The Other Son Read Online Free

brick buildings, some of which were attached to the university on the other side of the motorway.
    She paid the driver in cash and went into a three-story building that contained a number of small businesses. She walked up the stone steps to the first floor and opened an unfamiliar door, then walked along the corridor lined with empty, unfurnished offices and a small, glass-walled conference room. She noticed that someone had written some mathematical calculations on the whiteboard in black marker.
    At the end of the corridor Sophie opened a door and walked in.
    “Sorry I’m late.”
    Ernst Lundwall didn’t answer; he was concentrating on a sheaf of papers. Leszek was sitting alone on a chair farther away.
    “Hello, Leszek,” she said.
    He didn’t answer either. There was nothing impolite about that; it was just that he never said hello.
    She sat down at the table in front of a cell phone.
    Sophie looked at the men. Ernst, Hector’s legal and financial adviser, who had an almost unbelievable grasp of the Guzman organization. He was an awkwardly intelligent person with a pronounced lack of interest in other people.
    And Leszek Smialy, Adalberto Guzman’s bodyguard for many years. Now at her side as some indeterminate mixture of bodyguard, probation officer, and warden.
    She looked around the room. She had never been there before, would never go there again. That was always the way with these meetings, which took place regularly once each week. Always in a new location, the details of which she was informed about a few hours in advance.
    The phone on the table in front of her vibrated. She waited a couple of seconds before picking it up and answering.
    “Yes?”
    “
Who else is in the room?
” Aron’s voice.
    “Leszek and Ernst.”
    “
Is the speaker on?
”
    She switched the phone to speaker mode and laid it flat on the table. There was a slight hiss, possibly because the reception was bad up in the mountains of southern Spain, where Aron was calling from.
    There was a crackle, then Aron’s voice again: “
Hector’s brother, Eduardo, was murdered yesterday in Biarritz
.”
    The room grew darker.
Hector’s brother.
She had never met him…Eduardo, the marine biologist from Biarritz, she knew that much, married to Angela, two sons…
    “What happened?” Leszek asked.
    “
A bomb in a café
.”
    Silence.
    “Was it meant for him?” she asked.
    “
We assume so
.”
    She looked at Ernst and Leszek. Ernst showed no reaction. Leszek, on the other hand, looked grief-stricken, as if all the air had just gone out of him. She was aware that of the three people in the room, he knew Eduardo best. He had sent Hasani to Biarritz on Adalberto’s orders to protect Eduardo and his family last year, after Hector had been knocked down at a pedestrian crossing in Stockholm by the Hankes. That had been the starting shot for everything, and led to Hector being admitted to Danderyd Hospital, where Sophie worked, and where they met for the first time.
    “And the children? His wife, Angela?” she asked.
    “
They’re safe. Hasani has moved them
.”
    “Who did it?” she asked.
    The loudspeaker crackled, then the noise disappeared when Aron’s voice came back.
    “
The same people who tried to kill us in Istanbul.
”
    “Hankes?”
    “
Who else?
”
    “Why now? Why Eduardo?” Sophie asked.
    “
You tell me
…” Aron said thoughtfully. Then his voice became clearer and he said, “
Ernst? Skip everything that isn’t urgent right now. What’s critical?
”
    Ernst adjusted his glasses.
    “First, Don Ignacio is putting us under pressure again. He wants to expand, and is being quite aggressive, asking for Hector. He wants to talk to him in person.”
    Ignacio Ramirez, or Don Ignacio as he was usually known. A drug baron from Valle del Cauca in Colombia. An old business acquaintance, principally of Adalberto Guzman, Hector’s father. The biggest fish they ever dealt with, by far.
    “
What have you told him?
”
    “The