"Can't do it. I'm abroad."

Deep breath. Very close. And yet hundreds of miles away.

"Then we've got a bastard of a problem, Erik. We've got a major delivery coming in twelve hours."

"Abort."

"Too late. Fifteen Polish mules on their way in."

Erik Wilson sat down on the edge of the bed, in the same place as before, where the bedspread was crumpled.

A major deal.

Paula had penetrated deep into the organization, deeper than he'd ever heard of before.

"Get out. Now."

"You know its not that easy. You know that I've got to do it. Or I'll get two bullets to the head."

"I repeat, get out. You won't get any backup from me. Listen to me, get out, for Christ's sake!"

The silence when someone hangs up mid-conversation is always deeply unnerving. Wilson had never liked that electronic void. Someone else deciding that the call was over.

He went over to the window again, searching in the bright light that seemed to make the practice ground shrink, nearly drown in white.

The voice had been strained, almost frightened.

Erik Wilson still had the mobile phone in his hand. He looked at it, at the silence.

Paula was going to go it alone.

Monday

He had stopped the car halfway across the bridge to Lidingö.

The sun had finally broken through the blackness a few minutes after three, pushing and bullying and chasing off the dark, which wouldn't dare return now until late in the evening. Ewert Grens rolled down the window and looked out at the water, breathing in the chill air as the sun rose into dawn and the cursed night retreated and left him in peace.

He drove on to the other side and across the sleeping island to a house that was idyllically perched on a cliff with a view of the boats that passed by below. He stopped in the empty parking lot, removed his radio from the charger, and attached a microphone to his lapel. He had always left it in the car when he came to visit her-no call was more important than their time together-but now, there was no conversation ro interrupt.