The Terrorists (38 page)

Martin Beck was depressed, but his voice was normal when he said, “Is that all?”

“Not really. We questioned the crew of the
Saga
. Started at the top with Einar Norrman, Lloyd’s chief skipper, and then talked to all the officers. Then we took the intendant, Harkild, and went right through the staff, especially stewards and cabin staff. But not one of them recognized that guy in the picture, Heydt.”

“Intendant?” said Martin Beck. “Don’t they call them pursers anymore?”

“Well, the
Saga’s
not the
Suecia
or the
Britannia
exactly, is it? They call the purser the intendant nowadays, and the steward in the dining saloon is called the headwaiter. They’ll start saying wall instead of bulkhead and left instead of starboard soon. Then …”

“Yes?”

“I was going to say that then boats can go to hell, and you might as well fly instead. Einar Norrman said, incidentally, that he hasn’t even worn his cap for six months now. The skippers’ll soon be passing out for lack of fresh air.”

Martin Beck felt sympathy for this Gothenburg policeman, but now it was a matter of steering the conversation back onto the right track. “About Heydt …” he said.

“Nothing,” said Hammargren. “I don’t think he ever went on board. With his looks, someone would have remembered him. But the car was standing there out at Hisingen.”

“And the lab examination?”

“Nothing there either. Absolutely nothing.”

“Okay. Thanks for the call.”

Martin Beck energetically massaged his scalp. The car could be a red herring; it was more likely that Heydt had left the country on a less noticeable boat than the
Saga
. Gothenburg had a large harbor and a great many ships left it every day. Some of them took passengers and were licensed to do so. Just as many, especially small-tonnage ones, carried travelers who wished to remain anonymous and could afford to pay for the privilege.

In sum, it was possible that Heydt had left the country several weeks ago and was already far out of reach.

He looked at the time. It was too early to recall any of his colleagues. Maybe it would be a mistake to bring them back,
anyhow. What if the car was a one-hundred-percent red herring and Heydt hadn’t left the country at all? It was a great loss that the man in Gothenburg didn’t know whether the car had been there even before the bombing. That would have made it certain. Now everything was one large question mark.

Martin Beck slammed the door of his temporary office and went home. Car or no car, it was probably best to stick to the plan. The train did not leave the central station in Stockholm until just before midnight. He still had plenty of time.

There was a film of ice on the roof, but it was not especially cold. Reinhard Heydt lay absolutely still, the warmth of his body sufficient to melt the veil of ice underneath and around him.

He was wearing a black jersey with a polo neck, a black woolen cap pulled down over his ears and forehead, black corduroy trousers, black socks and black shoes with crepe soles that he had smeared with black shoe polish. He was also wearing long thin black gloves.

The rifle had a black barrel and a dark-brown butt, and the only thing that could possibly give him away was a reflection in the night sight, but the lens was smoked and especially coated to prevent reflections.

Of course the idea was that he should not be visible, and although he could not have known it himself, a person with normal sight would not have been able to see him from a distance of six feet, assuming that such a person, for some extraordinary reason, were suddenly to appear on the roof.

He had reached the roof easily through a hatch a few feet away. His Volkswagen was parked in Slottsbacken, and on the street he had worn a light-colored raincoat. This was now lying with his briefcase, tucked into a niche in the grubby attic below.

The situation was perfect. In fact he could see all of Martin Beck’s windows, since they all faced east. So far, however, the apartment had been silent and dark.

The rifle was especially constructed for sniping in the dark, and he found he could even make out details in the rooms, although all the lights were out. Behind him the devilish racket
of the traffic on Skeppsbron formed a perfect background. The English rifle was comparatively quiet and the sound of a single shot would undoubtedly be drowned in the cacophony of car engines, squealing brakes and backfiring exhaust pipes.

The distance to the four windows was no more than fifty or sixty yards; if it had been ten times as far, he would still have been certain to hit his target.

