Forty Hours: A breath-taking thriller Page 9

  “I can’t, and you know that.” Above them, on the stairs, they could hear the clatter of high heels. “SURV might be the only department in a position to actually catch this guy. I have to make sure that our team remains operational for this.”

  Geiger descended the stairs. As she walked past, she sent Faris and Tromsdorff a belligerent look, but she was smart enough not to speak to either of them.

  Tromsdorff waited until she was out of earshot. “I will talk to her and try to change her mind,” he promised. He looked unhappy as he said this. “Go to the 118 and make your statement.”

  “Let me stay!” Faris begged, although he knew there was no point in asking.

  Tromsdorff shook his head. “Geiger has it in for SURV, you know that as well as I do. If I disregard her direct order, I’ll end up sacrificing the whole unit. You know she’s just waiting for the opportunity to shut us down.”

  Faris lowered his head. Tromsdorff was right. The SURV team had to remain intact. There were no alternatives. “Light a fire under Ben so he figures out as fast as possible how the guy managed to send that message from my personal computer.”

  Tromsdorff nodded wearily. “I will. And you stay available.” Tromsdorff patted Faris’s arm one last time. “I’m sorry, son. There’s nothing else I can do right now.”

  Chapter 10

  Faris’s statement for the 118 was filmed and immediately added to the DigA A file system, so that all the investigators working on the case in various departments could have access to it. The entire procedure took barely an hour. Faris asked his colleagues if it was wise for them to keep using the digital archive, and they assured him that the IT specialists had found the hole in the firewall and fixed it. Faris thanked them before leaving the building on Keithstraße.

  It was a few minutes after one o’clock as he hurried down the staircase in long, frustrated strides. He raced past the guard station and through the double oak doors, out onto the street. A bicycle courier had to swerve wildly around him as he launched himself out onto the sidewalk.

  “Watch out!” Faris yelled after him. His frustration was dancing as red dots behind his eyelids.

  “I did!” the courier bellowed back of his shoulder. “You aren’t face down on the sidewalk, are you?” And with that, he sped off.

  Faris took a deep breath, trying to calm down again.

  There were several cell phone shops along Kurfürstenstraße, which intersected Keithstraße near Department 1’s building.

  He picked one at random and asked the young man behind the counter to show him several budget phones with prepaid cards. He ignored the slightly irritated look the man sent him as he registered Faris’s dusty, battered appearance and finally chose a device that cost just sixty euros. He paid with his bank card and asked the salesclerk to insert the SIM card and give him a quick overview of the phone’s functions. Then he stuck the phone’s charger into his jacket pocket, where he had previously kept his regular phone, and left the shop.

  The sky had cleared a little while he was inside. Faris dialed Paul’s number. When he reached his colleague’s voicemail, he left a short message. “It’s me! Robert asked me to stay in touch. This is the number where you can reach me in case of emergency.” He hung up and deposited the phone in the pocket with the charger.

  As he considered what he should do now, he heard someone call his name.

  “Iskander!”

  Faris turned around and almost groaned aloud when he saw who was hurrying in his direction. “Niklas,” he murmured.

  The man who came to a stop in front of him, panting, was at least twenty kilos overweight, a reality that he was trying to hide with an untucked red-and-blue checkered lumberjack shirt. He was wearing black biker boots, and a leather jacket with a cocked collar completed the carefully crafted image of the investigative journalist. With a quick visual sweep from top to bottom, he took in Faris’s appearance. “Did you get caught in a sandstorm?” he asked with a grin.

  Faris gazed down his body. He desperately needed a shower and fresh clothes. With a weary smile and a shake of his head, he met the reporter’s eyes.

  Niklas had already pulled a digital recorder out of his jacket pocket, but he hadn’t turned it on yet. “What happened?” he asked.

