Forty Hours: A breath-taking thriller Page 14

  You didn’t press the button, Faris thought. He could tell from Paul’s expression that he knew exactly what was going through Faris’s head.

  “Faris is on sick le…” Paul’s voice continued on the recording.

  He was again interrupted. “I demand that he be brought back immediately!”

  “That won’t work.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “Listen …” Paul exclaimed, but the caller cut him off.

  “As-samu alaikum,” he hissed before hanging up.

  It was so quiet in the War Room that you could have heard a pin drop. Everyone here knew that this was the moment the bomb exploded. The recording continued to play and on it, Paul’s phone started ringing again. He answered.

  “So,” the caller said congenially. “Hopefully, that kind soul can now take his ease! Make sure that by the next time I call, I can talk to Faris. Otherwise, your body count will keep going up!” And with that, he hung up for a second time.

  Ben stopped the recording. Paul let his arm fall from his head to his lap. He looked gray and years older than he had just moments before.

  “That kind soul can now take his ease!” Shannon repeated. “That is a biblical reference, a saying my grandmother used years ago. From Luke’s gospel, I believe.”

  “Do you think he’s a Christian?” This whole time, Faris had suspected that the caller couldn’t be a Muslim.

  “I’m sure of that,” Shannon confirmed.

  Faris glanced over at Dr. Geiger to gauge how she was taking these conclusions and theories. To his surprise, she looked open to them. Her arms were folded, and she was nodding thoughtfully. “Does this call help jog any thoughts about a connection you might have with this man?” she asked Faris.

  He rubbed his jaw. “Unfortunately, no.”

  “And how do all of you want to proceed?” Geiger asked, turning to Tromsdorff.

  “He will doubtless call back,” he replied. “What other reason could there be to demand that Faris be brought here? Ben?”

  During this conversation, Ben had been messing with his laptop and one of the black boxes. He now reached for a cell phone and held it up. Faris recognized his own phone. Ben had obviously cleaned off the dust from the subway explosion.

  “We haven’t had much success at tracing the calls. We installed a trap and trace program on your phone, but it hasn’t delivered the results we’d hoped for. All we’ve figured out is that the culprit is using an internet link to communicate with us.”

  “What about the sender of the crucifixion video?” Gerlach interjected.

  “We know that the email came from Faris’s home computer,” Ben explained. “And we’re assuming that our mysterious culprit somehow smuggled a trojan onto his hard drive.”

  Faris nodded.

  “We could analyze the source of the trojan,” Ben continued. “But that would take too long.” His eyes met Faris’s, and Faris suspected that Ben was wondering if Hesse had had any luck at all in his search. He imperceptibly shook his head.

  He saw Geiger lean over to Gerlach and whisper something in his ear. The older officer nodded and jotted something down in a small tablet he pulled out of his pocket. Faris assumed that Gerlach had just been asked to examine his computer. He briefly wondered if he should simply admit – right here, right now – to having asked Hesse to install an illegal search program on his machine to track down the culprit. But then he glanced at Geiger and remembered that he was only here on probation. Because the caller had demanded this. Not because Geiger thought that he could actually be useful.

  For a long moment, no one spoke.

  “Good.” Geiger straightened up. “Do your colleagues from Department 5 have anything new to share, Gerlach?”

  “The bomb squad is on continuous alert,” the gray-haired officer reported. “By now, we also have the canine units from Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt.” He smiled grimly. “I’m already receiving complaints from the dog handlers that we’re overworking the poor animals. We have yet to find any indication of bombs at the stadium, and our search also includes the other five largest gathering sites. The Brandenburg Gate, Convention Centers Five and Six, the Memorial Church, and the Cathedral. Andersen is currently briefing all the officers who have contacts with informants inside the terrorist scene. But in the little time we have, they won’t be of much help.” The look he sent Tromsdorff was open and frank. “If we can be honest here, we’re hoping that your team will slice the head off the snake.”

