Forty Hours: A breath-taking thriller Read online

  “Bastard!” the boxer hissed in his ear.

  At this moment, several uniformed officers stormed down the half-buried stairs.

  “Police!” one of them called.

  He stopped on the next-to-last step and took in the scene. His experienced eye picked out Faris as the focal point of the turmoil. He gave the others a terse order, then reached for the holster at his side and unsnapped it. After taking care of that, he descended the last two steps and headed for the mob.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  The woman in the red dress took over as spokesperson. “What are we doing?” she cried. Faris could hardly bear her shrill, plaintive voice. “We caught the bomber, that’s what we’ve done.” She pointed at Faris, and with an icy knot in his stomach, he realized that her fingernails were long and red. “That’s him!”

  The mob started moving, clearing space for the officer who was instantly in front of Faris.

  “Jochen.” Faris lowered his head in relief. He had known Sergeant Jochen Baumgarten since his time at the police academy.

  “Faris?” Baumgarten’s eyes widened in astonishment.

  Faris simply nodded. Out of self-respect, he once again tried to twist free from the two men, but to no avail. The hands wrapped around his arms were like vises.

  “What are you doing here? I thought you were sus …” Baumgarten broke off. “Let him go!” he ordered abruptly. “This man is a police officer.”

  The fingers finally loosened a little.

  “Are you serious?” It was the slim man who spoke. He looked uncertainly back and forth between Faris and Baumgarten. His shirt collar was drenched with blood that had seeped from a cut on his neck. The fabric was sticking to his dusty skin.

  “Hurry up!” Baumgarten bellowed.

  The next moment, Faris was free.

  “Thank you.” Faris took his colleague’s proffered hand and shook it. His shoulder protested with a dull pain.

  “What are you doing here?” Baumgarten repeated once more.

  Faris thought about the caller and the phone that he must have stuck in his pocket at some point, prior to the confrontation with these self-appointed guardians of the law. He swiftly felt for it. “I …” he was reluctant to speak openly in front of the onlookers. “I’m a witness, just like the rest of them.”

  The woman in the red dress refused to meet his eyes, as did the boxer, but the skinny man wasn’t backing down. The man’s face revealed a mixture of relief, shame and doubt.

  Baumgarten pointed at Faris’s bleeding lip. “I assume these two heroes gave you that, right?” The officer recognized a punch-inflicted wound when he saw one.

  Faris wiped the blood off his lip with his thumb, studied it, and nodded.

  “Do you want to file a complaint?” Baumgarten asked. A typical question for him. For many years, he had cultivated an attitude of “us cops versus the rest of the world”.

  Faris looked at the boxer. This time, the man didn’t avoid his gaze. His chin jutted out stubbornly, like a child caught doing something naughty.

  “No,” Faris said quietly. “They were just trying to do the right thing.”

  The boxer now lowered his eyes.

  Faris swallowed down a sigh. He looked Arab, and there was nothing to be done about that. If he had been in these two men’s shoes, he might have suspected him, too.

  Chapter 5

  “God, you look like shit!”

  Sitting on the remnant of a concrete pillar, Faris lifted his head at the sound of the deep voice. A man, around the age of fifty with a slight paunch and thinning hair, was standing behind the paramedic tending his lacerations. The man’s eyes reflected the horror everyone was feeling, at the chaos that reigned in the completely demolished subway station.

  “Hi, Paul.” Faris inhaled through his teeth. The paramedic had just sprayed something onto his forehead that burned like hell. “It’s nice to see you, too.”

  The man was Paul Sievers, Faris’s partner at SURV, the Special Unit for Religious Violence. Paul grinned, but Faris had known him long enough to know when he was just pretending. The suffering around them touched him deeply.

  Faris’s gaze traversed the rubble, coming to a stop on the disfigured body of a woman in business clothes. Try as he might, he couldn’t tell if this was the woman with the slanted tooth who had smiled at him earlier. The paramedics had hung a tarp in front of the man with the stomach wound and his sobbing daughter. A short distance away, a man was screaming long and loud for someone named Hilde. Everywhere he looked, Faris now saw his colleagues. They were helping the first responders with the victims, interviewing the witnesses, and spreading comfort as best they could.

