Sohlberg and the Gift (36 page)

“Oh . . . look,” someone whispered.

Nine-year-old Camilla Otterstad walked into the room. She had been chosen by her Aunt Nora to represent St. Lucia. The shy girl led the procession and she looked positively angelic with her long platinum-blonde hair and white gown and red sash and crown of candles. Each of the boys and girls held candles that symbolize the fire that refused to take St. Lucia's life when she was sentenced to be burned at the stake for her Christian faith.

The children looked celestial with their innocent faces and their white robes. They wore green wreathes of cranberry leaves in their heads and walked in behind Camilla while they all sang the Norwegian lyrics of the St. Lucia song to the melody of the traditional Neapolitan song of Santa Lucia.

Black night is falling in stables and homes.

The sun has gone away, the shadows are threatening.

Into our dark house enters with lit candles

Sankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia!

The night is dark and silent; suddenly a rush

In all quiet rooms, like the waving of wings.

See, at our threshold stands, dressed in white

With lights in her hair

Sankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia!

 The children sang more Christmas songs. Sohlberg’s throat tightened as he remembered his dead Karoline and what his mother had told him long ago:

“Saint Lucia is a symbol of light and goodness . . . she suffered martyrdom after she spurned her pagan betrothed . . . who denounced her as a Christian to the Roman authorities. Don’t ever forget . . . my darling boy . . . although light and goodness might start out small at the beginning they always win in the end over darkness and evil. Better and better light-filled days will always follow the short dark days of winter in our lives.”

He held his wife’s hand tightly and was immeasurably moved by the thought that Astrid Isaksen—a veritable Saint Lucia child for her father—had brought light and goodness to her father’s grim and desperate situation.

Chapter 14/Fjorten

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14,

OR TWELVE DAYS AFTER THE DAY

After a 7 A.M. breakfast Sohlberg read his Colin Thubron travel book while his wife undertook a baking project in the kitchen. Sohlberg read travel books which allowed him to travel vicariously to faraway lands. He devoured works by Thubron and Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin and Bill Bryson.

Travel books transported Sohlberg to those warm and sunny climes that Norway lacked and that Sohlberg would never visit. Travel by book also allowed Sohlberg the pleasure of never having to leave behind the many comforts of his country and home. Travel books spared him the endless indignities of travel: cattle cars posing as airlines; price gouging of tourists; surly and resentful natives who confuse Europeans for hated Americans; Ugly American (or Russian) yahoos with loud mouths and loud clothes; arrogant customs and immigration tyrants; bribe-soliciting police officers; dysentery and projectile vomiting; insolent waiters; dirty hotel rooms; and, hotel beds designed as torture racks.

At 9 A.M. Sohlberg rose to shave and shower. Refreshed and wide awake he dressed up in his undercover garb for the day: a gray Anderson & Sheppard double-breasted suit with a cobalt blue woven silk Duchamp tie and white Hackett shirt from his old days as a well-paid lawyer who could afford to routinely buy expensive business clothes—and Crockett & Jones shoes—in London. For cufflinks Sohlberg felt he should make a whimsical if not ironic choice. He put on a set of Burlington parallel gold double bars—subtle symbols for prison window bars.

“I’m getting ready to leave,” said the dapper detective as he went down the stairs.

Emma Sohlberg met him in the hallway. She wolf-whistled her husband. “My . . . my . . . you’re looking mighty fine today. Since when do you go in to work dressed like that?”

“I’m meeting someone who will only take me seriously if I’m dressed like this. This person would never talk to anyone they thought was below their exalted rank.”

“A snobbish suspect?”

“Exactly.”

“Is he or she one of the
Empty Suits
. . . or
Empty Skirts
. . . that you love to hate?”

“Yes. The smart and powerful. The amoral if not immoral ruling class. The clueless intelligentsia. Leaders without values.”

From the main hallway closet he grabbed and put on a long black Burberry wool coat. He crowned himself with his favorite hat—a dark grey J. Press wool homburg that he had bought on his first trip to New York City on a long-forgotten corporate merger. He slipped two pairs of handcuffs into his suit’s pockets and for good measure he slid into his overcoat’s interior pocket a telescopic steel baton graced with a bone-shattering titanium ball tip. In case of trouble the German-made baton instantly expanded from 6 to 16 inches and it locked into place with the slightest flick of Sohlberg’s wrist.

“Sohlberg . . . are you planning on breaking some bones?”

“You never know.”

Sohlberg thought about also taking his personal .38 snub-nosed revolver—a Taurus that a New York police detective had given him as a gift. He also thought about taking his service pistol—a 9 mm semiautomatic Glock P80. But the slim and silent baton seemed more fitting and discrete for his boardroom meeting at noon in the luxurious offices of Johansen Olsson & Mortvedt.

Sohlberg sighed. “Alright. It’s ten o’clock. Time to go. I’ll miss you my Love.”

“You look so handsome. It’s been ages since you’ve dressed like this.”

“I must fit in with the crowd I’ll be with today.”

“Exactly what kind of a crowd would that be?”

“Rich lawyers.”

