by Anne Holt
He ought to think of the bus driver and the people in party mood on board. But he couldn’t muster the energy. In his mind, he could see only the eyes of his own son and the look Linus sent him when he seriously thought that his father was capable of murdering him.
Once the bus was five yards away from the bridge, Billy T. let go and fell.
A police horse stumbled and was on the verge of falling.
People were screaming. Silje Sørensen tried to smile reassuringly at all the spectators lining the street as the experienced rider managed to regain the animal’s balance.
It was as if the horses had been infected by the atmosphere.
Even the flags were flapping harder in the breeze than usual—the wind had picked up considerably overnight.
Silje was to lead the procession for the very first time, together with the Mayor and members of the May 17 Committee. She was wearing a uniform, in contrast to all the plainclothes officers mingling with the thousands of children behind her.
They were also armed.
The cell phone in the left-hand pocket of her uniform—the personal one—had rung several times. As discreetly as possible, she checked the display.
It was Hanne Wilhelmsen. Her fourth call.
The parade was setting off.
Silje tapped in a hasty message: The parade. Can’t talk. Phone Håkon. No results for Ranvik.
Then she tucked the phone back into her pocket, put on her broadest smile, and sent up a silent prayer that this day would soon be over.
Even though it was only ten o’clock.
Lars Johan Austad stood outside Stortingsgata 10, scratching his head. This was actually really odd.
It was getting to be a long time since he had ended up on the streets.
Though a mere shadow of the elite soldier he had once been, in fact he had never ceased being on guard. It came in handy. He had never been robbed and was a real expert at finding good places to spend the night. In the summer half of the year, he sometimes headed to Marka and stayed there for days on end. He had three small supply stashes there, with a tent, a sleeping bag, and a few cans of food. That was the best time of year. If it hadn’t been for him rarely being able to come into possession of dope to last more than two or three days at a time, he would have roamed there all summer long. The distance he covered each day was never far, because his feet got worse in the rugged terrain, but he knew of great camping spots all over the area.
This was strange. The instruments should be carried by musicians.
He had now seen three big bass drums sitting on their own, left on the sidewalk. The first one, outside Cubus, where the lanky police trainee had almost succeeded in spoiling his day, was to some extent being looked after by a guy in a band uniform.
Or was it?
Skoa used both hands to scratch his hair.
Fleas, he thought: it was about time for a visit to the Feltpleien in Urtegata, where the Salvation Army ran a clinic for down-and-outs. He needed new ointments for his feet as well.
The drum behind the Narvesen kiosk at Spikersuppa had looked unattended, anyway. It had looked almost abandoned, though Skoa could not fathom how anyone could forget about a big bass drum. And two minutes ago, when he had succeeded in escaping from Karl Johans gate and crossing over to Stortingsgata, a solitary drummer from Sinsen Youth Band had come along and put down his instrument in front of the Christensen watchmaker’s shop.
And simply walked off.
Skoa peered more closely at the drum.
It was not totally new. The maker’s name was embossed on the leather and partially rubbed off. Nonetheless, it would probably be possible to make a few kroner on it; the question was whether he would get away with walking about with a big drum through all the streets of Oslo. He definitely couldn’t be mistaken for a musician. He did not quite know where he might hide something as enormous as that, either, while waiting to find someone willing to buy it.
There was something odd about that drum.
He tried to lift it.
He managed with ease, but did not envy anyone who had to carry something like this for the whole of May 17. Their backs must be better than his, at the very least.
It couldn’t be right, though, that it weighed so much.
For years Skoa had not been capable of hunkering down. The nerve damage in his legs made it impossible, so with a tremendous effort he knelt down instead.
He could see that the leather had been repaired. A patch, maybe five square inches, was distinctly paler than the rest. The way the drum sat, the patch was at the base, beside the ground. Skoa tentatively pushed a finger down.
It loosened.
It struck him that the drum might be damaged. Unusable. That was why it had been left behind, and probably the owner would collect the almost worthless instrument by car the next morning.
It was actually extremely heavy.
Without further consideration, he tore off the patch.
The drum was not just damaged, he saw.
The drum was a bomb.
“Up to now at least, the day has been totally bomb free,” Håkon Sand commented to an officer who dropped into his office with coffee and a slice of cake. “And the procession’s already in full swing!”
She did not answer. The look she sent him on her way out the door made him smile sheepishly, with his mouth full of sponge cake and whipped cream.
He had wasted a major chunk of the night following up a tip Silje had received from a source she refused to name. It had not led anywhere. A woman by the name of Kirsten Ranvik was supposed to be somehow involved in the terrorist group, Silje had insisted.
Håkon had to admit he had not approached the assignment with wholehearted enthusiasm. Instead, he had delegated it to a young investigator who had shown himself to be more eager than competent in the past few months. The guy had returned half an hour later to report that Kirsten Ranvik was a librarian, had responsibility for a disabled son who needed constant care, and to top it off had a spotless record. The only political involvement he had been able to document was her past membership of the Progress Party.