  Faris had known Niklas Hesse for a long time. They had met during their last year of high school, just before final exams. After that, they had both joined the police department and taken their exams together. However, while Faris had chosen a classic police career track and spent a while doing patrol duty, Hesse had taken a different path. While Faris pursued his career, eventually being tapped by Tromsdorff to join the SURV team, Hesse stayed at the police academy as an instructor. Two years ago, he had finally left the academy, and Faris had lost sight of him. Several months later, though, Hesse had returned to Berlin. He was strangely changed, and instead of working once more for the police, he had left the force and founded an investigative online magazine called hotnewzz.tv, which barely made him enough to scrape by, these days. He had never told Faris what he had done for the few months he was away, but after a hard grilling, had admitted that there was a woman involved. Faris assumed that she had broken his heart.

  “No comment,” was all Faris said.

  Hesse just laughed, then glanced toward Keithstraße. After a brief moment of consideration, he said, “Are you back at work now?” He knew about Faris’s suspension.

  Faris shook his head. “I was there as a witness.” Geiger’s ouster still infuriated him, but he kept that to himself.

  “As a witness?”

  Faris nodded. “And you?”

  Hesse shrugged. “The subway bombing, of course. I’m on my way to Keithstraße. I thought I might get more information there than at the station. Everything over there is still cordoned off for quite a distance.” He tapped his forehead at the corresponding spot to where Faris’s bandage sat. “You really took a hit there, didn’t you?”

  Faris forced himself to smile. “Don’t even bother. You won’t get anything out of me.”

  “Come on!” Hesse’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “Bismarckstraße! Isn’t that pretty close to your apartment?”

  Faris didn’t reply.

  “Of course!” Hesse’s eyes once again scanned him from head to feet. “You were down there when the bomb went off, weren’t you? That’s why there’s a bandage on your hard head.”

  Faris sighed. “There’d be no point if I denied it.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.” Faris turned to go.

  But Hesse refused to be shaken. “Come on, bro! You can’t ditch me like this.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  This was a little game they had been playing since Hesse’s reinvention as a reporter. Hess acted stubborn, and Faris played hard-to-get as long as possible. At the same time, the reporter was one of the few journalists that Faris had ever unofficially passed along information to. He had always been able to trust Niklas. During their friendlier moments, they even shared personal secrets that they didn’t tell anyone else. Niklas knew about Faris’s psychological problems, and in return, the reporter had shared that he had spent a long time in therapy to work through the time he had spent in an orphanage as a child.

  A woman with a stroller walked toward them. She strode with great determination, as if she were charging with a battering ram. Faris and Hesse let her pass between them.

  “There were fatalities,” the reporter tried again. “I went over there, but your colleagues wouldn’t let me go down.”

  Faris sent him a sideways glance. “Why do you think that was?”

  Hesse snorted. “The people have a right to …”

  Faris broke into laughter. His anger at Geiger was slowly dissipating. “Spare me!” he exclaimed. He resumed walking, knowing fully well that Hesse wouldn’t let him slip away.

  “Dadgummit!” The reporter hurried after him. For several minutes, they marched side by side down Kurfürstenstraße, and because Faris was wa
lking quickly, Hesse soon started to wheeze. “Can’t you slow down a little!”

  Faris stopped. “You should work out more,” he teased.

  Hesse was about to respond, but at that moment, Faris’s new phone started ringing. It had a shrill, old-fashioned ring tone, the sound of which made Hesse grimace. “What kind of cheap phone is that?” he asked as Faris pulled out the device.

  Faris ignored his derision. He answered without even glancing at the screen. “Partner?” It had to be Paul, since he was the only one who had this number.

  “I just wanted to let you know I got your message,” Paul declared. “Everything okay?”

  Faris glanced at Hesse, then turned his back on him. “Yes. Niklas is with me. Just happened to run into him on Kurfürstenstraße.”

  “Alright. I assume he’s right next to you, salivating with curiosity, right?”

  Faris turned his head. “Something like that,” he confirmed with a smile.

