Norwegian by Night

by Derek B. Miller

  The trouble, towards the end, was that almost every Serbian man was a killer and his wife a devilish harpy, offering up foul whisperings to stir his cold blood. How could it have been any other way? Men kill because they want to. Something makes them want to. But the choice is always theirs, and with that choice lies their fate.

  The man who answered the call that Enver placed was well known in the KLA. He was known to Kadri. He was an unremarkable man of average height and no particular strength or speed. There was no special viciousness in his demeanour, or cruelty to his appetites. He did not drink to excess, and he did not justify his actions by wrapping them in words and history and emotion. He did not indulge in conspiracy theories to bond himself with other men.

  Those who knew him did not talk to him much, because there was little to say and less to hear. When he was talked about, however, there was one point of common agreement. All believed that he no longer had a soul. He was the living dead. He was called Zezake: the Black.

  The Black is Enver’s protection. His bodyguard. His soldier. He was sent to Norway to hide Enver from the Serbs, and to stay close to him and be of service.

  To be Enver’s shadow.

  The Black is a model citizen in Oslo. He waits for the lights to change before crossing. He signals before he turns. He holds doors open for women with strollers at United Bakeries. He never mumbles over the length of the lines at the Wine Monopoly.

  The Serbs know he is here. It is unlikely that the Norwegians do, though. He travels quietly, with false papers. He rents rooms and moves on. He leaves nothing behind. He is a ghost, and knows how to move through Europe as only criminals do.

  The Kosovars and Albanians are ordered and well mobilised in Oslo. They do not constitute a large population, and many of them know each other. They look out for each other, and one task in doing so is watching out for the Black so that the Black can watch out for Enver.

  And now he has a job to do. The Black has received the call from Enver, and has set about doing what Burim and Gjon failed to do. He is to recover the boy, for the simple reason that he is instructed to, and that is what he does — follow instructions. He has gone to the black market and bought an aged but functional Colt 1911A1 .45-calibre pistol and an old Winchester repeater with a wooden stock. The stock of the rifle has a swastika that has been etched into the wood by its former owner. The Black has purchased it, not for political leanings, but because of the reduced price and the likelihood that the owner would want to forget the transaction.

  The rifle uses an iron sight, and holds five rounds. The Black has tested it in the hills outside the city, and found it reliable and accurate.

  He has been told to gather the weapons and come alone to the summer house. Enver has given him the address. He will find his own way.

  The Black does not know that the young hunters have taken the boy. What he does know, however, is what the boy looks like and what his real name is.

  His special-operations training has taught him to always fuel a car or truck just before reaching a mission’s destination, because it prepares the vehicle for the return trip or the rushed escape from it. So as he pulls into the Esso station in Kongsvinger, it surprises him to see the boy through the window. He is holding a piece of moose jerky amidst five young Norwegian men.

  The Black sidles up to the pump and drives slowly past the mini-market where the boy is standing with the jerky. He opens the glove compartment and removes a bright-red plastic folder. Inside the folder is a series of photos of the boy. His passport photo. A few surveillance photos. There are photos of him with and without his mother. With longer and shorter hair. With an ice-cream cone.

  The Black holds up the photos and compares them to the boy. The boy sees the man in the small car looking at him and stares back. There is no recognition. The two have never met.

  The Black realises immediately that their chance encounter changes the calculus. It rearranges the pieces on the chessboard. The assault on the summer house was to attain a single goal: to find the boy. If the boy has been found, there is no need for any of it.

  Considering this, his face remains unchanged.

  The Black takes a mobile phone from his jacket pocket and calls Enver. He knows the lines can be traced, which is why he only uses pay-as-you-go cards. He knows his own phone can give away his location and can even be used as a microphone by the police, who have the ability to remotely activate the phone without him knowing it — which is why he discards the cards each time he makes a call to Enver.

  The phone rings and is answered.

  ‘What is it?’ says Enver.

  ‘I’ve found the boy.’

  There is silence for a moment.

  ‘Do you have him?’

  ‘No. But I will soon.’

  ‘What about the old man?’

  ‘I don’t see an old man.’

  ‘Who is the boy with? The police?’

  ‘No. He’s with local vacationers. Hunters. Maybe fishermen.’

  ‘Take the boy.’

  ‘Should I bring him to the house?’

  Enver sighs slightly into the phone. If only this call had come last night, the answer would have been no. Enver, Gjon, and Burim could have returned to their vehicles and met the Black at a random location, switched cars, and Enver could have made for the Swedish border on an unguarded side-road where Norwegian black marketeers traffic alcohol and cigarettes.

  But the call did not take place last night. It is taking place now.

  ‘Yes. Matters have already been set in motion. Bring him here after you finish your business. And bring the weapons. We won’t stay long.’

