Death in Oslo (46 page)

Then he would ring the police.

But first he had to make sure that the girls had somewhere to stay.

The biggest problem was the car that Fayed had hired. It took Al a long time to find the keys. They were under the bed. Maybe they had been lying on the bedside table, and had been knocked off when he was trying to get Fayed to tell what he knew about the disappearance of President Bentley.

Al Muffet sat on the steps outside his picturesque New England house with his face in his hands.

What have I done? What if I made a mistake? What if this is all due to an arbitrary and fatal misunderstanding? Why didn’t you say anything, Fayed? Couldn’t you just have answered me before it was too late?

He could drive the car into the old, dilapidated barn. The girls had no reason to go there; as far as he knew, no wild cats had had any kittens recently. Only kittens could tempt Louise into the barn, which was full of spiders and webs that normally scared the life out of her.

He wasn’t even able to cry. An icy claw was hooked somewhere just inside his breast bone, which made it difficult to think and impossible to speak.

But who would he speak to anyway? he thought, emotionally drained. Who could help him now?

He tried to straighten his back and take a deep breath.

The flag on the postbox had been raised.

Fayed had talked about a letter.

Letters
.

He could barely manage to stand up. He should move the car, remove all traces of Fayed Muffasa, and then pull himself together so he could welcome his daughters home from school. It was three o’clock, and certainly Louise was going to be home early.

His legs could only just carry him as he walked down the drive. He looked around. There was no sign of human life anywhere, except the hum of a motor saw somewhere far in the distance.

He opened the postbox. Two bills and three identical envelopes.

Fayed Muffasa, c/o Al Muffet
.

Then the address. Three identical, thickish envelopes that had been sent to Fayed, at Al’s address.

His mobile phone rang. He put the letters back in the postbox and stared at the display. Unknown number. No one
had phoned him during this horrible day. He didn’t want to speak to anyone. He wasn’t sure that he even had a voice any more. He put the phone back into his breast pocket, took the letters from the postbox and started to walk slowly back towards the house.

The person who was calling didn’t give up.

He stopped when he got to the steps and sat down.

He had to galvanise his energy to move the damned car.

The telephone kept ringing and ringing. He couldn’t bear the noise any more; the high, shrill tone made him shiver. He pressed the button with the green phone.

‘Hello,’ he said. His voice was barely there. ‘Hello?’

‘Ali? Ali Shaeed?’

He said nothing.

‘Ali, it’s me. Helen Lardahl.’

‘Helen,’ he whispered. ‘How did . . .’

He hadn’t watched TV. He hadn’t listened to the radio. He hadn’t been near his computer. All he had done all day was despair over his dead brother and try to work out what kind of a life his girls would have after this.

Finally, he started to cry.

‘Ali, listen to me. I’m on a plane, crossing the Atlantic. That’s why the connection is bad.’

‘I didn’t let you down,’ he shouted. ‘I promised you I would never tell anyone, and I haven’t broken that promise.’

‘I believe you,’ she said calmly. ‘But you realise that we’re going to have to investigate this. And the first thing I want you to do is—’

‘It was my brother,’ he said. ‘My brother spoke to my mother on her deathbed, and . . .’

He stopped and held his breath. He could hear the hum of an engine in the distance. A cloud of dust rose behind the hillock with maple trees. A dull, rotating noise made him turn to the west. A helicopter was circling over the trees. The pilot
was obviously looking for a place to land.

‘Listen to me,’ Helen Bentley said. ‘Listen to me!’

‘Yes,’ Al Muffet said and stood up. ‘I’m listening.’

‘The FBI are coming. Don’t be frightened. OK? They got their orders directly from me. They’re coming to talk to you. Tell them everything. If you’re not involved in this, everything will be fine. I promise you.’

A black car swung into the drive and drove slowly up towards the house.

‘Don’t be frightened, Ali. Just tell them what there is to tell.’

The phone was cut off.

The car stopped. Two dark-suited men got out. One smiled and held out his hand as he approached.

