“My brother’s face-”
“We know all about it, Roland, shut the fuck up,” Anders says. He’s also very nervous.
“A firebomb right to the face!” Roland repeats in a loud voice. “Eleven operations later and he can-”
“Can you handle this?” Goran asks sharply.
“Sure, what the fuck!”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fine,” Roland answers quickly. He looks out of the window and scrapes his thumbnail sharply over the lid of his tin of snuff.
Saga Bauer opens the door slightly to let some air into the van. She accepts this is the right time for a raid and there’s no reason to wait. Even so, she still wants to understand the connection to Penelope Fernandez. What was her role in the Brigade? And why was her sister killed? Too much was still not clear. She desperately wants to talk with Daniel Marklund again, look him right in the eye and ask a few direct questions. She’d tried to bring this up with her boss. She wants answers before they go in on this raid. Especially if there is a question about who will be alive afterward.
This is still my investigation! she thinks angrily as she climbs out of the van into the suffocating heat of the sidewalk.
“The SWAT team will go in here and here.” Goran Stone stabs his finger on an architectural drawing of the building. “We’re here and maybe we’ll have to get in through this theater-”
“Where the hell did Saga Bauer go?” Roland asks.
“Maybe she got her period and needed a Tampax!” Anders says with a smirk.
30
Joona Linna and Nathan Pollock park on Hornsgatan and quickly scan a bad printout of the picture of Daniel Marklund. Then they get out, make their way through the heavy traffic on the street, and enter the door of a small theater. The Tribunal Theater is an independent theater group-with income-pegged ticket prices. Plays from Oresteia to The Communist Manifesto have been performed within its walls.
Joona and Nathan continue swiftly down the wide staircase and over to the combined bar and box office. A woman with a silver ring in her nose and straight hair dyed black smiles at them. They nod in a friendly way but walk right past her without a word.
“You guys looking for someone?” she yells as they start walking up a metal staircase.
“Yes,” Pollock says, but his voice is low.
They enter a messy office crowded with a copier, a desk, and a bulletin board from which newspaper clippings hang down. A thin man with matted hair and an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth sits in front of a computer.
“Hi there, Richard,” Pollock says.
“Who are you?” asks the man absentmindedly as he returns his gaze to his screen.
They continue past the actors’ dressing rooms-past racks of carefully hung costumes and makeup stations. A bouquet of roses droops on one of the tables.
Pollock takes a quick look around and then points. They walk up to a steel door with a stenciled sign: ELECTRICAL ROOM.
“It’s supposed to be in here,” Pollock says.
“In the electrical room of a theater?”
Pollock doesn’t answer but picks the lock as fast as he can. They look inside a cramped space with an electrical meter, a cupboard for props, and stacks of boxes. The ceiling light doesn’t work. Joona clambers over paper bags filled with old clothes. There is a new door behind some extension cords hung across the ceiling. Joona pushes it open and finds a hall with bare cement walls. Nathan Pollock follows him. The air is stagnant and it smells like garbage and damp dirt. In the distance, they can hear the faint backbeat of music. On the floor, there’s a flyer featuring Che Guevara with a lit fuse at the top of his head.
“The Brigade’s been hiding out here several years now,” Pollock says softly.
“I should have brought some cake for our little visit,” Joona replies.
“Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“The only thing I worry about is whether Daniel Marklund will be here.”
“He’ll be here. He’s almost always here.”
“Thanks for your help, Nathan.”
“Maybe I should go in with you anyway?” Pollock asks. “You’ll have only a few minutes before Sapo storms the place. It could get dangerous.”
Joona’s gray eyes narrow. “I’m just dropping in for a little chat.”
Nathan starts heading back to the theater and coughs as he closes the steel door behind him. Joona stands alone in the empty hallway for a moment. He draws his pistol and checks that the magazine is full before he slides it back in his holster. He starts to walk toward another steel door at the other end of the hall.
He loses a few precious seconds as he picks the lock.
Someone has scratched “The Brigade” in tiny letters, not more than two centimeters high, into the blue paint on the door.
Joona presses down the handle and the door slowly opens. He’s met by loud, screeching music; it sounds like an electronically reprocessed version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun.” The shrieking guitars have a dreamlike, surging beat. They drown out everything.
Joona closes the door behind him and keeps going, half running, into a space filled with junk. Mounds of books and magazines reach the ceiling. Although it’s dark in the room, Joona can tell the heaps of books are not just random but have been created as a kind of labyrinth leading to other doors. He quickly makes his way through it to a dimly lit area. The path forks there and he keeps going to the right, but swiftly backtracks. He thinks he saw hasty movement out of the corner of his eye. He’s not sure, though.
Joona walks on, squinting to see something more. A bare bulb sways at the end of its ceiling cord. Over the music, Joona suddenly hears a roar. Someone is screaming behind walls that dampen the sound. Joona stops, walks back, and looks into a thin passage where a stack of magazines have slid down and now are scattered across the floor.
Joona’s head is starting to hurt. He thinks he should have had something to eat. He should have taken something with him. A few pieces of dark chocolate would have been enough.
He steps over the magazines and reaches a spiral staircase leading down to the floor below. He can smell sweet smoke in the air. Holding tightly to the rail, he tries to sneak down as quietly as possible, but he cannot silence his shoes on the metal steps. On the lowest rung, he stops before a velvet curtain that has been drawn shut. He puts his hand on his holstered pistol.
The music is fainter here.
A plastic clown lamp with a red bulb for a nose is in the corner, and more red light leaks through a gap in the curtain. Joona tries to get a glimpse through it, but the gap is too small. He hesitates, then steps quickly through the curtain and into the room. His pulse thuds and his headache pounds as he sweeps the space with his eyes. On the cement floor, there’s a double-barreled shotgun and an open box of cartridges. The shells have lead slugs, the kind that would leave considerable damage. Sitting on an office chair is a young, naked man, smoking; his eyes are shut. This can’t be Daniel Marklund, Joona thinks. A blond girl with bare breasts lounges on a mattress, leaning back against the wall, an army blanket around her hips. She meets Joona’s gaze, blows him a kiss, and then, unconcerned, takes a sip of beer from a can.
From behind the only open door comes another scream.
Joona keeps his eye on the two as he picks up the shotgun, points the opening of the barrels down, and then steps hard on the barrels until they’re bent.
The woman puts down her beer can and scratches her armpit absentmindedly.
