Trophy (30 page)

‘Kim Andersen,’ Lene said.

‘Yes. So who the hell is inside the Humvee operating the camera?’

‘No idea. The fifth man, it would seem,’ she said.

‘The sixth.’

‘Yes. Thomas Berg, Kenneth Enderlein, Kim Andersen, Allan Lundkvist, Robert Olsen and …? How many were there in Norway?’

‘Seven, including the client. If we presume that Flemming Caspersen was the client at Porsanger Fjord, I’m missing a sixth man. We’re one short.’

‘Jakob Schmidt?’

‘Good question,’ Michael said, and pointed at the screen. ‘By the way, I think they’re nearly done, poor fools.’

Kim Andersen unlocked the boxes and flipped open the lids. The two Afghans looked inside and grinned to each other. Again they shook hands with the private first class who closed the lids and helped them carry the boxes to the pick-up. He passed them up to the stocky smuggler who had jumped up on the back of the pick-up again.

‘What’s in the boxes?’ Lene wanted to know.

‘Some kind of military hardware. Plastic explosives, hand grenades, rocket equipment, night vision goggles … stuff like that. Stingers.’

‘And it’ll end up with the Taliban?’

‘I can’t think of any other buyers, can you?’

She looked Michael in disbelief.

‘So they sell weapons and get paid in opium? Weapons that will end up being used against themselves or other Danes? Or their allies?’

He let out a weary sigh.

‘I don’t think they’re going to get that far, Lene. Either they’ll get mowed down in ten seconds or the Danes have agreed with the CIA or MI6 to hide an electronic tracker in the boxes which can lead Special Forces up through the food chain. Or they’ll detonate the explosives in the boxes remotely when they have got away. My money is on the latter.’

‘My money’s on the first,’ Lene said, looking at the screen. ‘Look at Thomas. And how the hell do you know that?’

‘Military Police. I was a captain. I’m not a complete amateur, Lene.’

The tall, sturdy soldier scanned the sky through his binoculars as the white pick-up started driving back to the road. Once again the passenger’s brown hand beat the side of the car rhythmically and the music from the car radio mingled with the braying of the goats. Thomas Berg turned to the armoured vehicle and ran the edge of his hand across his throat.

Michael gulped.

Twenty metres. Thirty. Dust started rising from the wheels of the Toyota, the hand in the white sleeve waved goodbye and they could hear an electric hum close to the camera’s microphone.

‘The machine gun,’ Michael said, and Lene jumped when the salvo exploded from the laptop’s speakers. They saw the individual bullets hit the white road. They caught up with the back of the pick-up, went through the animals and
reached the driver’s cabin. The shells ate the car. The frame wobbled and shook in time to the long machine-gun salvo. The Toyota keeled over; for a moment its rear end seemed to hover above the road, before the car skidded diagonally down the high verge and slowly, tragically slowly, turned onto its side.

‘Jesus,’ Michael said while Lene instinctively covered her ears with her hands. Her bad ear was ringing. The film was shocking, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the screen.

The man with the scorpion tattoo walked through the dust cloud, jumped across the ditch and approached the upturned car. A couple of metres behind him, Kim Andersen appeared with his service gun at the ready. They instinctively avoided each other’s firing lines.

By some miracle the car radio was still working somewhere inside the wreckage. A few fortunate goats scarpered noisily across the bare fields; others lay still next to the Toyota or had been crushed under it. One animal with a broken front leg hobbled towards the soldiers. Small flames from the engine started to lick the car. Kim Andersen aimed his gun and shot the goat through its head. He said something to his colleague, who laughed.

There was movement on the driver’s side of the car and the lean opium smuggler elbowed his way up through the side window with considerable effort. He cut his hands on the window frame and they started bleeding. His turban was gone and his long, blood-stained hair had come loose and
was falling across his face. He said nothing, but fought gravity with silent, grim determination. He had managed to free his upper body and twist, so that he could pull himself out by holding on to the undercarriage, when Thomas Berg reached him. The Afghan turned his face towards the Dane and hung without moving, half in and half out of the car. No expression.

Thomas Berg stopped a few paces from the smuggler, took out his pistol from his hip holster, flicked aside the safety catch and assumed the classic shooting position with legs astride and his arm fully outstretched. He sent a bullet through the smuggler’s head at close range. The man’s head was flung backwards; his body straightened out like a rubber band before flopping down, while the glass in the window frame held it in place. The Dane looked inside the car and fired two shots in quick succession – probably at the trapped passenger, the fat, cheerful one.

Kim Andersen recovered the two aluminium boxes some distance from the crashed Toyota, tucked one under each arm and walked back to the Humvee and the camera.

‘You were right,’ Michael said.

