Death In Oslo

XIV

It was nearly eleven o’clock. Johanne was too tired to get up from the sofa and too restless to sleep. She tried to relish the thought of not having the children tonight and tomorrow, but couldn’t do anything other than stare at the news, which was only serving up pointless repeats and regurgitated speculation. The only thing the authorities were clear about, nearly sixteen hours after the disappearance of the American president had been discovered, was that she had not reappeared. Representatives of official Norway were still reluctant to use the word ‘kidnapping’, but journalists showed no such restraint. One commentator after another expanded on the more-or-less ridiculous theories. The police just kept quiet. No one leading the investigation had been willing to give an interview since early afternoon.

‘I agree with them about that,’ Adam said and sat down beside her on the sofa. ‘There are limits as to how many times they can be forced to say exactly the same thing. Which generally has been nothing. Bastesen looked pretty sheepish the last couple of times.’

‘I hope they’re lying.’

‘Lying?’

She gave a faint smile and moved until she was more comfortable. ‘Yes, that they know more than they’re letting on. And I’m sure they do.’

‘I’m not so sure. I have seldom seen a grimmer-looking bunch of people than whose who were filmed on their way out from…’

Johanne zapped over to CNN.

Wolf Blitzer himself was in the studio, as he had been for the past fourteen hours. The programme, The Situation Room, had taken over the entire broadcasting network, and judging by the activity in the studio, they had no intention of ending soon. The anchorman was, as usual, immaculately dressed. Only his tie was a smidgen looser than earlier in the day. With expert ease, he switched from a correspondent in Washington DC over to New York, before politely interrupting the journalist to give the word to Christiane Amanpour. The world-famous journalist was on the slope in front of an illuminated Norwegian royal palace. She was wearing thin clothes, and she seemed to be shivering.

‘It’s impressive how quick they are,’ Adam mumbled. ‘They’re up and running within a few hours.’

‘I don’t see what the palace has got to do with the case.’ Johanne stifled a yawn. ‘But it’s a good report, I agree. Everything is getting slicker and quicker. Did you run? You’re sweating, my love.’

‘Picked up speed a bit towards the end. It was great. More like jogging.’

‘In a suit?’

He smiled disarmingly and kissed her. She plaited her fingers into his.

‘Strange, really…’ She stopped and stretched to get her wine glass. ‘Can you tell the difference?’

‘Between what?’

‘The Norwegian and the American programmes. The mood, I mean. The Americans seem to be efficient, quick, nearly… aggressive. Everything here is a bit more… restrained. People seem to be paralysed in a way. Almost passive. At least, the interviewees certainly do. It’s as if they’re frightened to say too much, and so what little they do say just sounds silly. It all feels a bit like a parody. Look at the Americans, they’re so much better at it.’

‘But then they’ve had more opportunities to practise,’ Adam said, trying to hide the irritation he always felt when confronted with Johanne’s ambiguous relationship with anything American.

On the one hand, she never wanted to talk about the period when she had studied in the US. The two of them had known each other for many years now. They were married; they had children and a mortgage together. They shared dreams and daily life. But there was still a substantial part of Johanne’s past that was secret, that she protected more vehemently than even the children. The night before their wedding, she had forced him to take an oath: that he would never, under any circumstances, ask her why she had suddenly broken off her psychology studies at the FBI’s academy in Quantico. He had sworn on his dead daughter’s grave. Both the formulation of the oath and the consequences of it made him feel unwell whenever the topic was raised, and Johanne was consumed by a rage that she never demonstrated otherwise.

But at the same time, Johanne’s fascination with everything American was bordering on manic. She read almost exclusively American literature and had a large collection of American low-budget films, which she bought over the Internet or got a friend of hers in Boston, whom he had never met and knew practically nothing about, to send. The shelves in her small office were full of reference books about American history, politics and society. He was never allowed to borrow any of them, and it really bothered him that she locked the door on the rare occasions that she went away on her own.

‘Not really,’ she said after a long silence.

‘What?’

‘You said that they’d had more opportunity to practise.’

