incident as there would be too many. I doubt that
any American president over the last twenty years
has completed his term of office without at least
ten attempts on his life being uncovered and the
perpetrator arrested. The media were none the
wiser.’
‘Why not?’
Crime Squad chief Bjarne Møller imagined he
had only thought the question and was as surprised
as the others when he heard his own voice. He
swallowed when he noticed the heads turning and
tried to keep his eyes on Meirik, but couldn’t help
them wandering in Brandhaug’s direction. The
Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs winked
reassuringly.
‘Well, as you know, it’s usual to keep attempted
assassinations under wraps,’ Meirik said, taking
off his glasses. They looked like the glasses which
go darker as you go into the sun, worn by Horst
Tappert in the Oberinspektor Derrick role, very
popular with German mail-order catalogues.
‘Attempted assassinations have proved to be at
least as contagious as suicides. And besides, we in
the field don’t want to reveal our working
practices.’
‘What plans have been made regarding
surveillance?’ the Under Secretary of State asked.
The woman with the cheekbones passed Meirik a
sheet and he put on his glasses again and read it.
‘Eight men from the Secret Service are coming on
Thursday. We will then start going through the
hotels and the route, vet all those who will come
into contact with the President and train the
Norwegian police officers we’re going to deploy.
We’ll need to call in units from Romerike, Asker
and Bærum.’
‘And they will be used to what end?’ Brandhaug
asked.
‘Mainly observation duties. Around the American
embassy, the hotel where the entourage will be
staying, the car park —’
‘In short, all the places where the President isn’t.’
‘POT will take care of that. With the American
Secret Service.’
‘I thought you didn’t like doing surveillance jobs,
Kurt?’ Brandhaug said with a smirk.
The memory caused Kurt Meirik to grimace.
During the Mining Conference in Oslo in 1998,
POT had refused to offer surveillance on the basis
of their own threat assessment. They concluded it
was ‘medium to low security risk’. On the second
day of the conference the Norwegian Directorate
of Immigration drew the conference’s attention to
the fact that one of the Norwegian drivers POT had
cleared for the Croat delegation was a Bosnian
Muslim. He had come to Norway in the 1970s and
had Norwegian citizenship for many years. But in
1993 both his parents and four members of his
family had been butchered by Croats at Mostar, in
Bosnia Herzegovina. When the man’s flat was
searched they had found two hand-grenades and a
suicide letter. Of course, the press had never got a
sniff of it, but the repercussions reached
government level, and Kurt Meirik’s career had
hung in the balance until Bernt Brandhaug himself
had intervened. The matter had been hushed up
after the police inspector in charge of the security
clearances had resigned. Brandhaug couldn’t
remember the man’s name, but ever since then his
working relations with Meirik had been excellent.
‘Bjørn!’ Brandhaug exclaimed, clapping his
hands together. ‘Now we’re all keen to hear what
it was you wanted to tell us. Come on!’
Brandhaug scanned the room, swiftly moving past
Meirik’s assistant, but not so swiftly that he didn’t
notice her looking at him. That is, she was looking
in his direction, but her eyes were expressionless,
blank. He considered whether to return her look, to
see what expression would emerge when she
realised what he was doing, but he dropped the
idea. What was her name? Rakel, wasn’t it?
5
Palace Gardens. 5 October 1999.
‘ARE YOU DEAD?’
The old man opened his eyes and saw the outline
of a head standing over him, but the face merged
into a corona of white light. Was it her? Had she
come to collect him already?
‘Are you dead?’ the bright voice repeated.
He didn’t answer because he didn’t know
whether his eyes were open or he was simply
dreaming. Or, as the voice asked him, if he was
dead.
‘What’s your name?’
The head moved and he saw the tips of trees and
blue sky. He had been dreaming. Something in a
poem. German bombers are overhead. Nordahl
Grieg. The King fleeing to England. His pupils
began to adjust to the light again and he
remembered he had sat down on the grass in the
Palace Gardens to rest. He must have fallen
asleep. A little boy crouched beside him and a pair