Death In Oslo

II

Warren Scifford felt awful.

In the half-dark he fumbled around for his mobile phone, which was playing a mechanical version of something that was supposed to sound like a cockerel. The noise would not stop. He sat up in bed, confused. He had forgotten to close the blackout curtains again before going to bed, and the grey light behind the thin curtains gave him no idea of what time it was.

The cockerel got louder and Warren swore passionately as he searched around on the bedside table. Finally he caught sight of the mobile phone. The display said it was 05:07. It must have fallen on the floor in the course of his three hours of restless sleep. He couldn’t imagine how he had managed to set the alarm so wrong. He had meant to set it for five past seven.

He missed a few times before he finally managed to turn the alarm off. He sank back into the bed. He closed his eyes, but knew immediately that there was no point. His thoughts were crashing and colliding and creating chaos, so it would be impossible to sleep. He stood up, resigned, padded into the shower and stood under the water for the next fifteen minutes. If he wasn’t rested, he could at least scrub himself into some sort of waking state.

He dried himself and pulled on his boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

It didn’t take him long to rig up the portable office. He left the ceiling lamp switched off and closed the blackout curtains. The table lamps gave sufficient light to work. When everything was set up, he filled the kettle and stood leaning against the bookshelf, waiting for it to boil. For a moment he considered coffee. But the powder looked old and tasteless, so he took a tea bag and dropped it into the cup instead, then filled it with boiling water.

No new emails.

He tried to work his way back. It was around two in the morning when he went to bed. That would be around eight in the evening in Washington DC. So now it would eleven o’clock back home. Everyone was working flat out. No one had sent him anything for more than four hours.

He tried to reassure himself that it was because they thought he was asleep.

It didn’t work. The fact that he was being frozen out was becoming increasingly apparent. The more time that passed without the President being found, the more Warren Scifford’s role was diminishing. Even though he was still the contact person for the local police, it was obvious that operations at the embassy on Drammensveien had increased in scope and content without him being fully informed. The operative investigators the FBI had sent to Norway some hours after he had arrived were the kings of the castle. They stayed at the embassy. They were linked to communications technology that made his little office, with his selection of mobile phones and encrypted PC, look like a pathetic delivery to a technical museum.

They didn’t give a damn about the Norwegian police.

Some of them did still come to the meetings he tried to set up several times a day in an attempt to coordinate the American effort with anything that the Norwegian police might have discovered regarding clues, evidence and theories. When he informed them that the body of Jeffrey Hunter had been found, he was given something that might at least resemble attention. As far as he could understand from the ambassador, a minor diplomatic tussle had ensued regarding the man’s earthly remains. The Norwegians wanted to keep him for further examination. But the US authorities simply refused.

‘I don’t give a damn,’ whispered Warren Scifford and gave his face a good rub.

He had warned Ambassador Wells.

‘They’re going to hit the roof when they realise what you’re up to,’ he’d said in exasperation when they met at the embassy the day before. ‘OK, they might have a US-friendly government, but I realise that this is a country where opposition can be strong. They might be stubborn, as you warned me, but they’re not stupid. We simply can’t -’

The ambassador had interrupted him with an ice-cold stare and a voice that made Warren hold his tongue. ‘I am the one who knows this country, Warren. I am the US ambassador to Norway. I have three meetings a day with the Norwegian foreign minister. The government of this country is constantly informed of what we are doing. Everything that we are doing.’

It was a complete lie and they both knew it.

Warren took a sip of the tea. It didn’t taste of much, but at least it was warm. The room was too. Far too warm. He went over to a box on the wall to see if he could turn down the temperature. He had never managed to get the hang of the whole Celsius system. The switch was turned to twenty-five degrees, and that was certainly too hot. Maybe fifteen would be better. He held his hand up to the vent in the wall. The air cooled immediately.

He hesitated for a moment, and then turned his computer off. There were two files on the desk. One was as thick as a book. The other contained no more than twenty pages. He took both of them and lay back down on the bed, bolstered by the pillows and cushions at the head of the bed.

He looked through the classified report on the intelligence situation first. It was more than two hundred pages long and he had not received it in a coded email, as he should have done according to various agreements and routines. He had discovered, by accident, that it existed when he overheard some snippets of conversation in the headquarters at the embassy, and had had to argue his way to a copy. Conrad Victory, the sixty-year-old special agent who was in charge of operations at the embassy, thought that Warren didn’t need the document. And in situations like this they operated with a strict ‘need-to-know’ policy, which Warren, given his experience, should understand. His role was to be the liaison between the Norwegian and American police. He had himself complained how difficult it was to resist the pressure the Norwegians put on him with regard to American information and intelligence. The less he knew, the less Oslo Police would interfere.

