by Peter Beck
Winter got to the bungalow.
The stocky chambermaid from the previous evening was outside the door, knocking on it with her fist. Winter wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d tried to break down the door with her shoulder. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘we have a bomb alert. Please go straight to the car park with the other guests!’
‘I know.’
The door opened a crack and Fatima’s large eyes were even larger than usual. Her long, black hair was dishevelled. ‘What’s wrong?’
Somewhere in the main building a siren went off.
The chambermaid hurried to the next bungalow.
Fatima was holding a towel to cover herself.
Winter grabbed Fatima’s head with both hands. ‘Bomb alert. Get dressed, quick. We’ve got to get out of here.’
She slipped on her jeans and a jumper. Winter threw the rest of their things in the suitcase on wheels and grabbed his rucksack. Then they hurried to the car park. Fatima walked across the gravelly car park in bare feet. About a hundred guests were milling around, chatting and on the phone. Some were taking photos of the hotel, and for a moment Winter was seized by the macabre thought that they might be trying to capture the explosion.
Before. After.
Fatima sat on a rock and put on her shoes.
Winter went up to the Jaguar. He had the electronic key in his hand, but he hesitated, remembering his dream. The Jaguar was parked between a blue Polo with Norwegian plates and a claret-coloured Mercedes. It looked untouched. He walked around the convertible.
A cat had left its paw prints on the bonnet. Cats love warm cars. Winter was always a bit disconcerted when his cat treated his Audi the same as it did him. It seemed to make no difference to Tiger whether he was cosying up to Winter’s legs or the Audi’s tyres. He would purr on Winter’s lap just as he did on the warm car roof. Could you be jealous of cars?
The windscreen was full of insects. He didn’t notice anything suspicious on the lock of the boot. He kneeled on the ground and looked under the sports car.
Nothing.
He cautiously tried the door handle on the driver’s side, which was still locked. About five centimetres beneath the window of the passenger door was a barely visible horizontal scratch! The Hertz rep hadn’t said anything about that. Winter had given the car no more than a cursory glance when they’d handed over the keys. The scratch could be from anything, such as a branch brushing the chassis or a picklock that had slipped. Winter ran his thumb over the scratch and checked the passenger door as well.
He looked around.
Fatima was sitting on the rock and the other hotel guests weren’t taking any notice of him. He heard sirens and two fire engines arrived. If something blows up now, Winter thought, then at least the fire brigade’s here. He took a few steps back, stood behind the next row of cars and pressed the unlock button. The Jaguar responded with a flash of its lights. Winter breathed a sigh of relief.
‘What’s wrong?’ Fatima appeared beside him.
‘Nothing, I just had a bad dream.’
He packed the luggage into the boot and they sat inside the car. From their vantage point they had a good view. More fire engines and police cars arrived. In contrast to the holiday guests, most of whom were lightly dressed, the firemen were wearing full protective gear. The hotel had now been sealed off with yellow and black tape. The safety zone around the main building was about fifty metres. The fire brigade was putting hoses in place.
The initial frenzy started to die down. People waited tensely. A Saab came along the drive and Winter saw the large logo of a newspaper emblazoned on its side. The press. The bomb alert would make it into the regional paper at least. Two young men got out and started looking and asking around.
‘What are we going to do now?’ Fatima asked, flipping down the sun visor to check her appearance in the mirror. When Winter didn’t reply she turned to him.
Winter felt as if they’d already known each other for ages. He attempted a reassuring smile and said, ‘Wait,’ unsure of what else to say. He continued watching the activity outside.
After a while he remembered Hansen and told Fatima about his breakfast with the money manager. He pulled out the documents from the conference room, leafed through them and passed some on to Fatima. The week’s schedule and detailed daily programmes: presentations and discussions on selected topics of global infrastructure. A list of around thirty names – mostly Arabic and some Chinese – with telephone numbers, emails and contact addresses.
Recognising some of the names, Fatima commented, ‘In the Middle East they’re part of the Establishment.’