‘I meant…’

‘They have never lost a president outside the country’s borders. American presidents have been killed by random madmen in their own country. Never abroad. And never as part of a conspiracy, for that matter. Did you know that?’

Something in her voice made him not answer. He knew her well enough to know that if he turned this into a dialogue, she would quickly change the subject. If she was left to carrying on talking without interruption, she did.

‘Four out of forty-four presidents have been assassinated,’ Johanne said thoughtfully, as if she was actually talking to herself. ‘Is that not nearly ten per cent?’

He tried to withstand the urge to interrupt.

‘Kennedy.’ She gave a faint smile and beat him to it. ‘Forget it. Lee Harvey Oswald was a strange man who may have planned it with another couple of weirdos. Possibly not. It was certainly no great conspiracy. Except for in the film.’

She reached out for the bottle of wine. It was too far away. Adam grabbed it and poured some into her glass. The TV was still on. Wolf Blitzer’s forehead now looked slightly damp, and when he handed over to a reporter in front of the White House, you could see the shadows under the anchorman’s eyes. No doubt they would be concealed with make-up after the adverts.

‘Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley,’ Johanne continued, without touching her glass. ‘They were all killed by lone fanatics. A confederate sympathiser, someone with mental-health problems and a mad anarchist, if I’m not wrong. Mad fellow countrymen. The same is true of all the many attempted assassinations. The guy who tried to kill Reagan wanted to make an impression on Jodie Foster, and the man who tried to bump off Theodore Roosevelt thought that he would get rid of the pain in his stomach if he killed the President. Only the two Puerto Ricans who…’

Christiane Amanpour was on the screen again. She had a warmer jacket on. The fur collar was perhaps intended to give a more Arctic mood. She was trying to keep it shut with one hand. This time she was standing outside the police headquarters in Grønland. Nothing new from there either. Johanne squinted at the screen. Adam turned down the volume with the remote control and asked: ‘What about the Puerto-’

‘Forget it,’ Johanne interrupted. ‘My point wasn’t to lecture you in elementary American history.’

‘What was the point then?’ he asked, and tried to keep a friendly tone in his voice.

‘You seemed to think the Americans were prepared. And they are, of course, in many ways. Certainly the television stations are.’

She nodded at Christiane Amanpour, who was having difficulties with her microphone. Behind her, a group of men in dark suits hurried down the slope to Grønlandsleiret. They turned their collars up at the TV cameras and were not to be stopped by the questions shouted by around thirty journalists who obviously had bunkered down for the night. Adam immediately recognised the Chief of Police. Terje Bastesen turned away from the press and pulled his uniform hat down lower than regulated as he strode towards the cars that waited by the road.

‘But the American people,’ Johanne said, focusing on a point far above the television. ‘They’re hardly prepared. Not completely, not for this. Their entire history tells them that when it comes to the assassination of presidents, they have to watch out for confused fellow Americans. I should imagine that the Secret Service has outlined a number of assassination scenarios, mostly involving anti-abortionists, women-haters and the most zealous supporters of the war in Iraq – groups that include Helen Bentley’s most ferocious opponents on the home front, and the sort of environment that fosters the kind of fanaticism that is empirically proven to be requisite. America’s more recent history…’

She paused for a moment. ‘More recent history has, of course, generated other scenarios. Post-nine eleven, I assume that the Secret Service would ultimately like to keep their president in a cement bunker. The US has never been so unpopular with the rest of the world at any time since the War of Independence. And as the concept of terrorism has been extended in recent years, certainly for the Americans, their fears of what might happen to the president have also changed. The fact that she would simply disappear into thin air on a state visit to a small, friendly country was probably a long way off what they anticipated. But…’ The wine glass nearly toppled over as she suddenly reached out for it. ‘… what do I know about that?’ She finished on a light note. ‘Cheers, my love. Let’s go to bed soon.’

‘What’s it like in the real Situation Room at the moment then, Johanne?’

She extracted herself from his arm.

