One hour more and they would never have had to see that foolish hitman ever again. But at the pub Hitman Anders had met the wrong person and drawn the right conclusion. And that was why he was now standing in the center of the room, next to the yellow suitcase and the red one, opening them and finding bills everywhere.
“Well?” was what he said.
“Fourteen point four million,” said the receptionist, in a resigned tone.
The priest tried to save her life and the situation: “Four point eight million of it, of course, belongs to you. You can spread it around however you like: the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and wherever else seems right. It’s important to us that we don’t leave you empty-handed. A third of it is for you. Definitely!”
“For me?” said Hitman Anders.
“For me” was all his brain could handle in that moment. It had been so much simpler before, when he hadn’t had to think so much. All he would have had to do was:
1. beat the priest and the receptionist to a pulp
2. take the suitcases full of money
3. leave.
But these days it was more blessed to give than to receive; it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who was rich to enter the kingdom of God. And you weren’t supposed to covet either one thing or the next.
Although . . . no, there were still limits. And he heard Jesus speak to him. “Get rid of these two fakers, these Pharisees who have been using you for so long. Take all their money and start afresh somewhere else.”
Those were Jesus’s exact words, and Hitman Anders conveyed them to the priest and the receptionist.
At that point, the receptionist began seriously to despair; he felt that it would soon be time to get down on his knees and beg for his life. Meanwhile, the priest was mostly just curious.
“Did Jesus really speak to you? Just think, in all my years as an ambassador between Heaven and Earth, he never said a word.”
“You don’t think that might be because you’re a fraud?” said Hitman Anders.
“I suppose that could be it.” The priest nodded. “If I survive the next few minutes, I’ll try to check with him. Just one quick question before you start getting rid of us.”
“Yes?”
“What does Jesus say you should do after that?”
“Take the money and go, as I told you.”
“Yes, of course that’s right. But more specifically? Practically everyone in this country knows who you are. You realize that, don’t you? You’ll be recognized everywhere. And you have almost every half- and full-blown criminal in the area after you. Did you tell Jesus about that?”
Hitman Anders was silent. And then he was silent a little longer.
The priest assumed he was trying to make contact with Jesus again, and perhaps was not receiving a response. If so, she said, Hitman Anders should not take it personally: maybe something had just come up for Jesus. He had so much to do: fill empty nets with fish, bring widows’ dead sons back to life, drive demons out of men who couldn’t speak . . . There was proof to be found in chapter five of Luke and chapter nine of Matthew if Hitman Anders didn’t believe her.
The receptionist squirmed. Was this really the best time to provoke him?
But Hitman Anders didn’t feel provoked. She was right! Jesus must have his hands full all the time. He would have to figure this out on his own. Or ask someone else for advice. Like, for example, the goddamned priest. “Do you have any suggestions?” he asked sullenly.
“Are you asking me or Jesus?” wondered the priest, and was met with an angry look from the receptionist: Don’t go too far!
“I’m asking you, for Christ’s sake,” said Hitman Anders.
Ten minutes later, the priest had managed to get the story of what had happened at Soldaten Švejk out of him: about how the valiant hitman had laid a threatening Olofsson brother out cold (“first a left block and then a straight right, and that was that”), and about the conclusion the hitman had drawn from the conversation that had preceded the knockout—that is, that the priest and the receptionist were in the process of cheating the pants off their business partner.
“Former business partner,” the receptionist attempted. “This all started when you went on strike.”
“I found Jesus! Is that so goddamn hard to understand? And just for that, you fucked me over!”
The priest broke in to put a stop to the fight they didn’t have time for. She agreed with the hitman’s description of the state of affairs, even if he might have chosen a different expression. But now it was time to look to the future and act quickly, since there was no way of knowing when Hitman Anders’s friend from the pub would choose to get up off the floor, gather up his fury and take off. Probably in a beeline to his brother to inform him of this and that.
“A little while ago you asked if I had any suggestions of how we could move forward. The answer is yes!”
The best plan was for them to leave together. The priest and the receptionist’s task would be to protect Hitman Anders from discovery, with all that that implied. They would divide up the money in the suitcases in a brotherly and sisterly fashion; after all, there was a little over five million each if they included the priest and the receptionist’s more honestly saved money (not much more honestly, but a little).
They weren’t quite sure where they would go, but the receptionist had visited Hitman Anders’s old acquaintance the count the day before and purchased a small camper; there was room for all three of them to live in it for a limited amount of time, even though it was originally meant for just two.
“A camper van?” Hitman Anders said. “What did you pay for it?”
“Not much,” the receptionist confessed.
Per Persson had driven away in the vehicle with the promise that Hitman Anders would call in the following Friday to pay for it and also give details of the execution of the double murder the count had ordered.
“The double murder the count ordered?”
“Yes, it’s ordered and paid for, but not committed. One of the count’s main competitors in car dealing, and ditto for the countess, but in the pill-pushing trade. I imagine they want fewer dogs in the race, and they thought it was worth one point six million.”
“One point six . . . which is now in this yellow suitcase?”
“Yes, or the red one.”
“And the count and countess won’t be getting their murders?”
“Not unless Jesus insists you return to work, and we have no reason to hope he will. They will, however, have had a camper stolen from them too. There’s a chance the count and countess will soon be the clients who are angriest with us, in company with a number of other angry clients. So perhaps we ought to take off, on our journey to an unknown destination.”
At that moment, it was not easy to be named Johan Andersson. And nothing was made easier by the fact that he was better known as Hitman Anders, that he was recently saved—and that his only friends in the world seemed to be the two sincere enemies who suddenly wanted to move into a camper with him instead of being beaten to death.
Jesus continued to remain about as talkative as the Wailing Wall, while the priest and the receptionist chattered on. Despite everything, they seemed to have come up with the only reasonable solution he could think of.
“Can I tempt you with a half-bottle of the blood of Jesus for the road?” the receptionist tried.
Hitman Anders made up his mind. “Yes, you may. Or a whole bottle on a day like this. Come on, let’s go.”