Assassin's Game

FIFTY-EIGHT

Arne Sanderson sat in the passenger seat of his ex-wife’s new Volvo, tinkering with the seat controls to find a more comfortable position.

“Can I help?” Ingrid asked from the driver’s seat.

“No, I’m fine. Just a bit of soreness from the surgery.”

“It’s only been two days. Have you taken your pain pills?”

He gave her a severe look. “I won’t let you be my nursemaid as well. By the way, I haven’t asked lately — how is Alfred?”

“The same,” she said.

Sanderson stared out at Stockholm in the late-morning gloom, a steady rain peppering the windshield. “Sjoberg came to see me yesterday.”

“Did he?”

“I’m being put up as a hero, you know. Relentless detective, fighting illness and the odds. All that rubbish. Of course there’s no mention of the fact that I had been taken off the case, let alone that the assistant commissioner thought I’d slipped my gimbals.”

She asked, “Did you really throw your credentials at him?”

“I suppose that was a bit juvenile of me.”

Ingrid giggled.

“It felt good at the time.” Sanderson allowed a smile, and the ensuing silence was broken by no more than the thrum of passing cars and the hiss of wet asphalt under the Volvo’s wide tires.

He said, “They want me to come back.”

“Arne, that’s wonderful!”

“Is it?”

“Please — don’t tell me you’ve turned them down.” Her tone was that of a mother chiding a recalcitrant child. “Arne?”

“I told Sjoberg I’d think about it. But I just don’t know.”

“The department has been your life.”

“Yes, I know. But in those days — when I thought my career had ended — it wasn’t so bad. Sooner or later I’ll be gone, and the department will get along fine without Arne Sanderson. My thirty-five years won’t even be stuffed into a file cabinet — just compressed onto a hard drive somewhere that won’t have the decency to gather dust. An electronic urn for the remains of my career.”

“And what did you expect? A statue in Stortorget Square? I won’t tolerate self-pity, Arne. No one will make a record of my life, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been useful. I’ve made a difference in people’s lives, and put a few smiles on faces along the way.”

He looked at her and met her eyes for a moment. “Yes. Yes, you have.”

Her attention went back to the road as she added, “I see no reason for either of us to go idle — not while we can still contribute something.”

She turned onto Sanderson’s street, and soon the Volvo was splashing into his rutted driveway. She kept the car going, the wipers flapping rhythmically.

“Can I help you inside?” she asked.

“No, I’ll manage.”

“I’ll check on you tomorrow, maybe bring a batch of my potato soup.”

“That would be nice, thank you.”

“Did you remember your key?”

He gave her a suffering look, but after a long moment turned serious.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Well, I—”

“No, of course you can’t, you’re a policeman’s wife … or were. But I want you to promise me this once.”

Ingrid nodded.

“All this business in the papers about me getting the better of the assassin, shooting him on that bridge in Geneva. It’s all a lie. My official report, the details of how I came across the two of them — it’s fabricated, nearly every word.”

“But Arne — why?”

“The whole thing was staged.”

“Staged?”

Sanderson confessed, telling her about the three-way encounter on the jetty, Hamedi’s confession and the assassin’s plan.

“You can’t be serious,” she said when he was done.

“All I had to do was pretend to shoot the man.”

“So this Israeli killer — he’s still alive?”

Sanderson looked away, clearly perplexed. He mused aloud, “When I was standing on that bridge, facing the two of them — I wasn’t well. I had a terrible pain in my head, fine motor issues. I wasn’t thinking clearly. It couldn’t have been a more simple task. All I had to do was point the gun at the man and miss, then he was to go over the rail. But my vision—”

“Your vision?”

“At the last moment I remember seeing double. There were two of him, and I was terribly confused and dizzy. You see, I’m not sure, but … I fear I may have shot him after all.”

She held his hand for a long moment, then reached over and kissed his cheek. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No, you’ve been wonderful as always. Thank you.”

“Take care of yourself, Arne.”

“I will. And you take care of Alfred.”

Minutes later Sanderson was inside and had the teakettle on the stove. He turned on the furnace, then went around the house and cracked windows open to clear the stagnant air that had built in his absence. On the kitchen counter he lined up enough pill bottles to start his own pharmacy, and finally settled into his best chair. He turned on the television and quickly found a news broadcast. The banner at the bottom told him all he needed to know. BREAKING NEWS: NUCLEAR BLAST DETECTED IN CENTRAL IRAN. GOVERNMENT SILENT AS TO CAUSE. The commentator speculated, because that was all he could do. Sanderson registered none of it. Instead, he weighed the evidence himself, having a good bit more to work with. He sat very still, sifting and making deductions, applying the events of today to what he remembered from Geneva.

The teakettle began whistling three minutes later, and by that time, as he stood gingerly and went into the warming kitchen, Arne Sanderson had a broad smile on his face.