Three Seconds (53 page)

    "Ordered? By whom?"

    Lennart Oscarsson gave a fleeting smile.

    "I was ordered to prevent Grens-or any other police officer for that matter-from getting near Hoffmann. I stood there in reception, tried to look him in the eye, explain that the prisoner he wanted to see was in the hospital unit, that he would be there for three, maybe four days more."

    "By whom?"

    Same smile, impotent.

    "I was ordered to move Hoffmann. Back to the unit he'd come from. Even though a prisoner who's been threatened should never be moved back."

    Hermansson was shouting now.

"By whom?"

    The smile.

    "And I was given orders, just now, that if Hoffmann demands that the gates are opened for him and the hostages…
that I mustn't let him out."
"Oscarsson, I have to know who-"

    "I want Martin to live."

    She looked at the face that wouldn't manage to hold on for much longer, then at the clock that was hanging on the wall.

    Seven minutes left.

    She turned around and ran out of the office, his voice following her down the corridor.

"Hermansson!"

    She didn't stop.

"Hermansson!"

    Words that ricocheted off the cold walls.

"Someone wants Hoffmann to die."

     His legs tied. His hands tied. His mouth gagged. His head covered.

    Nitroglycerine against his skin. Pentyl fuse around his chest, torso, legs.

"Setting thirty-two."

    He dragged the heavy body over to the window, hit it, forced it to stand there.

"TPR three."

"Repeat."

"Transport right three."

    They were close to firing. The dialogue between the marksman and the observer would carry on until they fired.

    He needed more time.

    Hoffmann ran across the workshop to the storeroom and the other hostage, the prison warden with the pale face.

    "I want you to shout."

    "The packing tape, it's cutring-"

    "Shout!"

    The older man was tired. He panted, his head hung to one side, as if he didn't have the strength to hold it upright.

    "I don't understand."

    "Shout, for fuck's sake!"

    "What…?"

    "What the fuck you like. There's five minutes left. Scream that." The frightened eyes looked at him.

    "Shout it!"

    "Five minutes left."

    "Louder!"

    "Five minutes left!"

    "Louder!"

"Five minutes left!"

    Piet Hoffmann sat still and listened: careful sounds outside the door. They had understood.

    They had understood that the hostages were still alive, they wouldn't break in, not yet.

    He carried on to the office and the telephone, the ringing tone, once, twice, three times, four, five, six, seven. He was holding the empty porcelain cup and threw it against the wall, shards all over the desk, the pencil holder, the same wall, she hadn't answered, she wasn't there, she..

    "Object out of sight for one minute, thirty seconds."

    He hadn't been visible enough.

"Repeat."

"Object out of sight for one minute, thirty seconds. Can't locate either object or hostages."

"Prepare for entry in two minutes."

    Hoffmann ran out of the office and they were moving on the roof again, getting ready, finding their positions. He stopped by the window and pulled the rug toward him-the hostage had to be close and he heard him wince as the plastic cut deeper into the wounds around his ankles.

"Object in view again."

    He stood still, waiting, now,
abort now for Christ's sake.

`Abort. Abort preparations for entry."

    He let out a slow sigh and waited, then he ran back to the office and the telephone, try again. He dialed the number, the ring tone, he couldn't bear to count them, that bloody ringing, the bloody fucking ringing, that bloody-

    It stopped.

    Someone had answered but didn't say anything.

    The sound of a car, a car driving, the person who answered was in a car driving somewhere, and maybe, very faint, as if they were sitting farther away, it had to be, the sound of two children.

    "Have you done what we agreed?"

    It was difficult to hear, but he was sure, it was her.

    "Yes."

    He put the phone down.

Yes.

    He wanted to laugh, to jump up and down, but just dialed another number.

    "Central security."

    "Transfer me to the gold commander."

    "Gold commander?"

    "Now!"

    "And who the hell are you?"

    "The person in one of your monitors. But, I guess for this room it's completely black."

    A clicking sound, a few seconds' silence, then a voice, one that he had heard before, the one that made the decisions-he had been transferred to the church tower.

    He is a dead man in three minutes.

    "What do you want?"

    "He is a dead man in three minutes."

    "I repeat… what do you want."

    "Dead."

    Three minutes.

    Two minutes and fifty seconds.

    Two minutes and forty seconds.

    Ewert Grens was standing in a church tower and felt totally alone. He was about to make a decision about whether another person should live or die. It was his responsibility. And he wasn't sure anymore if he had enough courage to do it and then live with it afterward.

    The wind wasn't blowing anymore. He certainly felt nothing on his forehead and cheeks.

    "Sven?"

    "Yes?"

    "I want to hear it again. Who he is. What he's capable of"

    "There isn't anything else."

    "Read it!"

    Sven Sundkvist was holding the documents in his hand. There was only time for a few lines.

    "Extremely antisocial personality disorder. No ability to empathize. Extensive reports, significant characteristics include impulsiveness, aggression, lack of respect for own and others' safety, lack of conscience."

    Sven looked at his boss but got no answer, no contact.

    "Shooting incident involving a police officer in Söderhamn, at a public space on the edge of town, he hit-"

    "That's enough."

    He bent down toward the prostrate marksman.

    "Two minutes. Prepare to fire."

    He pointed to the door into the tower and the aluminum ladder peeping over the top of the hatch. They would go down into the room with the wooden altar-the marksman was to be disturbed as little as possible. He was about halfway down when he turned on the radio and held it to his mouth.

"From now on, I only want traffic between myself and the marksman. Turn
off your mobile phones. Only the marksman and I will communicate until the shot has been fired"

    The wooden stairs creaked with every step-they were approaching the control post and he would only leave again once it was over.

     Mariana Hermansson knocked on the dirty window and looked at the camera that was focused on her. It was the fourth locked door in the long passage under the prison and when it was opened, she ran toward central security and the exit.

     Martin Jacobson didn't understand what was happening. But he felt that it was nearing the end. In the last few minutes, Hoffmann had run back and forth several times, he was out of breath and he had shouted loudly about time and death. Jacobson tried to move his legs, his hands, he wanted to get away. He was so frightened, he didn't want to sit here anymore, he wanted to get up and go home and eat supper and watch TV and have a drink of Canadian whisky, the kind that tasted so soft.

    He was crying.

    He was still crying when Hoffmann came into the cramped storeroom, when he pushed him up against the wall and whispered that soon there would be an almighty explosion, that he should stay exactly where he was, that if he did that he would be protected and wouldn't die.

     He was lying with both elbows positioned on the wooden floor of the balcony and enough room for his legs; his position was comfortable and he could concentrate on the telescopic sight and the window.

    It was close.

    Never before on Swedish soil had a marksman taken another life in peacetime, not even shot to kill. But the hostage taker had threatened his hostages, refused to communicate, made another threat. He had gradually forced the situation to this choice between one life and another,

    One shot, one hit.

    He was capable; even at this distance he felt confident: one shot, one hit.

    But he would never see the consequences, a person blown to bits. He remembered one morning during training, the remains of live pigs that had been used as target practice-he couldn't bear to see a person like that.

    He edged fractionally farther out on the balcony so that he could see the window even better.

    She ran through the open prison gates and out into the nearly full parking lot, she rang Ewert's number for the second time and for the second time was cut off, she was nearly at the car and tried Sven and tried Edvardson without getting through, she got into the car, started it and drove over the grass and plants, looking up at the church tower as much as at the road as there was someone lying there, waiting.