  “I can imagine. Now, listen. We’ll try to keep you in the loop on things as much as possible, until Tromsdorff manages to bring you back on board. This is where things are. We’re still working on the caller and the video. Shannon is looking into the known fundamentalist extremists. Andersen has set up a team that is doing the major footwork for her, and we’re getting an officer from the 632 who’ll be our go-between with Andersen’s guys.”

  “Good. I assume the guys are really chomping at the bit, right?”

  The officers in Department 632 were used, among other things, to ending hostage situations. Most of them had been trained in both psychology and criminology and were always called in when there was a need to convince a hostage-taker to surrender.

  Faris could hear a grim smile in Paul’s voice, as his partner replied: “They’re hoping the guy will break cover soon, so they have something to do.”

  Faris ran his fingers through his dust-coated hair. “We’re all hoping for that.”

  “We’re working on it, partner. Have you remembered anything at all that could help us?”

  “I don’t have even the slightest notion who the guy could be.” Faris shook his head. By this point, Hesse had walked around him and was staring curiously into his face, so Faris turned around once more. “Could you try to convince Tromsdorff to give me access to the DigA A? I’d like to look through some things there.” Because of his suspension, he had lost his access to the case files.

  “Are you heading home?” Paul asked.

  Faris glanced at Niklas Hesse. Of course, he could have gone home and accessed the DigA A archive on his own computer, but his personal device was old and not the fastest thing around. Skimming through the audio and video files on that machine would be a tiresome task. “Not yet,” he replied. “Just try to get Tromsdorff to reinstate my access.”

  Hesse walked around Faris again.

  In muffled tones, Paul said something to somebody else in the room, then he was back on the phone. “All uniformed units have just been instructed to keep their eyes out for any places that could hold a cross. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and someone will discover something that could lead us to the crucified man before …” he broke off here.

  But Faris knew what he had been about to say.

  … before the next bomb goes off.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” Paul added. “Geiger took a look at your statement, and she asked Ben to take a picture of the crucified man. At this moment, she’s sharing it with the press.”

  “Hmmm.” Faris rubbed the bridge of his nose. It was routine procedure to ask the public for clues in missing persons cases. However, in this instance, he wasn’t sure if Geiger’s decision was wise or not. The caller hadn’t explicitly forbidden this course of action, but what did they actually know about what made him tick? They couldn’t simply dismiss the possibility that he might snap if he saw the picture of his victim online or discovered it in a newspaper. And yet, Faris forced himself to calm down. Geiger might be somewhat narrow-minded, but she wasn’t stupid. She and her staff would have carefully weighed the pros and cons of releasing the picture.

  “We’re hoping to get some information about the identity of the man. Gitta is going through the old files from the museum case, but so far, we haven’t found anything.”

  “Something might come to me.” Faris took a deep sigh. “I’ll call as soon as that happens,” he murmured.

  “Good. I’ll talk to Robert about the DigA A.” Again, Paul seemed to turn away from his phone. “I’m coming,” Faris heard him call out to someone else. “The code monkeys seem to have plugged the hole in the firewall,” he informed Faris.

  “I know. The guys with the 118 told me about that.”

  “Good. We’ll stay in touch,” Paul promised before hanging up.

  Faris stood on the sidewalk of Kurfürstenstraße and stared at the phone in his hand. His head and shoulders ached, and for a moment, he lacked the energy to take even one more step.

  “Sounds as if they put you out on the street,” Hesse remarked.

  Faris shrugged. “Looks like it.”

  Hesse grinned broadly. “Because of that thing with the skinhead asshole? What was his name?” Hesse was one of the few people to whom Faris had told the full story of his fight with the neo-Nazi.

  “Rainer Golzer.”

  “Well, if you ask me, they should’ve given you a medal for what you did.”

  Faris just sniffed.

  “Fucking skinheads!” Hesse was becoming increasingly agitated. “They should all get punched in the jaw more often!”