But Warren didn’t give in. When nothing else worked, he resorted to highlighting his close personal relationship with the President. Between the lines, of course. It worked. Finally.

He had fallen into bed at two in the morning and had not really had a chance to look at the document until now.

It was frightening reading.

In the intense search for the President’s kidnappers, it was becoming increasingly clear that her disappearance would be followed by a major terrorist attack. But neither the FBI nor the CIA, nor any of the other numerous organisations that fell under the umbrella of Homeland Security, was willing to use the name that Warren Scifford’s BSC Unit had given to such a potential attack: The Trojan Horse.

They didn’t dare to call it anything yet.

The problem was that no one knew what or who would be the target of any such attack. The intelligence was extensive, in terms of the amount of reports, tips, and theories, and speculation was overwhelming. But the information was fragmented, confusing and to a large extent contradictory.

It could be an Islamist conspiracy.

It presumably was an Islamist conspiracy.

It had to be the Muslims.

The reports indicated that the authorities had a full overview of all other potential criminals, attackers and relevant terrorist groups – to the extent that anyone could ever have a full overview. And as far as twisted, fanatical American citizens were concerned, they were always a latent threat, as the bomber Timothy McVeigh had shown when the Gulf veteran killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995. The problem was that there were no indications of abnormal activity in any of the many ultra-reactionary groups in the US. They were still under comprehensive surveillance, even post-9/11, when most of the attention was now focused in another direction. There was nothing to indicate that extreme animal-rights or environmental activists had taken the step from illegal, bothersome protests to real terrorist attacks. There were fanatical religious groups all over the States, but as a rule they were really only a threat to themselves. And there was nothing extraordinary to report from their ranks either.

And kidnapping an American president from a hotel room in Norway was light years away from what any known American group would have the ability to orchestrate.

It had to be an Islamist conspiracy.

Warren straightened his glasses.

The tangible angst in the report was fascinating. In all his thirty years in the FBI, Warren Scifford had never read a professional analysis that was so permeated by impending catastrophe. It was as if the truth had finally dawned on the entire Homeland Security system: someone had managed the impossible. The unthinkable. Someone had stolen the American commander-in-chief, and it was hard to imagine that those responsible had any limits as to what they might do.

The fear was focused on an attack targeting various unidentified installations on American soil. It was based on a number of reports and events, but the reports were insubstantial and the events ambiguous.

The most worrying and confusing factor was all the tips.

The American authorities were constantly receiving such communications, and more often than not there was no substance to them. House-owners who wished unpleasant visits from uniformed police on their neighbours could come up with the most fantastic claims about what was going on on the other side of the fence. Suspicious visits, strange sounds at night, abnormal behaviour and something that could only be dynamite in the garage. Or maybe even a bomb. Property sharks found it both convenient and effective to get help from the FBI in evicting troublesome tenants. There were no limits to what people claimed they had seen. Arabs going in and out at all times of day and night, conversations in foreign languages and the transport of boxes that contained God only knows what. Even teenagers might decide to report a classmate as a terrorist, simply because the guy had shown disrespect in trying it on with a girl he should have kept his hands off.

This time the tips seemed more like warnings.

The FBI’s field offices had received an unusual number of anonymous messages in the past few days. Some were phoned in, others came in emails. But the content was exactly the same, and they all claimed basically that something was going to happen, something that would make 9/11 pale into insignificance. Most of them said that the US was a weak nation that couldn’t even look after its president. They only had themselves to blame for leaving their ranks open. This time the attack would not be targeted on a specific area. This time the whole of the US would suffer, in the same way the US had caused suffering throughout the world.

It was payback time.

The most alarming thing was that the phone calls could not be traced.

It was incomprehensible.

The many organisations associated with Homeland Security had a technological advantage that they thought was absolute, and that made it possible to trace any phone call to or from American soil. Generally it took no more than a minute to identify a sender’s PC. In the shadow of the wide-ranging powers of attorney that George W. Bush had passed since 2001, the National Security Agency had gained what they believed to be almost total control of telephonic and electronic communication. The organisation saw no problem in the fact that they exceeded these powers of attorney in their efforts to be effective. They had a job to do. They had to ensure national security. The few who had the opportunity to discover these transgressions and the possibility to do anything about them chose to turn a blind eye.

The enemy was powerful and dangerous.

The US had to be protected at all costs.

