Forty Hours: A breath-taking thriller Read online

  You didn’t push the button. Paul’s words echoed through his head. His partner had repeated them to him over and over again as Faris lay in the hospital.

  Shannon shook her head and glanced up from her notes. She disagreed with Paul. “I don’t think we need to expand our search to other cases. The caller’s voice was distorted, but he is clearly tense whenever he talks about the museum bombing. I think he is somehow linked to that case. We should focus on that … and on the thing with his father. We might find some connection there.”

  “He wouldn’t have brought up his father, if there wasn’t.” Paul sounded fully convinced of this.

  Faris tried to imagine what it would take for someone to nail their own father to a cross. He couldn’t.

  “We’ll work on both angles,” Tromsdorff decided. “Just to be sure.” He waved at Paul, who stood back up and wrote another note on the board.

  Check on old cases. Revenge.

  This time he drew three question marks after it. After a moment’s thought, he added:

  Father?

  “Don’t forget that we are searching for two individuals,” Faris murmured. He felt tired and a little sick. Before he could continue, a phone somewhere in the room rang.

  “It’s mine.” Without apologizing for the interruption, Dr. Geiger reached inside her jacket pocket and pulled out her phone. “Dr. Geiger,” she said and then listened for a few seconds. “That’s okay,” she replied before ending the call. Then, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid I have to go. My presence is required elsewhere.” And with that, she stood up and exchanged a long silent look with Gerlach, who almost imperceptibly nodded at her. She turned coolly toward Tromsdorff. “Robert, we have now had two bombings. I don’t need to remind you that the politicians, the conference organizers and the press are all breathing down my neck. Just make sure that this … this bastard is caught before there are more fatalities!” She left the rest of the threat unspoken, but everyone in the room knew what she really wanted to say.

  Otherwise I’ll shut down SURV for good.

  She stalked over to the door, and the next moment, she was gone.

  “I’m sorry, Robert,” Faris murmured, not knowing exactly what he should apologize for.

  Tromsdorff waved this off. “Let’s get to work!”

  The door opened again, and an officer that Faris didn’t know stepped inside.

  “I’m supposed to deliver something here,” the man mumbled by way of greeting. He was carrying a brown paper bag, and his eyes scanned the assembly in front of him.

  When Faris waved at him, the man headed over and handed him the bag. Faris looked inside. It held his badge and a Sig Sauer P6 along with a shoulder holster.

  “Welcome back on board,” the officer said.

  “Thanks!” The bag felt heavy in Faris’s hands, and he could feel Paul watching him. He met his eyes, saw the concern in them, and lowered his head, because he didn’t know how to handle that. The memory from early this morning, when he had stood at his window and yearned for this very gun, played through his mind like a film.

  Chapter 17

  The city tour was on the verge of turning into a complete catastrophe.

  The whole time, Pia chatted a blue streak with Dennis, and Jenny had hardly been able to get a word in. She kept glancing sideways at Dennis. He had pulled on his leather jacket as they left the hostel, but on the bus, he had taken it off and pushed his t-shirt sleeves up as high as they would go. His tattoos peeked out from under his collar, and Jenny simply couldn’t take her eyes off of them. She saw black wings and something that looked like a triple swirled snail. She caught herself wondering if Dennis’s stomach might also be tattooed. She started to feel a little giddy.

  As they drove past the Brandenburg Gate, he caught her gaze – and smiled.

  Pia tugged at his arm to draw his attention back to her. “Did you know,” she asked in a rather shrill voice, “that this used to be the city gate? Can you imagine? Berlin once ended here!”

  Dennis nodded politely, but Jenny had the feeling that he wasn’t all that interested in the history of the city. This time, he turned toward Jenny, and when she made eye contact with him, he rolled his eyes briefly.

  She suppressed a giggle. She might have been wrong. This tour might not be as much of a disaster as she had feared.

  Suddenly, she recalled a conversation she had had with Pia a few weeks ago. It had been on the day that Jenny had finally gotten her parents’ permission to travel to Berlin alone. The girls had been sitting on Jenny’s bed and drinking soft drinks.

