Death in Oslo

by Anne Holt

  ‘What’s it like in the real Situation Room at the moment then, Johanne?’

  She extracted herself from his arm.

  ‘How should I know? I have no idea about—’

  ‘Yes you do. If nothing else, because you’ve got a book that’s actually called The Situation Room . . .’ now it was Adam who could not restrain his irritation, which was about to spill over into real anger, ‘that’s lying on your bedside table. For Christ’s sake, Johanne, it must be possible to share . . .’

  In one swift movement she got up from the sofa and was on her way to the bedroom. A few seconds later she came back. Her face was bright red.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘You’ve got the title wrong. And if you’re so interested, you’re free to read it. It’s not exactly secret as it’s lying beside our bed. So here you are.’

  Her glasses were starting to steam up and sweat was visible on her nose.

  ‘Johanne,’ Adam groaned, exasperated. ‘For God’s sake, we can’t carry on like this . . .’

  I’m starting to get sick of this, he thought to himself. Be careful, Johanne. I don’t know how much longer I can stand your ambiguity. This transformation of my intelligent, lovely, sensible wife into an ill-tempered creature that rolls into a ball with all its spines out for no understandable reason is wearing me out. Your secrets are too big, Johanne. Too big for me, and far too big for you.

  There was a ring at the door.

  They both jumped. Johanne dropped the book on the floor, as if she had been caught red-handed with stolen goods.

  ‘Who could that be?’ Adam mumbled and looked at the clock. ‘Twenty past eleven . . .’

  He was stiff when he got up and went to open the door.

  Johanne stayed standing where she was, half turned towards the TV. The images that flickered across the screen were being watched all over the world at this very moment, irrespective of time zone or political regime, religion or ethnicity. CNN hadn’t had so many viewers since the catastrophe on Manhattan, and seemed to be greedily taking advantage of the situation. It was nearly six in the evening on the east coast. Americans, hungry for news, were on their way home from work; they had felt compelled to go, despite the morning’s terrible news. The news programme packed in more reporters, analysts, commentators and experts. They seemed more engaged than tired, as if the knowledge that they were nearing prime time gave them all renewed energy. Solemn men and women with impressive titles discussed the constitutional consequences and national contingency plans, short- and long-term crisis scenarios, terrorist organisations and the vice president’s highly criticised absence. As far as Johanne could make out, he was hidden away either in a plane somewhere over Nevada, or in a bunker in Arkansas, as one of the experts claimed. Another insisted that he knew that the vice president was already out of harm’s way at an American naval base far from the country’s shores. They discussed the twenty-fifth constitutional amendment, and everyone agreed that it was scandalous that the White House had not made it clear whether this had been activated yet or not.

  That’s what they’re discussing in the real situation room, Johanne thought to herself.

  She could image all the plasma screens on the walls of a cramped room in the White House, somewhere on the ground floor of the West Wing, with red geraniums outside the windows. More than six thousand kilometres away from the semi-detached house in Tåsen in Oslo, a group of people were at that moment working frantically in an uncertain crisis situation, keeping a watchful eye on the same TV programmes as everyone else, while they tried to prevent the world from becoming a considerably changed place the following morning.

  Every day, the many departments and agencies connected with national security received more than half a million electronic messages from embassies, military bases and other intelligence sources all over the world. They included warnings of vital importance to the nation’s security as well as insignificant memorandums they would rather be spared. Routine reports came in alongside reports of worrying enemy activity. The CIA, the FBI, the NSA and the Department of State all had their own operations centres that separated the wheat from the chaff in the incessant flow of information. Information of no importance was sent where it would do least harm, whereas important and dangerous information was tapped into messages to those who were there to deal with such matters: the Situation Room staff, a tight-knit core that had the authority to raise or lower the threshold for information, to demand more reports about particularly worrying developments, and who, most importantly, worked directly for the President.

  Under George W. Bush, the screens were locked on to Fox News.

  But now they once again watched CNN in the Situation Room.

  Everyone did. Johanne nodded and sat down again.

  The Americans were swimming in a sea of information with undercurrents that constantly threatened to pull them under. Agencies and departments, operations centres and foreign outposts, military and civil organisations – the flow of information in a crisis such as this was unbelievable. The entire American system would be on its knees by now, both domestic and international, in Washington DC and countless other cities and towns. When Johanne closed her eyes and acknowledged the indescribable fatigue that made it impossible to open them again, she thought she could hear a faint hum, like a swarm of bees in summer: tens of thousands of American civil servants who had only one aim, to bring the American president safely back home again.

  And they were watching CNN.

  She turned the TV off.

  She felt so small. She went over to the kitchen window, which had finally been fixed. There was no longer a cold draught when she ran her hand along the windowsill. It was almost dark outside, but not quite. The spring brought with it the return of this beautiful light that made the evenings less threatening and the mornings easier.

  She spun round. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Work,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Work? At midnight on the seventeenth of May?’

  He walked over to her. She was staring out of the window again. He put his arms round her slowly. She smiled and felt the goodness of his body warm her back. She relaxed. Closed her eyes.

