Drammensveien. The sound cut right through the
blanket of brass-band music.
‘Fuck. Fuck!’
He broke into a run.
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