  “Whew!” Pia had said, blowing up her bangs. “That was like pulling teeth. Are your parents always so stuffy?”

  Jenny had smiled into her glass. “Always.” She felt light and airy. For the first time ever, she was being allowed to travel on her own! And to Berlin, at that. She thanked the good Lord that he had arranged for the church conference to be held in the capital, of all places. “They act as if some new threat to my maidenhood is lurking on every street corner!”

  Pia leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. For a while, they were both silent, but then Pia said, “Do you think we’ll meet a couple of nice boys?”

  Jenny grinned. “They’re expecting a hundred thousand people. I’d think our chances are pretty good.” She felt a tingling in her stomach. This was so exciting!

  The room fell quiet again.

  “I intend to make it happen!” Pia eventually murmured, dreamily. Her eyes were still shut.

  Jenny turned her head. “What will happen?” she asked.

  “Silly!” Pia opened her eyes and looked over at Jenny. “I’ll lose my virginity, of course!”

  Flabbergasted, Jenny glanced over at the door to make sure it was really shut. “If my parents heard you say that,” she scolded, “I could kiss our trip goodbye. They’d never let me go with you to Berlin!”

  Pia had just laughed. “Stuffy indeed! Berlin, Jenny! If not there, then when else could it happen?”

  Now, here on this bus, a smile played around Jenny’s lips as her fingers fiddled with the glow stick hanging from her neck.

  “Do you like that thing?” Dennis’s voice tore her out of her thoughts, and she returned from the past.

  “The glow stick?”

  “Yeah. Everyone’s running around with them.” Dennis stretched out his hand and tapped the finger-thick plastic rod. As if coincidentally, he brushed against Jenny’s fingers, sending an electric jolt through her body.

  “So what?” She could feel her cheeks grow warm. “It’s a great idea: tomorrow evening, during the service, everyone will light them at the same time.” She unclipped the light from her rainbow neck strap and handed it to Dennis.

  He examined it. He read the conference motto aloud, “Speaking the Word of God Boldly.”

  Jenny snatched the light back from him, and this time she made sure that their hands touched. Dennis smiled radiantly back at her. His gaze made her feel nervous. She was aware that Pia was glaring at her darkly because she had managed to divert the conversation with Dennis to herself. And yet, for some reason, she really didn’t care if her friend was annoyed. She gazed into Dennis’s eyes, and a fluttering started in her stomach.

  Maybe she would be the one to lose her virginity during this church conference, not Pia. Who would have ever thought that?

  Exhilaration spread through her body as Dennis now reached for her hand to reclaim the light. “It’ll only work once, right?” he asked.

  Jenny nodded, and he promptly acted as if he were going to break it in the middle. She flinched, but noticed instantly that he was just teasing. With a laugh, he pretended to hand it back to her, but instead he snapped it back onto the strap around her neck. His fingers came dangerously close to her breasts …

  Her heart pounded so rapidly that she felt like it would explode any minute.

  *

  After the officer who had brought Faris’s gun and badge left, silence descended moment
arily on the conference room.

  “Make sure you get out of here now!” Tromsdorff finally said. “The caller wants you to check out the internet café. We shouldn’t defy his wishes again.” He glanced at Faris’s phone. “Ben?”

  The FCI tech glanced up from his work. “Yes?”

  “What do we need to do with Faris’s phone?”

  Ben scratched his nose. “He obviously has to take it with him. If the man calls in and someone else picks up, we’ll have a huge problem on our hands.”

  Tromsdorff wanted to add something, but Ben grinned brightly. “We won’t miss anything, don’t worry!” He pointed at his computer. “I’ve set up a fake exchange station. When he calls, Faris’s phone will ring, but we will be able to listen in from here too.”

  Tromsdorff nodded. “Good. Faris, hit the road!”

  Faris was about to stick his phone, as usual, into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, but that was where his temporary phone was already sitting, so he put his main phone into his jeans pocket.

