“A possibility,” Joona says calmly.
“How many people are here in the embassy right now?” asks Saga.
“It’s open for business and there are four appointments scheduled.”
“Four people?”
“Yes.”
“And how many employees are here?”
“Eleven.”
“And how many security guards?”
“Five, at present,” he says.
“No other people?”
“No.”
“No carpenters, no painters, or-”
“No.”
“So twenty people in all,” Saga says.
“Do you wish to look around on your own?” asks Karl Mann quietly.
“We would prefer to have someone with us,” Saga replies.
“How many?” asks Karl Mann.
“As many as possible and as heavily armed as possible,” Joona answers.
“So you really believe he is that dangerous.” Karl Mann smiles. “I can put two men at your disposal along with myself.”
“We don’t know what to expect, but-”
“You said he’d been shot in the arm,” Karl Mann points out. “I must say I’m not exactly afraid.”
“And it’s possible he never actually got inside. Or maybe he’s already left,” Joona says quietly. “But if he is here, we might lose some people.”
Silently, Joona, Penelope, and Saga, accompanied by the three policemen carrying automatic rifles and shock grenades, begin to walk through the corridors on the main floor. Renovations had been carried out throughout the building during the last few years while embassy business had been moved to Artillerigatan. However, in spite of the fact that the last few touches were being completed, embassy personnel had been moved back. It still smelled like paint and newly sawed wood. Some of the floors were still covered with protective paper.
“We would like to see your visitors first,” Joona says. “Not the regular employees.”
“I expected that,” Karl Mann says.
Penelope feels strangely calm as she walks between Saga Bauer and Joona Linna. Somehow she does not believe she will meet her pursuer here. The place seems too normal and peaceful.
Then she notices Joona’s caution, how his movements beside her change.
An alarm starts beeping. Everyone stands still. Karl Mann lifts his radio and speaks shortly in German.
“A door alarm is going off,” he explains to them in Swedish. “The door is actually locked but the alarm is so sensitive it acts as if the door had been opened for a few seconds.”
They keep walking together along the hallway and Penelope Fernandez is aware of the extra weight of the gun against her back.
“Here is the office of Martin Schenkel, our business attache,” Karl Mann gestures. “He has a visitor, Roland Lindkvist.”
“We’d like to meet them,” Joona says.
“Martin has requested no one disturb him until after lunch.”
Joona says nothing.
Saga clasps Penelope’s upper arm and they stop while the others continue on toward the closed door.
“Wait a moment, please,” Karl Mann says to Joona as he knocks.
He receives a muffled answer, waits a moment, and then is given permission to enter. He does so, and closes the door behind him.
Joona looks at a room with a door covered by gray industrial plastic. A pile of gypsum board is stacked there. The plastic billows a little like a sail, just as sounds drift out from behind the closed door to the business attache’s office. There are voices and a loud thud. Penelope’s thoughts fly back in time to the news reports about when this very embassy building had been occupied by Kommando Holger Meins in the spring of 1975. She remembers the demand that Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, and thirty-five other prisoners from the Red Army Faction be released from their West German prison. It was in these very corridors that they ran and screamed at one another, pulling Ambassador Dietrich Stoecker by the hair and pushing Heinz Hillegaart’s bloody body down the stairs. She didn’t remember what they’d said or what the negotiations had been, but afterward, the German chancellor Helmut Schmidt had told Swedish prime minister Olof Palme not to negotiate with the terrorists and then two of the hostages were shot. Karl-Heinz Dellwo had screamed that he would shoot one person every hour until his demands were met.
Now Penelope watches Joona Linna step up to the door. The other two men are standing totally still. Joona pulls out his gun, undoes the safety, and then knocks at the door.
There’s an odor spreading in the hallway as if someone left food burning on the stove.
Joona knocks again, listens, and hears a monotone voice as if someone is repeating the same phrase over and over. He waits a few moments, hides his pistol behind his back, and then pushes down the door handle.
Karl Mann stands directly below the ceiling lamp with his automatic rifle down beside his leg. He looks at Joona and then back at the man sitting in an armchair pushed deep into the room.
“Herr Schenkel, this is the Swedish inspector,” he says softly.
Books and folders of scattered papers are spread all over the floor as if someone had pushed them off the desk in a fit of rage. The German business attache, Martin Schenkel, is sitting quietly in an armchair watching television. A live broadcast of a soccer match is coming from Beijing. The game is between Germany’s DFB-Elf and the Chinese National Team.
“Wasn’t Roland Lindkvist here a minute ago?” asks Joona deliberately.
“He left,” answers Martin Schenkel without looking up from the television.
Joona and Karl Mann go back into the hallway. Karl Mann is annoyed as well as disquieted. He barks some orders to his men in a hard voice. A woman in a light gray knit dress is walking quickly away down the hall over the protective paper.
“Who is that?” asks Joona.
“The ambassador’s secretary,” answers Karl Mann.
“We’d like to talk with her and-”
Suddenly an alarm rips the air. Over the whooping noise, a calm, prerecorded voice admonishes them that this is no drill and that they should not use the elevators as they exit the building immediately.
84
Karl Mann spits rapid orders into his radio as he jogs toward the stairwell.
“The top floor is on fire,” he says shortly.
“How big a fire?” asks Joona as he keeps pace with him.
“We don’t know, but we’re evacuating the embassy and there are usually eleven people working upstairs.”
Karl Mann snatches a fire extinguisher from a red cabinet and pulls out the safety stopper.
“I’ll take Penelope outside,” Saga yells.
“He started the fire,” Penelope says. “He’s going to escape when everyone’s working to put out the fire.”
Joona follows the three military men up the stairs. Their steps echo between the cold cement walls although they try to run as quietly as they can. They come into the hallway on the third floor where there is a stronger smell