Heydt was no longer lying still. He was moving his fingers and legs a little so as not to stiffen up. He had learned all that a long time ago—lying almost still, but giving his small muscles a little exercise so that none of them would let him down at the decisive moment. Now and again he checked the sight, which was truly a technical masterpiece.

He must have been on the roof for about forty minutes when a light was suddenly switched on in the elevator shaft and shortly afterward in the farthest of the four windows. Heydt pressed the butt against his shoulder and placed his finger inside the trigger guard, letting it stroke the trigger. He was familiar with his weapon and knew exactly where the pressure point lay.

His plan was simple. It entailed acting immediately, shooting this man Beck as soon as he showed himself and then swiftly but calmly removing himself from the area.

Someone passed the first window, then the second and stopped in front of the third. Like all good snipers, Heydt relaxed, his body filling with a pleasant, satisfying warmth as the rifle, in some mysterious way, became a part of himself. His right forefinger rested on the trigger without a tremble. His physical and mental self-control was complete.

Someone was standing with his back to the third window.

But it was the wrong person.

It was a woman.

She was small and quite broad-shouldered. Straight blond hair and a short neck. She was wearing a brightly colored blouse, a tweed skirt down to her knees and, presumably, tights.

Suddenly she turned around and looked up toward the sky.

Heydt had already recognized her before he saw her straight blond bangs and searching blue eyes. Six weeks had passed since he had seen her. Then she had been wearing a black duffle
coat, faded blue jeans and red rubber boots. He also remembered exactly where he had seen her, first here in Köpmangatan, then in an alley, the name of which he had forgotten, and shortly afterward in Slottsbacken.

He had no idea who she was, but he recognized her at once, and if he had been equipped with such a capacity, he would have been surprised to see her. Instead, he observed her hair through the telescopic sight and thought that perhaps she did not bleach it, as he had thought the first time.

A man came into his field of vision, quite a tall man with a broad forehead, straight nose, thin but wide mouth and strong jaw. Heydt at once recognized him from television. This was his enemy, Martin Beck, the man who had transformed the assassination into a miserable fiasco, then put Kaiten—the most physically dangerous of all ULAG’s agents—out of action and the man who would now have to be eliminated to facilitate Heydt’s own retreat from the country.

The man put his arms around the woman, turned her around and pulled her toward him.

He did not look particularly dangerous, thought Heydt, raising the barrel a trifle so that the cross hairs of the night sight lay exactly between the policeman’s eyes. It would have been easy to kill him then, but after that he would also have had to kill the woman, and it all would have had to happen very quickly. Everything depended on how she would react. He had not seen much of her, but something told him she was probably very quick-thinking. If she were swift enough, she might have time to take shelter after the first shot and raise the alarm, and in that case his situation up there on the roof would not be particularly enviable. If there were enough police nearby, he would no longer be protected by the darkness and his isolated position. Instead he would find himself in a deathtrap, with no means of flight and no path to safety.

Heydt analyzed the situation, clearly and swiftly, and decided that there was still plenty of time. He could wait and see what happened.

Rhea Nielsen stood on tiptoe and bit Martin Beck playfully on the cheek.

“I have regular working hours nowadays,” she said. “And superiors. It looks a bit peculiar when a policeman comes and fetches me three quarters of an hour early.”

“The circumstances are a little special,” said Martin Beck. “And anyway I didn’t want to go home alone.”

“What circumstances?”

“I’ve got to go away this evening.”

“Where to?”

“To Malmö. I should really have gone already.”

“Why haven’t you then?”

“There was something I thought I’d better take care of first.”

“What? Where? In bed?”

“For instance.”

They moved away from the window. She ran her fingers roughly over one of his model boats, peered suspiciously at him and said, “How long will you be gone?”

“Don’t know for sure. Might take three or four days.”

“Over Christmas Eve then? Damn. I haven’t even had time to buy you a present.”

“I haven’t got yours yet either. But I’ll probably be back on Christmas Eve.”

“Probably? Don’t I look nice today, by the way? Skirt, blouse, tights, real shoes, tartan bra and matching panties.”

Martin Beck laughed.