  “Faris is my partner,” Paul said. “I’ll go with him.”

  “It’s more important that you stay here,” Tromsdorff replied, but after a moment’s hesitation, he reluctantly agreed. “Fine, go on.”

  *

  A few minutes later, they were sitting in an unmarked police car, a black BMW M3, and driving toward Kurfürstendamm. On their way to the garage, Faris had called Hesse to ask him if he needed his motorcycle back, but the journalist had said no.

  “I’m just fine, pal,” he had assured Faris. “I still have my delivery van. Take care of the important stuff!”

  As Faris steered through the thick traffic in the capital, Paul stared through the windshield at the street and said nothing. When they had to stop at a red light, the silence grew oppressive.

  “Creepy,” Paul murmured with a shudder.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The caller, earlier. Did you feel like he was watching us?”

  Faris thought about the cameras in the subway station. “He knows a lot,” he agreed. “About me, about SURV.” The gun underneath his arm felt unfamiliar and heavy, and this revealed how much the past few months had changed him. This never would have bothered him in the past.

  Paul nodded, gazing at a young woman in a miniskirt who had just crossed the street in front of them. “Do you think he knows us personally?” The light changed to green, but they still couldn’t drive on because the intersection was full of vehicles. “He knew Tromsdorff’s name and rank, but he could’ve researched that as well.”

  Faris suddenly recalled something that he hadn’t thought of before now. “His first contact with me,” he murmured. “The caller forbade me from contacting my colleagues. ‘At this point,’ he said. It confused me at the time, but I forgot about it in all the chaos that followed.”

  The woman vanished around a corner. Somebody behind them blew their horn.

  Faris glanced in the rearview mirror. “And then, after the first explosion, the man specifically gave me permission to bring SURV into the picture. He didn’t want just me. He wanted the entire team to investigate him.”

  “You think that he has a score to settle but possibly not with you, but with the whole SURV unit?”

  Faris sent a sideways look at his partner. “You should pass that along to the others. They should start following up on that.”

  As Paul called the War Room, Faris drummed his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel. “Are these cars ever going to move?” he grumbled.

  Paul hung up. “Gitta’s on it.” He sighed. “I have a bad feeling about all this.” A group of women in long skirts and colorful conference scarves was standing on the sidewalk on his side of the road.

  Faris impatiently threw his arms up.

  “A really bad feeling!” Paul repeated. A chirping sound underscored his words.

  It came from Faris’s jeans pocket.

  *

  “Well now, Faris,” the distorted voice said, as soon as Faris fished the phone out of his pants and accepted the call. “I hope you have a good reason for not being at the café yet.”

  Through narrowed eyes, Faris stared at the still-blocked intersection. “How do you know that?”

  “GPS,” was the short answer.

  Faris nodded. Of course.

  “We’re stuck in traffic,” he explained.

  “What am I supposed to think about that?” The distorted voice was skeptical, and it sounded to Faris like the caller’s response had been just slightly delayed.

  “We …”

  “Are you refusing to follow my instructions?”

  “No, listen, I …”

  “Stop it, Faris! Stop fucking around with me! I think I need to teach you a little lesson. I will call you back in five minutes. If you can’t hand your phone to the internet chick, that little goth-mouse behind the café counter, then someone will die. Somebody who matters more to you than that poor homeless man from earlier.”

  “No!” Faris now yelled. “Listen, I …”

  “That’s it, Faris! My patience is over! Five minutes!” And with those words, the man hung up.

  Faris lowered his phone and struggled to regain his self-control.

  “Quick! The flasher!”

  Paul reacted instantly. He lowered the BMW window and set the magnetic flasher on the top of the car. At the same moment, Faris activated their siren.

  Five minutes!

  There was no way he could make it. They had just passed Wittenbergplatz and weren’t even across Nürnbergerstraße. And as far as he could see, the entire stretch of Tauentzienstraße was a parking lot.

  The cars in front of him reluctantly moved to the side.

