Bjorn grabs onto the wet ladder and climbs aboard onto the foredeck, then clatters down a set of stairs to a metal door. The launch rocks in a swell. Bjorn staggers a second and then opens the door.
A sweet metallic smell fills the wheelhouse-oil and sweat.
The first thing Bjorn spots is a police officer, tanned from his work, lying on the floor with a bullet hole between eyes that are wide open. The pool of blood beneath him has dried almost black. Bjorn gasps, stunned, and looks around at a normal-looking clutter of belongings, magazines, raincoats. He hears a voice outside. Its Ossian: his voice carrying over the pounding engine. Hes limping along the gravel pathway, a yellow umbrella over his head. Bjorns blood pounds in his head. Hes made a mistake. This is a trap. He fumbles for the door handle, dazedly seeing the splatter of blood on the inside of the windshield. The stairs to the sleeping quarters behind him creak and Bjorn fatally freezes, staring back at his nemesis. His pursuer wears a uniform. His face is alert, even curious. Its already much too late to flee, but Bjorn spots a screwdriver from above the instrument panel as a last-resort defense. The man climbs up casually, holding on to the railing, and blinks in the stronger light. He looks through the windshield to the beach. The rain pounds down. Bjorn stabs for his heart and stumbles, suddenly not comprehending what has just happened. The mans blow has numbed his arm from the shoulder down. It feels as if his arm no longer exists. The screwdriver clatters uselessly down and rolls behind an aluminum toolbox. The man now holds on to Bjorns useless arm and pulls him forward. Then another blow folds Bjorns body in on itself and he kicks Bjorns feet out from under him. The killer guides his fall so that his face takes the full force of his momentum against the footrest at the steering wheel. Bjorns neck is snapped by the collision. He feels nothing at all but does see strange sparks-small lights that jump about in darkness and then slow down and become more and more pleasant to watch. A quiver passes over his face, which he does not feel, and then he is dead.
56
Penelope stands at the window. The skies flash bright from lightning and thunder rolls over the sea. The rain pours down. Bjorn has disappeared into the wheelhouse of the police launch. She watches Ossian limp down toward the water, a yellow umbrella over his head. The metal door of the wheelhouse opens and a uniformed police officer steps out onto the foredeck, hops onto the dock, and ties up the boat.
Not until the policeman begins to walk up the gravel path does Penelope see who it is.
Her pursuer does not bother to answer Ossians greeting. His left hand snakes out to clutch Ossian under the chin.
Penelopes phone drops from her hand unnoticed.
With professional ease, the man in uniform turns Ossians face to one side, slides a dagger into his own right hand, turns Ossians face farther awry, and then, in seconds, sends the dagger into Ossians neck right above the atlas vertebra and directly into the brain stem. The yellow umbrella falls to the ground and rolls down the slope. Ossian is dead before his body touches the earth.
The man strides closer. A pale flicker of lightning illuminates his face and Penelope meets his eyes. Before the darkness falls again, she can see the worried expression on his face, his exhausted, sad eyes, and his mouth, disfigured by a deep scar. The thunder rolls. The man never pauses. Penelope stands by the window, absolutely paralyzed. Her breaths come quick, but she cant flee.
The rain batters the window frames and the glass panes. The world outside seems far away. Suddenly the man is silhouetted by a bright yellow light that seems to brighten the dock, the water, even the sky. As if a massive oak tree had sprouted from the boat behind him, a column of fire shoots up with a bellow. Metal scraps fly into the air. The cloud of fire grows and pulsates with an eerie, internal flickering. Its heat sets nearby brush, even the dock, afire. The explosion pounds against the house.
With shattered glass falling around her, Penelope is finally able to act. She whirls around, running so fast she just races up and over the sofa and down the hallway with all its signed portraits. Out the back door and over the ragged lawn. She slips but keeps going, through the pounding rain along the trampled path, around the grove of birches, and out onto a meadow. A family with children-all dressed in bright yellow rain gear, life vests, and carrying fishing poles-is braving the downpour. Penelope runs straight between them and down to the sandy beach. Shes out of breath and feels she might faint. She has to stop, and yet she cant. Instead, she drops down behind a small wheelbarrow and vomits into the nettles. She whispers the Lords Prayer. Thunder rumbles from far away. Shakily she rises to a crouch, wiping the rain from her face with her sleeve, to peer back across the meadow. The man is rounding the birch grove. He pauses next to the family group and they immediately point in her direction. She ducks, creeps backward, sliding down the shallow cliff to run close to the water. Her footsteps leave a white track behind her in the churned-up wet sand. A long pontoon bridge seems to offer the only distance she can reach, and she runs along it as far as she can. She hears the thud of helicopter blades and keeps on running. It takes only a quick glance to see her pursuer heading straight for her. At the far end of the bridge, a man is being winched down from the sky, from a rescue helicopter. He lands there, waiting for her. The water around him is whipped up in concentric circles from the wash of the helicopters blades. Penelope runs straight to him. Quickly he fastens a harness to her, shouting instructions, and then circles his hand in a gesture to the aircraft above them. They are lifted free from the bridge, swept to one side close over the water as the line lifts them toward the helicopter. Penelopes view of the beach is almost immediately blocked by the encroaching spruce trees, but just before that moment, she sees her pursuer go down on one knee. Hes setting down a black backpack and swiftly assembling something. Hes out of her sight then; she sees only the tight tops of trees and the turbulent surface of the sea.