  Faris wanted to lower his head, but the paramedic wasn’t done bandaging his wound yet.

  “Please stay still,” he said.

  Exhausted, Faris obeyed. “Why are you here?” he asked Paul. “I thought you were on vacation. Weren’t you supposed to go to the Baltic with Christa?” That was what Paul had told him the last time they had spoken on the phone.

  Paul had shoved his hands into his back pockets, and now he shrugged. “There was a lot to deal with in the office because of the church conference, so we postponed our trip for a few days.” He glanced around. “It looks like that was a good call.”

  Faris followed his partner’s gaze. Things were escalating behind the suspended tarp. “Papa?” shrieked the girl, but nobody seemed to be paying attention to her. “Out of the way!” Faris heard the paramedic shout, followed by the familiar sound of a defibrillator. The girl began to whimper.

  Faris gritted his teeth. His paramedic finished dressing the wound. “That’s it.” He leaned over the opened case sitting at his feet, pulled off his gloves, and tossed them inside. “You should go to the hospital for a complete examination,” he advised his patient before walking off. “You might have a concussion.”

  A uniformed police officer, whom Faris only knew by sight, approached them. “Can you walk?” he asked as he watched the paramedic move away.

  Faris nodded.

  “Then please leave the station. Report up on ground level to officers who are taking state …” he broke off as Paul turned toward him. “Hey!” he exclaimed in recognition.

  Paul nodded at him. “Faris is one of us, Fred.”

  The officer turned back to him. “A fellow officer as witness?” he asked with a certain degree of satisfaction. “Great! I bet we’ll get more useful information from you than we are getting from the civilians.”

  “Islamists?” an older woman moaned as she was led past them. She stared malevolently at Faris. “Wretched monsters!”

  Faris shook his head. The caller’s distorted voice echoed through his head again, followed by the museum bomber’s last words.

  Wrong answer!

  “This wasn’t an Islamist attack,” he said, instantly wondering how he knew this with certainty. After all, he had no idea who they were dealing with. The caller had distorted his voice, so Faris couldn’t tell anything about him.

  Paul looked at him quizzically. “Let’s go up to street level.”

  The first members of the forensics team were arriving. In their white suits, they looked like astronauts, and Faris and Paul gave them a wide berth to avoid getting under foot. On their way up to the surface, Paul paused in front of a small flower shop: “What exactly happened?”

  “A bomb. That’s all I know. It must’ve been on the train that entered the tunnel right before the explosion.” Faris recalled the elderly nun with the pale eyes, the group of teens that had been with her. He felt a hard knot form in his chest as his heart clenched up.

  “Why are you here? You never take the subway,” Paul asked, insistently. The stairway up to the exit was short, and the gray light made the dust in the air shimmer.

  Faris pulled his battered phone out of his jacket pocket and held it up. “I was sent here.”

  Paul furrowed his forehead, perplexed.

  “This m
orning, I got a phone call. A distorted voice dropped a bunch of hints and ordered me to come here.”

  “Ordered?” Paul cocked an eyebrow. “How?”

  They reached the surface. Practically all of Wilmersdorfer Straße was blocked by police vehicles and ambulances that were parked all over the sidewalks and road. Flashing lights sent twitching reflections onto the surrounding buildings, and more and more vehicles were arriving with blaring sirens. People were running around all over the place. Even up here, the paramedics were tending to the wounded. Faris watched as a zinc casket vanished through the door of a hearse. Dozens of officers were standing close together, speaking with witnesses or discussing what to do next.

  And on the edge of the chaos lurked the inescapable news vans from the local television and radio stations. The first cameras were already running.

  Faris pulled Paul between the ambulances. “There’s a chance it’s the guy from the Klersch Museum.” His voice sounded husky.

