And the German had understood at once. “You need a plausible diversion,” he’d said.
“One of Schlagel’s admirers.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Someone with a history,” DeCamp said. “A police history.”
“I have just the man. In fact he is already there in Oslo. I’ll overnight his dossier to you.”
“At the Grand, under the name Edward Grecinger.”
“Yes,” Wolfhardt said. “Suite four-oh-seven.”
And DeCamp held his anger and vulnerability with the German in check. For now. “I’ll look for it.”
* * *
Eve’s fear, which had turned into a vague sense of unease, stayed with her through breakfast and the last of the news conferences before the ceremony, these mostly with Norwegian and Swedish television and radio stations. Halfway through one of them the reporter motioned for her cameraman to interrupt filming for a moment.
“Are you feeling well, Doctor?” the reporter asked, obviously concerned.
Eve knew what the woman meant and she shook her head. “Just a little tired,” she said. “The past few weeks have been chaotic, and I think maybe I’m feeling a little jet-lagged. Sorry.”
The woman reporter smiled. “No need to apologize, Doctor. Nearly every Nobel laureate I’ve interviewed on the day of the ceremony was in the same shape. Except, of course, for Mr. Gore. But then he was a politician and quite used to the pace. May we continue?”
“Yes.” Eve had nodded, and she concentrated not only on what she was saying, but how she was speaking.
The worst part so far, she’d confided to McGarvey, was the constant stream of people wanting to meet with her, and fellow environmental scientists were even worse than the politicians and businessmen because they insisted on talking shop, mostly about new carbon dioxide capture technologies. She wanted to tell them that when her water turbines began to come online, carbon dioxide would cease to be an issue. Any trends toward global warming would come mostly from naturally occurring cyclical events. But scientists were specialists and had trouble seeing beyond their own disciplines.
The ballroom on the mezzanine had been partitioned for the last three news conferences, and Don had remained at the rear of the ornate hall during all of them, avoiding any contact with McGarvey who stood to one side where he could watch not only Eve but the closed door and, she supposed, the faces of the reporters and technicians. He was dressed in a light-colored sport coat and knowing that he carried a gun in a holster beneath the jacket didn’t help her uneasy mood. The mere fact that he needed to be here with her was bothersome. And some of that mood, she guessed, had shown on her face
An older man in a leather jacket raised his hand. Eve pointed at him and he got to his feet, his cameraman focusing on him at first.
“Thank you, Doctor Larsen. I’m Arvid Morkum, TV 2, and I would like to add my congratulations.”
Eve nodded. “Thank you,” she said. She had been introduced by Jacobsen, who’d withdrawn to the side leaving her seated alone at a small table, a single microphone in front of her.
“As I’m sure many of my colleagues were, I was impressed watching the special program on the Fox network for its succinct explanation of exactly how your World Energy Needs project will not only produce electricity but, according to your work, reduce the number and severity of tropical cyclones around the globe, as well as have a decisive effect on global warming.”
Eve forced a smile even though she suspected what was coming next. “Is there a question in there, Mr. Morkum?”
A few of the reporters twittered.
“The televangelist Jeremiah Schlagel led a demonstration outside of the television studio even while you were inside, claiming that what you are trying to accomplish goes against — the reverend’s words — God’s will. How do you feel about his crusade?”
“His is a point of view apparently not shared by the Nobel Prize committee.”
Several of the people in the audience laughed out loud, but Morkum was not amused. “Aren’t you taking the man and his message seriously?”
“Not at all.”
“Then can you explain why you have hired a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency to act as your personal bodyguard? And my follow-up question is, are we to see a repeat of the strong-arm tactics used by Mr. McGarvey at the Fox studios in Washington?”
Jacobsen, who’d been standing to one side, spoke up. “Pardon me, Mr. Morkum, but I do not believe that is a relevant question at this news conference.”
The TV 2 camera swung toward him, and then panned to McGarvey.
