The airport building was hopelessly overfilled – with loud people with nervous tension writ large on their faces. It was a mood like during the interval in a symphony concert – when one knows that afterwards will come Bruckner's Eighth. Then Maille saw the young woman with the placard that bore his name in large letters.

Jelena Jansson was as pretty as she was taciturn. During the taxi-ride into town that lasted over two hours, Maille found out only that Jansson had moved here after the kidnapping of the professor – out of fear «of getting entangled in difficulties.»