  Paul’s eyes widened. “The museum bomber? That’s ridiculous. He blew himself up in that explosion.” His eyes fell on a man in a navy-blue suit standing off to the side of the action. He was talking to several other suits, obviously politicians. A dark look flitted across his face, but he turned back to Faris. “Honestly, partner. There’s no way it could be the culprit from back then.”

  Two paramedics emerged at the top of the stairs, carrying a stretcher. The body upon it was completely covered with a white sheet. The two men hesitated and looked around, as if lost.

  The hairs on Faris’s arms stood on end. “As-samu alaikum,” he whispered. “Those were the words the person who called me used in greeting.”

  “Shit!” Paul blurted out.

  Faris gulped and nodded in agreement. Like a gentle breeze blowing past his ear, he heard the child weeping. “As-samu alaikum.” He had to clear his throat.

  Paul recognized the extent of his concern. “What now?”

  “The caller gave me a message.” Faris watched the two paramedics who simply decided to set their stretcher down between the ambulances. “He said that this bomb wouldn’t be the last.”

  The dark hood of another hearse rounded the corner.

  Faris reached into his pocket. “And there’s one other thing that you’re not going to like,” he said grimly, reaching for his phone.

  *

  Alexander

  “I don’t know what to say,” Alexander whispered.

  “YOU DO,” the voice of the messenger countered. “TELL ME HOW EVERYTHING STARTED.”

  And, strangely enough, Alexander knew what the messenger meant. “It began on a Sunday at my grandma’s,” he murmured. He remembered. “Christmas. It was Christmas, at my grandma’s.”

  And then he began his story.

  Grandma has made rouladen, and Alexander has found a piece of tough meat on his plate. The longer he sits hunched over it, poking at it, the more it looks like the carcass of a small animal. The dark sauce resembles dried blood, and although he dutifully chews and chews on it, he can’t swallow down the next bite.

  He honestly tries, but when he gets close to forcing the chunk of meat down his narrow throat, he gags. He almost spits the chewed meat onto the white tablecloth. Grandma comes to his rescue at the last second, holding her hand flat underneath his chin to catch the disgusting remnants.

  “That’s all you can manage?” she asks, sounding friendly and concerned. Alexander’s eyes dart over to his father, but he is deep in a conversation with his grandpa, so Alexander nods uneasily.

  With that, Grandma picks up his plate. “You don’t need to finish it,” she says with a smile. “When I was your age, I didn’t like rouladen, either.” She stands up and starts to clear the table. All the others are done with the meal by this point. “Just wait a second. It’s time for dessert. You’d like some, right?”

  Alexander is so happy, which is why he forgets to glance in his father’s direction. As he turns his head, he notices that Father is watching him. He swallows hard, but his father’s face doesn’t reveal any displeasure. Alexander thinks he is safe.

  Sitting next to him, Mother is drawing little eights in the starched white tablecloth with a fork handle. She refuses to make eye contact with either him or Father …

  Alexander broke off.

  “It feels horrible to think about all this,” he sniffled. “I felt so betrayed by Mother!”

  “YOU MUST FORGIVE HER,” the angel said. “SHE’S YOUR MOTHER.”

  Alexander nodded before resuming his story …

  A few minutes later, Grandma returns with the dessert. Vanilla ice cream with hot cherries, his favorite!

  Delighted, he gazes at the plate sitting in front of him. He can hardly wait for the others to get their servings so that he can start eating. His stomach growls loudly, since he hasn’t eaten much until now. He reaches for his spoon and submerges it into the mixture of red sauce and slightly melted ice cream. The first spoonful is halfway to his mouth, when Father’s strident voice cuts through the air.

  “Stop!”

  He doesn’t speak loudly, but Alexander freezes instantly. As his spoon jolts to a stop, a little of the red sauce drips onto the tablecloth, leaving a fat spot.

  Father’s eyes are fixed on him, and he feels as if he is being examined by an x-ray machine. “You didn’t honor Grandma’s meal,” Father declares. “Which commandment did you break?”

  “Werner, please!” Grandma’s voice is pleading. The look he gives her is cold, and she falls silent.

