by Anne Holt
He took a quick breath.
‘You cannot begin to imagine,’ I said quietly, ‘what kind of cover stories the authorities can cook up. In the end you almost believe them yourself, in spite of the fact that you know the real truth. I’ve experienced it myself, Geir.’
I left it at that.
In the spring two years ago, I hid the American President in my apartment for several days. This utterly absurd situation ended when she shot dead an FBI agent. That same evening the story was distorted, simplified, and conveyed to the public in a way that frightened the life out of me. But most of all, and extremely reluctantly, I was impressed. There were still only a handful of us who knew the truth about the American President’s visit to Norway, and that was the way it was going to stay.
‘Believe me,’ was all I said. ‘Right now, well-paid and well-equipped specialists are sitting there cooking up a story that all these people ...’
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the lobby.
‘... will swallow hook, line and sinker.’
‘But what about me? I mean, I can say what I like when —’
‘As I said,’ I broke in. ‘I trust you. Besides which, no one is likely to believe your story.’
‘My story,’ he repeated. ‘So far I haven’t got a story. Why do you think ... what makes you think this is to do with a terrorist? Here?’
He was still immensely worked up. A vein was throbbing at the side of his neck, and his face had taken on a different flush from when he had been out in the storm for several hours.
‘The scope of it,’ I said, trying to force tears to my dry, smarting eyes. ‘The planning needed to carry the whole thing through. The insanity of it.’
And the fact that the Foreign Secretary himself is involved, I thought, without saying it out loud. The only reason I could see why they had the minister’s telephone number as a contact to inspire confidence in case of a crisis was that they were absolutely one hundred per cent dependent on being believed without any further questions. They needed an authority figure with a voice everyone recognized.
‘The insanity.’
Geir had fallen back into his old bad habits. He had reverted to repeating what I had just said.
‘We talked about it, don’t you remember?’ I asked. ‘Outside the cold room? We decided it must be a high-risk prisoner. Who was in a position to be able to make demands. Don’t you remember that?’
‘I suppose so ...’
He fished out the snuff with his index finger and threw it in the bin. Then he wiped his hand on his trousers and gulped down the rest of his beer.
‘You said it was absolutely ridiculous to move a prisoner by train,’ he said, suppressing a belch. ‘You said it had to be every police officer’s worst nightmare. And that they must have planned the entire journey taking all eventualities into account. Wind and weather and power failure. Possible escape routes. All the way from Oslo to Bergen.’
I nodded.
‘But a terrorist.’
He still couldn’t utter the word without looking as if he’d just swallowed a wasp.
‘In Norway?’
‘Souhaila Andrawes,’ I said drily. ‘One of the most wanted terrorists from the 1970s. She lived here for several years with her husband and children in a nice little apartment in Oslo before she was discovered and unmasked. And many people also feel that Mullah Krekar isn’t exactly an honoured guest in our country. But nobody has managed to dig him out yet. Not that I’m taking a stand on ...’
I shrugged my shoulders instead of completing the sentence.
‘This is something completely different,’ muttered Geir, looking around for something else to drink. ‘I’m going for another beer. Do you want anything?’
I did, really. A big glass of good red wine would be wonderful.
‘Just a Farris,’ I said. ‘With ice, please.’
‘I won’t be long. Don’t go. Don’t go!’
I had no intention of going anywhere.
Geir was right. The case of Mullah Krekar was something completely different from our current situation. The only threat he posed was that he was still legally resident in Norway, many years after the first attempts to throw him out came to nothing. It was true that Mullah Krekar had given various ministers with responsibility for foreign affairs a headache, but he was hardly a danger to others. At least not in this country.
I could understand Geir’s scepticism. I was sceptical myself. But my terrorist theory was the only one that could explain this absurd mystery. The whole thing was so huge, so spectacular and so unnecessarily risky that I couldn’t imagine the Norwegian authorities going along with something like this unless ...
‘You’re still here,’ said Geir, putting down the glasses before closing the door. ‘I’ve been thinking.’
And you interrupted my train of thought, I wanted to say.
I picked up my drink and felt the coldness of the glass. The ice cubes clinked delicately and the wind was now so far away that I could hear the faint hiss of the carbon dioxide.
‘You know,’ said Geir, settling down, ‘there could be something in what you say. Terrorists have more bargaining power than other prisoners. Much more. They have information about future attacks on civilian targets, about terror cells, about ... And besides ...’
He looked thoughtful and seemed to be examining something in the foam on the top of his beer.
‘The Americans are stupid,’ he said calmly.
‘I’m not saying that.’
‘Just imagine the dilemma that would have arisen,’ he said, addressing the air in front of him and putting down the glass of beer without having a drink, ‘if a terrorist were seized on Norwegian soil. A Norwegian terrorist blasting his way into a Norwegian embassy, for example. Or the Norwegian forces in Afghanistan having ... You see what I mean!’
He was animated now, resting his elbows on his knees. His breath smelled of beer and snuff, and he thought for a few seconds before he carried on, making a point of emphasizing certain words.
‘I’m not talking about some idiot who carries out the odd attack on the synagogue in Oslo. I’m talking about a real terrorist. One that the Americans want. One they want more than anything! One who has helped to strike a blow against American interests.’