  Tromsdorff sighed. “Or that we find the crucified man in time. Gitta? What’s going on with the tips from the public?”

  Gitta consulted a pile of folded pages. “I’ve checked the DigA A entries from the emergency phone center, as well as the phone banks whose numbers were given out in the press release. Her eyes flitted across the paper. “All in all, there are about three hundred tips that are being followed up on right now, of which about two dozen are promising. But none of them bring us even one step farther.”

  As she was speaking, Faris’s gaze wandered over to his phone, which Ben had set down on the table beside him. Regardless of the efforts their colleagues were making, the only solid lead they had was the man on the other end of the line.

  While he mulled over what they could do next, the burner phone in his leather jacket started to ring. He pulled it out and answered. It was Hesse.

  “The software’s found something,” he said without greeting. “But I’m not sure you’re going to be happy about it.”

  “Just tell me,” Faris urged him.

  “Your email was sent from an internet café somewhere close to Ku’damm …”

  In the middle of that word, a chirping sound started, sending a shiver down Faris’s back. Gitta clapped both hands over her mouth.

  Ben’s hand darted over to Faris’s phone. “It’s him!” he confirmed, superfluously.

  Chapter 16

  Faris asked Hesse to call him back later, and he pocketed his temporary phone. In the meantime, Ben had connected Faris’s regular phone to an amplifier, and he handed Faris a headset, which the latter put on. Ben, Tromsdorff and Dr. Geiger did the same thing.

  “Iskander,” Faris answered when everyone was ready.

  “Hi, Faris.” The electronically distorted voice hit Faris like a punch. “How nice that you’re back. I was practically yearning for you.”

  “I couldn’t help that ...” Faris started, but the caller interrupted him.

  “I know, I know. I’m no longer annoyed that someone else answered instead of you.”

  Faris made a surprised sound.

  The caller chuckled. “You didn’t see that coming, did you? Anyway. Let’s just say that the little fire I set has cooled my temper.”

  Faris forced himself to stay calm, even though the words sent fury surging through him. He suddenly remembered the friendly face of the nun with the pale eyes, and he felt his neck muscles tense. He tried to breathe as quietly as possible, but not quietly enough as it turned out.

  “Feeling stressed, Faris?” The caller sounded content. “That’s good.”

  “Why?” Faris asked. He knew that he needed to get the man to talk, to provide him with some detail that could help them figure out where he was.

  However, the stranger didn’t respond to his question. “Are your colleagues listening in on our little chat?” he asked instead. Despite the voice distortion, Faris thought he could hear how relaxed the man was. “Tell Ben he should feel free to turn on the loudspeaker.”

  Faris jerked his head up. His eyes first stopped on Ben, whose eyes were huge, before moving on to his supervisor.

  Ben’s hand rose and hovered for a moment over the amplifier to which the headsets were connected. He shot Tromsdorff a questioning look.

  His commanding officer hesitated.

  “Don’t be so shy,” the caller ordered, and Faris involuntarily scanned the corners of the room for cameras. Had the man somehow managed to get surveillance access
to the War Room, just as he had in the Bismarckstraße subway station?

  Finally, Tromsdorff nodded. Ben lowered his hand and pressed the button. Faris’s headset emitted a very quiet crackling sound, which the caller obviously heard as well. “Well then,” the distorted voice now sounded from the amplifier’s loudspeaker.

  Tromsdorff, Ben and Faris removed their headsets, but Dr. Geiger was listening so hard that she didn’t do the same.

  “With whom do I have the honor of speaking?” the stranger asked. “Superintendent Tromsdorff?

  “I’m here,” Tromsdorff replied. In the interim, Paul had stood up and walked over to the case wall. He now picked up one of the markers and removed its cap. He thought for a few moments, then wrote several words on the board.

  The culprit knows SURV!

  He underlined the sentence several times.

