Stewe Billgren has just watched twelve heavily armed police officers split up to run through two doors into the Saluhall. He’s been frozen with his pistol aimed at the closest door since Mira ran inside with Group 5 less than ten minutes ago. Now she finally has some backup. He stands stiffly up, relieved, and goes to sit in the driver’s seat of Alpha Car. Blue lights flash on walls all the way down to Sturegatan. A new movement in his rearview mirror makes him glance up. The hood of a red Volvo pokes out from an entrance to the building beside the Saluhall. It comes slowly forward across the sidewalk and turns right onto Humlegårdsgatan, nearing his own car. It passes and turns onto Majorsgatan right in front of him. The early-morning light reflects back from the windows and he can make out only a vague impression of the man behind the wheel. He looks away toward the square and watches an officer shout urgently into his radio. Stewe feels the urge to go over and ask about Mira when several things click into place in his mind. The man in the red Volvo had to let go of the wheel in order to shift. His black jacket looked shiny, as if it were wet. Stewe’s heart stutters. The left arm was wet. He couldn’t see the driver’s face through the reflections, but there were no reflections in the back side window because the window was gone. And the glitter around its edge was broken glass. The hit man had broken into the Volvo to escape and his left arm was bloody.
Stewe reacts immediately. He radios the leader of the operation even while the red Volvo is driving up Majorsgatan. He gets no answer. He starts his engine and shifts his car into gear without a thought for his own safety. The moment he turns onto Majorsgatan, the Volvo speeds up. The hit man realizes immediately that Stewe is on his trail. Both cars now speed up. They are on a narrow street past the neo-Gothic Holy Trinity Church and approaching a T intersection. Stewe is shifting into fourth gear and closing on the Volvo. He plans to force the driver to stop by swerving into its side. The light façade of the church seems to approach too fast. The Volvo swings right on Linnégatan so rapidly his wheels swerve up onto the sidewalk beneath a red awning to crash through some café tables. Splintered wood and metal scraps fly up. His left fender is torn loose and sparks on the concrete. Stewe slides around the curve and so gains a few seconds. He shifts up and closes in on the Volvo even as they are speeding down Linnégatan. The fender tears loose from the Volvo and smacks into Stewe’s windshield. He involuntarily ducks, slows a second, but speeds up again. A taxi honks at them from a side street. They both swerve into the opposite lane to pass two slower cars. There’s hardly time to see the roadblocks around Östermalm Square. Gawkers have begun to gather.
The wider road next to the National Historical Museum gives Stewe a breather and he tries to reach the leader of the operation again.
“Alpha Car!” he yells.
“Roger,” a voice says.
“Suspect is in a red Volvo on Linnégatan heading toward Djurgården,” Stewe calls into the radio.
He drops the radio and it bounces on the floor as his car hits a wooden barrier in front of a sandpile. His right front tire lifts off the ground and he slides to the left, passing the hole where the asphalt has been broken up. He disengages the clutch and matches the drift in the other direction, slides past the opposite lane, and is in control of the car again. He hits the gas.
He’s pursuing the Volvo down tree-lined Narvavägen Boulevard, which had crossed Linnégatan. A bus brakes hard to miss the Volvo. It slides into the intersection and the back end swings around to hit a light pole. Another car swerves to avoid the bus and helplessly drives right into a bus shelter. Glass splinters rain down onto the sidewalk. A woman throws herself away from the car and falls down. The brakes of the bus are still squealing, its tires thunder up onto the safety island, and the roof of the bus knocks off a large, overhanging tree branch.
Stewe keeps following the racing Volvo past Berwald Concert Hall. He’s coming closer just in time to see that the driver is managing to aim a pistol at him. He stamps down on the brake at the same moment the shot goes through the window near his head. The interior of Stewe’s car instantly fills with flying glass. The Volvo drives over a parked bike with a placard advertising Linda’s Café. There’s a big bang as the bike bounces up, then over the hood and roof and on into the air. It lands directly in front of Stewe to be crushed beneath his wheels and thwack up momentarily against his undercarriage.
They’re speeding through the sharp curve to Strandvägen, right over the safety island between the trees. Stewe hits the gas as he pulls out of the turn and his tires spin. They’re racing through early rush-hour traffic, leaving the sounds of squealing brakes and the thud of minor collisions behind. They come up to the left by Berwald Concert Hall, over the grass-covered safety island and onto Dag Hammarskjölds väg.
Stewe pulls out his pistol and puts it down next to him. He reasons that he’ll reach the other car at Djurgårdsbrunnsvägen. At that point he’ll try to head him off, and then it will be time to take the man out. They’re passing the American embassy, hidden behind a high gray fence, at about 130 kilometers an hour. The Volvo, its tires smoking now, jerks from the road and turns to the left just past the Norwegian embassy. It goes up over the sidewalk and between the trees. Stewe reacts a touch too late and is forced to swing wide, right in front of a bus, over the sidewalk, up onto the lawn, and through some low bushes. His tires whack on the curbstones of the Italian Cultural Institute. He crosses the sidewalk and slides to the left on Gärdesgatan, where he immediately spots the Volvo.
It’s stopped in the center of the Skarpögatan crossway.
Stewe believes he sees a glimpse of the driver through the back window. He grabs up his pistol from the seat and releases the safety. He drives slowly up to the Volvo. Blue lights flash from all the police cars streaming from Valhallavägen beyond the Sveriges Television Building. The Volvo driver bails quickly from his vehicle and then he is only a black-clad figure running down the road between the two stately embassies of Germany and Japan. Stewe is almost out of his car when the Volvo explodes into a fireball. The shock wave hits his face and the blast deafens him. He hears the world as if cotton wool were stuffed into his ears, but he drives on into the unbelievable quiet, up onto the sidewalk, even directly across the smoking hulk, but he can no longer see the suspect. There is no other place to go. He speeds up, crashes through a high fence, stops as the street dead ends, leaves the car, and runs back with his pistol ready.
The man is gone. The world is still unbelievably silent, except for an odd high-pitched whistle as if a strong wind were blowing. Stewe scans the street quickly up and down. The embassy buildings sit behind gray steel wire. There was nowhere the man could go except into one of these buildings by using a code or even climbing over one of the high fences.
People are emerging from their buildings to see what caused the explosion. Stewe looks around, takes a few steps, then quickly turns around again. This time, he spots the suspect immediately, on the grounds of the German embassy. He walks casually, matter-of-factly, to the main entrance. The door swings open and the man steps inside. Stewe Billgren lowers his arm and tries to calm down from a feeling of total frustration. He tries to control his breathing. The German embassy sits on a piece of land that is diplomatically considered part of Germany itself. He cannot enter without an express invitation. Swedish jurisdiction stops at the gate.