“You be careful. They’re more dangerous than drugged-out back-alley muggers and purse-snatchers.”

“I’ll be okay. I’m going undercover.”

“Isn’t it more like
overcover
?”

“Cute. Very cute. I should be back in the late afternoon . . . early evening.”

After kissing his wife the accoutered detective drove to the Kastellet tram station. He glanced constantly at the rearview mirror. But no one followed him that sun-washed Sunday which was just like a warmer day in early Spring but for the sub-freezing temperature and wind chill. No one else climbed into the tram with him. In downtown at the Jernbanetorget bus-tram-train junction he switched from the tram to the Metro subway which dropped him off at the Nationaltheatret station. He resented leaving the warmth of the station but at least the streets had no snow or the residual puddles of icy and dirty snow-melt that he hated with a passion.

He needed to get inside No. 10 Haakon VIIs Gate—an imposing H-shaped building located where Haakon VIIs Gate loops on itself between Munkedamsveien and Ruseløkkveien. But to do that Sohlberg had to walk around the block to reach the building’s front door. He marched down the wind tunnel of Haakon VIIs Gate until he reached Munkedamsveien and turned right.

Sohlberg remembered visiting clients and other lawyers at No. 10 Haakon VIIs Gate. The 9-floor building with wide and narrow windows always struck him as an oddly modern castle where Johansen Olsson & Mortvedt lorded over the city’s legal landscape next to its rival for clients and profits—the 190-lawyer advokatfirmaet of Thommessen AS.

“Come in,” said the security guard through a speaker after Sohlberg pressed a button next to the locked glass doors.

The warm lobby welcomed the chilled detective. “I’m Harald Sohlberg . . . I have an appointment with Christoffer Løvaas . . . of Johansen Olsson.”

“Yes. He asked that you not sign in with me and just come upstairs. Please take the elevator on the right. He’s on the seventh floor.”

Løvaas was waiting for him at the main door. “This way.”

The deserted offices—like all weekend-emptied law firms—struck him as the only prison in the world where the inmates voluntarily returned to their cells every Monday.

I’d go crazy if I had to work one hour in this fancy sweatshop.

They passed by endless rows of empty secretary desks and lawyer offices until they reached the massive corner office of the managing partner. The room reminded Sohlberg more of a large living room with its two extra-long champagne-colored leather sofas on either side of a large honey-colored maple coffee table. Two Queen Anne chairs at both ends of the coffee table completed the seating arrangements. The managing partner’s aircraft carrier of a mahogany desk found its berth next to an expanse of windows.

“Everything in place?” said Sohlberg as he took off his overcoat and hat. He hung them on a coat rack behind the door. He stared at the enormous 65-inch flat screen panel that hung on a wall over the managing partner’s credenza near the massive mahogany desk.

Løvaas pointed at the flat screen. “My tech person is recording us right now . . . even as we speak . . . with our top-of-the-line video conferencing equipment. It’s a Tandberg telepresence system from Cisco. Our Prime Minister has it . . . so do the Americans at the Pentagon and the White House.”

“Will it record both sound and images?”

“Yes. The video camera is in that little black box that’s at the top of the screen.”

“But I don’t see that the little red light is turned on.”

“We disabled it just for our meeting so as not to attract any suspicion.”

“Very good.” Sohlberg sat on the chair in front of and to the left of the desk that served as an altar to Christoffer Løvaas.

“I checked with the airport . . . she should be landing in an hour or less.”

Sohlberg nodded. He hid the steel baton next to him in the chair and took out his police-issued cell phone to call Constable Hanna Høiness.

“Yes it’s me. . . . I need you on stand-by for an arrest. Yes . . . an arrest. It’ll be inside an office building . . . Number Ten at Haakon Seventh’s Gate. Yes . . . the building with those windows. No . . . never mind what case. I’ll tell you later.

“If possible bring someone else for backup since the prisoner may try to flee. Yes . . . one prisoner but there might be two. The suspect is coming in from the airport . . . so do
not
park your car and do not stand anywhere on any major avenues or side streets where you can be seen on any route from the airport. You need to be invisible.

“There’s no need to follow them from the airport . . . or have anyone waiting out there for them.”

“Chief Inspector . . . where should we wait?”

Sohlberg thought carefully about his answer. He gave detailed instructions because he could not make any mistakes with the type of ruthless criminal he was about to ensnare. “Wait in the car. I need you to park your car as inconspicious as possible on Løkkeveien . . . where Dronning Mauds gate and Ruseløkkveien and Løkkeveien converge. Yes . . . that’s it . . . the driveway between the old large white building and the new brown building where the Eksportfinans offices are on Løkkeveien. If someone’s taken that spot then park on Arbins gate.”

“When Chief Inspector?”

“Now. Come over as soon as possible . . . the suspect’s flight arrives in an hour or less.”

Sohlberg hanged up before Høiness could ask more questions. The detective fell into a gloomy silence while he thought about the trap that he had sprung. His mind reeled with the essential questions that had to be asked to break the suspect. From time to time Christoffer Løvaas glanced at his guest while both men silently rehearsed what each was going to say.