These sinister messages, however, could not be traced. Not to the right place, at all events. The cutting-edge technology found the sender’s IP address or telephone number almost instantly, but when they were then investigated, the information appeared to be wrong. One call, where a deep man’s voice accused the American authorities of being arrogant and warned them not to harass decent citizens who had done nothing wrong other than having a Palestinian father, had apparently been made from the telephone of a seventy-year-old lady in Lake Placid, New York. At the time that one of the FBI’s offices in Manhattan received the call, the frail old woman was having a tea party with four equally charming friends. None of them had touched the phone and a log from the local telephone company showed the widow was telling the truth: no one had used the phone at that time.

The tea had cooled. Warren took a sip. He glasses steamed up for a moment, as if someone had breathed on them.

He turned to the more technical section of the report. He couldn’t understand much of it, and wasn’t particularly interested in the details. He wanted to read the conclusion, which he found on page 173: it was entirely possible to manipulate addressees in the way that had been done.

Slightly unnecessary conclusion, Warren said to himself. They’ve already documented more than a hundred and thirty cases of the phenomenon.

He adjusted one of the pillows behind his head to make it more comfortable.

Manipulation of this sort required substantial resources.

Yeah, yeah, he thought. No one ever thought it was the work of a poor man.

And presumably a telecommunications satellite. Or access to capacity on one. Rented or stolen.

A satellite? A bloody spaceship?

Warren was starting to feel cold; fifteen degrees was obviously not warm enough. He got up again to reset the switch in the box on the wall. This time he turned it to twenty degrees and then climbed back into bed and continued reading.

Satellites of this type were located in stationary orbits about forty thousand kilometres from the surface of the earth. Since all the telephone calls and electronic messages were linked to phones and computers on the east coast of the States, the actions were compatible with the use of an Arabic satellite.

An Arabic satellite would not be able to penetrate further into the country than that.

But it could reach the east coast.

Tracking, Warren thought impatiently and leafed quickly through the pages. With all the billions of dollars and powers of attorney and technology that we have, what about the tracking and reconstruction of the phone calls and messages?

Warren Scifford was a profiler.

He respected technique. In the course of his work tracking down serial killers and sadistic, sexually motivated murderers, he had over the years developed a deep respect for forensic pathologists and their magic, using chemistry, physics, electronics and technology. On occasion, he even sneaked a peak at an episode of CSI, in deep awe of the profession.

But this was beyond him. He could set up a PC and learn a few codes, but generally he was happy to let others look after the technology.

His area of competence was the soul.

He couldn’t understand this.

He carried on reading.

The messages stopped suddenly at 9.14 a.m., Eastern Time. At the exact time that the FBI went to investigate the first address they had traced. According to NSA’s log, someone had phoned the FBI headquarters in Quantico from a small house on the outskirts of the Everglades in Florida, with a chilling message that the USA was heading for a fall.

An old man with poor eyesight and terrible hearing lived in the house. His telephone wasn’t even connected. It lay covered in dust in the cellar, but his subscription was still live as his son in Miami paid all his father’s regular bills. Obviously without checking what they were for. Presumably he hadn’t visited the old man in years.

The messages had stopped at exactly the same time.

And none had been received since.

The report finished by saying that work was ongoing to analyse the voices and the language used, but nothing of any value to the investigation could be said yet about the recordings of the threats or the sixty or so emails with similar content. The voices were scrambled and distorted, so expectations were not high. The only thing that could be said with any certainty was that all the callers were men. For obvious reasons it was more difficult to establish the sex of the originators of the electronic messages.

End of report.

Warren was hungry.

He went to the minibar, took out a bar of chocolate and opened a bottle of Coke. Neither of them tasted any good, but did help to increase his blood sugar. The slight headache that he got when he didn’t have enough sleep disappeared.

He went back to bed. The thick document fell to the floor. According to instructions, it was to be destroyed immediately. But that could wait. He picked up the thinner file and held it at arm’s length for a few seconds. Then he lowered his arm on to the duvet.

The slim report was a masterpiece.

The problem was that no one seemed to be particularly interested in reading it, and even less so in responding to it.

Warren knew it almost off by heart, even though he had only read through the paper twice. The report had been prepared by the BSC Unit at home in DC and he had contributed as much as he could from this godforsaken place they called Norway.

Warren longed to go home. He closed his eyes.

He had started to feel old more and more frequently. Not just older, but old. He was tired and had bitten off more than he could chew with this new job. He wanted to go back to Quantico, to Virginia, to his family. To Kathleen, who had put up with him and his countless, deeply hurtful infidelities over the years. To his grown-up children, who had all settled near their childhood home. To his own house and garden. He wanted to go home, and felt a great pressure under his ribs that did not disappear even though he swallowed several times.

The thin report was a profile.

