“Why do you train them to do that? To murder?”
“What do you think? I have to defend myself. It’s fucking tough in the market today. I have the best suppliers, middlemen and pushers. There are lots of buyers and it’s a matter of ensuring I keep my income. Money is everything. Whatever people say, that’s what everybody is after. What everybody wants. And when money is involved, there’s a lot of dirty work too. If drugs are involved, there is even more. So you have to always make sure you have people around you with the same approach as you have yourself. Who want to protect me and what I have created—my market. Who want to cleanse away clumsy people, snitches, people who are unable to pay, who don’t fulfill their obligations, so to speak. You see, it is difficult to recruit adults. They cost too much and when they have got a taste for the good life they only get greedy. Cheat you. Or they are totally stoned and utterly useless. Careless.”
Gavril went on.
“From a crushed child you can carve out a deadly weapon. A soldier without any feelings, without anything to lose, is the most dangerous there is.”
“Is that why you kill...”
“The parents, yes. The children are easier to deal with then. More devoted. Aren’t they? That’s true, isn’t it? You do agree with me?”
She didn’t answer, clenched her teeth.
Gavril threw his hands out again.
“I make Sweden a better country. People might think that my activities are not acceptable, but I contribute to a better world by weeding out the weak. Partly, I do society a service by reducing the number of illegal offspring. Partly I let the migrant kids themselves clean up among the weak in society. It is like Darwin. Only the strongest survive.”
“But you kill all of them.”
“Children have always been murdered. In all ages. Even in the Bible it talks about the killing of children. Don’t you remember the Gospel according to Matthew where King Herod after the birth of Jesus orders all the Jewish boys under two years of age to be killed because he has heard that a future king has been born and he doesn’t want a rival.”
“So you see yourself as the Herod of our time?”
“No, what I mean is that death is a weapon in itself. To convince everybody about who you are. I use children so I don’t have to risk having rivals.”
Gavril looked to the right and his scar wrinkled up in the movement and hung over his eye.
“Stand still, I said,” Jana shouted.
Gavril turned his gaze back. His reddish-pink skin smoothed out again.
“I am still,” he said slowly.
“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.