  Faris nodded at him. Marc Sommer, who had been silently standing beside them the whole time, leaned back against a window frame and crossed his arms.

  “How nice!” the caller exclaimed. “Welcome, welcome, ladies and gentlemen!”

  Tromsdorff tightened his jaw so much that his muscles protruded visibly. He had shoved his jacket sleeves up to his elbows, but now he yanked them back down. It looked as if he suddenly felt cold.

  Faris stood up from his chair. As he considered what to say next, he picked up a pad of paper that was lying on the case table. With a pencil, he wrote down: Does he have access to cameras here, in this room?

  Ben turned one of the knobs on an elongated gray box and shook his head. “Impossible!” he mouthed soundlessly.

  Faris was relieved.

  “Cat got your tongue, Faris?” the caller inquired. “You haven’t said anything in a while.”

  “Why is it good if I’m feeling stressed?” Faris repeated his earlier question.

  The caller asked again. “Do you really think I’m that stupid? If I tell you that, I’d hand you a clue that you could do something with. Do you already have a guess who I might be?”

  “Perhaps.”

  The caller fell silent for a second, then he said, “Know what? When I think about it, the fact that you seem to think I’m an idiot upsets me a little. I mean, it was really silly of you to give up your phone and head off. That was very inconsiderate of you!”

  Faris closed his eyes. He had seen that coming.

  “I will grant you absolution, but as penance you have to tell me what all you have discovered about me.”

  Faris searched for Tromsdorff’s gaze. His boss’s face was inscrutable, but he shook his head slightly.

  “Or would you prefer that I set off another bomb?” the caller asked.

  “No!” Faris exclaimed.

  “Alright. Then give me a proper report, soldier!”

  At this final word, Paul wrinkled his forehead thoughtfully. He started playing with his marker, and Faris could see that his brain had just shifted into high gear. Paul wrote Soldier on the case wall.

  Faris looked over at Tromsdorff. Should I? he mouthed. And when Tromsdorff nodded grimly, he began. “We know that you can’t be the museum bomber. We also know that you hacked into the police database, and that’s how you accessed the details we never released to the public.”

  “Good work!” The caller sounded pleased.

  “So we’re right about that?”

  “On both counts, yes.”

  “Nonetheless, there’s still some connection between you and the museum bombing,” Faris resumed. Perhaps he could force the man to make a mistake. The room Faris sat in was filled with trained case analysts, including himself. They would register every spike in excitement, every tiny exclamation, that could possibly be a clue.

  “Who knows?” the man shot back. “Maybe I just used that nice little phrase to get your full attention.”

  Still standing next to the case wall, Paul energetically shook his head and pointed at one line.

  Link between Faris and culprit.

  He then tapped the words Score to settle before adding three exclamation marks behind them.

  All of a sudden, Faris once again became aware of Dr. Geiger’s presence. The Department 1 director had removed her headset by now, but unlike Tromsdorff and Ben, who had set theirs down on the table, she was still holding hers. She kept fiddling with it indecisively, as she exchanged long looks with Gerlach.

  “What else have you learned?” the caller’s voice rasped through the speaker.

  Faris shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We know that you’re planning an attack at the papal Mass tomorrow.”

  “Excellent! But that wasn’t too hard to figure out, was it?”

  Faris didn’t respond to this.

  The man on the other end of the line laughed. “Chatting with you is a little tedious, Faris, with all your stops and starts.”

  “No,” Faris squeezed out between clenched teeth. “It wasn’t that difficult.” And then he remembered something. He glanced back at the case wall on which Paul had written Two culprits, and he considered what he could do to entice at least some detail out of the stranger on this topic.

  “Good boy!” the caller commended him.

  “Where do we go from here?” Faris asked to shift course.

  “Well, what do you think? You can try to find me, do all that fancy police stuff that you’re all so damned proud of. And I’ll wait and see if you’re successful.”

  “You view this as a game, don’t you?”

  The caller’s voice sounded amused. “A game? Of course! Isn’t it?”