‘Al Muffet, I presume!’

Al took his hand, which was warm and firm.

‘I hear that you’re a friend of Madam President,’ the agent said and did not let go of his hand. ‘And a friend of the President’s is a friend of mine. Shall we go inside?’

‘I think,’ Al Muffet said, and swallowed, ‘I think that you should take care of these.’

He handed him the three envelopes. The man looked at them without giving anything away, and then took them by the corner between his fingers and indicated to his colleague to find a plastic bag.

‘Fayed Muffasa,’ he read quickly, his head cocked. Then he looked up. ‘Who’s that?’

‘My brother. He’s in a chest in the cellar. I killed him.’

The FBI agent looked at him, long and hard.

‘I think it’s best we go in,’ he said and patted Al Muffet on the shoulder. ‘Seems there’s a lot to sort out.’

The helicopter had landed and all was quiet again.

T
here was only one hour left of Thursday the 19th of May 2005. The intense summer heat had lasted the whole day, leaving a balmy, still evening in its wake. Johanne had opened all the windows in the sitting room. She had had a bath with Ragnhild, who was exhausted and had fallen asleep happily as soon as she was put down in her own familiar bed. Johanne felt almost as euphoric as the one-year-old. Coming home felt like purification. Just walking through the front door had almost made her cry with relief. They had been held by the PST for so long that Adam had eventually called Peter Salhus and threatened to rip up the pile of confidentiality papers they had signed if they weren’t allowed to go home immediately.

‘I think we can forget the idea of any more children,’ Adam said, as he padded, flat-footed, over the floor, dressed in only a pair of wide pyjama bottoms, which had been cut open at the groin, just in case. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything so painful in all my life.’

‘You should try giving birth.’ Johanne smiled and patted the place next to her on the sofa. ‘The doctor said you’d be OK. See if it’s comfortable to sit down here.’

‘. . .
proved to be a conspiracy in America’s own ranks. At a press conference at Gardermoen, President Bentley stated
. . .’

The TV had been on since they got home.

‘They don’t know for certain yet,’ Johanne said. ‘That there are only Americans involved, I mean.’

‘That’s the truth they want us to know. The most convenient
truth right now. It’s the truth that will allow oil prices to fall, in other words.’

Adam lowered himself down on to the sofa as carefully as he could, and sat with his legs wide open.

‘. . .
following a dramatic shoot-out in Krusesgate in Oslo, where the American FBI agent Warren Scifford
. . .’

The picture they showed must have been his passport photograph. He looked like a criminal, with a surly expression and half-closed eyes.

‘. . .
was shot and killed by a Norwegian intelligence officer who has not been named. Sources at the American embassy in Norway have said that the plot involved only a very small number of people, and that all of these are now being questioned by the authorities.
’

‘The most impressive thing, really, is that they managed to cook up this story so quickly,’ Johanne said. ‘Especially the fact that the President wasn’t kidnapped at all, but had “disappeared” in order to help uncover the planned assassination. Do they have scenarios like that ready, just in case?’

‘Maybe. But I doubt it. We’ll witness a masterful smokescreen over the next few days. And if they don’t have the stories there already, they certainly have experts in the field. They’ll put something together and tighten all the nuts and bolts, so that in the end they have a story that most people will be happy with. And then the conspiracy theories will follow. This will be a feast for the paranoid. But no one listens to them. And so the world will continue to limp on, until it’s no longer possible to know what’s true and what’s false, and no one is that bothered any more. It’s easiest that way. For everyone. Bloody hell, that hurts!’

He winced.

‘. . .
expected that President Bentley, who will arrive back in the States in a few hours, will offer an unconditional apology to Saudi Arabia and Iran. The American people have been informed
that she will give a speech tomorrow morning at
. . .’

‘Turn it off,’ Adam said and put his arm round Johanne.

He kissed her on the temple.

‘We’ve heard enough. It’s all just stories and lies anyway. I can’t be bothered.’

