Marked for Life (31 page)

“And the drugs? Why all the drugs?”

“You must reward people with something. And what could be better than to make everybody dependent? Not only on drugs, but on me too. Then they are less likely to run away too. You see, children do as you tell them. They look up to you. If you give them a dose of the right stuff, you can be a father for them.”

“Like a god then?”

“Not really, more like his opposite. A devilish god you could say.”

“Why carve names into their flesh?”

“So that everybody will feel they belong. A community. Like a family. All with unique names. But with the same content.”

“Gods of death.”

“Exactly. And I carve out the name so that you won't forget who you are. I gave you your real name.”

“My name is Jana. That's my real name.”

“But you are Ker.”

“No.”

“Yes,
you are! Deep inside you are exactly what I trained you to be.”

Jana didn't answer.

“What I do isn't anything new. In many countries there are young people who are deliberately recruited, trained and used in armed forces. I do the same here but I've taken it a step further. Anyone can shoot with a pistol, but not anyone can be an assassin.”

“How many?”

“That we have trained?”

“If you look at it like that...”

“Seventy.”

Gavril's answer hit her like a blow from a fist. She loosened her hold on Phobos's neck slightly. Seventy! His fingers stopped digging so hard into her arm.

“But we only chose the strongest from every batch.”

“That's the containers, as far as I know.”

“Yes.”

“So you took seven children from each one?”

“Sometimes more, sometimes less. Then we selected the two best. Or just one. The rest were got rid of. You surely remember how we went about it?”

Gavril shaped his hand like a pistol and pointed it at Jana.

“Stand still!” she shouted.

The boy moved too. She tightened her grip around his neck and lifted him a couple of centimeters off the floor. He kicked with his legs before she lowered him again.

“It might be of interest to you that until recently I had a pupil on the island.”

“Thanatos?”

“Quite right. He was unique.”

“He killed Hans Juhlén. Why?”

“Goodness me, you are well informed. What should I say? Hans Juhlén interfered just a bit too much. He turned into a bit of a problem for us.”

“By ‘us' you mean you, his secretary, Thomas Rydberg, and Anders Paulsson?”

“Precisely!”

Gavril threw out his hand and Jana reacted by raising the pistol against him. He smirked and threw out his hand even further. As if to frighten her.

“Keep still!” she shouted. Her mouth was dry and she swallowed. “Go on, explain!”

“You've already worked it out.”

“Go on!”

Gavril became serious.

His lower teeth were exposed in a weird grimace.

“Hans Juhlén managed to dig out a list of all the containers and put pressure on Thomas Rydberg for information. He threatened to reveal everything so we had to get rid of him. Thanatos carried out the mission to our great satisfaction. But Anders messed things up. When he was taking Thanatos back to the island, something went wrong. Thanatos tried to escape and Anders shot him, a mistake that was very costly for us.”

“The container that I came in...”

“Was the first one we chose. It required a lot of planning. It still does.”

“You're expecting a new one?”

Gavril made a grimace again. He raised his chin and hissed between his teeth.

“It is better to renew everything all the time. Then they won't have a chance to understand anything either. When they have carried out their task, when we don't need them any longer, we can let them disappear. There are new children coming along all the time after all. As you know, this has been so for more than twenty years. Thousands pass Sweden's borders every year. And nobody misses them. Nobody is looking for them. That's right, isn't it, there hasn't been anybody looking for you? Nobody, that's right, isn't it?”

“Shut up!”

“Nobody...who...looked...”

Gavril held up both hands toward her and waved them while he hissed. Like a snake.

“Ssssssssssss!”

“Keep still! I'll shoot!” she shouted and pointed her pistol at him.

Gavril calmed down. He lowered his head a little.

She felt her heart pounding.

“I know that you'll do it. I know exactly how you think. I've trained you after all,” said Gavril.

“Not just you...”

“No, it wasn't just me,” said Gavril loudly and took a step forward toward the gun on the floor.

“But the others are long since dead. I said that you must have people around you that you can trust. And you only want a few people around you, then there are fewer mouths to feed.”

Jana swallowed. She squeezed the pistol hard.

“It's over now,” she said with a resolute voice.

“It will never be over. Children are our future.”

Gavril took another step forward.

She noticed his movement.

“Stand still! Stand still!”

He didn't listen, took yet another step forward.

“Stand still! Don't move! Otherwise...”

“Otherwise what?”

He took yet another step.

“Otherwise I'll shoot him,” she shouted and pointed the pistol at Phobos instead. She pressed the pistol hard against his forehead and forced his head to the left.

Gavril stopped and smiled.

“Do it. He's worthless anyway.”

“He's your son,” Jana shouted and pressed the pistol even harder against Phobos's forehead.

His face was taut, he whined.

“He isn't my son, he is one of those worthless kids. Just as worthless as all the others. A nobody.”

She looked at Gavril unable to fully grasp his meaning. Then at Phobos, who was whining alot now. She immediately stopped pressing the gun so hard and saw the red mark from the muzzle on his thin skin.

“You can shoot him, I'd do it anyway later. He knows that. Even so, he does everything I tell him. Don't you, Phobos? You do everything I tell you, don't you?”

Gavril blinked at Phobos who immediately understood the signal and started to kick with his thin legs at Jana's. He hit her on the lower part of her shin and she gave a start from the pain without seeing that Gavril at that moment picked up the pistol from the floor.

She took a firmer grip of Phobos's neck and forced him up on his toes to keep him still. When she looked back at Gavril again, she saw the gun in his hand. She quickly turned round. And Gavril pressed the trigger...but the weapon just clicked.

He pressed the trigger again and again. Click. Click. The magazine was empty!

Gavril immediately started to laugh. Out loud.

