He came my way slowly, as if unsure, as if examining every doorway, every building, as he reached it. Then he came even with me and I glimpsed him—or, at least, the side of his head, hair as black as the night. He was staring down Sveavägen in the direction I had originally come from. His shoulders were broad, and his hands, like the thick ends of two clubs, hung down at his side, twitching. It didn’t seem to me that he had a weapon, though he could have been hiding it. Guns didn’t seem so cool at that moment. I held my breath.
But he walked right past me. And he didn’t turn around—at least, not at first. I watched him from my hiding spot, and when he was a good fifty feet away, I stepped out.
That was a mistake.
Just as I moved, he turned around. I didn’t see his face clearly because the instant he began to pivot, I was off and running the other way, up Sveavägen. I could hear him starting to accelerate after me.
Where could I go? I was far from the hotel and any sort of safety, and I couldn’t see anyone for miles. It didn’t make sense to keep fleeing up this big street where he had a clear view of me and could track me. I turned in to the Tunnelgatan. I had no idea where it went, where the assassin had vanished after he slipped into it that horrible night, but that was where I was going. Maybe I could vanish too!
I’d never run so hard in all my life, and once I was ten or so strides in, the tunnel got dark. All the doors in the buildings were slammed shut and likely locked, and up ahead it looked totally black. It felt like I was going back in time too, along a narrow cobblestoned medieval street where Vikings lurked. I came to a cross street and considered taking it, but it was nearly as narrow and almost as dark, so I kept moving forward. I could hear the man behind me, thundering along, breathing heavily and gaining on me!
And maybe he wasn’t the worst of my enemies. Maybe he was just driving me in here—a lost boy all alone herded into a dead-end street where a whole gang of thieves and murderers could fall upon me. It struck me as a perfect opening scene in a Swedish crime novel—you see the kid pursued and then gruesomely terminated and then it fades to black and a grim, depressed Swedish detective with all sorts of issues figures out the motivations and the identities of these faceless murderers, these sickos.
Then I spotted a steel gate stretched across the end of the tunnel—no doubt locked, shut down at this time of night because it was too dangerous to go any farther. That was it then. This was the end. My assassin had indeed driven me in here on purpose. But I didn’t see any accomplices, and then I spotted something that surprised me even more. Stairs! There were stairs in the middle of the street, running steeply upward on each side of the gate. And beyond them, I could see light! Or at least I thought I could: dim and distant. I raced up the hard stone stairs as if pounding up the steps in a dungeon. It wasn’t clear where they were going, but I had no choice. Then there was another staircase, and then another, narrowing toward the center, leading up to who-knows-what!
As I went higher, my legs started to feel like lead and I began to stagger. I was slowing down, really slowing down, and I could hear the beast behind me gaining ground. But up ahead, way up another two flights, I still thought I could see that light.
I ascended the next flight and then began to climb the last. I could barely move! I’d started out taking three steps at a time, then two, and now I could barely do one! Finally, I was halfway up the last flight, still ten or more steps to go, looking down at my feet, unable to raise my head to see what was in front of me, grabbing my legs to pull them forward to make each step.
Five steps left! It seemed like the man was just a few strides behind and not slowing. Was he superhuman?
Three steps, then two…then one!
But I stumbled on that last one…and felt a hand reach out and grab me from behind!
I somehow lurched up onto level ground with the hand still on me, trying to push him off, raising my head and seeing that I was on a street, a brighter one.
“Mr. Adam?”
Greta Longrinen was standing there, holding the handlebars of her horse-bike, the monkey on her shoulder.
“Yip,” said the admiral.