A Death in Sweden(65)

Then they went and sat again. Dan kept his eye on the building across the street, though no one ever turned up, and even Callie had now given up on looking out.

It was beginning to get dark when Josh said, “Mr. Hendricks . . .”

“You can call me Dan if you prefer.”

“Okay, thanks.” Callie looked at Josh in annoyance, as if to ask what he was thanking him for. “It’s just, I wondered, if you’re going out to Bill’s place. Are you . . . are you planning on taking us with you?”

“He can’t do that, Josh. We’d give him away or get in the way.” She stared directly at Dan, that same challenging and resolute stare he’d first seen up in the office. “He’s gonna kill us. It’s the only thing he can do.”

Dan shook his head, bemused, and said, “You’ve spent too much time with the wrong kind of people. I said I wouldn’t kill you, and unless you give me a reason, I won’t.” He looked at Josh who, conversely, was desperate to believe in him. “I have another set of cuffs. It won’t be comfortable but I’ll cuff you to the railings out on the top of the landing there.” He’d checked them while they were each in the bathroom, the ornate metalwork was sturdy enough and fixed well into the stone floor. “I’ll write a note and put it in my jacket, in case things don’t work out, telling them that the two of you are here.”

It was obvious that Callie still couldn’t make up her mind about Dan or this whole situation, but his final comment seemed to throw her more than anything else he’d said. It struck Dan as the most natural thing in the world, that he should make sure they weren’t left to starve to death in an empty building if he got killed, but she looked touched by the gesture.

“Dan, you still don’t have to do this.”

He smiled at her and said, “But I’m going to. And now I need to ask you both some questions.” Her face darkened again, as if she suspected she’d been lured into a trap. “Where will they be, these four guys?”

“There’s a lodge, but he might only have . . .”

“Josh, shut your mouth!”

Josh looked at her, defiant, as if to remind her that she wasn’t his senior officer or, even if she had been, she wasn’t anymore, and he was deliberate as he said again, “There’s a lodge, but he might only have one guy in there if he’s down to four. Maybe two, and one of them will walk the grounds every now and then. The other two will be in the house—they hang around the kitchen most of the time, but maybe not tonight.”

“Good. Is his wife there, other family, staff?”

“Staff won’t be there in the evening. And his wife’s away. They’ve just had a new grandson . . .”

Callie added, to no one in particular, “Harry’s second, born two weeks ago.”

At first he thought she was challenging him, but he guessed she was aware of the irony, that Harry Brabham was building a happy family for himself.

“How long till they wait for backup from the Berlin station?”

Callie answered, saying, “He probably called it in as soon as I spoke to him on the phone.”

She was trying to put him off going, but Josh laughed and said, “I doubt it. It would be the last resort. And I’m talking the absolute last resort. We don’t officially exist, or at least, not here in Berlin. Bill sent someone home in the summer because he went out for a drink with someone from the embassy. He’ll barricade the place, but he won’t call for backup, not unless he’s the last man standing.”

“What kind of surveillance does he have in place?”

“Motion sensors on the perimeter, cameras with night vision. There’s nothing you can do about the motion sensors but they’ve been erratic ever since he moved in there, so they ignore them a lot of the time—maybe not tonight, though. The cameras . . .” Josh weighed something up, then nodded to himself and said, “If it would help, I can show you how to knock them out for ten minutes—there’s a flaw in the way the computer runs them.”

Even as he was still speaking, Callie had looked at him with consternation, and she said now, “Josh, what are you doing? If you help him in any way, you’re breaking the law, you’re probably committing treason.”

“You think?” She didn’t respond, and he pointed at the laptop and said, “You think he faked that tape?” Again, she didn’t answer. “Exactly. You wanna report me, Callie, you go ahead, but I know I’m doing the right thing. Because we’ve been helping them sweep people like Dan here under the carpet, but you know what, who’s to say in five years they won’t be trying to sweep us under it?”

“There are things here that need to be answered, but if you help him, I will report you.”

Josh stared at her for a few seconds, then turned to Dan and said, “You could probably breach it without this, but I can set it up on one of your laptops there. Basically, if someone with an authorized code—someone like me—reports a malfunction on the surveillance system, the thing does a full check on itself, and after ten minutes it’ll confirm that there’s no malfunction. But here’s the thing—mother of all fuck-ups—the system shuts down all its elements and brings them back online one by one to check them, but it brings the cameras on last. So for nearly ten minutes, no cameras.”