“What are you laughing at? My femininity?”

“That’s not in your clothes.”

“You’re sweet,” she said suddenly.

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, I do. If I read your thoughts correctly, then we should immediately rush off to bed.”

“You read my thoughts absolutely correctly.”

She kicked off her shoes, which flew in different directions, then said, “In that case I’d better check up on the fridge and pantry first, so there won’t be hunger riots afterward.” She went out to the kitchen.

Martin Beck went over to the window and looked out. The sky was actually clear and the stars were out—a meteorological miracle at this time of year.

“Where did this lobster come from?” she called out.

“Hötorg market.”

“I can do lots of good things with it. How long have we got?”

“That depends on how long you spend messing around in the kitchen,” he said. “No, we’ve got plenty of time. Hours.”

“Okay, I’m coming. Have you got any wine?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Rhea undressed on her way to the bedroom, beginning by flinging her blouse on the kitchen floor. “It scratches,” she explained.

By the time she reached the bed, she had nothing on but the tartan bra. “You take it off,” she said with burlesque coquettishness. “It’s a rare occasion, since I almost never wear one.”

They did not pull down the blinds, since normally there was no way anyone could see into the apartment.

From his place on the roof, Heydt could not see the bed, but he observed that the light dimmed in the bedroom, and he was quite able to figure out what was going on.

After a while, the lights went up again and the woman came to the window. She was naked.

Through the telescopic sight, he gazed dispassionately at her left breast. The cross hairs lay just over the large brown nipple, the enlargement in the night sight was so great that it filled his whole field of vision. He could even see that there was a blond hair about half an inch long growing just above the nipple. It occurred to him that she ought to have it removed.

Then he lowered the barrel a trifle. The cross hairs lay over a point immediately below her left breast. Her heart. He pulled the trigger toward him half a millimeter and felt it against the point of pressure. If he pulled the trigger yet another half-millimeter, the gun would go off and the bullet would strike her in the heart. With the super high speed ammunition he used, she would be thrown backward across the room and be dead before her back even struck the far wall.

Rhea was still standing by the window.

“What stars!” she said. “Why do you have to go to Malmö? Is it still that character with the sideburns? Heydt?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what I think he’s doing at this moment. Sitting in Bali fishing for goldfish with a hula-hula girl on his lap. Come on, let’s fix that lobster.”

Fifty yards away, Reinhard Heydt was deciding that this whole project was uninteresting and pointless. He wriggled down through the hatch, dismantled his rifle and put the parts into the briefcase. Then he put on his light-colored raincoat and left.

As he walked calmly down Bollhus Alley, he decided when, how and where he would leave the country.

Since Martin Beck and his generation had been children, Christmas had changed from a fine traditional family festival into something that might be called economic cheapjackery or commercial insanity. For over a month before Christmas Eve, almost desperate advertisements for practically everything hammered at people’s nerves, intent on squeezing their money from them right down to the last possible coin. Christmas was supposed to be in many respects a festival for children, but many children suffered from nerves and exhaustion several weeks before the great day finally arrived.

It had also become a festival of travel. The whole population seemed gripped by a manic need to be on the move. The lines of cars were endless, and charter flights to Gambia, Malta, Morocco, Tunis, Malaga, Israel, Canada, the Canary Islands, Algarve, the Faroes, Capri, Rhodes, and various other places less inviting at that time of year, were all fully booked. The state railways had to put on extra trains, and singularly uncomfortable buses rumbled off to the strangest places, like Säffle, Bogholm and Hjo. Even the Djurgård ferry and the boats to Visby were full.

Martin Beck could not sleep on the night train to Malmö,
although in his capacity as a senior official he was able to travel first class. His sleeplessness was partly due to the fact that his companion in the bunk above not only snored, talked in his sleep and ground his teeth, but also frequently climbed down to pass water, as it was called in tasteful language. As the train was rattled through the shunting yard in Malmö, Martin Beck’s fellow traveler was peeing for the fourteenth time, apparently suffering from some malfunction of the bladder.