“I believe it is,” Morkum said. “Outside the hotel at this very moment, a small group of the Reverend Schlagel’s followers are preparing to wage a demonstration against Dr. Larsen the moment she steps out the door.” He turned to McGarvey. “Would you care to comment, sir?”
McGarvey shook his head. “No.”
“Is it true that you entered Norway on a diplomatic passport and that you carry a firearm?”
McGarvey held his silence. Everyone’s attention was on him now, and Eve had to admire his control.
“Isn’t it also true, Mr. McGarvey, that you and Dr. Larsen were together during the attack on the Hutchinson Island nuclear facility in Florida? And can you explain your presence there? Certainly it was not a coincidence.”
Jacobsen stepped forward. “This concludes today’s final news conference. I’m sure that you will all understand Dr. Larsen’s need to prepare for this evening’s ceremonies and her lecture. Press kits have been provided for your information. You will find them on a table just outside of this room. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”
Morkum was protesting, but the doors were opening and most of the other reporters, rather out of politeness or not, were getting to their feet and heading away.
“I’m terribly sorry, Dr. Larsen,” Jacobsen said.
Eve looked up as McGarvey came over. “I didn’t expect anything like that,” she said.
“There will be no further trouble, I would hope,” Jacobsen said to McGarvey.
“More protest demonstrations probably,” McGarvey assured him. “But your police will keep the peace.”
“Dreadful.”
As the newspeople, including Morkum and his cameraman, were clearing out, Don came forward, scowling. “That was good,” he said.
“Dr. Larsen will remain in her suite until it’s time to leave for city hall,” McGarvey told the Nobel committee chairman. “I assume a car will pick her up.”
“Yes, of course,” Jacobsen said. He turned back to Eve. “Again, my sincerest apologies, Dr. Larsen. If there is anything else that I or the committee or the staff of this hotel can do for you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thank you,” Eve said, and she felt a little sorry for the man.
“Until this evening then,” Jacobsen said with a half bow and he left.
Don was agitated, all the muscles in his face tense. “You coming here has ruined everything,” he told McGarvey.
“That’s not true, Don,” Eve said. She’d seen him like this before, not often, but when he got like this it usually ended up with him stalking off and staying away until she could find him and talk him down. Sometimes he was like a spoiled kid.
“Yes, it is. This afternoon was supposed to be ours to enjoy. But now this incident will be all over Norwegian television, and will probably be picked up by CNN or someone like that. All the networks are here.” He turned back to McGarvey. “Are you really carrying a gun?”
Eve put a hand on Don’s sleeve. “I asked him to come here with me.”
Don gave her a bleak look. “Christ,” he said, and he stalked off.
“He’ll get over it,” Eve said.
McGarvey nodded. “Will you?”
* * *
The afternoon had turned chilly, especially for DeCamp who had spent most of his life in the southern portions of the African continent or Mediterranean France, so in the
afternoon of the ceremony he’d purchased a warm, fur-lined jacket from the upscale department store Bertoni Byportenshopping.
He’d returned to his suite where he’d had a light snack of pickled herring, small toasts, and two bottles of Ringnes beer, and had watched the Nobel news conferences, especially the one on TV 2. Dr. Larsen had come across as a tired woman who’d rather be in her lab, or soon aboard the oil exploration platform en route to Florida’s Atlantic coast. The TV journalist had been an ass, but he’d focused on McGarvey with a couple of pointed questions, giving DeCamp at least a small measure of the man. Impressive, the thought came to mind. In control.
Afterwards he’d taken a shower, got dressed and cleaned, and loaded his Steyr and attached the suppressor. When he was finished he packed his single suitcase, for his early morning departure on the six fifteen flight to Berlin, and packed the second magazine of 9mm ammunition and cleaning kit in a FedEx package and addressed it to William Jenkins, SOS Ministries, McPherson, Kansas, USA.
Downstairs at the desk, he settled his bill, arranged for the package to be sent out in the morning, and asked for a wake-up call.