No grounds for arresting the woman, in other words.
In addition, she was the mother of a captain in the Armed Forces Special Command.
Peder Ranvik was a scumbag, for that matter, as Håkon had experienced for himself. After the extremely unsuccessful interview with him, Håkon had tried to set up another. That had been like trying to catch fish with his bare hands.
Captain Ranvik was impossible to pin down. There was a phone number for him, but a metallic female voice answered that the number was no longer in use. When several investigators to begin with, and subsequently Håkon himself, had tried to contact the Armed Forces Special Command at Rena, all they learned was that Peder Ranvik could not be reached at present.
Håkon had never come across a government department so wrapped in utter secrecy. They could not say where he was. Nor when he was expected back. They could not even answer whether he was in Norway. Håkon had been so irritated that he had kindly requested confirmation that Peder Ranvik actually existed, but that was not forthcoming either.
In the end, he had threatened to send a patrol to Rena to search for the man, but the voice at the other end had put down the receiver.
He had regarded himself as finished with Peder Ranvik in the meantime and had not wasted any time on him last night. His mother was possibly a reactionary woman from Korsvoll but scarcely a terrorist.
He would have liked to know who Silje’s source was.
The cake was not particularly good. The sponge was dry, the cream too stiff, and the imported strawberries actually tasted of nothing but water.
The telephone rang.
He did not recognize the number, but took the call.
“Sand,” he said, his mouth full of cake.
“Hi, Håkon. It’s Hanne. Hanne Wilhelmsen.”
He went on chewing. Tried to swallow.
“Hi,” he mana
ged to articulate.
“I’ve been trying to reach Silje. She’s walking in the procession and can’t talk. That’s why I’m phoning you.”
The cream turned into something tasting of overly sweet butter in his mouth. He snatched up a letter from his in-tray and glanced at it, before spitting out a sticky, pink lump that he dropped into the wastepaper basket.
“I see,” he said, grabbing a tin of snuff sachets from a drawer.
“Bombs are set all around the city center, Håkon.”
He slipped a sachet under his upper lip.
“What?”
“They’re hidden in musical instruments. Four big bass drums and a tuba, as far as I know. Concentrate on finding the ones no one is carrying.”
“How . . . what the hell—”
“Listen to me, Håkon. Please.”
Her voice sounded so unfamiliar. She seemed tense, almost on the point of tears, and he caught himself wondering if it really was Hanne Wilhelmsen.
“You understand, of course, that I can’t instigate any action on the basis of someone phoning and claiming to be—”
“Håkon! Just listen to me now! We had creamed rice for dessert at our place on Christmas Eve 2002, a few days before I was shot. Hairy Mary had invited you, without me knowing anything about it. Okay? Are you listening to me now?”
“Fine,” he muttered, unfastening a button on his shirt.
“We’re terribly short of time. The first thing you must do is give the whole force instructions to search for drums. And a tuba. Then you have to send a patrol to Skjoldveien in Korsvoll and arrest a woman by the name of Kirsten Ranvik.”
Håkon noticed his mouth hanging open and snapped his jaw shut.
“On what grounds?”
“Find something. I swear, Håkon, I’ll give you everything I have later today. I have . . . Billy T.—”
Now it genuinely did sound as if she was crying.
Håkon had never seen Hanne Wilhelmsen in tears.
He had never thought her capable of it.
“Honestly, I don’t understand any of this,” he said.
“You will understand. Kirsten Ranvik leads a group that is behind both bombs. Billy T. has sent me . . .”
Again she had great difficulty talking.
“Hello?” Håkon said.
“Do it!” she yelled. “For God’s sake! Drums and a tuba, Håkon. And haul in Kirsten Ranvik. She also has a son who’s involved. Peder. Peder Ranvik. These people are dangerous right-wing extremists, Håkon, you must please—”
“Did you say Peder Ranvik? The army captain?”
“Yes. In a special force, as far as I understand. He may have stolen the explosives that disappeared, for all I know. I don’t really have a clue about any of that, but you really must . . .”
Peder Ranvik, he ruminated, letting his arm fall.
“Hello?” he could only just hear, as Hanne shouted into the receiver: the phone was now lying on the desk in front of him.
If the question of the C4 theft was ever to come up again, after the Ministry of Defense put a lid on the investigation, then Peder Ranvik would be the only one above suspicion. He was the one who had kicked up the most fuss. It had been Peder Ranvik who had requested that it be reported to the police. He was the one who had set the military’s own hounds on two specific named persons.
At the same time, Peder Ranvik was aware that the Ministry of Defense would never risk revealing their own best-kept and extremely valuable secrets. He had felt secure the entire time and obtained substantial cover for his own back if anything were to crop up at a later date.
Such as that the explosives had been used in a terrorist campaign.
“Hello?” he heard again. “Are you there?”
He grabbed the phone.
“Yes. Can you come here?”
“If you promise to do as I say, I’ll come. Send a patrol car to pick me up. I’ll explain everything. But you must trust me, Håkon. You must simply trust me this time.”