  There are five of them, plus the boy. All are in their late twenties, early thirties. He watches them leave the mini-market with groceries. Each carries a bag, and the boy walks slightly behind them. He is an odd one, this son of Enver’s. It was known that he lived with his mother and that the mother was odd — a fast-talking liar who, it was said, turned some tricks to pay the rent. Whatever she did, though, she did for her son. It is unclear why Enver upset the routine and decided to take the boy from Norway. But the reasons people do what they do is no longer a question that haunts the Black.

  So here he is, silently following a group of men about whom he has no information. Why would the boy be here without the old man? He can think of no reason. The old man must be inside, buying something, or urinating. It is what old men do. He decides to wait for the pensioner to emerge.

  But he does not emerge. Instead, all five men and the boy get into the pick-up truck and start it up. Then pull off.

  The Black follows the truck out of the Esso station and on to a subsidiary road. It is paved and quiet. There are a few cars on the road, but not enough to protect them. The odds are in his favour.

  The forest is thinner here on the outskirts of town. Brown and yellow grasses edge the road, and poke through old potholes and cracks. The weather is fine. The surface of the road is dry.

  The Black puts the small car into third, and overtakes the truck. The driver with the lined face looks at him as the two cars ride parallel for just a moment. Then the moment passes. When the Fiat is a full five car-lengths in front of the pick-up, the Black slams on the breaks and spins out the back of the car with the hand brake.

  The pick-up truck slams on its breaks and screeches to a halt just before hitting the Fiat. The Black opens his door quickly and is already out of the car. The driver’s side is away from the pick-up. He stands up — looking over the silver, rusted roof of the old Italian car. Then, in a smooth gesture so as not to waste time, he swings the Winchester into play, chambers a round by flicking the lever down forty-five degrees, and takes aim at the driver.

  The boy is not in the cabin. He is sitting in the flatbed of the truck with three men. The Black watched them as he drove behind.

&nb
sp; This is better and makes the job easier.

  The Black fires the rifle into the window of the truck, shooting the driver in the face. Blood splatters across the windscreen. The other man, obviously unaccustomed to war and its necessary responses, is frozen in place like the animals he undoubtedly hunts. The Black takes aim, flicks the Winchester’s lever again, and kills him.

  There is shouting at the back of the truck now. He hears a commotion, and then footsteps on the steel slats. He crouches to the ground and looks between the wheels of both vehicles to see whether they have come down from the truck and are trying to run. He knows from experience that if they run directly away from the truck he will be unable to see them, and will need to move off to the left or right in order to gain the needed line of sight.

  He sees no feet, but believes he soon will.

  When he stands again to look over the roof of the car to the truck, there is a slightly chubby man with dirty blond hair holding a rifle above the truck’s cabin. His arms are shaking. Before the Black can reacquire a target, the man shoots.

  The bullet passes the Black’s head closely enough for him to hear it, and it leaves a terrible buzz and ringing in his ear.

  He then reacquires his target and shoots the man. His aim is slightly off, as his shot seems to have hit the man lower in the face than he intended. But the target drops from view, and this is all that concerns him for the moment.

  He crouches down again, and this time does see their feet.

  The boy’s smaller feet are to the right and running with one of the men. The other man is making for the woods to the left. There is a chance he might make it, too, because the Black has to make a choice. If he steps to his right to sight the man with the boy, he will obscure his view of the other who is making for the woods. If, on the other hand, he steps left, he will be able to shoot the one making for the woods, but will then have to chase his targets. And he does not want to chase his targets.

  He is surefooted and moves quickly. Stepping behind the Fiat, he sees the man running with the boy, and manages to shoot him. But the shot is especially low, and catches him in the lower back. The man writhes and screams on the ground. The boy, on the other hand, stops running and turns to face the Black.

  He is crying, but is mercifully silent. Crying upsets the Black, and he has made a concerted effort to stay away from children for that reason. It is the remaining sound — aside from cats howling in the night from hunger — that continues to touch some nerve.

  He jogs forward so he clears the truck and has a complete view of the road. The other man has indeed escaped into the woods. In his youth he might have pulled the .45 and peppered the forest with random shots, but he does not do this sort of thing any longer.

  The Black now walks slowly. There is no immediate hurry. His concern is that the survivor has a telephone, and will call the police. This is likely. Everyone in Scandinavia has a mobile phone.

  He stands beside the boy and looks down. He runs his thumb under the boy’s eye, and wipes away a tear. The two look at each other. When the Black looks into the boy’s face it reminds him, just a bit, of what he no longer sees when he looks in the mirror.

  The one who was shot in the back is Mads. He is still alive, though his eyes are already vacant. There is no need to shoot him in the back of the head. He will either die quickly enough, or he will not. In either case, his life is not significant compared to the one who fled.

  What is significant, however, is the sound coming from the truck behind him.

  The Black turns to look at the pick-up and is genuinely surprised to see the fat one holding the rifle and pointing it at him. He has lost part of his face, but the bullet did not penetrate the cranium. He is evidently able to wield a rifle.