A three-page list entitled ‘Partners’ gave addresses and contact persons for banks, financial institutions, authorities, specialists, experts, advisors, as well as public and private university institutes. There was a comprehensive list of books and studies, arranged by topics such as energy, transport, mixed. Someone had marked a few titles with a pink highlighter. This participant was obviously interested in shipping and wanted to invest in ports and container ships.
The bundle of paper also contained some PowerPoint presentations and prospectuses of Hansen’s private equity fund. Wearing a pink tie, he smiled at Winter from page three, extolling the achievements of his investments. The graphics were impressive. Growth, profitability, performance. Everything was going up at a giddying rate.
Another police car, a panel van, sped up the drive and skidded to a halt outside the hotel. Winter could make out the word ‘Bergen’. Two uniformed officers got out and yanked open the doors at the back. Two Alsatians leaped out and were put on a lead. The specialists from Bergen with their sniffer dogs. Winter checked his watch: 07:42. About half an hour since the evacuation. The dogs were excited and looking forward to their search. For them it was just a game.
Fatima pointed at a document. ‘Look, here’s a presentation about nuclear power stations by Al-Bader. “The peaceful use of a clean technology – the sustainable yields of nuclear power stations.” He was actually trying to persuade others to invest in our nuclear power plant.’
Winter skimmed the presentation. It looked like all those beautiful pieces of paper from his bank. He’d study it later.
The hotel had set up an improvised breakfast buffet and were providing the waiting guests with tea, coffee, rolls and fruit. The waitress from earlier wandered through the crowd with a tray full of plastic cups.
The children had drawn lines in the gravel of the car park and were playing hopscotch. They hopped around, laughing and trying to make each other lose balance.
The security guard Winter had chatted to that morning was strolling along the lines of cars, inspecting them. He held a cup in his right hand, switched it to the left, stroked the Jaguar and said, ‘Nice car. I wish the company gave us these to drive.’
‘Just a rental, I’m afraid. But she drives beautifully. A bit large for the narrow roads in this part of the world. On the drive here I learned a few words of Norwegian: Automatisk Trafikkontrol.’ Winter grinned.
‘Oh yes, our lovely speed cameras.’
‘Got everything under control?’ Winter asked, pointing at the hotel.
‘I think so. Probably a false alarm.’
‘You only ever know that after the event. Where did the alert come from?’
‘It seems as if a number of guests got an email this morning warning them that the hotel would be blown up at zero eight hundred hours. They woke up, dozily checked their mobiles and then couldn’t get back to sleep.’ The guard gave the time in military fashion. His fake golden Rolex showed ten to eight.
‘Who sent it?’
‘Some Islamic committee. The Arabs took it seriously at any rate. The committee is demanding that they’ – he pointed to the Arab hotel guests – ‘stop doing business with the infidel.’
‘What was the exact name of the sender?’ Fatima asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What will happen if they don’t find a bomb?’
&
nbsp; ‘We’ll wait a few hours. The police will give the all clear and that’s the end of the scare.’
Through an open window on the first floor of the hotel they saw one of the handlers egging on his dog. Ten minutes for the entire building was tight, but not impossible. There were thousands of scents inside a hotel and the dogs had to focus on just a few. These trained animals were still far superior to any technology; they could sniff out explosives in an instant.
But the three-storey main building of the hotel had around sixty bedrooms plus attic, basement and kitchen. Then there were the large reception areas. A hundred rooms, two dogs, ten minutes. Five rooms per minute. And if any explosives were found there was no guarantee that these could be defused in time.
The security guard walked over to a Mercedes SLK-Class, giving the outward impression of calmness. Winter and Fatima waited. They couldn’t concentrate on the documents any longer and the clock was ticking more slowly than normal. The police officers from Bergen asked the guests to move further away from the hotel. The firemen donned their helmets, flipped down their visors and shouldered their equipment. One of the reporters had set up a tripod on a rock at a safe distance and mounted a camera.