  “What do you want from me?” Faris balled his right hand into a fist. “Why me, of all people? I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.”

  “You disappoint me, Faris! What do you think this is? A bluff, like back there at the museum? No, perhaps it’s about time to give you a little leg up. If you decide to call off the service tomorrow evening, I will know.”

  “I …”

  “Let me finish, Faris! You know that I hacked into the police server once before, but I can do it a second time, trust me. It doesn’t matter what your super-smart IT people claim. If I get even a little suspicious that you’re about to cancel the service, I will set off another bomb that will make the one in the subway look like a breeze. So, what’s going to happen next?”

  He paused, and when Faris didn’t say anything, continued. “The internet café on Knesebeckstraße, Faris. That’s where I was when I sent that trojan to your computer yesterday. You asked me what you should do now. Fine, I’ll tell you, though to be honest, I’m rather disappointed that it’s necessary. Go to that café. That might help you get a little closer to me.”

  Faris gritted his teeth.

  “That is the condition for my absolution. Got it, Faris?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That’s the next step. Your very special task is as follows: Find my father before it’s too late! Otherwise the people in the city … You know what their fate will be, if you fail.” He waited a second before pressing for an answer. “You do know, don’t you?”

  Faris’s stomach plummeted. “Yes,” he whispered through dry lips.

  “Say it!”

  “I …”

  “Say it, Faris! Say it so that I know you understand everything. What will happen to all those people out there if you fail one more time?”

  Faris closed his eyes. “They will die.”

  *

  “The man definitely has a score to settle with you.”

  After the caller had hung up, Marc Sommer was the first person to speak. His voice sounded a little hoarse. He was still leaning against the window frame.

  Shannon was busily jotting down notes on a piece of paper. “Did you hear what he said? That the man on the cross is his father, I mean.”

  “He might be feeding us misinformation,” Tromsdorff said. “But check it out anyway.”

  Shannon nodded and continued scribbling on her notepad.

  Faris made a decision. “I’m going t
o head off right away,” he said, and he was already halfway to the door when Tromsdorff called out to him.

  “Wait! You aren’t going anywhere without your gun and badge!”

  With that, he explicitly challenged Geiger’s mandate. She shook her head rapidly. “Mr. Iskander isn’t officially back on the force yet. I will not permit him to …”

  “Anke!” Tromsdorff’s voice cut in, sharp and hard. He slowly rose to his feet. “I will NOT allow Faris to go out there without a weapon, and believe you me, I don’t fucking care what you do with me after all this shit is over. Kick my butt out the door, for all I care, but you will give him back his badge and weapon immediately, or …”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. His face was now flushed beet red, and his hands were clenched into fists. He slowly opened them, took a deep breath, and sat back down.

  Geiger was speechless. Faris could see the wheels turning inside her mind, but to his relief, she was too smart to escalate the confrontation. “Fine,” she agreed. She put her headset back on and reached for her phone; an elegant, ultra-flat device. She flipped it open, dialed, gave a few curt orders, and snapped it shut again. “I have set everything in motion. Someone will be here in a few minutes with the items.”

  It wasn’t difficult to interpret the long malevolent look she gave Tromsdorff. We will talk later!

  Faris tried to relax. Hopefully this wouldn’t cost them all their heads in the end.

  “Okay.” At the whiteboard, Paul cleared his throat, bringing everyone’s attention back to the case. He clicked the lid back on the marker, set it down, and sat on the edge of the case table. “Maybe we shouldn’t limit ourselves to the museum case. We should go through all the old cases in which Faris made the arrest. The guy might be trying to lead us astray with clues that are supposed to point us toward the museum bombing.”

  Faris let his eyes close again. The responsibility resting on his shoulders felt as heavy as lead. The dead from the museum returned to him. All those people he hadn’t been able to save! What if he failed now, too? What if, because of him, not hundreds but thousands of people died?