Hanne Wilhelmsen is coming back to police headquarters, he thought.
For the first time in more than eleven years.
She must obviously be deadly serious, and Håkon realized that the pieces were falling into place.
“Seriously,” one angry policeman said to another outside Stortingsgata 10. “Let him do it! He used to be a special soldier. Concentrate on getting people out of the road. Do as I say! Get people away!”
Touching the man’s shoulder, he barked yet another order.
Police radios were crackling and sputtering all over the city. Individual civilians began to notice the unmistakable increase in police activity. Anxiety spread.
Skoa did not pick up on any of it.
He was a soldier again.
It was as if the last fourteen years had vanished. He had returned to what he had once been and maybe had never completely ceased to be. His hands felt steady, his focus clear. His heartbeat was calm and measured. Using his pocketknife from the Veterans’ Association, he did exactly what he needed to, at the right time, and in the order he knew to be correct. His feet were no longer aching. He did not even feel them: he had been kneeling for so long now that they had gone completely dead.
It was of no consequence.
Nothing was any longer of any consequence, apart from the task he had taken on himself without anyone asking.
The space around him grew increasingly deserted. The policeman who had recognized him was the only person, with the exception of Skoa, still left standing on the sidewalk between Rosenkrantz’ gate and Universitetsgata. The noise of brass music and cheers still wafted from Karl Johans gate, but increasingly more sirens merged with the soundscape.
It did not disturb him.
Nothing disturbed him, and his sore feet had gone. A sense of joy he had thought no longer existed spread like intoxication through his body as he, without hesitation, cut through the final cable and tried to straighten his back.
It was impossible. He slumped onto all fours, like a dog.
“Finished,” he said calmly. “It’s disarmed. There’s another one at the Narvesen kiosk at the intersection over there. Can you . . . could you carry me there?”
He raised one arm and pointed.
Without answering, the police officer helped him to his feet.
“You’ll have to sit on my back,” he said curtly, and managed to haul Skoa up.
The peculiar horse and rider began to move, and still no bombs had gone off.
Kirsten Ranvik was seated in a police patrol car en route to Grønlandsleiret 44, aware there were only a few minutes left until the explosion.
The four men who had picked her up were polite enough. She had received them with dignity, as one should. They had shown her a sheet of paper that stated she was charged with violation of the Tax Administration Act § 5-2 jf § 12-1.
Tax evasion.
She had smiled at the fabrication. They must obviously be pressed for time: to charge a librarian employed in the public sector, without any additional job, of withholding tax was unimaginative, to say the least. Especially on May 17.
But then she knew they had a lot on their hands.
For the second time, everything had not gone according to plan. Linus had not turned up. That had troubled her, but there was no possibility of getting in touch with him. Linus’s absence had not been totally destructive, anyway. Just a disappointment, a bump in the road—just as the discovery of the Muslim out there in Marka had not been part of the plan either. However, Peder had assured her there was no chance of linking the body to him, Andreas, or Linus. She should stay completely calm.
The five weeks that had passed without any developments in the case indicated that he had been right, as usual.
Peder was an elite soldier and knew what he was doing.
The police had not handcuffed her.
On the contrary: the youngest of the men had helped her along the gravel path down to the police car, since she was wearing dress
shoes and the heels were so difficult on that surface.
The thought of Gunnar on his own made her a bit uneasy, but she consoled herself that he could manage for eight to ten hours without any problem. She would be home long before that.
There was nothing they could use against her.
No papers. No fingerprints or electronic traces. No purchase of bomb-making ingredients, and no pathetic manifesto issued to hundreds of people.
The police had nothing of the sort, for nothing of the sort existed.
She was a librarian from Korsvoll with a pigeon loft in her garden and prizewinning rose bushes. She was neither a terrorist nor a tax dodger. A smile appeared at the very thought.
The only thing that could befall them, Peder had said one night when they had both sat talking on their own after Gunnar had gone to bed, was if one of the boys cracked.
They wouldn’t do that.
They were just as convinced as she was.
Linus and Andreas, Marius and Theo were all young men you could rely on. She knew that immediately when she encountered such young men, first Marius and Theo in the first year of RAR and the two others about a year ago. She noticed the ones who were influenced by order, cleanliness, and the old values. By discipline. Most of the young men in the project dropped out eventually, some obtaining jobs that they held on to for a month or two and others having gained a certain interest in literature. Those were not the ones she was after.
Those were not the ones she had recruited.
Peder was most enthusiastic about Andreas. He was brilliant, in Peder’s estimation, and Andreas was the one who had come up with the idea of the Prophet’s True Ummah. Setting the extreme jihadists up against the so-called moderates.
No Muslim was moderate. Norwegians did not understand that taqiyya—lies and deceit in the pursuit of jihadist aims—was Islam’s most important strategic weapon, their invisible Trojan horse. Islam was an organized military power. Taqiyya had to be exposed. It had been Linus who had picked out the Muslims, a little gang of losers, easy to use and even easier to get rid of.