The handlers came out of the hotel, shaking their heads. They patted their dogs and gave them a treat, then the animals obediently jumped back into their cage. A brief bark. Otherwise silence all around. The hotel guests had stopped chatting. Winter checked the time: 07:59.
JULY 30 – 08:00
A mobile phone rang and a portly Arab took the call. The people standing nearby turned to him. He nodded, made a brief gesture, muttered something, then energetically flipped his phone shut. The journalist placed his right hand on the camera and checked his watch. Ready to shoot. The firemen were pawing impatiently in the starting blocks.
The unnerved guests moved further back.
08:00 passed uneventfully.
Bent over the steering wheel, Winter stared at the hotel. After a few anxious minutes the guests came to life again.
Relieved, he leaned back in his seat and gave a long sigh. Winter looked at Fatima. She was relieved too. He was alive, well and with an intriguing woman. Then the image of Anne laughing came back to him and superimposed itself on the present. He fancied she gave him a look that was at once searching and inviting.
He shook his head. When would the future begin? Turning away, he said, ‘Come on, let’s go for a bit of a walk. Waiting any more is going to drive me mad. We’ll get a good view from the cliffs over there.’
Behind the hotel they found a narrow path alongside the fjord. They passed small, weekend houses with white timbers, terraces and boathouses. The air was thick with the sweet scent of ripe cherries. To the left lay a cherry orchard, to the right a stony bay with patches of sand. In the distance he could see a ferry. Although the sun was already shining strongly, the air was still fresh from the night.
Fatima seemed to like the tranquillity here. It offered a contrast, at any rate, to the dust and noise of Cairo. They strolled along the bay, both buried in their own thoughts. It was peaceful; the explosions now seemed far away.
At the end of the bay, cliffs plunged into the fjord. After a short climb they reached a rugged, barren plateau, where they were met by a cool wind that ruffled Fatima’s hair. The black cliffs fell forty metres vertically into the water. The waves of the fjord frothed against the crags that lined the cliffs in multiple rows, like shark teeth.
They sat on a bench bearing the logo of the local tourist board and gazed out at the fjord. Where the Hardangerfjord met the horizon, the blue of the water melded into the blue of the sky.
Winter wondered where the fresh water of the fjord finished and the salt water of the sea began. Did the salt content increase gradually or was there an invisible boundary? When did his feelings for Anne end and when did they begin for Fatima? Anne was dead. That was a clear boundary at least. But he did not want to forget her. Confusion. After a while, Winter said, ‘I’m so relieved that the bomb threat wasn’t carried out.’
‘Me too.’
Nodding, he bent forwards, rested his elbows on his knees and said, more to the water than to Fatima, ‘Somehow it all happened too quickly for me. On the day the helicopter crashed I was actually meant to meet up with Anne. We got on well outside work too.’
‘I know. Did you love her?’
‘No.’ He hesitated before adding, ‘Yes. I don’t know. I mean, not in the way you’re thinking.’ She rocked her head from side to side, but said nothing. Winter was finding it hard to disentangle his feelings in his head, let alone articulate them. He felt Fatima lay a hand on his back, then said, ‘Yes, I did love Anne. Maybe I’m still in love with her. But I was her boss and I never told her. I’d planned to a few times, but I never managed it. I just didn’t want to embarrass her.’
‘I can understand that.’
Winter remembered Kaddour and how he’d spoken about Fatima, how he’d looked at her. Then the explosion at the restaurant near the pyramids. Deciding it was going to take time, he turned to Fatima and said, ‘Let’s think of the future.’
‘Yes, let’s see what fate Allah has in store for us.’ Fatima smiled, thoughtfully at first, then with a broader grin. Laughter lines at the corners of her eye. Somehow fate seemed to be the right word here, Winter decided.
