The Oslo Conspiracy

by Asle Skredderberget

  Milo made a quick search on the Internet, and clicked on the first result. The link took him to a local newspaper site and the headline FITNESS KING FROM SON. The article was eight years old and illustrated with a picture of a suntanned man with enormous muscles and a minimal bathing suit, flexing his biceps for the photographer.

  “I’ll bet a year’s salary that the beauty products these boys imported from Asia were far from creams and shampoos,” said Milo.

  38

  Oriana was given a cell to rest in while Sørensen and Milo set the paper mill in motion. Arrest orders were issued for the persons named in the Downtown Gang who had been present during the killing of Tormod Tollefsen, in addition to search orders on Asian Beauty Import.

  The raid in Hølen and Son would also be coordinated with local police.

  It was almost six when everything was ready.

  “Now let’s go,” said Sørensen.

  “I’ll take my own car. I have to drop Oriana off first,” Milo replied.

  “Great. See you at the meeting place.”

  Milo had briefly considered driving her home to his apartment, but realized that might be too risky. Another alternative was to call Sunniva, but there were limits for dramatic debuts as his new half sister. So he ended up booking a room at the Grand Hotel for her.

  She was sleeping heavily in a kind of fetal position, but with a facial expression as if she had a stomachache. He tapped her shoulder carefully, and she woke up with a little twitch and looked at him in confusion.

  He gave her a few moments before they went down to the car, which was in the basement. Shortly after, they drove out of the police station garage in the direction of central Oslo and the Grand. On the way he called Temoor.

  “This is Temoor.”

  His voice sounded energetic over the speaker in the car.

  “It’s Milo. I’ll be out for a few hours now, but I wondered if you’ve found anything on the mobile traces around the kidnapping.”

  “Haven’t worked on anything else today. Was actually just about to call you. Hold on a moment while I finish keyboarding.”

  Milo turned left toward the bus terminal when he came to Grønland, and they heard Temoor tapping in the background. They passed the Postgiro building and continued toward the Vaterland Tunnel.

  “There we go,” Temoor began.

  “What have you got?”

  “Well, the girl apparently had the phone on when they picked her up at St. Hanshaugen, and I can follow her from a base station there and over to the Regjering block and further east. The last signal is from the base station right below the Sjømann School. You know, the one that’s on the way up toward the Ekeberg restaurant. The main thruway passes right below this base station in and out of Oslo on the east side. Either north toward Gardermoen or south toward Moss. The signal from the phone has come from the same spot for almost a full day.”

  “They must have taken the phone away from her and discarded it,” Milo replied.

  Beside him Oriana sat chewing on her knuckles.

  “Most likely, yes,” Temoor said. “But what I did was to look at the dataset from the telecom companies of which SIM cards were active at the same place. In the same time period.”

  “There must be thousands?”

  “In the ten-minute period I concentrated on there were, let’s see, 21,458 active SIM cards there.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Relax. I knew I didn’t have time to go over all of them, so I cross-checked against the phone numbers on a number of our usual suspects, you might say. And I found a couple that are extremely interesting. At the same time and place the phones of both Farak and Mohammat Ambhalajad were active.”

  “The twins,” said Milo.

  “Exactly. And I can trace both back to St. Hanshaugen, where the signals to the girl’s phone started.”

  “Brilliant, Temoor!”

  “Yes, yes, relax, there’s more.”

  “Of course,” said Milo.

  Because while Olena’s phone could be traced no farther than to the foot of Ekebergåsen, you could follow the twins electronically down Mosseveien.

  “Toward Son!” Oriana exclaimed.

  “Who was that?” asked Temoor.

  “Oriana is with me in the car. The big sister,” Milo explained.

  “I see. But no, not Son. Not that far.”

  “Where then?” asked Milo.

  But he already knew the answer.

  * * *

  For the third time in a week he stopped outside the storage building. The closest streetlamp was out of order, and the nearest source of light was from the windows of the gym a little farther away. But that was not where Milo intended to go.

  Two times he had called Sørensen, but came straight to voice mail. Finally he sent a text.

  Oriana was still in the passenger seat. She had flatly refused to get off at the Grand when she understood what was going on.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said, and there was no time to discuss it.

  Milo got out of the car and looked around. There were no other cars or people in the vicinity. He walked quickly up to the loading gate and the alarm panel. Through the dirty windows in the gate he could see that the parking area inside was empty.

  Quickly in and quickly out, he thought as he entered the simple code he had seen the managing director of Quick Storage use a few days earlier.

  The gate opened with the customary metallic creaking and moved slowly upward. Milo jogged back to the car and cast a glance at Oriana.

  Fear and expectation were written on her face, and he could see she had her hands folded on her lap. As if in silent prayer.

  Deep down Milo was doing the same. As he put the car in gear and they rolled in through the gate, he said an Our Father and a Hail Mary, but did not cross himself to avoid making Oriana even more worried than she already was. She appeared to be stressed to the utmost.