As always, they had started their work by analysing the actions and events. The BSC Unit worked along timelines and in depth, putting the events in context, analysing the causes and effects and studying the costs and complexity. Every detail in the sequence of events was set against alternative solutions, because that was the only way in which they could come close to capturing the motives and attitudes of the people who were behind the kidnapping of Madam President.

The picture that slowly emerged over the twenty pages worried Warren and his loyal colleagues in the BSC Unit just as much as the thick report scared the life out of the rest of the FBI.

They thought they would establish the profile of an organisation. A group of people, a terrorist cell. Possibly a small unit, an army fighting a holy war against Satan’s bulwark, the US.

Instead they saw the profile of a man.

One man.

Obviously he could not be acting alone. Everything that had happened since the BSC Unit saw the first vague signs of the Trojan Horse more than six weeks ago indicated that a disconcerting number of people were involved.

The problem was that they didn’t seem to belong together. In any way. Instead of developing a more detailed description of a terrorist organisation, the BSC Unit had outlined a single individual who used people the way that others used tools, and showed the same lack of loyalty or other human emotion to his helpers that anyone else would to a toolbox.

Nothing was done to look after or help the various actors afterwards. Once they had played their role, done their bit, there was no protection. Gerhard Skrøder had been thrown to the wolves, as had the Pakistani cleaner and all the rest of the pieces in this complex jigsaw puzzle.

Which must mean that they didn’t know who they were working for.

Warren yawned, shook his head briskly and opened his eyes wide to force back the tears. His hand, which was still holding the report, felt heavy as lead. He pulled himself together, lifted it up and caste his eyes over the front page.

The title was modestly placed at the top of the page in the same font size as the rest of the document, only it was in bold: The Guilty. A profile of the abductor.

Warren wasn’t sure whether he liked the name they had chosen. On the other hand, it was neutral, with no ethnic or national connotations. Again he tried to make himself more comfortable, and then started to read:

I.i. The Abduction.

As usual, their starting point was the key event.

The actual kidnapping of the President gave the BSC Unit strong characteristics in terms of the perpetrator’s profile. Ever since he had been woken in his flat in Washington DC at some ungodly hour by an emotional agent who told him that the President had apparently been kidnapped in Norway, Warren Scifford had been thoroughly perplexed. On the flight to Europe, he had constantly been expecting, and in some absurd way hoping, that he would arrive to be told that Madam President had been found dead.

He had already dismissed the possibility that she would be found alive.

The key question was: why kidnapping? Why not kill Helen Bentley instead? By all accounts, it was far easier to carry out an assassination, and therefore far less risky. Being the commander-in-chief of the US was definitely a high-risk job, due to the simple fact that it was impossible to fully protect any individual from sudden fatal attacks by other people, unless that individual was kept in isolation.

The kidnapping had to have a purpose, its own value. And this had to be something to do with what could be gained by keeping the US in suspense, rather than letting the American people gather in shared shock and grief over their murdered president.

The obvious effect of the disappearance was that the country was now more vulnerable to attack.

Just the thought made Warren’s skin crawl.

He turned to the next page before taking a swig of Coke. He still had a feeling in his stomach that he couldn’t define, and wondered for a moment whether he should order some food to see if that would help. The clock on his mobile phone showed three minutes to six, so he abandoned that idea. Breakfast would be served in an hour.

The use of Secret Service agent Jeffrey Hunter was as genius as it was simple. Even though it might in theory be possible to kidnap the President without the help of an insider, he could imagine no way in which it would be possible to carry it out in practice. The fact that the Guilty had an apparatus in the States that could abduct an autistic boy, twice, in order to frighten a professional security agent into cooperation was one of the elements that made the profile increasingly clear. And even more overwhelming.

The phone rang.

The sound gave Warren such a surprise that the Coke bottle that was wedged between his thighs fell over. He cursed, managed to catch the bottle of sticky dark fluid and grabbed the phone.

‘Hello,’ he grunted, drying his free hand on the duvet cover.

‘Warren?’ a distant voice said.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Colin.’

‘Oh, hi, Colin. You sound very far away.’

‘I have to be quick.’

‘Sounds like you’re whispering. Speak up!’

‘Dammit, Warren, listen to me. We’re not exactly in people’s good books at the moment.’

‘No, I noticed that here, too.’

Colin Wolf and Warren Scifford had worked together for nearly ten years. Warren’s first choice when he was putting together the BSC Unit was his peer. Colin was old school. His name might be Wolf, but he looked like a bear and he was thorough, calm and compliant. His voice was higher than normal and the delay on the line made him stressed.