  ‘I want to go to sleep,’ she whispered and ran a finger down his underarm. ‘Please take me to bed.’

  ‘Warren is in Oslo,’ he whispered, not letting her go, even though he felt her stiffen. ‘Warren Scifford.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s here in connection with . . .’

  Johanne was no longer listening. Her head felt light and detached, as if it was no longer her own. A flush of heat pulsed down her arms into her hands, which she lifted and pressed to the window pane. She saw the lights of an aeroplane in the sky to the north, and could not understand what it was doing there at this time of night, on a day like today. She found herself smiling without knowing why.

  ‘Don’t want to know,’ she said lightly. ‘You know that. Don’t want to hear about it.’

  Adam refused to let her go. Her body felt smaller now; she was positively skinny. And stiff as a poker.

  Warren Scifford, the Chief, had been Johanne’s teacher at the FBI Academy. And more than just a teacher, Adam had soon understood. Johanne was very young at the time, only twenty-three, whereas Warren must have been well into his forties. A love affair that happened an eternity ago. Adam had not felt even a hint of jealousy on the few occasions that he and Warren had bumped into each other. The last time must have been three or four years ago at an Interpol meeting in New Orleans, when they had even had dinner together. But for reasons that he could not explain, he had felt uncomfortable when Warren started to ask lots of questions about Johanne. He had avoided answering in any detail, and for the rest of the meal they had talked about their work and American football.

  Warren Scifford played a leading role in Johanne’s great secret. Any talk of the man was forbidden, a fact that only told Adam the obvious: that he had at some point hurt her deeply.

  But shit happens, he though
t, and held on to Johanne. It’s horrible and can be very difficult at the time. But you get over it. It’s almost fifteen years ago now, my love. Forget it. Get over it, for God’s sake. Or is there something more?

  ‘Talk to me,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Can’t you just tell me what this is all about?’

  ‘No.’ Her voice was no more than breath.

  ‘I’m going to have to work with him,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He still tried to hold on to her, but she pulled herself loose with surprising strength and pushed him away. The look in her eyes frightened him when she asked: ‘What did you say?’

  ‘He needs a liaison.’

  ‘And it has to be you. Of all the hundreds of . . . You said no, of course.’

  In a way she suddenly seemed more present, as if she had woken up when he let go of her body.

  ‘I was given an order, Johanne. I work for an organisation that gives orders. Saying no is not an option.’ He made quote marks with his fingers.

  Johanne turned away from him and went into the sitting room. She twisted the cork from the corkscrew and put it back into the half-empty wine bottle. Then she grabbed the glasses and took them out into the kitchen, where she put them down on the worktop. Then she checked that the dishwasher was full, put some soap in the dispenser, closed the metal door and started the machine. She snatched up a cloth, wrung it under running water and wiped the surfaces. Then she carefully shook the cloth over the sink, rinsed it again and folded it before hanging it over the edge.

  Adam followed her every movement without saying a word.

  Finally, Johanne looked at him.

  ‘I just want to make one thing absolutely clear before we go to bed,’ she said. Her voice was calm and enunciated, just as it was when she was giving Kristiane a telling-off. ‘If you say yes to being Warren Scifford’s liaison, this marriage is over.’

  He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

  ‘I’ll leave you, Adam. If you say yes, I’ll leave you.’

  Then she went and got ready for bed.

  Finally, the Norwegian national day had come to an end.

  WEDNESDAY 18 MAY 2005

  I

  When Warren Scifford woke up, he didn’t know whether it was the jet lag, the fact that he hadn’t had enough sleep or a latent flu that was making him feel so awful. He lay in bed for a while, staring at the ceiling. The airy sky-blue curtains let the sunlight in. His bed was bathed in morning light. When he finally lifted his head to look at the digital clock on the TV, he furrowed his brow in disbelief.

  Half past four in the morning.

  Now he understood the point of those hideous rubber blackout curtains he had ignored when he flopped into bed at around one. He struggled out of bed and padded over to the window to close the curtains. Darkness fell in the room. Only a sliver of light that prised its way through the opening between the curtains made it possible to see anything at all.

  He turned on the bedside lamp and lay down again without pulling the duvet over him. His naked skin contracted in the breeze from the air-conditioning. His neck was stiff and he could feel a headache lurking behind his eyes. He was exhausted and yet alert at the same time, and he knew that he wouldn’t go back to sleep. After a few minutes, he got up again and put on a peacock-blue silk dressing gown. There was an electric kettle on the shelf by the TV. Three minutes later he was stirring a cup of bitter, strong instant coffee, which he drank as soon as he could. It helped, but he still felt so drained that in other circumstances he might have been worried.