  He parked and jumped out of the car.

  “We have to be quick,” he said to her over the roof of the car, then went behind and opened the trunk.

  He tossed aside a bag of empty bottles he had not had time to redeem, in search of a suitable tool. He needed a bolt cutter, but it was at home in his apartment along with the rest of his tools. A hammer was next on his wish list, but he was not in the habit of keeping one in the car either.

  He pulled up the floor of the trunk, pulling out warning triangles and finally found the lug wrench for changing tires. He weighed it in his hand, and felt the cold metal against his skin. It would have to do.

  He started almost running toward the corridor and slapped his hand on the switch so that the fluorescent lights started blinking to life. A few days earlier he had passed through the same corridor, along the same orange compartment doors, in the company of Sørensen and the Follo police. Only to find a compartment that had recently been emptied.

  He felt his heart pounding over what he expected to find. He was sure that Banno and his people knew they had searched the compartment the week before, and did not expect the police to come back a second time.

  This time the compartment won’t be empty, he thought.

  The question was whether they were too late.

  They stopped in front of the compartment, and he immediately saw there was a new padlock in place. He started hammering it loose with the lug wrench.

  The sound of metal against metal filled the corridor, and Oriana held her hands to her ears.

  The first blows deformed the padlock, but it did not give way. He felt how the blows, combined with the steadily growing sense that every second counted, made him warm and sweaty.

  He continued hitting. With each blow he found a rhythm, as he usually did when he hammered away on the boxing bag at home, and he concentrated on hitting as cleanly as possible where the iron loop went into the lock housing.

  With a sharp crack it broke, and the pieces fell down on the concrete.

  He dropped the lug wrench and took hold of th
e handle to the door, pushing the lock to one side and opening the compartment door in one quick motion. In the first few seconds his eyes had trouble adjusting to the darkness inside.

  An odor of urine, sweat and feces struck them.

  “Olena!” Oriana called, forcing herself past him.

  She was in the far corner, with duct tape over her mouth and around her hands and feet—lifeless.

  “Olena!” Oriana repeated, along with a series of words he did not understand.

  She got down on her knees bent over her little sister, crying while she talked. Milo crouched down beside her, and felt for a pulse.

  “She’s alive,” he said to Oriana.

  They released her from the tape, and gave her a few light taps on the cheek. Slowly she opened her eyes and stared vacantly at them.

  Oriana continued talking to her in their native language while she rocked her in her arms.

  Milo looked at his watch. They had been there five minutes, and he wanted to get out as quickly as possible. He tapped Oriana on the shoulder.

  “We’ve got to get out,” he said.

  She nodded and let him pick up Olena’s small body.

  She was light, and he jogged down the corridor with her in his arms while Oriana followed behind.

  They were approaching the end of the corridor when they heard the sound of the gate opening.

  He turned abruptly to the right, into the storage labyrinth to an unlit corridor that also led to the parking area.

  With quiet steps he moved along the wall and stopped by the corner, where he set Olena down on the concrete floor. He signaled for them to be quiet, and took a quick look around the corner in the direction of his little Fiat. A truck had just parked farther back, so that it partly blocked the loading gate, and Banno and the twins got out.

  He pulled his head back, while he thought through the situation. Less than thirty meters away he could hear Banno’s voice.

  “Get her quick! I’ll watch this little punk car.”

  Milo quickly looked around the corner again, and saw the twins trotting toward the corridor they had just been in, while Banno remained standing with his arms crossed, leaning against Milo’s car.

  He knew that in less than two minutes the twins would discover that the compartment was empty. Then it would be too late.

  He could not manage all three.

  But he could manage Banno.

  “Can you carry her?” he whispered to Oriana.

  She nodded.

  “Give me a few meters head start. Then you follow, and get her in the car as fast as you can.”

  She nodded again, carefully picking her little sister up from the floor.

  Milo took out the car key and held it ready in his hand. He cursed to himself that he had not brought the lug wrench. He would have felt more secure with a club in his hand.

  He crossed himself, crouched down and started running quickly toward the Fiat.

  Five meters behind Oriana followed with Olena in her arms.

  Banno turned around. His surprised expression quickly turned into a smile, and he pushed away from the car.

  “I knew we’d meet again,” he said, walking toward Milo.

  Milo did not answer, but held his gaze. He knew that Banno would aim right for his body and then squeeze, strike or head-butt the shit out of him. At the same time he was thinking about what his jujitsu instructor had once said about the training:

  Everyone has a weak point.

  The fact was that juicer boys had two weak points. One was lack of speed. Heavy muscle mass does not move quickly. The other was the joints, which were usually worn after years of heavy strain.

  Milo knew he had to fake out Banno. Not too soon, so that he could adjust course. But not too late either, so that he was able to land one of his crushing blows.

  He walked quickly toward Banno, who flexed his muscles and rolled his head calmly from side to side. As he raised his arms to a guard, Milo also made himself ready.