‘They won’t listen to us,’ Colin said. ‘They’ve made up their minds.’

‘About what?’ Warren asked, even though he knew the answer.

‘That there’s some Islamist organisation or other behind it all. And they’re back on the al-Qaeda track again. Al-Qaeda! They’re no more involved in this case than the IRA. Or the Scouts, for that matter. And now they’ve seen red. That’s why I’m calling.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘They’ve discovered an account.’

‘An account?’

‘Jeffrey Hunter. Transferred money to his wife.’

Warren swallowed. The brown stain on his groin was disgusting. He pulled the duvet over it with his sticky hand.

‘Hello?’

‘Yes, I’m still here,’ Warren said. ‘Well I’ll be damned.’

‘Quite. It’s all too good to be true.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Listen, but I have to be quick. I want you to know. The amount was two hundred thousand dollars. The money was of course filtered through the usual channels so there is no identity, but we’ve managed to trace it back to the sender all the same. It only took the boys over in Pennsylvania Avenue five hours.’

‘And who did they find?’

‘Are you sitting down?’

‘I’m lying in bed.’

‘The cousin of the Saudi oil minister. He lives in Iran.’

‘Shit.’

‘You can say that again.’

Warren picked up the BSC Unit report again. The papers stuck to his hand. That wasn’t right. That couldn’t be right. They were right: Colin and Warren and the rest of the small, marginalised group of profilers who no one would listen to.

‘That just can’t be right,’ he said pensively. ‘The Guilty would never have done anything in such an amateur way that the money could be traced.’

‘What?’

‘That can’t be right!’

‘No, that’s why I’m calling! It’s too simple, Warren. But what about if we turn the whole thing on its head?’

‘What? I can’t hear, there’s…’

‘Turn the whole thing on its head,’ Colin shouted. ‘Let’s suppose that the trail to Saudi Arabia was laid on purpose. If we’re right, and the intention was that the money would be found and traced…’

Then everything falls into place, thought Warren, aghast. That’s the way the Guilty works. He wants this to happen. He wants chaos, he creates crises, he’s…

‘Don’t you see? Do you agree?’

Colin’s voice was so distant.

Warren wasn’t listening properly.

‘It won’t take long before this leaks,’ Colin said, as the connection deteriorated. ‘Have you been watching the stock exchange?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘When the link between Saudi Arabia and Iran becomes known…’

Oil prices, Warren realised. They’ll rocket, like never before in history.

‘… dramatic fall in the Dow Jones, and it’s so bloody sharp and…’

‘Hello,’ Warren shouted.

‘Hi. Are you still there? I’ll have to stop, Warren. I have to run because…’

The crackling was unbearable. Warren held the receiver out a few centimetres from his ear. Suddenly Colin came back. The connection was crystal clear for the first time.

‘They’re talking about a hundred dollars a barrel,’ he said grimly. ‘Before the end of next week. That’s what he wants. It fits, Warren. It all fits. I have to go. Call me.’

The connection was cut.

Warren got up from the bed. He had to shower again. With his legs wide apart, so that his sticky thighs wouldn’t touch, he waddled over to his suitcase.

He still hadn’t unpacked properly.

‘The Guilty is a man with enormous capital and a sound understanding of the West,’ he parroted from the report. ‘He has well-above-average intelligence, incredible patience and a unique ability to plan and think long term. He has built up an impressive international and extremely complex network of helpers, presumably through the use of threats, capital and costly cultivation. There is every reason to believe that few of these people know who he is. If any.’

Warren couldn’t find any clean boxer shorts. He checked and double-checked the side pockets of the suitcase. His fingers touched something heavy. He waited a moment before fishing the object out of the narrow opening.

His watch.

Verus amicus rara avis.

He’d thought that he’d lost it for good. It had bothered him more than he liked to admit. He liked the watch and was proud to have received it from Madam President. He never took it off.

Except when he had sex.

Sex and time did not go together, so he always took it off.

Deep down, he was afraid that the watch had been stolen by the woman with red hair. He couldn’t remember what she was called any more, even though it was only a week since they’d met. In a bar. She worked in advertising, he seemed to remember. Or maybe it was film.

Whatever, he said to himself and slipped the watch on to his wrist.

There were no clean boxer shorts in his suitcase.

He would just have to make do without.

‘It is unlikely that he is American,’ Warren imagined a voice saying, as if the profile document was being played on a tape recorder in his head. ‘If he is a Muslim, he is more secular than he is fanatical. He presumably lives in the Middle East, but he also has places to stay in Europe.’

It was now thirty-three minutes past six and Warren Scifford no longer felt in the slightest bit tired.