Home>>read The Redbreast free online

The Redbreast(8)

By:Jo Nesbo


photocopier, and the young Foreign Office

probationer jumped, managing only a wan smile

before Brandhaug was round the next corner. Lise

was a newly fledged lawyer and the daughter of a

friend from university days. She had started only

three weeks ago. And from that moment she had

been aware that the Under Secretary, the highest

civil servant in the building, knew who she was.

Would he be able to have her? Probably. Not that

it would happen. Necessarily.

He could already hear the buzz of voices before

he opened the door. He looked at his watch.

Seventy-five seconds. Then he was inside, casting

a fleeting glimpse around the room to confirm that

all the authorities summoned were represented.

‘Well, well, so you’re Bjarne Møller?’ he

shouted with a broad smile as he offered his hand

across the table to a tall thin man sitting beside

Anne Størksen, the Chief Constable.

‘You’re the PAS, aren’t you? I hear you’re

running the roller-coaster leg of the Holmenkollen

relay?’

This was one of Brandhaug’s tricks. Coming by a

little piece of information about people he met for

the first time. Something that wasn’t in their CV. It

made them insecure. Using the acronym PAS – the

internal abbreviation for Politiavdelingssjef, the

head of Crime Squad – particularly pleased him.

Brandhaug sat down, winked at his old friend Kurt

Meirik, the head of Politiets

overvåkningstjeneste, or POT, the Security

Service, and studied the others sitting round the

table.

As yet, no one knew who would take charge of

the meeting as the representatives were equally

high ranking, theoretically at least, coming from the

Prime Minister’s Office, Oslo police district,

Norwegian Security Service, Crime Squad and

Brandhaug’s own Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The

Prime Minister’s Office had called the meeting, but

there was no doubt that Oslo police district, in the

guise of Anne Størksen, and POT, in the shape of

Kurt Meirik, wanted the operational responsibility

when procedures were that far advanced. The

Under Secretary of State from the Prime Minister’s

Office looked as if he envisaged taking charge.

Brandhaug closed his eyes and listened.

The nice-to-see-you conversations stopped, the

buzz of voices slowly subsided and a table leg

scraped on the floor. Not yet. There was the

rustling of papers, the clicking of pens – at

important meetings like these most heads of

department had their personal note-takers with

them in case at a later point they began to blame

each other for things that had happened. Someone

coughed, but it came from the wrong end of the

room and apart from that it wasn’t the kind of

cough that preceded speaking. Sharp intake of

breath. Someone spoke.

‘Let’s begin then,’ Bernt Brandhaug said, opening

his eyes.

Heads turned towards him. It was the same every

time. A half-open mouth, the Under Secretary of

State’s; a wry smile from Anne Størksen showing

that she understood what had taken place – but

otherwise, blank faces looking at him without a

hint of recognition that the battle was already over.

‘Welcome to the first co-ordination meeting. Our

task is to get four of the world’s most important

men in and out of Norway more or less in one

piece.’

Polite chuckles from around the table.

‘On Monday, 1 November, we will receive a

visit from the PLO leader Yasser Arafat, the

Israeli PM Ehud Barak, the Russian PM Vladimir

Putin and, last but not least, the cherry on the cake:

at 6.15 a.m., in exactly twenty-seven days’ time,

Air Force One, with the American President on

board, will be landing at Gardemoen Airport,

Oslo.’

Brandhaug’s gaze moved from face to face down

the table. It stopped at the new one, Bjarne

Møller’s.

‘If it isn’t foggy, that is,’ he said, earning himself

a laugh and noticing with satisfaction that Møller

forgot his nervousness for a moment and laughed

along with the others. Brandhaug responded with a

smile, revealing his strong teeth which had become

even whiter since his last cosmetic treatment at the

dentist’s.

‘We still don’t know exactly how many people

are coming,’ Brandhaug said. ‘The President had

an entourage of 2,000 in Australia and 1,700 in

Copenhagen.’

Mumbles around the table.

‘However, in my experience, a guesstimate of

around 700 is probably more realistic.’

Brandhaug was quietly confident his

‘guesstimate’ would soon be confirmed as he had

received a fax an hour before with a list of the 712

people coming.