Death In Oslo

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It was just gone two o’clock when Helen Bentley came back into the kitchen. She looked awful. Six hours’ sleep and a long shower had worked wonders for her in the morning, but now she was deathly pale. Her eyes were glazed and she had moon-shaped bags under her eyes. She sank heavily down on to a chair, and greedily took the coffee that Johanne offered her.

‘The New York Stock Exchange opens in an hour and a half.’ She sighed and drank some coffee. ‘It’s going to be a black Thursday, perhaps the worst since the thirties.’

‘Have you found anything out?’ Johanne asked tentatively.

‘I’ve got some kind of overview. It’s clear that our friends in Saudi Arabia were not so friendly after all. There are persistent rumours that they’re behind it, together with Iran. Without anyone in my administration admitting anything, of course.’

She forced a smile. Her lips were nearly as pale as the rest of her face.

‘Which means that Warren must’ve sold out to the Arabs,’ Johanne said, still speaking quietly.

The President nodded and put a hand over her eyes. She sat like this for a few moments, before suddenly looking up and saying: ‘I just can’t work out how all this fits together without logging on to my secured pages in the White House. I’ll have to use my own code. And even then there will still be a lot that I can’t access as I need other equipment. But I have to find out if Warren has been burnt. I have to find out how much my people know about all this before making any sound. If they don’t know anything about his-’

‘He’s in full swing here in Norway,’ Johanne said. ‘I would have known if anything had happened to him. If he’d been arrested or anything like that, I mean.’

She paused for a moment, and looked over at her mobile. ‘Or at least, I think I would.’

‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ the President said. ‘If they know that he’s involved, they may just as easily feel that it’s expedient to keep him on his toes. But if they don’t know…’ she took a deep breath, ‘then it might be dangerous to have him running around freely when I raise the alarm. I have to get into my pages. I just have to do it.’

‘It’ll only take them a few seconds to discover you,’ Johanne said, with some scepticism. ‘They’ll see the IP address and find out that the computer is here. And then Armageddon will break loose.’

‘Yes. Could it… No. I don’t need a long time, really. Just a couple of hours, I hope.’

The door to the sitting room opened and Hanne Wilhelmsen rolled in.

‘An hour’s nap here and there,’ she said and yawned. ‘It actually makes you feel quite rested. Have you managed to make any headway?’

She looked at Helen Bentley.

‘A fair bit. But now I’ve got a problem. I have to access my secured pages, but if I use your computer, that will immediately tell them that I’m alive, and not only that, where I am.’

Hanne sniffed and wiped her nose with her finger.

‘A problem, hmm. What should we do?’

‘My computer,’ Johanne said, surprised at herself, and raised her finger. ‘What about using that?’

‘Your computer?’

‘Do you have a computer? Here?’

The other two looked warily at her.

‘It’s in the car,’ Johanne said eagerly. ‘And it’s registered with the University of Oslo. They would, of course, also be able to trace the IP address there, but it would take longer to… They would have to contact the university first, then they would have to find out who the laptop had been lent to, and then they would have to establish where I was. And in fact…’ she looked guiltily at her mobile phone again, ‘Adam is the only one who knows,’ she finished, subdued. ‘And he doesn’t really know either.’

‘Do you know,’ the President said. ‘I think that’s a good idea. I don’t need more than a couple of hours. And that is presumably the amount of time we can buy by using another computer.’

Hanne was the only one who was still sceptical.

‘I don’t know a lot about IP addresses and things like that,’ she said. ‘But is either of you absolutely certain that this will work? That it’s not the line itself that’s traced?’

Johanne and Helen Bentley exchanged looks.

‘I’m not certain,’ the President said. ‘I simply have to take that chance. Could you get it?’

‘Of course,’ Johanne said and got up. ‘I’ll only be five minutes.’

As the front door closed, Helen Bentley sat down on the chair beside Hanne’s wheelchair. She seemed to be struggling to find the right words. Hanne looked at her with an expressionless face, as if she had all the time in the world.

‘Hannah. Do you… You said you were a retired policewoman. Do you have a gun in the house?’

Hanne rolled away from the table.

‘A gun? What do you want-’

‘Shhh,’ the President said. There was a hint of authority in her voice that made Hanne stiffen. ‘Please. I’d rather Johanne didn’t know about this. I wouldn’t like my one-year-old to be in the same flat as a loaded gun. Of course, I don’t think it will be necessary to use it. But you must remember that-’

‘Do you know why I’m sitting here? Has the thought never occurred to you? I’m sitting in this bloody wheelchair because I was shot. My spine was destroyed by a bullet. I don’t exactly have a good relationship with guns.’

‘Hannah! Hannah! Listen to me!’

Hanne tightened her lips and looked straight at Helen Bentley.

‘I am normally one of the world’s best-guarded people,’ the President almost whispered, as if she was frightened that Johanne might already be back. ‘I have heavily armed bodyguards with me everywhere, all the time. That’s not for no reason, Hannah. It is absolutely necessary. The moment that it’s known that I’m here in this flat, I will be completely defenceless. Until the right people get here, and then I’ll be protected by them again. But until then, I have to be able to defend myself. I know you’ll understand, if you just think about it.’

Hanne was the first one to look away.

‘I do have a gun,’ she said eventually. ‘And ammunition. I never had those heavy steel cupboards removed, and they… Are you any good?’

The President gave a shy smile.

‘My teachers might say otherwise. But I can handle a gun. I’m the commander-in-chief, remember?’

Hanne was still staring at the table without expression.

‘One more thing,’ Helen Bentley said, and laid her hand on Hanne’s arm. ‘I think it’s best if you all leave. Leave the flat, in case something happens.’

Hanne lifted her head and stared at the President with a look of exaggerated disbelief. Then she started to laugh. She threw her head back and roared with laughter.

‘Good luck,’ she hiccuped. ‘I will not be budged. And as for Mary, she lives with a radius of about thirty metres. You will never, and I repeat never, get her to leave this flat. I occasionally manage to convince her to go down into the cellar, but you won’t be able to do that. And as for-’

‘Here you go,’ Johanne said, out of breath. ‘It’s full summer outside, by the way!’

She put her laptop down on the kitchen table. With practised hands, she plugged in the external mouse, laid down a mat, put the plug in a socket and turned on the machine.

‘Voilà!’ she said and logged on. ‘There you go, Madam President. A computer that it will take time to trace!’

She was so excited that she didn’t notice Hanne’s worried face as she reversed out from the table, turned round and rolled off into the flat. The rubber wheels squeaked on the parquet floor. The sound vanished when a door was shut, somewhere deep in the heart of the enormous flat.