Lene shook her head: ‘I don’t understand how that can happen. That they’re prepared to run the risk. I thought the sky was packed with drones, planes and satellites scanning every corner?’

‘It’s a bloody big country,’ Michael said slowly. ‘Firstly, the soldiers probably know the flight plan and positions of the
drones and the satellites, secondly … well, secondly, it’s a bloody big country. If it really was possible to watch every inch of it from the sky, the Taliban wouldn’t be able to plant a single roadside bomb.’

‘What’s he doing now?’ she asked.

‘Covering his tracks. With a shock grenade.’

Thomas Berg had unscrewed the cap on the Toyota’s listing petrol tank, which was gulping its contents down on the ground. He walked away from the wreckage and tossed something that looked like a white beer can in a lazy arc towards the boot of the car. Then he covered his ears and closed his eyes.

They heard a sharp bang followed by a blinding white light and the Toyota was engulfed in flames.

The film ended and Lene wanted to throw up.

‘He’s unbelievably inhuman and callous,’ she mumbled. ‘I thought I’d met my fair share of psychos, but that one … Thomas.’

‘He’s bordering on unique,’ Michael conceded.

‘Have you ever met anyone like him?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do to them?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Either I worked for them or I fought them. One or the other.’

‘I feel sick,’ she said.

‘Would you like a glass of water?’ he asked.

‘Yes, please.’

He went over to the kitchen sink and opened a couple of wall cupboards before he found a water glass. Lost in thought, he held his finger under the tap, waiting for it to get very cold. Lene studied his profile. He was gazing out of the window when he suddenly straightened up. His eyes narrowed and he leaned forwards. Something luminous and white like a shooting star flew past the window and crashed into the outside wall.

Michael spun around and opened his mouth, but Lene never heard his warning. He placed a hand on the kitchen table and scaled its entire width. Lene had never seen anyone move so quickly and with such coordination. He hit her mid-chest as she was about to get up and they fell to the floor, tangled up in each other. Michael’s face was a few centimetres from hers. He looked down at her, opened his mouth and shouted something about the gas canisters outside, a fraction of a second before everything exploded, the kitchen became a bell jar of fire, and a big, hot hand flung them against the wall.

They flew through the room, along with the furniture, and she couldn’t breathe, didn’t know which way was up or down, if she was dead or alive. She must be dead, she thought and was grateful because everything had turned bright and warm and then all of a sudden it grew black, everything hurt, and the air she inhaled into her lungs was scorching – so blistering that she must still be alive, but even so she longed for the beautiful light.

Michael was blinded and it terrified him. He dug his fingers into his eye sockets and sobbed with relief when he was able to scrape away a sticky mess and see again. He looked at his hands, but couldn’t work out what had covered his eyes. Dust, mortar or blood? Or perhaps a mixture of all three. Lene was soft, hard and warm underneath him.

He got up on his hands and turned his face in the direction of the garden. The wall was gone. The trees outside were lit up by the flames that were consuming the cottage and he could see stars above the trees. Determined armed figures walked slowly across the lawn, blurred shadows at first, until they turned into two men wearing sophisticated camouflage clothing and ski masks. They carried military carbines in their hands.

He heard a dry crack from the beams as they gave way above him, and the sky, the trees and the killers were erased by a cloud of embers when the lean-to collapsed in front of the wall that had been blown away. The heat was indescribable and he could feel his eyebrows and eyelashes burning.
Lene looked at him with wide-open eyes. Her mouth was also open and he realized that she was talking to him, but he couldn’t make out the words. He got up on his knees and then onto his feet, pulled her upright, put his arm around her and spotted the doorway to the living room in front of them.

‘Out!’ he shouted.

She lashed out at him and he nearly punched her until he realized that she was trying to extinguish the embers on his shoulders and his head. They stumbled through the doorway into the cooler living room, where Lene bent double and coughed and spluttered while Michael got the first mouthful of air into his lungs after what felt like forever. He looked back over his shoulder. The kitchen was an inferno. The glowing mass that was the thatched roof had cascaded into the gap left by the missing wall and was obscuring his view of the killers.

He grabbed hold of her hand and they staggered through the living room towards the sanctuary of the porch, where the windows overlooking the garden had been blown in. With a strange sense of detachment Michael noted a perforated stripe being drawn across the white wall. Fountains of plaster and brickwork erupted at waist level and came towards them at speed. Glittering shards of glass flew through the room.

‘Get down!’ he shouted, and kicked her feet away from under her.

With deep sighs the bullets passed right above their heads. He covered her with his body and pressed her face against the floor. They were trapped between the fire and the killers’ automatic weapons. Every thought of escaping through the hallway, the children’s bedroom or the bathroom was dead in the water. Lene turned over underneath him. Her face was powdered with tiny glass fragments which he carefully brushed them away from around her eyes with his fingertips. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. The flames changed her irises from green to twinkling gold.