  Tears pool in Alexander’s eyes as he realizes that the ice cream is now completely unreachable. Right in front of him, the delicacy melts into a pool of redness rimmed with white cream.

  “Which commandment?” his father repeats, mercilessly.

  Mother doesn’t move.

  Alexander glances at his grandma for support, but she too no longer seems capable of standing up to Father. She is staring awkwardly at her own plate. Alexander’s eyes threaten to well over.

  “Don’t cry!” Father demands. “Which commandment?”

  He forces himself to swallow. It feels like he is about to choke on Grandma’s dried animal meat. “The fourth one,” he finally whispers.

  “And what does it say?”

  “Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land …”

  Alexander sniffed. The memories from that day broke over him like a storm. He could still feel the spasm that cramped his small body as the first little part of his heart transformed from warm flesh to cold stone.

  “KEEP GOING,” the angel commanded.

  And he obeyed.

  He has obviously recited the commandment correctly, since for a brief moment his father’s gaze softens. For a fleeting second, Alexander hopes that he will still be allowed to eat his ice cream, but that hope is in vain.

  Father leans forward, reaches for his plate, and pulls it to the center of the table. “You won’t be having dessert,” he declares. “While the rest of us eat, you will consider what the words you just uttered mean.”

  Alexander’s eyes search for those of his mother and grandma, but neither of them meet his gaze. Only Grandpa stares furiously at Father, but when the latter shoots him a warning look, he lowers his head as well. Alexander watches as his mother’s spoon sinks into the ice cream and lifts it to her mouth. She swallows with difficulty.

  Alexander stopped.

  The voice of the messenger in the light was very soft and friendly. “THAT IS GOOD. THAT WAS A GOOD START. THANK YOU!”

  “The disappointment made me feel sick,” Alexander continued. The tears he was struggling to keep back tasted bitter in his throat. “That was the first time I felt …” He paused.

  “THAT WAS THE FIRST DAY YOUR FATHER FELT THE BURDEN OF HIS OWN SINS,” the messenger explained.

  Alexander wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear fury in the other voice.

  Chapter 6

  “This was just a warning?” Paul’s eyes widen
ed as he heard what the caller had said.

  “The only reason the train exploded was to show us that he’s serious,” Faris confirmed. Every fiber of his being was taut. “There’s obviously another bomb somewhere, and if this really was just a warning, I guess that the second one will be significantly larger.” He swiped through his phone’s files until he found the email with the video. “He sent me this.” He turned the phone so that Paul could see the film. Faris watched as his partner’s face moved from horror to increasing bewilderment as the gruesome events played themselves out on the screen.

  By the time the video ended, Paul looked completely baffled. “I don’t get it,” he mumbled.

  “I don’t, either. I don’t know much more than you do. All I have is what the guy told me.” Faris cleared his throat before continuing. “This man here,” he tapped his phone. “He’s somewhere here in Berlin, and he’s hooked up to a heart monitor.”

  Paul waited for him to say more, but Faris could already see recognition dawning in his eyes. Paul was a seasoned policeman, and in their work together at SURV, they had seen some of the most bizarre, horrifying things.

  “If that man on the cross dies …” Faris didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  Paul fell back a step. “Oh, God!”

  Faris nodded slowly.

  Paul needed a moment to gather his thoughts, but eventually straightened his shoulders. His eyes swept the area, coming to rest once more on the tall man in the dark blue suit he had noticed earlier. The man’s name was Martin Andersen. Faris knew that Andersen was the head of State Police 5, the department that handled state security matters. The investigation into this bombing fell under his purview, and he was here on site to gain a sense of what had happened.

  At that moment, Andersen’s conversation came to an end. He exchanged a few final words with the local politicians beside him, then discovered Faris and Paul. He walked over to the two of them and held out his hand to Faris.

  “Detective Iskander, isn’t it?” He was a carefully coiffed, clean-shaven man with penetrating blue eyes and narrow fingers with seemingly manicured nails. “Someone was just telling me that you witnessed this attack.” He studied Faris’s dust-covered body from head to shoes.