The woman in the wheelchair was looking straight at her. She had the most incredible eyes that Helen Bentley had ever seen. They were icy blue, almost bleached of colour, and yet at the same time they gave the impression of being deep and dark. It was impossible to read her face: no questions no demands. Nothing. The woman just sat there looking at her. It made her feel small and she tried to look away, but it wasn’t possible.
‘They tricked me,’ Helen Bentley said in a quiet voice. ‘They knew what they had to do to make me panic. To make me go with them, willingly.’
‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’ the woman asked and started to fold the newspaper carefully.
‘I think I have to,’ Helen Bentley said, and took as deep a breath as she could. ‘I don’t have any other choice.’
VII
‘And that’s all you have to say?’
The head of intelligence, Peter Salhus, looked dissatisfied and scratched his cropped head. Adam Stubo shrugged and tried to sit as comfortably as he could on the desperately uncomfortable chair. The TV on the filing cabinet was switched on. The volume was turned down and was distorted. Adam had already seen the same clip four times. ‘I give up,’ he said. ‘After that episode last night, it’s not been possible to get so much as a peep out of Warren Scifford. I’m almost starting to believe the rumours myself, that the FBI are doing their own thing. Someone in the canteen even said that they had broken into a flat during the night. In Huseby. Or… maybe it was a villa.’
‘Just rumours,’ Peter Salhus muttered and pulled open a drawer. ‘They might be arrogant and behaving badly, but they know they can’t be complete cowboys. We would have received a full report if it was true.’
‘God knows. I just think it’s all… so frustrating.’
‘What? The fact that the Americans are more or less doing as they please on someone else’s territory?’
‘No. Yes, actually. But… Thank you!’
He took the red box that Peter Salhus offered him. With the utmost care, as if he was accepting the most treasured gift, he selected a thick cigar and stared at it for a few seconds before running it under his nose.
‘CAO Maduro Number 4,’ he said solemnly. ‘The Sopranos’ favoured cigar. But… can we smoke here?’
‘Emergency situation,’ Salhus said briskly, taking out a cutter and a large box of matches. ‘And with all due respect, I don’t care.’
Adam laughed and prepared the cigar with a practised hand before lighting up.
‘You were about to say something,’ Peter Salhus continued and leant back in his chair.
The cigar smoke rose up in soft circles to the ceiling. It was only around mid-morning, but Adam suddenly felt weary, as if he’d had a big meal.
‘Everything,’ he muttered and blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling.
‘What?’
‘I’m frustrated about everything. We’ve got God knows how many men rooting around trying to find out who’s kidnapped the President and how they did it, and that just doesn’t seem to matter.’
‘Of course it matters, it-’
‘Have you been watching the box recently?’ Adam nodded towards the television. ‘It’s all power politics, the whole thing.’
‘What did you expect? That the case would be just like any other missing-person case?’
‘No. But why are we working our backsides off to find losers like Gerhard Skrøder and that Pakistani who shits his pants if we so much as look at him, when the Americans have already decided what happened?’
Salhus looked like he was enjoying himself. Without answering, he put his cigar in his mouth and his feet on the table.
‘What I mean is…’ Adam started, looking around for something to use as an ashtray, ‘last night, three men sat for five hours trying to piece together the puzzle to establish when Jeffrey Hunter hid himself away in the ventilation shaft. It was complicated. Lots of loose ends: when was the presidential suite last inspected? When did the sniffers come in? When was it vacuumed afterwards, because the President is allergic to dogs? When were the cameras switched on and off? When did… You get the idea. They did finally manage to get it all to fit. But what’s the point?’
‘The point is that we have a case to solve.’
‘But the Americans don’t give a damn.’
He looked sceptically at the plastic cup that Salhus was holding out for him, then he shrugged and tipped the ash off into it.
‘Oslo Police are hauling in one crook after another,’ he continued, ‘and they all seem to have been involved in the kidnapping. They’ve found the second driver. They’ve even managed to get hold of one of the president lookalikes. None of them can tell us anything about the job other than that it was well paid and they have no idea where the money came from. We’ll have the cells full of bloody kidnappers before the night’s over!’
Peter Salhus roared with laughter.
‘But are they at all interested?’ Adam asked rhetorically and leant forward on the desk. ‘Does Drammensveien show the slightest bit of interest in what we’re doing? No, not at all. They’re busy running around doing their own thing, playing cowboys and Indians, while the rest of the world is going to the dogs. I’ve had it. I give up.’
He took another draw on his cigar.
‘You have a reputation for being phlegmatic,’ Salhus commented. ‘You’re supposed to be the calmest man in the NCIS. But I have to say that that all seems to be rather unfounded. What does your wife have to say about it all?’
‘My wife? Johanne?’
‘Do you have more than one?’
‘Why should she have anything to say about it?’
‘As far I know, she’s got a PhD in criminology and some experience with the FBI,’ Salhus said, raising his hands in defence. ‘Would have thought she was qualified to have an opinion, if nothing else.’
‘It’s possible,’ Adam said, staring at the cigar ash that had fallen on his trouser leg. ‘But I actually don’t know what she thinks. I’ve no idea what she thinks of this case.’
‘Well, that’s the way it is,’ Peter Salhus said lightly, pushing the plastic cup even closer to Adam. ‘We’ve barely been home in the past couple of days, any of us.’
‘That’s the way it is,’ Adam repeated in a monotone and stubbed out his cigar even though there was still quite a lot left, as if the stolen pleasure was too good to be true. ‘That’s the way it is for us all.’
It was twenty to eleven, and he still hadn’t heard a thing from Johanne.
VIII
Johanne had no idea what time it was. She felt as if she had been transported to a parallel universe. The shock she had felt when Mary appeared with the half-dead President the night before had changed into a feeling of being completely disconnected from the world outside the flat in Krusesgate. She had watched the news, but she hadn’t even been out to buy the papers.
The flat was like a fortress. No one came in and no one went out. It was as if Hanne’s resolve to honour the President’s request not to raise the alarm had created a moat around their existence. Johanne really had to concentrate to remember whether it was morning or evening.
‘It has to be something completely different,’ she said suddenly. ‘You’re focusing on the wrong secret.’
She had been silent for a long time. She had quietly listened to the other two women. She had followed their conversation, which was at times eager and at other times hesitant and pensive, for so long without saying anything that Helen Bentley and Hanne Wilhelmsen had almost forgotten she was there.
Hanne raised an eyebrow. Helen Bentley frowned, a puzzled expression that made the eye on the bruised side of her face close.
‘What do you mean?’ Hanne asked.