‘How should I know? I have no idea about-’

‘Yes you do. If nothing else, because you’ve got a book that’s actually called The Situation Room…’ now it was Adam who could not restrain his irritation, which was about to spill over into real anger, ‘that’s lying on your bedside table. For Christ’s sake, Johanne, it must be possible to share…’

In one swift movement she got up from the sofa and was on her way to the bedroom. A few seconds later she came back. Her face was bright red.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘You’ve got the title wrong. And if you’re so interested, you’re free to read it. It’s not exactly secret as it’s lying beside our bed. So here you are.’

Her glasses were starting to steam up and sweat was visible on her nose.

‘Johanne,’ Adam groaned, exasperated. ‘For God’s sake, we can’t carry on like this…’

I’m starting to get sick of this, he thought to himself. Be careful, Johanne. I don’t know how much longer I can stand your ambiguity. This transformation of my intelligent, lovely, sensible wife into an ill-tempered creature that rolls into a ball with all its spines out for no understandable reason is wearing me out. Your secrets are too big, Johanne. Too big for me, and far too big for you.

There was a ring at the door.

They both jumped. Johanne dropped the book on the floor, as if she had been caught red-handed with stolen goods.

‘Who could that be?’ Adam mumbled and looked at the clock. ‘Twenty past eleven…’

He was stiff when he got up and went to open the door.

Johanne stayed standing where she was, half turned towards the TV. The images that flickered across the screen were being watched all over the world at this very moment, irrespective of time zone or political regime, religion or ethnicity. CNN hadn’t had so many viewers since the catastrophe on Manhattan, and seemed to be greedily taking advantage of the situation. It was nearly six in the evening on the east coast. Americans, hungry for news, were on their way home from work; they had felt compelled to go, despite the morning’s terrible news. The news programme packed in more reporters, analysts, commentators and experts. They seemed more engaged than tired, as if the knowledge that they were nearing prime time gave them all renewed energy. Solemn men and women with impressive titles discussed the constitutional consequences and national contingency plans, short- and long-term crisis scenarios, terrorist organisations and the vice president’s highly criticised absence. As far as Johanne could make out, he was hidden away either in a plane somewhere over Nevada, or in a bunker in Arkansas, as one of the experts claimed. Another insisted that he knew that the vice president was already out of harm’s way at an American naval base far from the country’s shores. They discussed the twenty-fifth constitutional amendment, and everyone agreed that it was scandalous that the White House had not made it clear whether this had been activated yet or not.

That’s what they’re discussing in the real situation room, Johanne thought to herself.

She could image all the plasma screens on the walls of a cramped room in the White House, somewhere on the ground floor of the West Wing, with red geraniums outside the windows. More than six thousand kilometres away from the semi-detached house in Tåsen in Oslo, a group of people were at that moment working frantically in an uncertain crisis situation, keeping a watchful eye on the same TV programmes as everyone else, while they tried to prevent the world from becoming a considerably changed place the following morning.

Every day, the many departments and agencies connected with national security received more than half a million electronic messages from embassies, military bases and other intelligence sources all over the world. They included warnings of vital importance to the nation’s security as well as insignificant memorandums they would rather be spared. Routine reports came in alongside reports of worrying enemy activity. The CIA, the FBI, the NSA and the Department of State all had their own operations centres that separated the wheat from the chaff in the incessant flow of information. Information of no importance was sent where it would do least harm, whereas important and dangerous information was tapped into messages to those who were there to deal with such matters: the Situation Room staff, a tight-knit core that had the authority to raise or lower the threshold for information, to demand more reports about particularly worrying developments, and who, most importantly, worked directly for the President.

Under George W. Bush, the screens were locked on to Fox News.

But now they once again watched CNN in the Situation Room.

Everyone did. Johanne nodded and sat down again.

The Americans were swimming in a sea of information with undercurrents that constantly threatened to pull them under. Agencies and departments, operations centres and foreign outposts, military and civil organisations – the flow of information in a crisis such as this was unbelievable. The entire American system would be on its knees by now, both domestic and international, in Washington DC and countless other cities and towns. When Johanne closed her eyes and acknowledged the indescribable fatigue that made it impossible to open them again, she thought she could hear a faint hum, like a swarm of bees in summer: tens of thousands of American civil servants who had only one aim, to bring the American president safely back home again.

