The Redbreast

30

Police HQ. 24 February 2000.

Wright swore. He had tried all the knobs on the overhead projector to focus the picture, without any luck. Someone coughed.

'I think perhaps the picture itself is unclear, Lieutenant. It's not the projector, I mean.'

'Well, at any rate, this is Andreas Hochner,' Wright said, shielding his eyes with his hand so that he could see those present. The room had no windows, so when, as now, the lights were switched off it was pitch black. According to what Wright had been told, it was bug-proof too, whatever that meant.

Besides himself, Andreas Wright, a lieutenant in the Military Intelligence Service, there were only three others present: Major Bard Ovesen from Military Intelligence, Harry Hole, the new man from POT, and Kurt Meirik, the head of POT. It was Hole who had faxed him the name of the arms dealer in Johannesburg. And had nagged him for information every day since. There was no doubt that a great number of people in POT seemed to think that Military Intelligence was merely a subsection of POT, but they obviously hadn't read the regulations, where it stated that they were equally ranked organisations working in partnership. But Wright had. So, in the end he had explained to the new man that low priority cases had to wait. Half an hour later Meirik had rung to say that this case was top priority. Why couldn't they have said that at the outset?

The blurred black and white image on the screen showed a man leaving a restaurant; it seemed to have been taken from a car window. The man had a broad, coarse face with dark eyes and a large, ill-defined nose with a thick, black, droopy moustache beneath.

'Andreas Hochner, born in 1954 in Zimbabwe, German parents,' Wright read from the print-outs he had brought with him. 'Ex-mercenary in the Congo and South Africa, probably involved with arms smuggling since the mid-eighties. At nineteen he was one of seven men accused of murdering a black boy in Kinshasa, but was acquitted for lack of evidence. Married and divorced twice. His employer in Johannesburg is suspected of being behind the smuggling of anti-air missiles to Syria and the purchase of chemical weapons from Iraq. Alleged to have supplied special rifles to Karadzic during the Bosnian war and to have trained snipers during the siege of Sarajevo. The last has not as yet been confirmed.'

'Please skip the details,' Meirik said, glancing at his watch. It was always slow, but there was a wonderful inscription from the Military High Command on the back.

'Alright,' Wright said, flicking through the rest of the papers. 'Yes, here. Andreas Hochner was one of four held during a raid on an arms dealer in Johannesburg in December. On that occasion a coded order list was found. One of the ordered items was a Marklin rifle, bound for Oslo. And a date: 21 December. That's all'

There was silence, only the whirring of the overhead-projector fan could be heard. Someone in the dark coughed. It sounded like Bard Ovesen. Wright shaded his eyes.

'How can we be sure that Hochner is the key person in our case?' Ovesen asked.

Harry Hole's voice came out of the dark.

I talked to an Inspector Isaiah Burne in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. He was able to tell me that after the arrests they searched the flats of those involved and found an interesting passport in Hochner's. The photo was of himself, but the name was completely different.'

'An arms dealer with a false name is not exactly… dynamite,' Ovesen said.

'I was thinking more of one of the stamps they found in it. Oslo, Norway, 10 December.'

'So he's been to Oslo,' Meirik said. 'There's a Norwegian on the company's list of customers, and we've found spent cartridges from this super-rifle. So Andreas Hochner came to Norway and we can assume a deal went ahead. But who is the Norwegian on the list?'

'The list does not, unfortunately, give a full name and address.' Harry's voice. 'The customer in Oslo is listed as Uriah. Bound to be a code name. And, according to Burne in Johannesburg, Hochner is not that interested in talking.'

'I thought the police in Johannesburg had effective methods of interrogation,' Ovesen said.

'Possibly, but Hochner probably risks more by talking than by keeping his mouth shut. It's a long list of customers…'

'I've heard they use electricity in South Africa,' Wright said. 'Under the feet, on nipples and… well. Bloody painful. Could someone switch on the light please?'

Harry: 'In a case which involves the purchase of chemical weapons from Saddam, a business trip to Oslo with a rifle is fairly trivial. I think, unfortunately, the South Africans are saving their electricity for more important issues, let's put it that way. Apart from that, it's not certain that Hochner knows who this Uriah is. And in the absence of any information about Uriah, we have to wonder: what are his plans? Assassination? Terrorism?'

'Or robbery,' Meirik said.

'With a Marklin rifle?' Ovesen said. 'That would be like shooting sparrows with a cannon.'

A drugs killing maybe?' Wright suggested.

'Well,' Harry said. 'A handgun was all that was needed to kill the most protected person in Sweden. And the Olaf Palme assassin was never caught. So why a gun costing over half a million kroner to shoot someone here?'

'What do you suggest, Harry?'

'Perhaps the target isn't a Norwegian, but someone from outside. Someone who is a constant target for terrorists, but is too strongly protected in their home country for an assassination to succeed there. Someone they think they can kill more easily in a small, peaceful country where they reckon the security measures will be proportionate.'

'But who?' Ovesen asked. 'There's no one in the country who fits that profile.'

'And there's no one coming,' Meirik added.

'Perhaps it's longer term,' Harry said.

'But the weapon arrived two months ago,' Ovesen said. 'It doesn't make sense that foreign terrorists would come to Norway two months before they're due to carry out a mission.'

'Perhaps it's not foreigners, but a Norwegian.'

'There's no one in Norway capable of doing what you're suggesting,' Wright said, groping for a switch on the wall.

'Exactly,' Harry said. 'That's the point.'

'The point?'

'Imagine a high-profile foreign terrorist who wants to take the life of a person in his own country, and this person is going to Norway. The secret services in the country where he lives follow his every move, so instead of taking the risk himself he contacts a group of like-minded people in Norway. The fact that they may be amateurs is actually an advantage as the terrorist then knows the group in question will not be enjoying the attentions of the police.'

Meirik: 'The discarded cartridges would suggest they're amateurs, yes.'

'The terrorist and the amateur agree that the terrorist finances the purchase of an expensive weapon and afterwards all links are cut. There is nothing to be traced back to the terrorist. In this way he has set a process in motion, risking little more than some cash.'

'But what if this amateur is not capable of carrying out the job?'

Ovesen asked. 'Or decides to sell the gun and run off with the money?'

'There is of course a certain risk involved, but we have to assume that the terrorist considers the amateur to be highly motivated. He may also have a personal motive that compels him to put his own life on the line in order to execute the mission.'

'Amusing hypothesis,' Ovesen said. 'How were you going to test it out?'

'You can't. I'm talking about a man we know nothing about. We don't know how he thinks; we can't rely on him acting rationally'

'Nice,' Meirik said. 'Do we have any other theories as to how this weapon could have ended up in Norway?'

'Tons of them,' Harry said. 'But this is the worst possible scenario.'

'Hmmm,' Meirik sighed. 'Our job is to chase ghosts after all, so we'd better see if we can have a chat with this Hochner. I'll make a couple of calls to… aaahhh!'

Wright had found the switch and the room was filled with harsh white light.