coming , Annika tried to shout, but the wind whipped her words away from her and threw them in the wrong direction.
You’ve got to hurry , the wind whispered, because I’m dying .
No! Annika cried. Wait!
And the next moment Caroline was lying in front of her. She was lying on the marble floor and looking up at Annika, and Annika was sorelieved, she fell to her knees beside the woman and leaned over toward her mouth to listen, and that was when Annika realized that the woman’s chest had been torn open—she could see the rhythmic contractions of her heart and the blood gushing out with every pulse.
No! she screamed in panic, trying to get up, but she was stuck fast, her hands were heavy as lead, impossible to lift. I didn’t mean to get here too late, that wasn’t what I wanted!
But then she suddenly realized that it wasn’t Caroline von Behring lying there before her: it was Sophia Grenborg, her husband’s former colleague, and suddenly the horror switched to jubilation.
Now you die, she thought triumphantly, satisfaction spreading out from her stomach, right out to her fingers and toes.
The next moment Thomas was there, kneeling beside Sophia, taking her in his arms, and as the blood poured out of her open chest, he started to make love to the dying woman, and the dying woman laughed out loud.
She woke up with a start. The light in the room was thin and gray. In the corners she could still make out Sophia Grenborg’s tinkling laughter, fragile and cold as shards of ice.
She’s gone now, Annika thought. She’ll never bother us again.
Thomas had taken the children to nursery school, and she reached down to the floor for her cell phone to see what the time was. 10:46. She’d been asleep three and a half hours.
The dream followed her like an uncomfortable shadow as she showered and got dressed. She skipped breakfast, calling Berit and arranging to have an early lunch with her instead.
More snow had fallen during the morning, muffling all sound. The number 62 bus glided up to the stop, shapeless and soundless. The driver didn’t look at her as she got on, showing her season ticket. The indefinable sense of unease from the dream followed her down the central aisle of the bus, breathing on her neck as she passed the other passengers, all gray and shadowy, none of them paying her any attention.
I don’t exist, she thought. I’m invisible, and I’ve gotten on a ghost-bus to hell.
Twelve minutes later she got off outside the Russian Embassy. Berit had remembered to bring her lunch vouchers with her, and Annika guiltily borrowed yet another one.
“I’ll pay you back soon …”
Her colleague waved aside her assurances and made her way to the salad bar with the latest editions tucked under her arm.
They picked at their food as they read.
There were the victims: the prizewinner, the chair of the Nobel Committee, and the three guards. The information about these last three was sketchy; their full names hadn’t been known until the early hours, so no one had had time to contact their families yet.
“We’ll have to divide that between us this afternoon,” Berit said, and Annika made a note on the edge of the page.
The prizewinner had been moved from the intensive care unit to a normal ward.
“I don’t suppose he’ll be sharing a room with Dodgy Hip Helga,” Annika said, turning the page.
“He’s got half of Mossad guarding him,” Berit said, eating the last bit of a Wasa low-fat crispbread. “They’re having a hell of a time explaining how the hell he came to be shot. They knew there were loads of threats against him.”
Aaron Wiesel and Charles Watson were stem-cell researchers, and vocal advocates of therapeutic cloning. The decision to award them the Nobel Prize for Medicine had been controversial. It had unleashed a wave of protests from Catholic and radical Protestant groups.
“Did you follow the debate when the prize was announced?” Berit asked.
“I can’t say that I did,”
You’ve got to hurry , the wind whispered, because I’m dying .
No! Annika cried. Wait!
And the next moment Caroline was lying in front of her. She was lying on the marble floor and looking up at Annika, and Annika was sorelieved, she fell to her knees beside the woman and leaned over toward her mouth to listen, and that was when Annika realized that the woman’s chest had been torn open—she could see the rhythmic contractions of her heart and the blood gushing out with every pulse.
No! she screamed in panic, trying to get up, but she was stuck fast, her hands were heavy as lead, impossible to lift. I didn’t mean to get here too late, that wasn’t what I wanted!
But then she suddenly realized that it wasn’t Caroline von Behring lying there before her: it was Sophia Grenborg, her husband’s former colleague, and suddenly the horror switched to jubilation.
Now you die, she thought triumphantly, satisfaction spreading out from her stomach, right out to her fingers and toes.
The next moment Thomas was there, kneeling beside Sophia, taking her in his arms, and as the blood poured out of her open chest, he started to make love to the dying woman, and the dying woman laughed out loud.
She woke up with a start. The light in the room was thin and gray. In the corners she could still make out Sophia Grenborg’s tinkling laughter, fragile and cold as shards of ice.
She’s gone now, Annika thought. She’ll never bother us again.
Thomas had taken the children to nursery school, and she reached down to the floor for her cell phone to see what the time was. 10:46. She’d been asleep three and a half hours.
The dream followed her like an uncomfortable shadow as she showered and got dressed. She skipped breakfast, calling Berit and arranging to have an early lunch with her instead.
More snow had fallen during the morning, muffling all sound. The number 62 bus glided up to the stop, shapeless and soundless. The driver didn’t look at her as she got on, showing her season ticket. The indefinable sense of unease from the dream followed her down the central aisle of the bus, breathing on her neck as she passed the other passengers, all gray and shadowy, none of them paying her any attention.
I don’t exist, she thought. I’m invisible, and I’ve gotten on a ghost-bus to hell.
Twelve minutes later she got off outside the Russian Embassy. Berit had remembered to bring her lunch vouchers with her, and Annika guiltily borrowed yet another one.
“I’ll pay you back soon …”
Her colleague waved aside her assurances and made her way to the salad bar with the latest editions tucked under her arm.
They picked at their food as they read.
There were the victims: the prizewinner, the chair of the Nobel Committee, and the three guards. The information about these last three was sketchy; their full names hadn’t been known until the early hours, so no one had had time to contact their families yet.
“We’ll have to divide that between us this afternoon,” Berit said, and Annika made a note on the edge of the page.
The prizewinner had been moved from the intensive care unit to a normal ward.
“I don’t suppose he’ll be sharing a room with Dodgy Hip Helga,” Annika said, turning the page.
“He’s got half of Mossad guarding him,” Berit said, eating the last bit of a Wasa low-fat crispbread. “They’re having a hell of a time explaining how the hell he came to be shot. They knew there were loads of threats against him.”
Aaron Wiesel and Charles Watson were stem-cell researchers, and vocal advocates of therapeutic cloning. The decision to award them the Nobel Prize for Medicine had been controversial. It had unleashed a wave of protests from Catholic and radical Protestant groups.
“Did you follow the debate when the prize was announced?” Berit asked.
“I can’t say that I did,”
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