And they were watching CNN.

She turned the TV off.

She felt so small. She went over to the kitchen window, which had finally been fixed. There was no longer a cold draught when she ran her hand along the windowsill. It was almost dark outside, but not quite. The spring brought with it the return of this beautiful light that made the evenings less threatening and the mornings easier.

She spun round. ‘Who was it?’

‘Work,’ he mumbled.

‘Work? At midnight on the seventeenth of May?’

He walked over to her. She was staring out of the window again. He put his arms round her slowly. She smiled and felt the goodness of his body warm her back. She relaxed. Closed her eyes.

‘I want to go to sleep,’ she whispered and ran a finger down his underarm. ‘Please take me to bed.’

‘Warren is in Oslo,’ he whispered, not letting her go, even though he felt her stiffen. ‘Warren Scifford.’

‘What?’

‘He’s here in connection with…’

Johanne was no longer listening. Her head felt light and detached, as if it was no longer her own. A flush of heat pulsed down her arms into her hands, which she lifted and pressed to the window pane. She saw the lights of an aeroplane in the sky to the north, and could not understand what it was doing there at this time of night, on a day like today. She found herself smiling without knowing why.

‘Don’t want to know,’ she said lightly. ‘You know that. Don’t want to hear about it.’

Adam refused to let her go. Her body felt smaller now; she was positively skinny. And stiff as a poker.

Warren Scifford, the Chief, had been Johanne’s teacher at the FBI Academy. And more than just a teacher, Adam had soon understood. Johanne was very young at the time, only twenty-three, whereas Warren must have been well into his forties. A love affair that happened an eternity ago. Adam had not felt even a hint of jealousy on the few occasions that he and Warren had bumped into each other. The last time must have been three or four years ago at an Interpol meeting in New Orleans, when they had even had dinner together. But for reasons that he could not explain, he had felt uncomfortable when Warren started to ask lots of questions about Johanne. He had avoided answering in any detail, and for the rest of the meal they had talked about their work and American football.

Warren Scifford played a leading role in Johanne’s great secret. Any talk of the man was forbidden, a fact that only told Adam the obvious: that he had at some point hurt her deeply.

But shit happens, he thought, and held on to Johanne. It’s horrible and can be very difficult at the time. But you get over it. It’s almost fifteen years ago now, my love. Forget it. Get over it, for God’s sake. Or is there something more?

‘Talk to me,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Can’t you just tell me what this is all about?’

‘No.’ Her voice was no more than breath.

‘I’m going to have to work with him,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

He still tried to hold on to her, but she pulled herself loose with surprising strength and pushed him away. The look in her eyes frightened him when she asked: ‘What did you say?’

‘He needs a liaison.’

‘And it has to be you. Of all the hundreds of… You said no, of course.’

In a way she suddenly seemed more present, as if she had woken up when he let go of her body.

‘I was given an order, Johanne. I work for an organisation that gives orders. Saying no is not an option.’ He made quote marks with his fingers.

Johanne turned away from him and went into the sitting room. She twisted the cork from the corkscrew and put it back into the half-empty wine bottle. Then she grabbed the glasses and took them out into the kitchen, where she put them down on the worktop. Then she checked that the dishwasher was full, put some soap in the dispenser, closed the metal door and started the machine. She snatched up a cloth, wrung it under running water and wiped the surfaces. Then she carefully shook the cloth over the sink, rinsed it again and folded it before hanging it over the edge.

Adam followed her every movement without saying a word.

Finally, Johanne looked at him.

‘I just want to make one thing absolutely clear before we go to bed,’ she said. Her voice was calm and enunciated, just as it was when she was giving Kristiane a telling-off. ‘If you say yes to being Warren Scifford’s liaison, this marriage is over.’

He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

‘I’ll leave you, Adam. If you say yes, I’ll leave you.’

Then she went and got ready for bed.

Finally, the Norwegian national day had come to an end.