‘What do we do?’ she asked. ‘What happened?’

‘They threw a stun grenade or a hand grenade at the gas canisters,’ he said. ‘Now they’re waiting for us outside.’

‘So what do we do?’ she asked calmly. She tried to get up, but he kept her pinned to the floor.

Michael ducked as a new salvo was fired from the meadow to the right of the house. The old half-timbered cottage and the wall offered little resistance against the bullets, which tore another dotted line across the living-room wall.

‘Back to the kitchen,’ he said and started moving backwards and away from her on his stomach.

‘What?! Are you out of your mind!?’

He crawled back to her and put his mouth right up to her ear.

‘If we stay here, we’ll die! The basement. Now!’

He grabbed her by her jacket collar and dragged her along. The kitchen was a wall of fire and sparks flying in the draught
created by the hole in the wall and the broken windows in the living room. The smoke was a thick carpet above their heads and sent tears streaming down their faces. Michael coughed in spasms and couldn’t stop, and yet he continued to make his way to the doorway. Finally, his obstinate companion started working with him rather than against him. He got up on his hands and knees and pulled her level with him.

‘Grab hold of my foot! Take a deep breath, close your eyes and follow me, Lene, now, it’s our only chance! Understand?’

He blinked away his tears and could see that she nodded with her eyes closed. She breathed in.

The heat was dense and textured like a wall. Michael pushed aside tables and chairs and burned his palms; his eyeballs dried out and shrank in the fierce heat and he struggled to see. It was Lene who located the iron ring that was sunk into the floorboards and who managed to raise the heavy trapdoor to the crawlspace under the kitchen. She must be incredibly strong, he thought. She slid down the short ladder on her stomach and Michael followed right behind her.

There was air down there and they curled up, coughing, pumping oxygen to their lungs while the tears flowed. He was able to see again and gazed at the white trails that the tears drew down her sooty face. Her hair was still filled with glass fragments. The floor groaned and warped above them when more of the roof fell into the kitchen and a cloud of
sparks landed on Michael’s back. He instinctively rolled onto the concrete and threw his shoulders against the floor to extinguish the embers. Lene pulled him towards the wall and away from the trapdoor.

He hawked, spat soot out of his mouth and got up on his hands and knees.

‘I’ve got to get back up there,’ he grunted.

‘What?! What did you just say?’

‘Got to go back up. The CD.’

‘
No!
’

He pulled off his anorak and wrapped it around his head. She tried to restrain him, but he pushed aside her hands and began climbing the ladder. The top steps were on fire.

Michael raised his head up above the floor and felt like a clay figure in a kiln. He watched the hairs on his hands curl up and fall off. The once white kitchen walls were blackened, golden and ablaze. He hadn’t known that stone and mortar could burn like that. He stuck his head back down in the basement, swallowed a mouthful of air and went back up straight away because he knew he would never be able to do it if he allowed himself time to think. He crawled across the black, smouldering floorboards and spotted the computer under one of the Tripp Trapp highchairs. Without thinking he reached for it and howled in agony when melting plastic stuck to his fingers and palms. He grabbed a tea towel, wrapped it around the laptop and dragged it back to the trapdoor. Michael had almost reached the ladder when something
heavy and burning crashed down from the roof and landed diagonally across his shoulders. He couldn’t move and knew that the clothes on his back were on fire. He pushed the laptop towards the opening and spotted Lene’s face in the gap.

Michael stared at her, and signalled that he very much wanted her to take the damned laptop, disappear with it and leave him to his fate.

Small, blue flames started frizzing her hair, but she reached her arms across the floor, got a hold of his shoulders and the anorak around his head, and dragged him across the floorboards and down through the hole. The trapdoor slammed shut behind them.

He hit the concrete floor in the basement headfirst and was granted a few seconds of merciful darkness. He desperately wanted a break, some peace and quiet, but it was not to be. She was just as brutal as he knew she would be. She kept hitting him on the back with the palms of her hands; she pulled the anorak off his head and continued putting out the flames in his shirt and hair.

‘Leave me alone,’ he mumbled.

She wouldn’t appear to have heard him because he was dragged further into the darkness and laid down along an end wall where there was still a small amount of oxygen. Then the indefatigable superintendent started bashing the water pipes under the ceiling with a hammer she must have found down there.

A dazed Michael watched her efforts uncomprehendingly until she suddenly cried out in triumph. Something metallic gave way with a welcome bang and cold, wonderfully cold, water splashed down in a wide, hard stream from the broken water pipe. He elbowed closer, stuck his face under the water and let it wash over his back.

He had never been this close to paradise before and knew that he never would be again.

