He laughed at the enormity of it, the suggestion that he could find truths in a couple of weeks that had eluded even Jack Redford in all his years of searching.
She laughed too, and said, “How much time did you say you had?”
He nodded, accepting the point, but said, “Look, first off, Redford undoubtedly knew more than he had up on those boards—he knew there was a link and was just looking for a way of proving it. Second, he was in hiding, and that limited what he could do.”
“You’re kind of in hiding too.”
“True, but I haven’t quite become Jacques Fillon yet. So I visit her parents, I visit the friends she lived with, the Algerian, anyone else I can find. Remember, I don’t have to prove anything, I don’t have to make it stand up in court, I just need to find the trail that leads back to Brabham, and I need to keep moving while I do it.”
“And if you fail? You must have some other option for escaping this . . . all these killings.”
All these killings. Just as with the murder of Sabine Merel, the mention of the killings did nothing to evoke the reality of what had happened to those people. But unlike Sabine, Dan and his colleagues had at least lived in that world and had done their own share of killing. It gave them choices, albeit limited.
“There are always options, but none as good as this, and the odds are no better either.” She took in what he said, and swigged at her beer, then Dan said, “So what about you? I guess this is essentially case closed for you? You found out about Habibi, you found out who Jacques Fillon was.”
“Habibi wasn’t important—we just wanted to know what happened to him.”
“And the rest?”
“I’m not sure. Our interest was more than the identity of Jacques Fillon, and given what we found . . . I don’t know. I’ll have to speak to my superior. Maybe I’m done after tomorrow.”
Dan nodded and said, “Well, it’s only been a couple of days, but I’ve enjoyed working with you.”
“Me too. It wasn’t . . .” She stopped herself. He raised his eyebrows, a little mock curiosity, and she said, “As you know already, I read a little about you before coming up here, and yes, it’s only been a couple of days, but you weren’t how I expected.”
Teasing, he said, “In a good way?”
She smiled, saying, “In a good way.”
She didn’t need to spell it out. Dan knew how he read on paper, and she probably hadn’t seen the half of it. He’d spent years working the edge, no rules of engagement, a ruthless focus on getting the job done, no matter what the cost. The only distinction between him and the monsters he’d taken down was the legitimacy of being paid by the winning side.
Or at least, he’d been part of the winning side back then—he had no idea which side he was on now. And he wouldn’t discover the answer to that question until he got back out into the world, to see how far Jack Redford would take him, and how much protection his secret afforded.
Chapter Eighteen
Per drove them to Lule? the following afternoon and they flew back to Stockholm. Patrick wasn’t flying in until early the following morning, so Dan thought Inger might suggest getting together for dinner, but instead she gave him the address of a café and suggested meeting the following afternoon to brief each other on developments.
So he spent the night alone in the hotel on Skeppsholmen, almost as quiet and removed from the world as the cabin they’d been sharing the last few days. The hotel itself wasn’t one he’d have chosen if it hadn’t been for the location, so he went to bed early and spent an hour listening to the wind blowing the leaves from the trees, and the faint sounds of the very few cars that came onto the island.
He woke once in the night, knocked into high alert by a noise nearby, probably only a door closing in the corridor. He could still hear the breeze working through the branches outside, but nothing else of the city beyond. And as he lay, slowly yielding to sleep again, he thought of Inger, somewhere else in the city, sleeping in her own bed, a million miles away from him.
The next day was clear and sunny but there was a stiff breeze now, chopping up the water in the harbor, a cold bite to it. Seeing the island in the daylight, he realized he’d been here before. The hotel and the few other buildings had been part of some historic garrison, so the whole island had that leafy campus quality he’d often seen in military installations. Most of those leaves now lay thick on the ground and more skittered and whipped through the air on the wind.
He crossed over to the mainland and left a message for Patrick White in the reception at the Grand Hotel, telling him simply to cross the bridge to Skeppsholmen at eleven. The location was perfect in that sense, in that it allowed him to make sure Patrick was on his own and not being followed.