“Early flight, sir?” the clerk asked.
“Unfortunately business in Berlin first thing in the morning. You know how that can be.”
“Yes, sir.” She smiled.
By the time the first dignitaries began showing up at city hall, and along with them the growing crowd, DeCamp took a quick pass once through the hundred or so onlookers satisfying himself that Billy Jenkins, the abortion clinic bomber, whose dossier, including photographs, that Wolfhardt had sent him, had not shown up yet. The man was blond and had the physique of a rugby player, hard to miss. But best of all the FBI considered him a man of interest who’d shown a propensity for religious intolerance and violence.
Wolfhardt had written a note on a second dossier, that of Terrance Langdorf, warning that the two men often worked together. Almost certainly both of them had been involved in the act of vandalism against Dr. Larsen’s Princeton lab, and they’d both been in front of the Fox television studio the evening she’d been interviewed. In fact it had been Jenkins whose arm McGarvey had broken.
* * *
The ceremony was held at Oslo’s city hall a short distance from the Grand Hotel. Eve rode over in the back of a Mercedes limousine with McGarvey and Jacobsen, Don in the front with the driver. Already a big crowd of onlookers lined the street outside the north doors that led to the ornate central hall where the medallion, certificate, and a document that confirmed the prize amount set since 2001 at more than one million U.S. would be presented in the presence of Norway’s King Harald V. The Prize was a point of great national pride for the Norwegians. Jacobsen had explained on the way over that when Alfred Nobel bequeathed his fortune to fund the Nobel Prizes in 1895, Norway and Sweden were a confederation. Since Sweden was responsible for all the foreign policies of the two countries, it awarded the prizes in the sciences and economics, but left the Peace Prize to Norway to avoid any hint of political corruption.
Police had kept a path from where the limousines were pulling in to the entry doors up two broad ramps that flanked a fountain and cascading waterfall. McGarvey, wearing a tuxedo, handed Eve out of the car, his attention on the people waving Norwegian and American flags. None of the religious demonstrators were evident.
Jacobsen and Don, also dressed in tuxedoes, got out of the car, and followed behind McGarvey and Eve, who was wearing a long, flowing white gown beneath a borrowed mink wrap, elbow-length gloves, her short hair done up that afternoon in her room by a stylist the Nobel committee had arranged for, and a diamond tiara, looked stunning. She was a completely different woman, in McGarvey’s estimation, from the one yesterday and this morning at the news conference. She finally had confidence.
“I think I belong here,” she said to McGarvey, her voice low enough so that no one else could hear her. “Is that too vain of me?”
McGarvey smiled for her. “Like you told that television reporter, the Nobel Prize committee thinks that you’ve earned this. Enjoy.”
“Not until I’m aboard Vanessa Explorer,” she said.
But then they were inside the fabulous Grand Hall that had been decked out for the ceremony with a stage and podium at one end and rows of chairs facing it. The hall soared three stories, the walls covered with elaborate frescoes, a line of windows at the ceiling level, which during the short northern days would practically flood the space with the oddly slanting natural light.
Already most of the seats were filled with dignitaries, everyone here strictly by invitation, and almost all the seats on the stage were occupied by members of the royal family, along with the prize selection committee. Eve handed her mink wrap to Don, and Jacobsen led her and McGarvey to their places. Don had been assigned a seat at the rear of the hall.
People got to their feet and applauded politely, and on stage Eve shook everyone’s hand, smiling and nodding.
When everyone was finally settled, Jacobsen went to the podium. “Ladies and gentlemen, His Majesty Harald V, king of Norway, and his consort, Her Majesty Sonja Haraldsen.”
Everyone rose, and moments later the king and queen in formal state dress entered from a rear door and came onto the stage. Everyone in the hall applauded.
Harald was a tall man, thin white hair at the sides of his head, his face long, his eyes kind. He’d been a chain-smoker but after a bout with cancer had quit. Jacobsen introduced him to Eve, who curtsied, which seemed to take the king by surprise and he smiled.