Lene sat with her back to the wall. She had pulled her knees up to her chest and poked her head straight into the jet. She smiled. Michael smiled too. The water rose and it was black and filled with golden reflections from the fire raging above them because strips of light fell through the floor planks. It was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

Then he rolled onto his back and sat up.

The laptop.

He looked around frantically and spotted it on an old crate. He put it on his lap, out of the water’s reach, opened the lid, and saw with almost religious awe the little lamps and buttons glow white and blue under the keyboard.

He clicked the CD out of the drive and looked around for something that could protect it from the fire and water. He emptied a plastic bag of old toys, carefully wrapped the bag around the disc and his wallet, and stuck it into what was left of his anorak. The water now reached to his knees and poured foaming white from the broken pipe with remarkable force. He drank a little from his cupped hands and
looked at Lene who was still sitting up against the wall, now resting her chin on her chest and with her eyes closed.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

She raised her head and looked at him. Her face was ghostly white and occasionally golden when the reflected flames danced across it.

‘You’re welcome,’ she mumbled. ‘How did they know we were here?’

Michael flinched instinctively every time something heavy hit the floor above him. He reached out his hand and touched the rough floorboards with his fingertips. They were warm, and the ladder below the trapdoor was steaming, hissing and contracting.

‘Your boss’s car,’ he said. ‘I was an idiot; I should have checked it for GPS transmitters.’

‘So they could have attacked us in the scout hut while we were asleep. While
you
were asleep!’

He shook his head. ‘They had no reason to harm us until we found Kim Andersen’s hiding place. In their own insane way they’re rational, so they must have been disappointed that they failed to scare you off.’

The water now reached up to his armpits. He let his hands glide through it and clenched and unclenched his fists. Right now they didn’t hurt, but he knew that the pain would return later when they dried.

‘I’m thinking of something,’ he said a little later. ‘Or rather … two things, Lene.’

She smiled. She actually had a lovely smile, he thought.

‘Two things? Well done, Michael.’

His hands were like two white fish in the black water.

‘Yes. One, we’re going to drown shortly, which is ridiculous and also really rather embarrassing. Drowning in a burning house – I mean, who does that. Wouldn’t you agree?’

Lene considered it before she nodded. The water now reached up to her chin.

‘It
is
a bit ridiculous, Michael. What was the second thing?’

‘I don’t understand why we can still breathe. It shouldn’t be possible because the fire should already have consumed all the oxygen down here. Technically, we should have died a few minutes ago. At least.’

He pulled one hand out of the water and looked at it. It dried faster on one side than the other. Down here in their sanctuary there was a draught. Above them the fire sucked up all the oxygen there was, but it also drew fresh air through the crawlspace from another source.

‘Perhaps we should turn off the water,’ she suggested.

‘Yes, if you would be so kind.’ He nodded amicably and lifted up his chin. He was floating now and his forehead bumped against the warm floor planks above him.

Armed with her hammer Lene made her way through the water. She located the broken pipe and covered the hole with her hands. The water flowed with undiminished force past
her palms. She tried pressing the handle of the hammer into the pipe, but the pipe simply broke off near the wall. The pipe would appear to have been badly corroded.

‘It’s not going very well,’ she said.

‘If you try to locate the grille,’ Michael said, ‘I’ll try to stop the water.’

She nodded and moved slowly through the black and orange water with her nose above the surface. There were only ten centimetres between the water and the burning kitchen floor.

Michael covered the pipe stump with his hands and managed to stop the flow, but water continued to seep in from the crumbling wall in several places. He fumbled for anything he could find in the water and got hold of some wet newspaper which he squashed into a ball and pressed against the hole where the pipe used to be. He couldn’t turn around, but he could hear Lene gurgle as she bashed away at the wall at the end of the crawlspace.

‘I think you need to hurry up,’ he called out in desperation.

She made no reply, but started hacking at something that resisted. Michael stretched out in the water, succeeded in pressing the soles of his feet against the opposing wall and forcied the ball of newspaper into the open pipe until his arms quivered.

‘Now!’ she shouted.

He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and kept pushing. There was no more clear space in the basement, they were
both underwater and the only air he had left was in his lungs. He could feel air bubbles seep from his nose and disappear past his eyes and forehead. His badly scorched lungs stung and strange visions started playing at the back of his eyelids. His arms let go, he flapped impotently through the water, but he had neither the energy nor the willpower to find the pipe again. His oxygen-starved brain was shutting down in preparation for unconsciousness and the great darkness. He thought about Sara, their children running across the lawn in front of their house, and he smiled to them from the garden gate, the warm sunshine, he would just wave to them and then be on his way …

Michael gulped helplessly and could do nothing but take the last, big, final breath which would fill his lungs with water.