  The Black puts down the rifle and takes out the pistol. As he takes aim, however, he feels a sudden pain in his knee. He turns to see that the boy has struck him — forcefully — with some kind of stick that has a handkerchief tied to the end.

  And in that moment there is a rifle shot.

  Tormod’s bullet hits the Black in the upper thigh and rips out a piece of his leg, but it has missed the femoral artery — which is lucky, because that would have killed him. It was, considering Tormod’s condition, a brave effort. It is also his last because, on one knee, the Black uses the bullets from the pistol that he has not fired into the woods to kill Tormod.

  The Black says to the boy in Albanian, ‘Come with me,’ but the boy does not move. More strangely, he does not respond at all. It is as though he does not speak Albanian. So the Black says it again, this time in English, and again the boy is immobile. Confused but undeterred, the Black grabs a handful of the boy’s shirt between the shoulder blades and drags him back to the car.

  Picking up the rifle, he limps into the Fiat, bleeding from the leg. He opens the glove box again and stitches himself together, using thread and a needle that is already prepared in the medical kit. He bandages his leg and then takes a long drink of water from a canteen stored under the passenger-side seat. The boy’s tears have stopped flowing. Perhaps it is now shock. It hardly matters either way.

  Truly, the Black cannot understand when and why emotions begin and end, morph from one into another. This no longer even prompts speculation in him. There are no more mysteries when the soul is dead. Only problems.

  When Enver answers, the Black’s report is brief.

  ‘I have the boy. The police are going to find the cabin. I’ll be there soon. I’m injured. Be prepared to leave.’

  ‘We’re ready,’ says Enver.

  The Black removes the chip from his mobile phone and snaps it in two. He replaces it with another SIM card.

  Satisfied, he closes the driver’s side door and starts the car. He should be at the road to the summer house in less than ten minutes.

  Chapter 21

  Donny moves quietly, one small step at a time, further into the woods. His balance is not what it used to be, so it is harder to for him hold himself steady on one foot and to find the right placement for the other. He is still far enough from the road that he thinks it safe to remain upright, but he will crawl and become one with the ground as he gets closer.

  He stops abruptly.

  Just off the private road that leads to the mews and on to the house itself, he catches a glint of metal just off to the side in a gully. He is on level ground now, and instead of moving closer he moves farther back onto a small rise and sinks into a prone position.

  Without making any wide movements, he takes the binoculars from his belt and brings them to his eyes. Out of habit, he does not use his trigger finger to adjust the focus, to avoid getting a splinter from the focus wheel.

  Sheldon does not know much about motorcycles, but he can recognise the badge on the fuel tank well enough. It is the unmistakeable blue-and-white wheel of a BMW, and the bright-yellow fuel tank means it is Lars’s bike.

  It has crashed in the gully facing towards the main road and away from the house, as though it were on the way to leaving the property.

  He does not see any people near it. No one dead or injured. The wheels are not spinning. He cannot hear the engine knock or whine.

  Whatever is going to happen has already started.

  It is not the exertion that will kill him at eighty-two, but the simple adrenaline. His heart beats faster, and a thin layer of cold sweat has already formed on his forehead, threatening a chill, pneumonia, and death. The cool breeze that was a blessing only moments ago ushers in a future without him.

  Sheldon keeps the binoculars to his eyes, and scans to his left. The forest and light blur until he catches the slightest glimpse of the colour red. It is a red that was once the colour of a sports car or a vibrant sunset. It is faded now, and pleasing. It makes the summer house both at one with, but always apart from, the sheltering wood.

  He
cannot see any windows from here. He cannot see the sauna. And that is where Moses and Aaron are hiding.

  Convinced he is alone, he moves more quickly now. He knows that the human eye is most attuned to movement and only then registers colour. We are prey. We are not the hunters. We are designed as prey, and our senses control us like prey. His staff sergeant was clear on the matter.

  When we see movement, our eyes dilate and we stare at it like idiots. Our adrenaline pulses through our hearts. We panic and prepare to flee, but we don’t flee. Why? Because we aren’t fast, and we don’t have any teeth worth mentioning, and we don’t have claws, and we can barely swim, and we can barely climb, and we aren’t half as clever as we think we are. We are food. But my job is to turn you from food into Marines! You cannot even imagine how hard my job is. I might as well turn lead to gold! I might as well turn my wife into Rita Hayworth! The only reason I am not involved in either of those useless but potentially gratifying pursuits is that the US Marine Corps is not paying me to pursue those other pursuits. They are paying me twelve cents a week to turn you from prey into predators! And do you know how the running, scared prey becomes the predator? Do you? I’ll tell you how! By stopping. And turning around. And deciding to kill. I will now teach you how to do that. You! Horowitz, what did I just say?

  Sir! Eat or be eaten, sir!

  He needs to cover ground and find the sauna, but not allow the enemy to spot him. He has done it before. But that was almost sixty years ago.

  Eight-two years old. His eyes now let in only one-quarter of the light that a young man can see.