‘Yes, good.’ He paused. ‘What do you think is behind the bomb scare?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It was effective. The investors are going to think twice about transferring their money to Galaxy. Getting hold of those email addresses isn’t exactly rocket science. They’re publicly accessible. I expect an insider heard about all the people who were meeting here and told an acquaintance who knows someone who knows someone else. And sending an email anonymously from an internet café is risk-free. The timing was good in any case.’
Winter rubbed the scabby scar on his temple and continued thoughtfully, ‘Sending a bomb scare by email is not the same as the two murders. My gut feeling tells me that somehow they don’t go together. The sequence and style don’t match.’
‘Maybe a copycat. Maybe one of Galaxy’s competitors sent the email to disrupt the conference.’
Winter nodded and scratched himself pensively. ‘What I want to know is why Al-Bader and Kaddour were targeted. Why were they singled out to be killed? And why precisely now? Did the two of them have other joint projects?’
‘Apart from the nuclear power station, no. Or not that I’m aware of. I knew Kaddour fairly well. He often asked me for advice. He always wanted to know my opinion. To begin with that was difficult, especially when my opinion was different. He didn’t always take my advice to heart.’
A faint smile emerged on Fatima’s lips before vanishing again.
‘No! I’m certain that Kaddour didn’t have any other business with Al-Bader. We enquired about him last summer. Someone Kaddour knew was dealing with Al-Bader’s brother and that’s how we came into contact.’
Hearing the sadness in Fatima’s voice, Winter looked at her and said, ‘We must find out more about the consortium’s plans. We’ve only scratched the surface so far. What we do know is that there’s a huge amount of money at stake and it’s being invested in Western infrastructure. That’s a politically controversial tightrope walk.’
‘I know.’
‘Being Swiss, I’m not going to get much out of them. But you could pretend to be a journalist and ask some questions. If you tell them you’re a freelance journalist working for Al Jazeera and you bat your eyelids I’m sure you’ll be able to coax something from one or two of them.’
But she shook her head resolutely. ‘No, that isn’t a good idea. I don’t want to put on an act. Why would businessmen talk about their affairs with a stranger? Business in the Middle East only functions through connections.’ After a pause she added, more gently, ‘And those take time.’
‘Oh well, it was just an idea. But how are we going to continue following the money trail?’
They gazed at the water.
‘Let’s go back. I’ll try to get talking to the women. Maybe they can help us further. Although they only operate in the background, in general they’re better with the money.’
Winter looked at Fatima, unsure if she was being serious. But it was a good idea.
‘Alright then. Maybe they’ve given the hotel the all-clear by now.’
They stood up and walked back. In the distance they heard the siren of a car ferry approaching from behind the cliffs and heading for the hotel’s landing stage. Fatima and Winter paused and watched the ferry advance with its belly full of cars and a bow wave in its tow. The crew was preparing to dock and a handful of passengers were waving from the deck.
A few minutes later they were back at the hotel. The main building was still sealed off. In the car park were uniformed officers, firemen, the security guards dressed in black and a few plain-clothed police, standing around their vehicles and discussing the situation. The car with the dogs was empty; no doubt the sniffers were doing another thorough search of the building. They walked in an arc around the hotel and entered the park.
Making a virtue out of necessity, the guests had settled down in the expansive park for a picnic. They sat or lay in the grass. Waiters and waitresses hurried back and forth, serving more food and drinks from the kitchen, which must have been reopened. It was quite a trek from there to the guests, who were used to being waited on. In the middle of the park was a rotunda, a sort of summer house with a metal roof that had turned green, a table and curved cast-iron benches around it. Five Arab women in traditional dress were sitting there, chatting animatedly.
Fatima headed for the rotunda.
Winter stayed where he was for a moment and watched her. He sighed and returned to the Jaguar, where he met the security guard. The man told Winter that they still hadn’t found anything and that it had probably been a hoax. Winter didn’t disagree. The hotel and bungalows were given a final methodical search. In all likelihood the guests wouldn’t be able to return to their rooms until the afternoon. Winter accepted the offer of some water and drank from the bottle.