“Any chance of a better picture?” he asked.
“Not while he’s moving,” the technician said. “It’s not exactly broad daylight out there.”
The image was jumping and shaking as the man outside made his way across the abandoned railway yard. Søren’s eyes wandered over to one of the other screens, the one that gave him a bird’s eye view of the area. They had two men stationed on the roof of the closest residential building on Rovsingsgade. The beat-up blue Scania refrigeration truck that was the object of the whole operation was parked more or less in the middle of the derelict triangle of no-man’s land between Rovsingsgade and the old railway junction tracks. A little farther away, on the other side of the strip of straggling allotment gardens, a train rattled past in a flicker of lit windows. Darkness had given way to half-light. Luckily, a mass of leaden clouds delayed true dawn a little, but it was still light enough for the inhabitants of the refrigeration truck to spot Berndt if he wasn’t careful.
But he was. Currently the little camera mounted on his headset was showing nothing except close-ups of stiff, yellow grass and nettle stalks from last year.
“Come on, come on.…” mumbled a voice on the far side of the technician—Mikael Nielsen, an intense young man with a very high IQ, one of the new people Søren had personally helped recruit to counterterrorism from the surveillance force. With his crew-cut and ruddy complexion, he could be mistaken for the head of one of the more violent soccer fan clubs, and he gave off a vibe that made people reluctant to share a taxi with him. He had been part of Søren’s group for a year and a half now, but Søren wasn’t sure he would last. Yes, he had a sharp mind and a head filled with astonishing facts, but there was a restlessness in him that he struggled to control during moments like this, when all they could do was wait. And wait. And wait some more. Caution took time.
Suddenly the camera advanced with a bump. They could hear Berndt’s breathing; it was very loud in the stuffy, oxygen-depleted atmosphere inside the van. The image got significantly darker.
“He’s under the truck now,” Gitte Nymand said, practically into Søren’s ear. She was standing behind him and had leaned forward so she could follow the action more closely. He couldn’t help noticing the feminine scent of freshly washed hair and deodorant. Hopefully the contrast with his own sixteen-hours-on-the-body shirt wasn’t too jarring.
Suddenly an image popped up on a screen that had so far been dark. It cut in and out and bounced and pixilated before resolving into something Søren didn’t need glasses to make out.
The bare interior of the truck’s cargo compartment. Spotlights from primitive work lamps fell stark and cold on a single, exposed silhouette on a chair. The man’s hands were cuffed behind his back, and a black plastic package had been strapped to his bare chest with wide strips of metallic duct tape.
“Yes!” Gitte hissed softly, and Søren didn’t begrudge her the small triumphant outburst. She had been right. She was the one who had gotten their captured activist to reveal his knowledge of the local area—surprisingly extensive knowledge, considering the man was a foreigner. She and Mikael had spotted the refrigeration truck and discovered that its registered owner had never heard of it. She had been in counterterrorism for only four months, and her self-confidence would undoubtedly benefit from a victory like this one.
“Contact on-site command,” Søren told Mikael. “Tell him we have visual confirmation and that they have explosives on the hostage. We need to stop traffic on Rovsingsgade before we go in.”
There were other more shadowy forms moving inside the Scania truck’s cargo hold. Four of them, it looked like. Two were holding a video camera and debating quietly in English why it wasn’t working.
“It’s the batteries.” The speaker was a woman, but the balaclavas and the shapeless bulletproof vests made it hard to discern much else.
“I just recharged them!” protested another, a youngish man by the sound of it.
“I can’t believe that Berndt got us visuals,” Gitte said. “I thought we’d be lucky to have sound. How did he do it?”
“The ventilation system,” Mikael Nielsen said absentmindedly, jabbing at his fancy new digital radio with an irritated thumb. “Come on!”
Finally he got a connection. He spoke quietly and moved over to the farthest end of the van so as to disrupt the surveillance as little as possible, and Søren refocused his attention once more on events in the refrigeration truck.
Two of the four kidnappers were holding automatic rifles; it was hard to see exactly what make, but there was something about the outline that reminded Søren of the Danish army’s old Heckler & Kochs. Presumably the two with the video camera at least had handguns, even though he couldn’t see them. But the explosives were by far the most critical factor in this situation.
All things considered, the hostage was remarkably calm. He was sitting quietly in the chair, watching his executioners with impassive equanimity. The spotlight bounced off his clean-shaven head and created sharp shadows below his chin and in the hollows beneath his collarbones. The mild shivers that made his naked shoulders tremble every few seconds seemed to be only a reaction to the cold.
Suddenly Søren felt Mikael’s hand on his shoulder.
“It’s not working,” he said. “I can’t get through to command. This crappy new system keeps transferring me to 911 instead.”
Shit. Søren didn’t say it out loud, that would only make the situation worse. He also suppressed the urge to snatch Mikael’s radio in order to see if it made any difference that an inspector pushed the buttons. Sometimes you could get people to do what you wanted by pulling rank; technology couldn’t care less.
“See if you can get him on his mobile,” he said. “But be careful what you say. We aren’t the only ones who can eavesdrop on the mobile network.”
Mikael nodded, chewing the nicotine gum that kept him smoke-free in tense situations so vigorously that the muscles in his intimidating jaw bulged under his skin. “I’ll try.”
But a few seconds later he swore again. “He has turned it off.”
That was per regulation, actually. Søren’s own mobile was also off so it wouldn’t jeopardize the operation.
“Okay,” he said. “Input?”
“The clock is ticking,” Mikael said. “At some point they’ll notice that Blue 1 is missing or that Blue 4 is failing to check in.” Blue 1 was the code name for the activist they had captured and interrogated; Blue 4 the guard that Berndt’s unit had taken out.
“Can we still get in touch with our own lot?” Søren said.
“Yes. It’s just the rest of the emergency services that have fallen off the map.”
“Brave new digital world,” Søren muttered.
“I think we should go in,” Mikael said. “While we still have the element of surprise. Seize them before they can push the button.”
“And if it goes wrong? You don’t know how powerful those explosives are,” Søren pointed out. “They’re only about twenty to thirty meters away from the traffic on Rovsingsgade.”
“And they could easily have a lookout outside—someone we haven’t spotted,” Gitte said.
“Well, if they do, then why didn’t he spot Berndt?” Mikael objected.
“Because Berndt is Berndt.”
“But it’s every bit as dangerous to wait. They could kill the hostage at any time. With or without the explosives.”
“No,” Gitte said. “Because they haven’t made the recording yet.”
Mikael emitted a sound of frustration, half wheeze, half sigh.
“Terrorism is called terrorism because the goal is fear,” Gitte said. “Isn’t that what you’re always preaching, boss?”