Suddenly he leaned back and folded his arms.
‘They would never have got him,’ he said in a surprisingly low voice.
‘I ...’
‘They can’t have him! Norway would not be able to extradite a terrorist to the USA, however good the Americans’ reasons for putting him on trial might be. We couldn’t do it, however much we might want to. Neither we nor our closest allies for the past sixty years could do that. A tricky situation for both parties, to say the least. They would never have got him.’
‘Because they have the death penalty for terrorism,’ I said slowly.
‘Yes. Yes!’ He slammed his fist down on the desk. ‘Which means that we —’
‘The USA could promise not to make use of that law,’ I interjected. ‘Norway extradites prisoners to countries that have the death penalty as long as we receive guarantees that the death sentence will not be imposed or carried out.’
‘But they—’
‘The USA is a country we trust,’ I said, raising my voice. ‘There is no doubt that someone like ... a central figure within al Qaeda, for example, would have been handed over. Al Qaeda has killed thousands of Americans. They have the right to demand it, for fuck’s sake!’
Now I was the one raising my voice. I don’t know who was most surprised, Geir or me. He smiled sweetly. Picked up his glass. Had a drink.
‘I doubt whether the Americans would have made such a promise,’ he said after an embarrassing pause. ‘And then everything immediately becomes more complicated. But let’s not fall out. This isn’t actually my main point.’
‘So what is your main point?’
With everything that had happened over the past couple
of days, I had forgotten that Geir Rugholmen was a solicitor. To me he was a man of the mountains. A local hero in shabby mountain clothes, a resident of Finse.
That was the way I had come to know him.
The way I liked him.
‘I thought your speciality was property,’ I said, more sourly than I had intended.
‘That’s right,’ he said, inserting a new plug of snuff. ‘But my wife is also a solicitor. She deals with completely different issues from me.’
There was an invitation in his words. I was supposed to ask what his wife did.
‘You said you had more ideas.’
‘If we toy with the idea that you’re right,’ he said, poking at the snuff with his tongue, ‘and that there actually is a terrorist down in the cellar ...’
Once he had actually spoken the words out loud, he started to laugh. His laughter was even more girlish than before. Panting, almost giggly.
‘Sorry,’ he said, raising one hand, ‘but it’s just so ...’ He shook his head and swallowed, pulling himself together. ‘Well,’ he continued firmly. ‘If we really are dealing with a terrorist here, then it isn’t the Norwegian authorities he should be most afraid of, or hard-hitting interrogations, or a difficult journey over the mountains.’
I knew I was tired and I did actually have a damaged auditory nerve, but I was beginning to wonder if I was suffering from auditory hallucinations. Since the storm had abated I had been able to hear a faint rushing sound in my ears. It was as if the sound of wind and whirling snow had attached itself to my eardrum for good. But the deep, monotonous hum that I could hear far, far away had nothing to do with the weather. I swallowed and opened my mouth wide so that my ears popped. Geir didn’t appear to notice.
‘Our friend the terrorist ought to be afraid of the Americans,’ he said, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Not only do they have an ugly history when it comes to liquidations outside their own country, but they —’
‘That was during the Cold War. Everything was different during the Cold War, and we ought to be more sympathetic towards —’
‘Hanne!’
Geir slammed his fist down on the desk. The glass of beer was still half full. It fell over. He leapt to his feet and backed away to avoid getting wet.
‘Shit. Shit! What’s the matter with you?’
‘With me? I’m not the one who just knocked a glass over!’
‘Are you the American ambassador to Norway, or something? Don’t you understand what I’m saying? Haven’t you realized that the Americans literally kidnap prisoners in other countries and put them in their horrendous camps? If a terrorist really has been caught or sought refuge on Norwegian soil, then it’s the Americans he ought to be afraid of! They would go to any lengths.’
He pushed the spilt beer across the desk with his hand. It splashed onto the floor. A sweet aroma of malt and alcohol pervaded the room.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me if the bloody Yanks had a man on the train,’ he said angrily. ‘Or several, in fact. If your crazy theory is correct, then I understand why the terrorist insisted on travelling by train. An attack on the railways is much more difficult to cover up than a carefully arranged plane crash. One strike against a plane, and everybody dies. To kill all the passengers on a train, you’d have to ... Bloody hell!’
The front of his trousers was soaking wet.
‘I haven’t got any clothes down here,’ he groaned. ‘And I don’t feel like going out and shovelling snow. Shit.’
The noise outside had grown louder. The humming had turned into a throbbing, even roar.
‘Quiet,’ I said. ‘Can you hear that?’
He stood there with his legs apart looking as if he had wet himself. His expression sharpened, with narrowed eyes and his mouth slightly open.
‘A helicopter,’ he said, fascinated. ‘They’re here already?’
He had forgotten his wet trousers.
