The Other Son by Alexander Söderberg Read Free Book Online

shrugged.
    “Not involved, but aware. We knew the plan.”
    “What plan?”
    “The Hankes have been looking for you, just as you have been looking for them. That was their best chance.”
    She made it clear that she didn’t understand.
    Ignacio scratched the back of his neck.
    “They were in control of the whole situation, right from the start,” he said, in a voice almost void of emotion.
    “But we set up the deal, found Basir. The whole thing was arranged in absolute secrecy, only a few of us knew anything about it….”
    “They have their tentacles everywhere,” he said.
    She was trying to understand.
    “And the purpose?”
    “I don’t know. They probably wanted to get Aron. But it didn’t turn out that way….”
    “ ‘Get’?”
    “Yes.”
    “And me?” she asked.
    “You?” Ignacio wondered with amusement.
    “I’m sitting here. What are you going to do with me?”
    He pondered for a moment, then laughed.
    “Good question…The Hankes obviously have a goal behind all this, they want to get rid of Hector and seize control of everything he’s got, and we’re helping them with that.”
    He coughed, then went on. “Now, take this back home and explain it sensibly to Aron or whoever’s making the decisions now. Come back with a constructive proposal that includes total capitulation. That’s what you need to do.”
    Ignacio Ramirez stood up, and Alfonse followed suit. They left the room.
    —
    The world outside the window of the plane was pale blue to start with, endless and cold. Then it became dark and closed.
    Ignacio was working with the Hankes, they had killed Hector’s brother, Eduardo, wanted to get rid of Hector. And she was supposed to persuade Aron to fall to his knees and surrender everything they had. Which was never going to happen. Aron would fight to his dying breath; he was like that, down to his very marrow.
    People would die.
    She had to find another way, somehow.

Jens stood up in the cargo hold of an old Russian Antonov An-12 that was cruising west at an altitude of 8,000 meters.
    The plane, around fifty years old, was being driven forward by four roaring Soviet turboprop engines. The noise level in the hold was unbearable.
    In the good old days the Communists had managed to squeeze one hundred angry and fully equipped paratroopers into a machine like this. Now there was only Jens. He, and four crates of stolen goods lashed to the middle of the floor.
    The crates belonged to an American Special Forces unit that had helped itself to some of the assets of the Ba’ath Party leadership during the first wave of the ground invasion of Iraq in 2003. Mostly gold and jewelry, art, museum artifacts, drugs, weapons, and an awful lot of cash. Everything had been packed up and buried in the desert east of Baghdad. Years had passed, the war had ended, and the time had come to dig up the treasure and get it out of the country. Jens had been contacted, and was given the job. He had gone to Baghdad, slinking around under constant fear of car bombs, and transferred the crates from one war to another: Afghanistan. There they had been buried once more. And more years had passed.
    A month ago he received a call. The Special Forces unit had finished fighting, and wanted the goods back in the USA:
Take the goods to Mexico, we’ll get them into the States from there.
    —
    A lamp flashed on the wall of the cargo hold. The pilots wanted something. Jens made his way to the cockpit.
    The captain and copilot were Georgian. Taciturn, proud, and constantly smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.
    “We’ll be landing in forty minutes,” the captain said. “Then we’ll have four hours to unload, refuel. Then we leave.”
    The Georgians would be heading home. Final destination: Batumi, on the Black Sea. Jens was going with them. He might get off somewhere en route, he didn’t know yet. That was what his life was like, constantly on the move, a compulsive urge to keep going, to keep working, tempt fate,