“I’m so pleased to finally meet you, Dr. Larsen,” he said, still smiling. “I’ve followed your work with great interest.” And he winked. “Perhaps this evening’s affairs will help quiet your critics.”
“I hope you’re right, Your Majesty,” Eve said.
The king turned to McGarvey. “We’ve never met, but I’ve heard a great deal about you, and your service to your country. We’re most pleased that you’re here with Dr. Larsen.”
They shook hands. “Thank you, sir, but I hope that my being here remains totally unnecessary.”
“But you don’t think so,” the king said. “Not here and not later after she leaves.”
“No, sir,” McGarvey said.
“No,” the king said, and he and the queen moved down the line, and when they had finally taken their seats and everyone else in the Grand Hall were seated, Jacobsen began the ceremony, introducing the honored guests on stage, including McGarvey, giving a short history of Alfred Nobel and the prizes, and finally the citation detailing Eve’s work to solve the world’s energy needs and calm violent weather around the world for which reasons she had been selected to receive this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
On cue the king got up and Eve remained in her seat until he reached the podium, then got up and went to where he and Jacobsen and an aide, who’d spent an hour coaching her on the etiquette and choreography of the awards ceremony, waited.
The hall was silent, and Eve would remember this solemn moment for the rest of her life. Every Nobel laureate did.
“On behalf of the Nobel Foundation, and of a grateful Norway for your contributions, I am happy to present you with a this year’s Nobel Prize for Peace,” Jacobsen said. He took an open velvet box containing the Peace Prize medal cast in eighteen-carat green gold and plated with twenty-four-carat gold the aide handed him, and presented it to Eve. The medal was heavy, nearly a half a pound, and she hadn’t expected that. Nobel’s profile was cast on both sides.
Jacobsen took the ornately decorated diploma in a leather folder, embossed with Nobel’s profile, and handed it to Eve along with the document confirming the prize amount.
The audience got to its feet and applause rolled through the hall, and Eve fought a nearly overwhelming urge to cry. She found Don on his feet at the back, applauding, and she nodded. The damn thing works, he’d told her that morning on the Big G in the Gulf Stream, and now nothing would stop her, stop them actually because he’d worked just as hard as
she had, in some ways even harder. She would make this up to him, because at this moment she felt in her heart of hearts that he should be up here with her as a corecipient.
Television cameras were, according to Jacobsen, broadcasting the ceremony around the world to 450 million households in 150 countries, and Eve was allowed to savor the thing for only a few moments before she handed the medal, diploma, and document to the aide. Jacobsen and the king stepped aside for Eve to come to the podium where her speech, leather-bound, had been placed for her, and then they withdrew and took their seats.
She took a moment until everyone was seated and silence returned before she opened the leather folder. And she waited for another beat, the words on the first page suddenly meaningless to her, as if they’d been written in Chinese characters or Arabic script and she panicked. But just for an instant. She could only think for that moment of the banquet immediately following her speech, and tomorrow night’s concert hosted by Harrison Ford and Oprah Winfrey, and starring among others Andrea Bocelli. She wanted this and all of the rest to be done so that she could return to her work.
But then she began in much the same way Al Gore had begun in 2007. “Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.
“More than thirty years ago a young scientist by the name of Amory Lovins raised the important argument that the United States had reached a critical crossroads. Down the path we were taking guaranteed an ever-increasing demand for and a reliance on nuclear fission and dirty fossil fuels.
“He warned that burning coal to produce electricity would double the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations early in the next century. This century. Unless something was done soon we were headed for a possible change in global climate that could become irreversible.”
Eve looked up and paused for a moment.
“Lovins called this road the ‘hard path,’ but he proposed an alternative. His ‘soft path.’ He called for renewable energy sources from the sun and the wind that along with conservation and new efficient technologies would bring about a cleaner, healthier environment in which the energy wars of the near future could be eliminated.
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