The Redbreast

104

Radisson SAS. 17 May 2000.

The old man was leaning against the window with his legs drawn up beneath him, holding the gun with both hands and listening to the ambulance siren slowly fading away into the distance. It's too late, he thought. Everyone dies.

He had been sick again. Mostly blood. The pain had almost deprived him of consciousness and afterwards he lay bent double on the floor, waiting for the pills to take effect. Four of them. The pain had subsided, with one last stab to remind him that it would soon come back, and the bathroom had assumed normal proportions again. One of the two bathrooms. With a Jacuzzi. Or was it a sauna? There was a TV anyway, and he had turned it on. There were patriotic songs, the national anthem, festively dressed journalists reporting on the children's parade on all the channels.

Now he was sitting in the living room, and the sun hung in the sky like a huge flare, lighting up everything. He knew he shouldn't look straight at the flare, because you would become night-blind and you wouldn't be able to see the Russian snipers wriggling through the snow in no man's land.

I can see him, Daniel whispered. One o'clock, on the balcony right behind the dead tree.

Trees? There were no trees here in the crater landscape. The Crown Prince has walked out on to the balcony, but he doesn't say anything.

'He'll get away!' a voice sounding like Gudbrand's shouted. No, he won't, Daniel said. No bloody Bolshevik gets away. 'He knows we've seen him, he's crawling into the hollow.' No, he isn't.

The old man rested the gun against the edge of the window. He had used a screwdriver to open it further than the permitted crack. What was it that the girl in reception had told him that time? It was to prevent guests from 'getting silly ideas'. He looked through the rifle sights. People were so small down there. He set the range. Four-hundred metres. Shooting from above and down, you have to take into account the fact that gravity affects the bullet differently; it is a different trajectory from shooting on the level. But Daniel knew that, Daniel knew everything.

The old man looked at his watch: 10.45. Time to let it happen. He rested his cheek against the cold, heavy rifle butt, placed his left hand on the barrel slightly further down. Contorted his left eye. The railing on the balcony filled the sights. Then black coats and top hats. He found the face he was searching for. There was certainly a strong resemblance. It was the same young face as in 1945.

Daniel had gone even quieter and took aim. There was almost no frost smoke coming out of his mouth any more.

In front of the balcony, out of focus, the dead oak pointed its black witches' fingers to the sky. A bird sat on one of the branches. Right in the firing line. The old man shifted nervously. It hadn't been there before. It would soon fly away again. He put down the gun and drew fresh air into his aching lungs.

Click-click.

Harry slapped the steering wheel and twisted the ignition key one more time. Click-click.

'Start, you bastard! Or else it's off to the scrap heap tomorrow.'

The Escort started with a roar and the car shot off, spitting grass and earth. He took a sharp right by the lake. The young people stretched out on the blanket raised their bottles of beer and cheered Harry on as he lurched towards the SAS Hotel. With the engine screaming in first gear and his hand on the horn he effectively cleared a way down through the crowded gravel path, but by the kindergarten at the bottom a pram suddenly appeared from behind a tree, and he flung the car to the left, wrenched the wheel to the right, went into a skid and only just avoided the fence in front of the greenhouses. The car slid sideways into Wergelandsveien, in front of a taxi with Norwegian flags and a birch twig festooning the radiator grille. The taxi driver jumped on his brakes, but Harry accelerated and threaded his way through oncoming traffic and into Holbergs gate.

He braked in front of the hotel's swing doors and leaped out. When he sprinted into the packed reception area there was an immediate moment of silence, with everyone wondering if they were going to witness a unique experience. But it was just a very drunken man on 17 May. They had seen that before and the volume was turned up again. Harry raced across to one of the absurd 'islands'.

'Good morning,' a voice said. A pair of raised eyebrows under curly blonde hair resembling a wig sized him up from top to toe. Harry spotted her name badge.

'Betty Andresen, what I'm going to tell you now is not a joke in poor taste, so listen carefully. I'm a policeman and you have an assassin in the hotel'

Betty Andresen contemplated the tall, half-dressed man with the bloodshot eyes whom she had, quite understandably, judged to be either drunk or crazy, or both. She studied the ID card he held up for her. She scrutinised him again. At length.

'Name,' she said.

'His name's Sindre Fauke.'

Her fingers danced across the keyboard.

'Sorry, there's no one here by that name.'

'Fuck! Try Gudbrand Johansen.'

'No Gudbrand Johansen either, Inspector Hole. Wrong hotel perhaps?'

'No! He's here, he's in his room right now.'

'So you've spoken to him, have you?'