Jana stared at the pistol he held in his hand.
That's my pistol
, she thought. Why is the magazine empty?

Suddenly a voice could be heard from the other side of the room.

“You're out of luck today.”

Danilo came out of the shadows and stood a couple of meters from Gavril with a gun pointed at him.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” said Gavril.

There was something about Gavril's way of talking to Danilo that confused Jana. And Danilo just stood there, as if they were friends. Then she realized they really are friends.

“Let me do it,” said Danilo and pointed his Glock at her.

“You see,” Gavril said. “You have to surround yourself with people you can rely on.”

“Yes, you are right about that,” said Danilo. “But I'm not such a person.”

Then he immediately changed the direction of the pistol and pointed it at Gavril again.

“What the fuck are you doing?” said Gavril.

Then he didn't say any more.

When he fell forwards and hit the stone floor he was already dead.

Danilo changed position. He went round Gavril and shot him again. In the back of his head.

Phobos stood absolutely still. His breaths were short. His eyes like saucers. Jana slowly moved the muzzle of her pistol from his head and pointed it instead at Danilo. He took off his hood and looked at her. His eyes were black. His gaze cold as ice.

“Jana,” he said. “Little, sweet, lovely Jana. Why did you have to go and dig into the past? I said that you ought to let things be.”

He walked toward her with the pistol hanging from his finger.

“I know what you're thinking. How could Papa recognize me? That's what you're thinking, isn't it?”

Jana nodded.

“Do you remember when I said that I pretended to be dead there in the forest, when Mama ran after me? And I said that I ran the other way? Do you remember that?”

Jana nodded again.

“You lied to me?”

“No, it was true. All of it. I ran but I couldn't run very far. Anders found me afterwards in a ditch. He pulled me into the van again. I thought I would die. But it was thanks to him that I'm alive. He took care of me. He has always been an old woman, soft as anything. But he knew his stuff. That's why I didn't think you'd manage him. I thought and hoped that you'd get shot there at his house.”

Danilo moved in a moon-shaped path around Jana. The pistol in her hand moved in the same path.

“That's why you gave me his name,” she stated quietly.

“Exactly,” said Danilo.

“You are a part of it all,” she then said.

“Right again.”

Danilo was behind her now.

“But how...”

“How could I survive? I grew up on the island. Got to learn everything there. I was clever and got more missions. Not just one like all the others.”

With dragging steps he was in front of her again.

“When I was seventeen I got to take over as trainer. Papa got rid of the other trainers. And all the other idiots too.”

“I can't believe that you call him that.”

“What? Papa? You did too.”

“But no longer.”

Danilo was to her left now. He kept on walking the same path around her.

“He is my papa. Oh no, I beg your pardon—I meant, of course, that he was my papa. And it was him, me, Lena, Thomas and Anders who took care of everything. Now they are all gone. Except me. It worked. Admittedly a bit earlier than I had believed, but it bloody well worked out.”

Jana's thoughts whirled around in her head. She heard what he said. But even so she didn't understand what he meant.

“What do you mean? You planned this?”

“Planned, well sort of. I hadn't planned to kill Thomas Rydberg. Somebody else did that.”

She looked down. Danilo was silent for a moment before going on: “When Thomas was out of the game, I saw that as a sign. That it was time.”

“For what?”

“To step forward.”

She suddenly understood the connection.

“You made use of me to kill Gavril,” she said slowly.

“And you swallowed it.”

“I trusted you.”

“I know. And that's why it was so easy. I helped you to help me.”

Jana stretched her back. The gun in her hand felt heavy.

She looked at Danilo, his ice-cold gaze back. Then he took three steps and kicked Gavril's dead body several times.

“I wanted you dead. You didn't think that, did you? That I wanted to kill you!” He kicked as hard as he could. The blood vessels on his forehead became distinct. His nostrils were extended, the tendons in his neck tensed like violin strings, and his teeth bared.

After a few seconds, he calmed down.

Jana didn't say a word.

Nor did Phobos.

Danilo sat down on a chair, flicked his hair off his forehead and looked at her.

“I'm sorry,” he said slowly. “But you realize that you are going to die here.”

She didn't know what she should answer so she just nodded. Her hand shook and she struggled so that it wouldn't be obvious.

“To think that you didn't suspect anything.”

“I ought to have done,” she said and met his gaze. “I ought to have understood long ago. But it's not until now that I realize how it all fits together. You gave me a Sig Sauer. Thanatos was killed by one of those, and I realize now that what I got was the murder weapon. But you emptied the magazine so that I would die a simple death here.”

Danilo laughed in answer.

“You wanted to leave me here so that nobody would suspect you,” she said slowly.

The laugh became loud and nasty.

“Exactly!” He jumped up from the chair, and stood a few steps from Jana.

“When the police come they'll find you here and they'll come to understand that you are the one who has killed all my dear ones, my pretty prosecutor, and that you happened to get shot as well. Just think what a scandal there will be!”

Jana bit her lip. How was she going to get out of this? Her hand shook all the worse. The pistol was heavy now.

“And when they do an autopsy on your body they'll find the name on your neck. Then they will understand. That you are one of all those children from the island. They are bound to think that you wanted revenge on the people who had taken you from the container. Who had killed your parents. Simple, isn't it?”

Danilo took two steps back.

“You know what's best of all? The best thing is that you haven't suspected anything. I told you that you should be careful. I told you that. But you didn't listen to me.”

He pointed the pistol at Jana, ordered her to let go of Phobos.

She refused.

“Okay,” said Danilo. “Then I'll shoot you both.”

He aimed.

And fired.

That very same moment Jana cast herself to one side and pulled Phobos down too. They landed on the floor, she rolled round, pointed the Glock at Danilo and fired too, but she missed.