Then his brother came back with the battery and a coil of wire.
“No, we’re going to do it in a different way, Hans. We’ll take the battery outside with us. You just have to connect it like this,” said Lasse, showing him how the explosives around Carl’s neck should be connected to the detonation cords and then to the battery. “Cut off a really long piece. It has to reach all the way out to the yard.” He laughed and looked straight at Carl. “We’ll connect the current outside, and the explosion will take this fucker’s head off and blow up the gas cylinders.”
“But what about before that? What about him?” asked his brother, pointing at Carl. “He could just tear off the wires.”
“Him?!” Lasse smiled and pulled the battery farther away from Carl. “You’re entirely right. In a minute I’m going to let you beat him senseless.”
Then his voice changed, and he turned again to look at Carl, a grave expression on his face. “How the hell did you find me? You said it was because of Dennis Knudsen and Uffe. But I don’t understand. How did you link them to me?”
“You made thousands of mistakes, you clown. That’s how!”
Lasse backed up a bit with what could only be interpreted as insanity rooted deep in his eyes. He was sure to shoot Carl a moment from now. Just take careful aim and pull the trigger. Then good-bye, Carl. No matter what, Lasse wasn’t going to let this cop stop him from blowing up the place. As if Carl didn’t know.
With peace in his soul, Carl looked up at Lasse’s brother. He was fumbling. Couldn’t get the wires to lie properly. They kept curling together as he unrolled them.
At that instant Carl felt Assad’s wounded arm trembling against his leg. Maybe he wasn’t hurt that badly. Small consolation in this situation, because in a moment they’d both lie dead.
Carl closed his eyes and tried to recall a couple of significant moments in his life. After a few seconds of nothingness, he opened them again. Even that solace was denied him.
Had his life really had so few high points to offer?
“You need to leave the room now, Mother,” he heard Lasse say. “Go out to the yard, far away from the outer walls. We’ll join you in a minute. Then we’ll all disappear.”
She nodded, took one last look at the porthole, and spat on the glass.
As she passed her sons, she looked down with disdain at Carl and the man lying next to him. She would have kicked them if she could. They had stolen her life, just as others had stolen it before them. She was in a permanent state of bitterness and hatred. No other emotion would be allowed to penetrate the protective glass bubble in which she lived.
There’s no room for you to get past, you witch, thought Carl, noticing how awkwardly Assad’s leg was stretched out to the side.
When her wheelchair drove into Assad’s leg, he uttered a roar. In one movement he leaped to his feet and was standing between the woman and the door. The two men standing next to the windows whirled around. Lasse raised the shotgun as Assad, blood pouring from his temple, crouched down behind the wheelchair, grabbed the woman’s bony knees, and stormed toward the men, using the chair as a battering ram. The cacophony of sounds was infernal. Assad roaring, the woman screaming, the whistling from the pressure chamber, and the warning shouts of the two men that was cut off by the chaos caused by the wheelchair as it knocked them down.
The woman lay with her legs in the air as Assad jumped on top of her and threw himself at the shotgun, which Lasse was trying to aim at him. The brother started wailing when Assad got hold of the barrel with one hand and began pounding Lasse’s larynx with the other. In a few seconds it was all over.
Assad moved away, holding on to the shotgun. He shoved the wheelchair aside, forced a coughing Lasse to his feet, and stood there for a moment, staring at him.
“Tell us how to stop this shit then!” he shouted as Carl stood up as well.
Carl spied the switchblade over by the wall. He unwrapped the wires and detonators from around his neck and went over to get the knife as Hans tried to pick up his mother.
“Tell us. Now!” Carl stuck the knife against Lasse’s cheek.
They both saw it in Lasse’s eyes. He didn’t believe them. In his mind, only one thing was important: Merete Lynggaard had to die inside the room behind them. Alone, slowly and painfully. That was Lasse’s goal. He would take whatever punishment they gave him afterward. At that point, what did it matter?
“We will blow up him and his family, Carl,” said Assad, his eyes narrowed. “Merete Lynggaard is finished soon anyway. We cannot do anything for her more then.” He pointed up at the manometer that now showed well under four atmospheres. “We do the same to them that they wanted to do to us. And we do Merete a favor.”
Carl looked intently at his partner. Inside those warm, brown eyes he saw a glint of genuine hatred that wouldn’t need much coaxing.
Carl shook his head. “We can’t do that, Assad.”
“Yes, Carl, we can,” answered Assad. He reached out and slowly pulled the wires and detonators out of Carl’s hand. Then he wrapped them around Lasse’s neck.
As Lasse glanced over at his imploring mother and his brother, who was shaking as he stood behind her wheelchair, Assad gave Carl a look that was unmistakable. They had to press Lasse to the point where he would start to take them seriously. Lasse might not fight to save his own skin, but he would fight to save his mother’s and brother’s. Assad had seen it in his eyes, and he was right.
Then Carl raised Lasse’s arms and attached the stripped ends of the wires to the detonation cords, as Lasse had prescribed.
“Go sit in the corner,” Carl ordered the woman and her younger son. “Hans, take your mother over there and set her on your lap.”
He looked at Carl with frightened eyes; then he picked up his mother in his arms as if she were a piece of fluff and sat down on the floor with his back against the far wall.
“We’re going to blow up all three of you along with Merete Lynggaard, if you don’t tell us how to shut off your infernal machine,” said Carl as he twisted a detonation cord on to one of the battery terminals.
Lasse turned his gaze away from his mother and looked at Carl. Hatred burned in his eyes. “I don’t know how to stop it,” he said calmly. “I could find out by reading the manuals, but there’s no time for that.”
“That’s a lie! You’re just stalling for time!” shouted Carl. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Assad was considering striking Lasse.
“Believe whatever you like,” said Lasse and turned his head to give Assad a smile.
Carl nodded. The man wasn’t lying. He was ice cold, but he wasn’t lying. Years of experience told Carl that. Lasse didn’t know how to stop the system without reading the manual. Very bad luck.
He turned to Assad. “Are you OK?” he asked, placing his hand on the barrel of the shotgun only seconds before Assad would have smashed the butt end into Lasse’s face.
Assad nodded angrily. The buckshot in his arm hadn’t done any significant damage, nor had the blow to his head. He was made of solid stuff.
Carl carefully took the shotgun out of his hands. “I can’t go that far. I’m taking the gun, Assad, and I want you to run over and get the manual. You saw where it was. The handwritten manual in the inside room. It’s in the pile at the very end. On top, I think. Go get it, Assad. And hurry!”
Lasse smiled as soon as Assad left and Carl stuck the barrel of the shotgun under his chin. Like a gladiator, Lasse was weighing his opponents’ strengths to choose the one who matched him best. It was clear he figured Carl was a better choice than Assad. And it was equally clear to Carl that he was wrong.
Lasse began backing toward the door. “You don’t dare shoot me. The other guy would have done it. I’m going now, and you can’t stop me.”
“Is that what you think?” Carl stepped forward and grabbed him hard by the throat. The next time the man made a move, he was going to slam the gun in his face.
Then they heard the police sirens in the distance.
“Run!” screamed Lasse’s brother as he abruptly stood up, clutching his mother, and kicked the wheelchair at Carl.
Lasse was gone in a second. Carl wanted to run after him, but he couldn’t. He was apparently in worse shape than Lasse; his wounded leg simply refused to obey.
He aimed the gun at the woman and her son as he let the wheelchair roll past and crash into the wall.
“Look!” yelled Hans, pointing at the long cord that Lasse was trailing after him.