  Faris didn’t react to this. “Do you have a fast computer I could use?”

  “Sure. If you’ll give me a few bits of information in exchange.”

  After brief consideration, Faris agreed. “The bomb in the subway. There was an emailed confession.” He was elaborating on the truth just a little. “But we can’t trace it because the sender is some kind of crappy hacker.”

  “Hey!” Hesse protested. “There are no such things as crappy hackers!”

  Faris didn’t press this point. “He managed to make it look as if the email came from my PC. This was why Geiger wouldn’t even consider letting me work on the case, regardless of my suspension.”

  “How annoying! But in all seriousness … Doesn’t the queen know that these days it’s quite easy to send an email from any computer you want?” Faris shrugged, and Hesse continued. “All someone had to do was smuggle a trojan onto your computer, and presto, he could send out any message he wanted.”

  “Would it be possible for someone to figure out if my computer has a trojan on it?” Faris asked.

  “Sure. All I’d need to do is get into your apartment and take a closer look at the machine.”

  Faris hadn’t missed Hesse’s transition from the generic someone to the specific I. A weak sparkle had appeared in the reporter’s eyes, the onset of hunting fever. Faris knew all too well what this felt like, and he could feel it start to spread inside him as well.

  “Fine,” he decided. “If you can help me prove that, I’ll give you more details about the case.”

  Chapter 11

  They took Hesse’s motorcycle to Faris’s apartment. The first thing Faris saw when he stepped inside was the mirror in the hallway. He stopped abruptly. He looked like a victim from the collapse of the World Trade Center, completely covered in a fine gray dust. More like a ghost than a living person. As Hesse started up his computer to look for clues to a trojan, Faris took off his jacket and went into his bedroom. He quickly slipped off his pants and t-shirt. In just his underwear, he strode into the bathroom, finished undressing, and took a shower. When this was done, he stood dripping in front of the sink, and turned on the light above it to thoroughly examine himself.

  His eyes still had the burning expression of exhaustion and sleep deprivation. The water hadn’t been able to wash the dust from all the fine lines in his skin, so he looked older than he actually was. He brushed his longish hair off his forehead before reaching for a towel and
drying off. When he was done with this, he looked halfway civilized again.

  As he reached for the light switch, ready to turn it off, his eyes fell on the burn scar on his torso. It slanted, dark red, from his hip over his right pec up to his clavicle, and then across his bicep, almost to the shoulder joint. At various spots, the skin puckered in ugly folds, while other patches had an odd, pockmarked pattern to them. People at his rehab program had explained that these were where the synthetic fibers of the fleece shirt he wore that day had seared themselves into his skin.

  For a few seconds, Faris stood motionless, incapable of moving, incapable even of lowering his hand which was still holding the light switch. He just stared silently at the wounds the explosion had left on his body and waited for the flashbacks to start. To his relief, they didn’t.

  He could pull himself together after a few moments.

  With a sigh, he flipped off the light and left the bathroom. In his bedroom, he pulled a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt from his closet and got dressed. His hoodie had suffered too much in the explosion, so he reached for his leather jacket before leaving his bedroom to join Hesse in the living room.

  “Well?” Faris asked. “Found anything yet?”

  Hesse was perched on the edge of an armchair, balancing Faris’s relatively aged laptop on his knees.

  “Here’s the bastard.” He gestured at the screen. “You really do have a trojan on your hard drive.”

  “A trojan.” Faris had only a vague notion of what that was, and Hesse clearly saw that straightaway.

  The reporter grinned. “Someone has laid a lovely egg in your nest. Think of it this way. A trojan is a program that can take complete control of a computer. Most of the time, it’s dormant, so you don’t notice it’s there. For example, someone could smuggle one onto your computer via an email attachment, and once it’s there, it won’t wake up until a certain time and then it will take some kind of action. This one here sent you an email with a video link this morning.”

  Faris ground his teeth. “Can you tell where the trojan came from?”