She picked up the remote control. There was quiet in the room. She snuggled in to him and gently stroked his hairy arms. They sat like this for a long time, and she breathed in Adam’s smell and was happy that summer had finally made an appearance.

‘Johanne,’ Adam said quietly. She was nearly asleep.

‘What?’

‘I want to know what Warren did to you.’

She didn’t answer. But she didn’t pull away either, as she always had done before, at the slightest mention of the hornets’ nest that had hung between them since they met on a warm spring day almost exactly five years ago. She didn’t hold her breath, or turn away. He couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t feel that she had closed up and was pursing her lips tight, as she normally did.

‘I think it’s time,’ he said and put his mouth to her ear. ‘It’s high time, Johanne.’

She took a deep breath.

‘I was only twenty-three, and we were in DC to . . .’

It was three in the morning by the time they went to bed.

The new day had just started to peek over the trees to the east, and Adam would never know that he wasn’t the first to share Johanne’s painful secret.

It didn’t matter, she thought.

The first was the President of the United States of America, and they would never meet her again.

W
hen the news that President Bentley was still alive had made its way round the world on Thursday evening, European time, Abdallah al-Rahman had stopped all his usual activities and locked himself away in his office in the east wing.

It was now nearly six in the morning. He didn’t feel particularly tired, despite having been awake all night. He had tried to take a nap several times, on the low divan in front of the plasma screen, but a growing unease had kept him awake.

The President was about to land at an unspecified military base in the US. The CNN reporters were all talking over each other in their eagerness to guess where it was. The US Air Force photographers and cameramen who sent the images to TV channels all over the world, were extremely careful to avoid showing any of the surroundings or buildings that might indicate where the President was to touch American soil again.

It wasn’t over yet.

Without turning off the television, Abdallah sat down in front of his computer.

He typed in a number of search words, for the sixth time in six hours. Several thousand hits came up on the screen, so he narrowed down the search, which meant that he only got a few hundred. He was uncertain, but then he added yet another word in the search field.

Five articles.

He scrolled quickly through four of them. Nothing of interest there.

The fifth told him that the Trojan Horse attack would never take place.

He realised that after scanning only the first few lines, but forced himself to read the whole article three times before logging out and turning off the computer.

He went back to the divan, lay down and closed his eyes.

The FBI had swooped on a small town in Maine, with helicopters and lots of men. Local reporters had made a speculative link between the operation and the Helen Bentley case, and within the hour, the place was surrounded by journalists from all over the state. However, the local police soon assured people that the incident was in no way related. They had been working with the FBI for some time now, trying to catch a gang who were trapping endangered birds for sale on the black market. A local vet had been very helpful to the investigation. Unfortunately, one of the gang had been killed during the raid, but the police now had everything under control. The article included a photograph of the vet, who was so like Fayed that only the moustache would distinguish them.

Fayed had let him down.

Fayed was supposed to launch the attack, following the instructions in the coded letters that Abdallah had had to sacrifice three couriers to send.

Fayed was dead and Madam President was back in place.

Abdallah al-Rahman opened his eyes and got up from the divan. He started methodically to pull the pins out of the map. He sorted them by colour. They could be used again later.

There was a knock on the door.

He was surprised, given what time it was. But he opened the door. His youngest son was standing outside, dressed in his riding clothes. He was inconsolable.

‘Father,’ Rashid cried. ‘I was going to go with the others for a morning ride. But then I fell off and the others just rode on. They say I’m too little, and . . .’

The boy sobbed and showed his father a graze above his elbow.

‘There, there,’ Abdallah said, and hunkered down in front of his son. ‘You’ll just have to try again, that’s all. You’ll never manage to do anything if you don’t try and try again. I’ll come with you. Let’s go for a ride together.

‘Yes, but . . . I’m bleeding, Daddy!’

‘Rashid,’ Abdallah said, blowing on the wound. ‘We don’t give up just because we’ve had a minor defeat. It hurts for a while, but then we try again. Until we succeed. Do you understand?’