'No. No, I… it'll take too long to explain.'

Harry ran his hand across his face.

'Let's see. I have to think. He must be high up. How many floors are there here?’

‘Twenty one.'

'And how many of them have not handed in room keys yet?’

‘Quite a few, I'm afraid.'

Harry threw both hands into the air and stared at her. 'Of course,' he whispered. 'This is a Daniel job.' I beg your pardon?’

‘Please check for Daniel Gudeson.'

What would happen afterwards? The old man didn't know. There was nothing afterwards. At least, there hadn't been so far. He had put four bullets on the window-sill. The yellowish-brown matt metal of the housing reflected the rays of the sun.

He peered through the rifle sights again. The bird was still there. He recognised it. They had the same name. He pointed the sights at the crowds. Scanned the lines of people at the barriers. Stopped when he saw something familiar. Could it really be…? He focused the sights. Yes, no doubt about it, it was Rakel. What was she doing in the Palace Square? And there was Oleg too. He seemed to be running over from the children's parade. Rakel lifted him over the barrier with outstretched arms. She was strong. Strong hands. Like her mother. Now they were walking up towards the guardhouse. Rakel looked at her watch. She seemed to be waiting for someone. Oleg was wearing the jacket he had given him for Christmas. Rakel said Oleg called it Grandpa's jacket. It seemed to be a little on the small side already.

The old man chuckled. He would have to buy him a new one for autumn.

The pains came without warning this time and he gasped helplessly for air.

The flare was sinking and their stooped shadows scrambled towards him along the walls of the trench.

Everything went dark, but just as he felt himself slipping into the blackness, the pains released their hold again. The gun had slid on to the floor, and the sweat made his shirt stick to his body.

He straightened up, put the gun back on the window ledge. The bird had flown away. He had a clear line of fire.

The youthful face filled the telescopic sights again. The Prince had studied. And so should Oleg. That was the last thing he had said to Rakel. That was the last thing he said to himself before he shot Brandhaug. Rakel had not been at home the day he had dropped into Holmenkollveien to pick up a couple of books, so he had let himself in and he happened to see the envelope lying on the desk and the Russian embassy on the letterhead. He had read it, put it down and stared through the window at the garden, at the snowflakes lying there after the shower, the last throes of winter. Afterwards he had sifted through the other drawers in the desk until he found the other letters, the ones with the Norwegian embassy on the letterhead, and also those without letterheads, written on serviettes and sheets torn out of notepads, signed by Bernt Brandhaug. And he had thought about Christopher Brockhard.

No Russian arsehole will be able to shoot at our watch tonight.

The old man released the safety catch. He felt a strange calm. He had just remembered how easy it had been to cut Brockhard's throat. And to shoot Bernt Brandhaug. Grandpa's jacket, a new Grandpa's jacket. He emptied the air out of his lungs and crooked his finger around the trigger.

With a key card to all the rooms in his hand, Harry did a sliding tackle into the lift and got one foot between the closing doors. They slid open again. Amazed faces met him as he stood up.

'Police!' Harry shouted. 'Everyone out!'

It was as if the school bell had rung for lunchbreak, but a man in his fifties with a black goatee, a blue striped suit, a thick 17 May ribbon on his chest and a thin layer of dandruff on his shoulders remained where he was.

'We are Norwegian citizens, my good man, and this is not a police state!'

Harry walked round the man into the lift and pressed 21. But the goatee had not finished.

'Tell me one good reason why I as a taxpayer should put up with

…' Harry took out Weber's Smith amp; Wesson from his shoulder holster. 'I have six good reasons here, taxpayer. Out!'

Time passes quickly, and soon it is another day. In the morning light we'll see him better, see whether he is friend or foe.

Foe, foe. Too soon or not, I'll get him anyway.

Grandpa's jacket.

Shit, there is nothing afterwards.

The face in the sights looks serious. Smile, boy.

Betrayal, betrayal, betrayal.

The trigger has been pulled back so far now there is no longer any resistance, the threshold lies somewhere in a no man's land. Don't think about the noise and the recoil, just press, let it come when it comes.

The bang took him completely by surprise. For a fraction of a second it was totally quiet. Then the echo reverberated and the wave of sound settled over the city and the sudden silence of thousands of sounds that died away at this instant.

Harry was sprinting through the corridors on the twenty-first floor when he heard the bang.

'Fuck!' he wheezed.

The walls coming towards him and passing him on both sides gave him the feeling he was moving inside a runnel. Doors. Pictures, motifs of blue cubes. His strides were almost inaudible on the thick carpet. Great. Good hotels think about reducing noise. And good policemen think about what they have to do. Fuck, fuck, lactic acid on the brain. An ice machine. Room 2154, room 2156. Another bang. The Palace Suite.

