Three Seconds

followed each step with interest.
    Transport of a protected object. Transport across an open space.
    Suddenly another sound cut through. Gunfire. Someone firing rapid single shots at the people on foot. Erik Wilson stood completely still and watched as the two people in black closest to the protected person threw themselves over said person and pushed them to the ground, and the four others turned towards the line of fire.
    They did the same as Wilson, identified the weapon by sound.
    A Kalashnikov.
    From an alleyway between two low buildings about forty, maybe fifty metres away.
    The birds that had been singing a moment ago were silent; even the warm wind that would soon become cool, was still.
    Erik Wilson could see every movement through the fence, hear every arrested silence. The men in black returned the fire and the vehicleaccelerated sharply, then stopped right by the protected person, in the line of fire that continued at regular intervals from the low buildings. A couple of seconds later, no more, the protected body had been bundled into the back seat of the vehicle through an open door and disappeared into the dark.
    ‘Good.’
    The voice came from above.
    ‘That’s us done for this evening.’
    The loudspeakers were positioned just below the huge floodlights. The president had survived this evening, once again. Wilson stretched, listened. The birds had returned. A strange place. It was the third time he had visited the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centre, or the FLETC, as it was called. It was as far south in the state of Georgia as it was possible to go; a military base owned by the American state, a training ground for American police organisations – the DEA, ATF, US Marshals, Border Patrol, and the people who had just saved the nation once more: the Secret Service. He was sure of it as he studied the floodlit asphalt: it was their vehicle, their people and they often practised here at this time of day.
    He carried on walking along the fence, which was the boundary to another reality. It was easy to breathe – he’d always liked the weather here, so much lighter, so much warmer than the run-up to a Stockholm summer, which never came.
    It looked like any other hotel. He walked through the lobby towards the expensive, tired restaurant, but then changed his mind and carried on over to the lifts. Made his way up to the eleventh floor which for some days or weeks or months was the shared home of all course participants.
    His room was too warm and stuffy. He opened the window that looked out over the vast practice ground, peered into the blinding light for a while, then turned on the TV and flicked through the channels that were all showing the same programme. It would stay on until he went to bed, the only thing that made a hotel room feel alive.
    He was restless.
    The tension in his body spread from his stomach to his legs to his feet, forcing him up off the bed. He stretched and walked over to the desk and the five mobile phones that lay there neatly in a row on the shiny surface, only centimetres apart. Five identical handsets betweenthe lamp with the slightly over-large lampshade and the dark leather blotting pad.
    He lifted them up one by one and read the display screen. The first four: no calls, no messages.
    The fifth – he saw it before he even picked it up.
    Eight missed calls.
    All from the same number.
    That was how he’d set it up. Only calls from one number to this phone. And only calls to one number from this phone.
    Two unregistered, pay-as-you-go cards that only phoned each other, should anyone decide to investigate, should anyone find their phones. No names, just two phones that received and made calls to and from two unknown users, somewhere, who couldn’t be traced.
    He looked at the other four that were still on the desk. All with the same set-up: they all were used to call one unknown number and they were all called from one unknown number.
    Eight missed calls.
    Erik Wilson gripped the phone that was Paula’s.
    He calculated in his head. It was past midnight in Sweden. He rang the number.
    Paula’s voice.
    ‘
We have to meet. At number five. In exactly one hour.
’
    Number five.
    Vulcanusgatan 15 and Sankt Eriksplan 17.
    ‘We can’t.’
    ‘
We have to.
’
    ‘Can’t do it. I’m abroad.’
    Deep breath. Very close. And yet hundreds of miles away.
    ‘
Then we’ve got a bastard of a problem, Erik. We’ve got a major delivery coming in twelve