.'

He lowered the binoculars and looked up at Grens.

'You'll find the soft target, the person-you'll find body parts everywhere.'

The face, the mouth, it was there again.

The man in the blue crumpled guard uniform got up. The same monitor as the last time, the same camera that had been turned away from the concrete wall. Bergh was still warm but had switched off and moved the desk fan so that it was now by the wall in the small central security room-he needed more space in order to see properly when he linked up and transmitted the picture on all sixteen screens.

The mouth was saying something, and then the other one, another person, Jacobson, naked and bound. The hostage taker was holding him and suddenly took a step back: he wanted to make sure that they could see that he had a miniature revolver to Jacobson's head. And then he said the words again.

Bergh didn't need to rewind this time.

He recognized the first words.

He is a dead man.

And the three last words were incredibly easy to interpret from the clear lip movements.

In twenty minutes

Sven Sundkvist ran up the church stairs with the mobile phone in his hand. His conversation with a distressed voice from central security had been clear: they had been given a countdown and every minute, every second meant less time to make a decision. He straightened the ladder, opened the hatch and crawled out on to the balcony. Ewert was there with the new marksman and his observer. Sven told them all loudly that there wasn't time anymore to discuss things that had already been discussed.

Ewert looked at him, his eyes alert, the vein on his temple pulsing. 'How long ago?'

'One minute and twenty seconds.'

Ewert Grens had been expecting it, but he thought that it might take longer, that he would have more time. He sighed; so that's how it was, that's how it always was, there was never enough time. He held on to the railing and looked out over the small town, over the prison. Two worlds only meters apart, but two separate, unique worlds with their own rules and expectations, that had absolutely fuck-all to do with each other.

'Sven?'

'Yes?'

'Who is he?'

'Who?'

'The prison warden?'

The man in the window over there, behind the reinforced glass, he knew, Hoffmann knew exactly how it fucking worked and he had decided that it would start now, that we will act because of an elderly guard. And he's right. It's the gray-haired prison warden we care about. If… if it had only been a drug dealer with a long sentence, well, it wasn't easy to say, to imagine, we might not have made such an effort.

'Sven?'

'Just a moment.'

Sven Sundkvist looked through his notebook, tightly written pages in foutain pen ink, not used by many these days.

'Martin Jacobson. Sixty-four. Has worked at Aspsas since he was twenty-four. Married. Grown-up children. Lives in the town. Liked, respected, no threat.'

Grens gave a distracted nod.

'Do you need more?'

'Not right now.'

The anger. His inner engine, the driving force, without which he would be nothing. Now it rook hold of him, shook him hard. No way, no goddamn way was that naked, bound man with a miniature gun to his eye, who had worked for forty years for peanuts with people who hated him, going to die on a foul- smelling workshop floor one year before retiring, no bloody way.

'Sterner?'

The military marksman was lying by the railing a bit farther along the balcony, holding up the binoculars.

'You're a police officer now. You are a police officer now. For five and a half hours more. And I have been assigned as gold commander here. So I am your boss. And that means that from now on you must do exactly as I order you to do. And I am, now listen carefully, not particularly interested in arguments about soft targets and international law. Do you understand?'

They looked at each other-he didn't get an answer, but he hadn't expected one either.

The big window.

A naked, sixty-four-year-old man.

He remembered another person, another hostage, nearly twenty years ago now, but he could still feel the choking rage. Some children in care, lethal and criminal, had planned to escape, so they decided they needed a hostage and had assaulted a retired woman who was doing some extra work in the kitchen. Cheap screwdriver to her throat, they chose the weakest member of staff and she had later died, not while she was being held hostage but as a result of it-they had somehow stolen her life from her and she didn't know how to take it back.