‘Would you please remain seated with your seatbelt on for a while longer, sir?’
Valentino, the flight attendant from earlier, had appeared beside Mats out of nowhere and was pushing him back into his seat with a professionally joyless smile.
‘It’s urgent,’ Mats said, without success.
‘You can go to the restroom in a few minutes, as soon as the captain gives the go-ahead. It’s for your own safety.’
Mats craned his head and shoulders to peer down the aisle past the gelled upstart, but the woman with the perfume that was as familiar as it was rare – it was no longer being made – had already vanished into business class.
‘Okay?’ Valentino asked, as if addressing a child in kindergarten, expecting them to understand the reprimand.
Mats didn’t reply, in part because he was distracted by a vibration that he alone could feel on this flight. Because it came from the inside pocket of his jacket: his phone.
Christ, did I actually forget to switch it off?
He couldn’t believe it. He, the aviophobia patient, hadn’t stuck to the simplest, most basic of safety rules. He was like someone terrified of dogs putting on a mailman’s uniform by mistake.
‘Okay,’ he mumbled eventually, to be rid of Valentino who was of course standing beside him like a guard dog.
Must be an appointment reminder or the alarm clock, Mats thought, taking out his phone.
Unknown number.
For a moment Mats was so bemused that he didn’t bother covering the screen with his hand.
‘How’s that possible?’ he wondered, before remembering the video ad on LegendAir’s website. Didn’t it mention something about mobile and wireless reception being available on all flights since 2009?
Yes, of course.
The wireless was even free, though calls were meant to be restricted to three minutes out of consideration for the other passengers.
And there it was: to the right of the five dots that indicated full reception, it said ‘LC- FlightNet’.
Mats looked around, but his immediate neighbours were still asleep, and none of the other passengers were taking notice of him.
He remembered the tiny earplugs he’d brought with him to listen to music on his iPod.
To avoid losing the call, which might be from the hospital or even Nele directly, he hastily fished the earphones from his trouser pocket and plugged them into his phone, which he replaced in his jacket pocket.
Pressing the switch on the slightly tangled wire, he took the call.
‘Hello?’ he whispered, his hand in front of his mouth. ‘Nele?’
‘Herr Krüger? Is this Mats Krüger?’
Mats recognised the voice at once. He might have a poor recall for names but his memory for voices was excellent, and he’d listened to this one for several hours at a time. Even though – and right now this was most unsettling – he’d never met or even seen the man in his life. Like millions of others, Mats only knew the faces of the world-famous stars the caller had loaned his voice to. To Johnny Depp, for example, or Christian Bale. Actors who were dubbed by this voice.
‘Who is this?’ Mats asked.
‘Call me what you like,’ the unmistakably melancholic, faintly smoky baritone said. The voice was clipped, slightly apathetic and accompanied by a breathing and hissing that must belong to someone else. The person who was actually calling. Because Mats obviously wasn’t really talking to the man who dubbed Johnny Depp. It sounded as if the caller was using a voice changer, speaking into a device that replaced his own voice with that of a celebrity. No doubt he could have just as easily chosen Tom Hanks, Matt Damon or Brad Pitt.
‘It’s about Nele,’ the voice said, again accompanied by the breathing of the actual caller. ‘Listen carefully and she won’t suffer any more.’
Mats blinked intensely. ‘Suffer? Is there something wrong with the baby?’
His knees trembled and his tongue lay like a dead fish in his mouth that now felt far too small. All of a sudden the caller’s voice seemed to come from a great distance, which was due to the tinnitus that had started buzzing in his ear. The sound of dying synapses, growing louder with every word the caller uttered:
‘You’re going to go straight to the nearest restroom and wait for further instructions. If I can’t get hold of you in two minutes, Nele is dead.’
Dead?
‘Who are you?’ Mats was going to shout, but the man didn’t let him speak. He fired his words like arrows, all striking their target with the greatest accuracy.
‘You will receive new instructions in three minutes. If you don’t answer, Dr Krüger, Nele is dead. If you alert anyone on board, Nele is dead. Especially if you inform the police or air traffic control. I have eyes and ears everywhere. If I get even the slightest hint that you’re notifying the authorities – for example, if the captain changes course or sends a radio message – or the police start asking questions, your daughter and the baby will meet an agonising death.’
There was a crackling, as if the stranger was hanging up, and immediately afterwards Mats heard the ping announcing a text message.
‘Nele… suffer? An agonising death?’
Had this conversation really taken place? Had the stranger with the famous voice really said that?
‘Hello? Are you still there?’
The effort Mats required to inch his phone from his pocket – just enough to check the call had disconnected – was almost painful. A pop-up window signalled the arrival of a new message.
This is a joke, he tried to persuade himself.
Nobody knew that he was on his way to Berlin. Not even Nils, his elder brother who’d emigrated to Argentina over a decade ago and with whom he’d initially lived following the tragedy with Katharina.
Up till the very last moment, Mats had been unsure whether he’d be able to summon the courage and strength to board this plane. So who could be calling him if not…
Nele!
One horrific thought gave way to the next.
Was this his daughter’s way of paying him back? Was this morbid phone call her attempt to frighten the wits out of him, as punishment for having abandoned his family at the worst possible moment?
Mats’ hands were trembling so badly that he was barely able to unlock the screen. When he finally succeeded he wanted to scream. But no sooner did he see the photo than the snake choked his neck.
A photo of Nele.
With an enormous swollen belly.
Her face contorted with pain.
A dirty gag in her mouth.
Tied up.
To a hospital stretcher.
Please, no, Mats implored a God he’d stopped believing in since Katharina’s first unsuccessful course of chemotherapy. He looked for signs that the picture wasn’t genuine. Photoshopped or deliberately staged, but he knew Nele’s expression. That slight skew of her pupils and the tiny reddish blood vessels standing out against the white – a look of utter despair he’d seen in her only rarely. But on the few occasions he had, they were moments of intense mental pain, such as when she’d been unhappy in love or when her best friend from kindergarten had died in a road accident. Mats knew that the agony in this picture was real. And Nele’s life in danger.
Which is why he believed the blackmailer, who reminded him with another anonymous message:
Two more minutes. Or your daughter dies.