His heartbeat drum rolls against his ribs. Harry stood beside the door and pushed his key card into the lock. There was a dull buzz. Then a smooth click and the light on the lock went green. Harry gingerly pressed down the handle.

The police had fixed procedures for situations like this. Harry had been on the course and learned them. He had no intention of following a single one of them now.

He tore open the door, rushed in with his gun held in front of him with both hands and threw himself into a kneeling position in the doorway to the living room. The light flooded into the room, dazzled him and stung his eyes. An open window. The sun behind the glass was like a halo over the head of the white-haired man who slowly turned round.

'Police! Drop the gun,' Harry shouted.

Harry's pupils shrank and out of the light crept the silhouette of the rifle pointing at him.

'Drop the gun,' he repeated. 'You've done what you came to do, Fauke. Mission accomplished. It's over now.'

It was peculiar but the brass bands were still playing outside as if nothing had happened. The old man raised the rifle and rested the butt against his cheek. Harry's eyes had got used to the light and he stared down the barrel of this weapon he had hitherto only ever seen in pictures.

Fauke mumbled something, but it was drowned out by a new bang, this time sharper and clearer.

'Well I'm…' Harry whispered.

Outside, behind Fauke, he saw a puff of smoke rise into the air like a white speech bubble from the cannon on the ramparts of Akershus Fortress. The 17 May salutes. What he'd heard was the 17 May gun salutes! Harry heard the cheering. He breathed in through his nostrils.

The room didn't smell of burned powder. He realised that Fauke had not fired the gun. Not yet. He gripped the butt of his revolver tightly as he watched the wrinkled face staring blankly back at him over the sights. It wasn't just a matter of his own and of the old man's life. The instructions were clear.

'I've come from Vibes gate. I've read your diary,' Harry said. 'Gudbrand Johansen. Or is it Daniel I'm talking to now?'

Harry clenched his teeth and crooked his trigger finger.

The old man mumbled again.

'What was that?'

'Passwort,' the old man said. His voice was hoarse and totally unrecognisable from the one he had heard before. 'Don't do it,' Harry said. 'Don't force me.'

A drop of sweat ran down Harry's forehead, down to the bridge of his nose until it hung off the tip, where it seemed unable to make up its mind. Harry shifted his grip on the gun.

'Passwort,' the old man repeated.

Harry could see the old man's finger tighten round the trigger. He could feel the fear of death squeezing his heart. 'No,' Harry said. 'It's not too late.'

But he knew it wasn't true. It was too late. The old man was beyond reasoning, beyond this world and this life. 'Passwort'

Soon it would be over for them both. There was only some slow time left, the time on Christmas Eve before… 'Oleg,' Harry said.

The gun was pointing directly at his head. A car horn sounded in the distance. A spasm flitted across the old man's face. 'The password is Oleg,' Harry said. The finger on the trigger paused. The old man opened his mouth to say something. Harry held his breath.

'Oleg,' the old man said. It sounded like a wisp of wind from his lips.

Harry was never quite able to explain it afterwards, but he saw it: the old man was dying at that very moment. And then it was a child's face looking at Harry from behind the wrinkles. The gun was no longer pointed at him and he lowered his revolver. Then he stretched out a hand and put it on the old man's shoulder.

'Do you promise me?' The old man's voice was barely audible. 'That they won't…'

'I promise,' Harry said. 'I shall personally see to it that no names will appear publicly. Oleg and Rakel will not suffer in any way

…'

The old man rested his eyes on Harry for a long time. The rifle hit the floor with a thud and then he collapsed.

Harry took the magazine out of the rifle and put it on the sofa before dialling reception and asking Betty to call an ambulance. Then he rang Halvorsen's mobile and said the danger was over. Afterwards he pulled the old man on to the sofa and sat down in a chair to wait.

'I got him in the end,' the old man whispered. 'He was about to slip away, you know. In the mud.'

'Who did you get? Harry asked, pulling hard on his cigarette.

'Daniel, of course. I got him in the end. Helena was right. I was always stronger.'

Harry stubbed out his cigarette and stood by the window.

'I'm dying,' the old man whispered.

'I know.'

'It's on my chest. Can you see it?’

‘See what?’

‘The polecat.'

But Harry couldn't see a polecat. He saw a white cloud scud across the sky like a passing doubt. In the sunshine, he saw the Norwegian flags wafting on all the flagpoles of the city and he saw a grey bird flap past the window. But no polecats.