  “Get out of the way!” Faris bellowed, but it was pointless. What if he got out of the car and ran the rest of the way? Impossible! He had been working out for the past two weeks, but he would need more than seven minutes to cover the two kilometers to the café. This would have been true even if he hadn’t slammed his skull into the subway station wall this morning.

  He honked.

  “They can’t just evaporate,” Paul murmured. “What’s going on now?”

  In two sentences, Faris explained. The siren punctuated his words with shrill screeching, and the cars right in front of them finally started moving.

  Paul had grown pale. “Someone close to you?”

  Faris was focusing so hard on the traffic that he wasn’t able to respond. He finally had a little space. He drove up on the sidewalk, then accelerated. But after only a few meters, a new obstacle blocked his path, a delivery truck that had pulled out of a driveway and was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “Shit!”

  Something that he couldn’t immediately identify started to ring. He honked once more, and the truck rolled back enough so he could squeeze by. After barely scraping past several concrete bollards, he accelerated again. He felt Paul fumbling around in his jacket pocket before pulling out his ringing burner phone.

  Paul answered and identified himself. “It’s Niklas.”

  “Not now!” Faris shouted. Relieved that he hadn’t hit any pedestrians, he returned to the roadway, but had to quickly hit the brakes because the cars in front of him couldn’t move out of the way fast enough. “For the love of God!”

  Paul switched on the speaker phone.

  “Faris, I have to …”

  “Not now, Niklas!” Faris shouted. The BMW’s engine howled as they took the turn onto Kurfüstendamm on squealing tires. Paul gave an alarmed cry, which mingled with the new sound of chirping from Faris’s regular phone.

  “Damn it all!” Faris yanked the phone up to his ear, as he tried to keep the car under control with one hand on the wheel. “The five minutes aren’t up yet!”

  “I know.” The caller laughed softly. “I just wanted to be on hand when you failed, my good sir.”

  “Who?” Faris snapped, slamming on the brakes, then hitting the gas again. A young man who was abo
ut to stride across the crosswalk in front of him, jumped back onto the sidewalk. In his rearview mirror, Faris checked to see if anything had happened to him, but the poor guy was just standing there, looking perplexed. One second later, he disappeared from Faris’s view.

  Hesse’s voice croaked through the burner phone’s speaker.

  “What do you mean?” the caller asked.

  “Who do you want to kill?” Horrible images flashed through Faris’s mind. Somebody who matters more to you. His sister Anisah? His nieces? Laura! The miserable bastard!

  “Oh, that!” The caller paused dramatically before he spoke. “I’ll give you a description: plaid shirt, biker boots, leather jacket …”

  Faris’s stomach somersaulted. “Niklas!” he shouted. “A bomb! Wherever you happen to be, get out!”

  “What? Faris, what’s that …”

  Faris’s ears were filled with the caller’s laughter mixed with the howling of the siren and Hesse’s incomprehensible babbling.

  Knesebeckstraße loomed before him, but the café was at the opposite end of it. Unreachably far away.

  “Ten seconds to go, Faris,” the caller remarked, and he began to count down.

  When he reached four, Faris slammed on the brakes. There was no point. He couldn’t reach the café in time.

  “Three.”

  He lowered the phone and grabbed for the one in Paul’s hand.

  “Two.” Although the caller’s voice now came from his lap, it was still loud and clear.

  Faris pulled the other phone up to his ear. “Get out, Niklas! You have to …”

  But it was too late.

  “One!” the caller cried.

  The air around Faris froze solid.

  “Bye for now!” The caller laughed.

  And the emptiness of the broken connection pierced Faris’s ear.

  Chapter 18

  Faris sluggishly lowered his phone and bent his head down to the steering wheel. His skull roared, and his heart hammered inside his chest. It took every bit of strength for him to keep from throwing up all over the car.

  Beside him, Paul seemed to be completely paralyzed. The regular howling of the siren seemed to be coming from incredibly far away. At some point, Paul turned it off. As the silence spread throughout the car, the traffic rushed past them.