  There was only one meter between them when he feinted with his upper body to the left. He saw the blow come immediately. With lightning speed Milo changed direction and made a quick side movement to the right, and in the same motion extended a kick with all his strength. As if he was going to kick a ball as far as he could.

  He felt Banno’s fist miss his eye, but nonetheless streak past his cheek hard enough to scrape the skin from his jaw to his ear.

  At the same time Milo located a kick right in his knee, and Banno howled in pain and went down on his knees on the concrete.

  Oriana came running behind Milo, and as he pressed on the car key and unlocked it, she tore open the door and started easing Olena into the backseat.

  Milo doled out another kick while Banno was still down, before he rounded the hood and heaved himself into the driver’s seat and put the car in reverse. He floored it backwards, grazed the truck and thundered into the freight door. It shook on its hinges and in the rearview mirror he saw the windowpanes in the gate shatter.

  But he did not make it through.

  He drove forward again, and Banno came toward him with an iron pipe that he used to strike the window on the passenger side. A shower of glass poured in over Oriana, who threw herself toward Milo. Milo leaned over the steering wheel and turned away. Then he put the car in reverse and accelerated again.

  He felt the car roll over Banno’s foot and heard him howl, but kept his eyes fixed on the freight door behind him.

  For the second time he backed into it with a crash, and now it was starting to give way.

  But he did not get out this time either.

  The lowest part of the gate was now bent out, but not enough.

  He had to hit the gate one more time, at higher speed. And to do that he had to turn the car to make optimal use of the horsepower.

  As he turned his head, the twins came rushing down the stairs, one of them with a handgun pointed toward the car. Glass shattered, and Milo had no more time to think.

  He accelerated, and the car spurted forward. He struck a trash can that was thrown to the side, navigated his way into one of the corridors to the left of the one the twins had just come out of, and which they were now blocking.

  The car was slightly more than a meter and a half wide, and he sincerely hoped the corridor was no narrower than that.

  The Fiat sped up, and as it slipped into the corridor, both side mirrors were torn off and sparks sprayed where the car scraped along the compartment doors.

  For a moment he feared they were going to get stuck, but they moved quickly ahead, and at the end of the long corridor came out onto a larger open area where there were several trailers.

  Oriana was clinging to the car door, while Olena was lying in the backseat, weeping.

  In four or five seconds he turned the little car with the powerful engine. His left arm worked the steering wheel frantically while he shifted back and forth between reverse and first gear with his right hand.

  The car was now turned the right way, and he let the engine idle. At any moment they would come toward him.

  He could not count on Sørensen and the cavalry coming to his rescue.

  Milo peered toward the corridor, which was lit up by the car lights. Along both walls there were black stripes of metallic paint from the car. The walls and compartment doors had serious dents.

  But he saw no one coming on foot.

  Quickly he looked around. Could they be coming another way?

  He did not like just sitting there in the car. The feeling of standing wide open to attack made his heart pound even harder.

  The only thing clear to him was that he only had one try left.

  He looked at Oriana, who was shaking beside him.

  “Put on the seat belt. And hold on tight.”

  He turned toward Olena in the backseat. She was in a fetal position and looked at him in terror.

  “Lay down on the floor,” he ordered her.

  Slowly she crept into place behind the front s
eats.

  He put the car in gear and rolled down the corridor. When there was only a meter or two left, he stepped on the gas. A moment later they were out of the corridor, and he saw the almost ruined freight door fifteen meters ahead—partly blocked by the truck.

  There the three men had taken position. All with pistols raised.

  The speedometer showed almost fifty kilometers per hour, and it was sink or swim. They rounded the truck, and Milo aimed at the area on the freight door where he had already done the most damage, and thundered into it.

  With a crash the gate loosened on one side, and the car slipped out while all the lights and remaining glass shattered. A dog owner got the shock of his life and jumped aside as the car swerved out on the road.

  Milo found second gear, accelerated and quickly shifted up to third and disappeared from the Unitor building.

  “Fuckin’ hell!” he said out loud to himself.

  The front window was smashed in, and the side mirror was gone. He turned around to see if anyone was following, but behind them there was only darkness.

  Beside him Oriana turned toward Olena in the backseat and stroked her arm.

  It was only when he felt the chilly evening wind blow through the broken windows that he noticed that he was bleeding from a gunshot wound in the shoulder.

  THURSDAY

  39

  Milo sat twirling an empty snuffbox in one hand as Sørensen came tramping in.

  “You almost look worse than your little toy car,” he said.

  Sørensen’s shirt was coming untucked, and he was balancing a coffee cup, two snuffboxes, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on top of a notebook.

  He looked at Milo, who had his left arm in a sling and a compression bandage on his cheek where Banno’s fist had torn a gash in his skin.

  On the right side of his throat was a bandage where pieces from the smashed car window had peppered his skin.

  “Oriana and the little sister?” Sørensen asked as he sat down with a tired groan behind his desk.

  “Still at the hospital. For observation. A patrol is keeping an eye out.”