I put aside all thoughts of terrorists and American attacks on foreign soil. It struck me briefly that the story of the secret prisoner was a sign of how small the world has become. Even in Finse, the Norwegian mountain village where the train struggles up through valleys so Norwegian that you imagine you can see nineteenth-century paintings flickering by outside the windows; even now, in a snowstorm, in ultra-Norwegian isolation in an old National Romantic wooden building, even here the outside world has made its presence felt. The presence of the terrorist was life’s reminder that the world was no longer so alien or so far away; it was here with us, always, and we were a part of it whether we liked it or not.
But I didn’t want to think about the terrorist.
Instead I thought about Cato Hammer and Roar Hanson.
ii
‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’
The lobby was in joyous uproar. People were clapping and laughing as if they were sitting on a charter flight that had just touched down on the runway. A few were raising their glasses in a toast, while others were starting to gather their belongings as if they thought they might be going home in ten minutes. The fourteen-year-olds had already started putting on their outdoor clothes; none of them wanted to miss the spectacle of a heavy helicopter landing on deep snow.
‘They can’t land,’ said Johan. ‘There’s no way they can land on this powdery snow. The thing will tip over!’
He was standing at the window by the long table, watching the lights as they approached over Finsevann. The helicopter was low in the sky and moving slowly. The searchlights swept from side to side across the vast expanse of snow. The ice crystals glittered so beautifully in the dazzling, blue-white light that some of the older ladies gasped out loud. As the machine came in above the roof and we lost sight of it, there couldn’t have been more than twenty metres between the ridge of the roof and the helicopter. The whole building was shaking, but this time the racket was not a sign of a threatening danger. This noise was a welcome consolation, a greeting from the lives we really lived, far away from both Finse and a storm that we didn’t yet know had been given the name Olga.
All those who had seen the helicopter coming ran to the front door. Even Adrian seemed excited. He left Veronica sitting alone by the kitchen door with those stupid cards spread out on the floor. He was chatting enthusiastically to one of the girls from the handball team, as if he’d completely forgotten how cool he actually was.
‘They can’t land,’ Johan said again.
A metallic voice sliced through every other sound and most people stopped dead before they even reached the door.
‘This is the police. I repeat: this is the police. We are going to winch down three men. Stay away from the station platform. I repeat: everyone must stay away from the platform.’
Johan sighed with relief, then ran towards the door.
‘Move away!’ he shouted. ‘Inside, everybody! Stay away from the door! Inside, all of you!’
The teenagers protested defiantly. A couple of men started arguing outside the kiosk, and Mikkel had to intervene. The lady with the knitting started crying again, loudly and piercingly. Berit came running from the kitchen.
‘Calm down!’
Over the past couple of days Berit had become a new person. She had acquired a strength that surpassed Johan’s, despite the mountain man’s indisputable physical superiority. From being an ordinary hotel landlady with a pleasant nature, Berit had taken control at Finse 1222.
‘OK, we’re going to remain completely calm,’ she bellowed, paradoxically with a smile. ‘Go and sit down either in Blåstuen or St Paal’s Bar – and I mean everybody. Come along!’
People calmed down. They shrugged their shoulders and glanced at one another. Nobody said anything much, but they moved back into the hotel as one man, removing hats and outdoor clothes. A few shuffled along slowly and sullenly, others strutted along arrogantly, heads held high, as if they had been proved right in some way, although I had no idea what this could possibly be.
‘This is the police,’ the metallic voice int
oned again. ‘We are asking everyone to remain indoors during the operation. I repeat: everyone must remain indoors.’
Kari Thue was not in the lobby. When I thought about it, I hadn’t seen her since dinner. Perhaps that wasn’t so strange; I had spent most of the time in the office, and hadn’t seen anybody except Geir Rugholmen.
But I didn’t like it.
Severin had sent for the police. In the letter Geir had smuggled to him, I had not only asked who had embezzled funds from the Public Information Service Foundation at some point towards the end of the nineties, I had also asked him to inform the authorities that there had been not only one murder at Finse 1222, as they had been told before communication with the outside world broke down, but two.
People moved towards the side wing as the helicopter’s rotor blades sent deep vibrations through the battered hotel. The disappointment over the fact that the helicopter had not come for them, that the journey home was postponed, the embarrassment at having got excited and happy for no reason meant that everybody had a long face as they passed by without looking in my direction.
I just stayed where I was in the middle of the floor, waiting.
iii
Although one of the police officers gave me an almost imperceptible nod as he walked past on the way down to Blåstuen, none of them seemed to recognize me from the old days. When I saw them, two men in their thirties from the Bergen police authority and an older man from the National CID, I felt a pang. They reminded me of the fact that I had once been part of something different, something bigger than life on Krusesgate with Nefis, Ida and Mary. For a long time I had felt as if that cold, dramatic December night in 2002 was not just the end of an epoch; my break with the police service was just as much the beginning of something new. Something I had wished for. The injury made it possible to create an existence for which I had the strength, a life where I was seldom afraid and never worn out.
When I saw the three officers talking quietly together, using an abbreviated language they were trained to interpret, and with glances only they could decipher, I wondered if I had been fooling myself. These years of silence, these days that were longer than I ever imagined days could be, the nights of loneliness in front of the TV, all these months that followed each other smoothly and without friction, when the only reminders that the year was passing were Christmas celebrations and Ida’s wonderful birthdays: was this what I really wanted?