  He quickly worked out that it would be half past ten in the evening in Washington DC. This raised his spirits a notch. He could still count on a couple of problem-free hours, should it be necessary to contact anyone. He quickly set up his portable office on the desk that he had got the hotel to install. When he had arrived in the afternoon, there had been a great rococo table with a huge vase of flowers in the room, which would hardly have done the job. The desk he had now was simple and unpretentious, but massive. He took out an unusually large laptop from the metal case standing by the bed, then four mobile phones and a pile of pastel-coloured paper. He placed them all neatly in a row with meticulous precision. On top of the paper he laid three pens, equally spaced. A black pen, a red pen and a blue pen. The four mobile phones were of different appearance and made by different manufacturers, and he placed them, as if on display, to the left of the laptop. Finally he took a small printer, in three detachable parts, out of the suitcase, attached it to the computer and plugged it into the socket under the window. The laptop immediately turned itself on. The hotel boasted about its complimentary wireless connection, but he instead tapped in an American number. Seconds later he had accessed one of his mailboxes, which only four people knew about. The encryption code scrambled briefly, as it always did, showing him a chaos of characters before settling down into a well-known image.

  Warren Scifford yawned and then blinked away the tears that had been squeezed out. He had received a reply to the query he had sent before he went to bed. He opened the email with a single click.

  He read slowly. Then he read the whole thing again before clicking on the print icon and waiting for the whirring sound that told him that the document was being transferred to the printer and about to come out. He swiftly logged out and turned off the laptop. Then he went over to the door to check that the security lock was still on. No one had touched it.

  He needed a shower.

  He stood under the rushing, too-hot water for several minutes. To begin with it burnt on his skin, before a comfortable numbness spread down his spine. His neck already felt more flexible and his sinuses unblocked. He gave himself a good lather and washed his hair. Then he turned off the hot water and gasped in an ice-cold cascade.

  Now he was certainly wide awake. He dried himself briskly and took some clean clothes from his suitcase, having confirmed behind the blackout curtains that it looked like it would be a sunny day. He got dressed, grabbed the printout and threw himself down on the bed, pushing three pillows behind his head.

  The Trojan Horse link was not just warm, it was burning hot.

  It was six weeks since one of the special agents had come into his office with a small pile of paper and a worried look on his face. When the man left half an hour later, Warren Scifford had put his elbows on the table, clasped his hands behind his neck and stared at the desktop for ages while silently cursing his own vanity.

  He could have stayed where he felt comfortable. Warren Scifford was the best in his field; he was an expert in behavioural psychology, and the FBI had nurtured and developed him for over three decades now. He could have continued being a superhero in his own universe. Paradoxically, there was something safe and manageable about pursuing bizarre serial murderers and perverted rapists. Warren Scifford had done it for so long and seen so much that the crimes no longer made any real impact. His emotions did not cloud an increasingly sharp eye and growing insight.

  He was the very best hunter.

  But then he was tempted.

  President Bentley had called him personally in November, well before she was sworn in, to persuade him. Warren could still remember the feeling of intoxication when she contacted him. The sweet taste of success made him soft, and he laughed out loud and punched the air with his fist when the conversation was over. Not only was he wanted by America’s commander-in-chief for an important position, she had in fact begged him. Even though Helen Bentley had been a close friend for more than six years, he knew that that gave him no advantages in the extensive jigsaw puzzle she had started to piece together when George W. Bush had finally and unwillingly given his concession speech.

  Quite the opposite, in fact. Commentators had praised Madam President as the various appointments were announced. The extent to which she had steered clear of friends and loyal supporters in favour of candidates who were indisputably competent and independent was admirable.

  But Warren was to be one of them, and he
became a daily visitor to the West Wing.

  The group he had been appointed to lead was part of the FBI. But he was to report directly to the President all the same, something that had caused a serious rift with the director of the FBI before the intelligence group had even been established. The entire procedure was completely at odds with FBI tradition. Of course, the director had to back down, but Warren’s pride in being given the prestigious position waned somewhat when he had to acknowledge that he was no longer deemed to be a true Bureau man. For a short while he had considered changing his mind. But he quickly understood that that wouldn’t be possible.

  After 9/11, things had changed in the FBI. The Bureau had very quickly gone from being a police organisation that focused mainly on traditional, domestic crime to spearheading the fight against terrorism. Restructures that would have taken years to implement before were now completed within weeks. A storm of patriotic efficiency swept through all government organisations, institutions and departments that had anything to do with national security. The process was greatly helped by more or less unlimited resources and a legislative authority that proved to be more flexible than Americans might otherwise have thought before that catastrophic morning in September.

  The image of the enemy had changed too.

  There were still countries and states that were a threat to the world’s most powerful nation. Following the disintegration and dissolution of the Soviet Union, the prospect of a traditional attack had as good as disappeared. But as the US had interests all over the world, it was still important to focus attention on unfriendly nations and hostile states that could attack for ideological, economic or territorial reasons.

  So those functions continued, now as ever.

  But it was not a state that had attacked the US on the 11th of September. There was no country to strike back at. The men who had hijacked the four planes and crashed them on American soil were individuals, of different origins and diverse backgrounds. While the political machinery surrounding President Bush had constructed a classical enemy in the form of the axis of evil, and targeted all its aggression towards existing nations, Helen Lardahl Bentley was convinced that the attackers were far more dangerous than that.