runnel. Doors. Pictures, motifs of blue cubes. His strides were almost inaudible on the thick carpet. Great. Good hotels think about reducing noise. And good policemen think about what they have to do. Fuck, fuck, lactic acid on the brain. An ice machine. Room 2154, room 2156. Another bang. The Palace Suite.
His heartbeat drum rolls against his ribs. Harry stood beside the door and pushed his key card into the lock. There was a dull buzz. Then a smooth click and the light on the lock went green. Harry gingerly pressed down the handle.
The police had fixed procedures for situations like this. Harry had been on the course and learned them. He had no intention of following a single one of them now.
He tore open the door, rushed in with his gun held in front of him with both hands and threw himself into a kneeling position in the doorway to the living room. The light flooded into the room, dazzled him and stung his eyes. An open window. The sun behind the glass was like a halo over the head of the white-haired man who slowly turned round.
'Police! Drop the gun,' Harry shouted.
Harry's pupils shrank and out of the light crept the silhouette of the rifle pointing at him.
'Drop the gun,' he repeated. 'You've done what you came to do, Fauke. Mission accomplished. It's over now.'
It was peculiar but the brass bands were still playing outside as if nothing had happened. The old man raised the rifle and rested the butt against his cheek. Harry's eyes had got used to the light and he stared down the barrel of this weapon he had hitherto only ever seen in pictures.
Fauke mumbled something, but it was drowned out by a new bang, this time sharper and clearer.
'Well I'm…' Harry whispered.
Outside, behind Fauke, he saw a puff of smoke rise into the air like a white speech bubble from the cannon on the ramparts of Akershus Fortress. The 17 May salutes. What he'd heard was the 17 May gun salutes! Harry heard the cheering. He breathed in through his nostrils.
The room didn't smell of burned powder. He realised that Fauke had not fired the gun. Not yet. He gripped the butt of his revolver tightly as he watched the wrinkled face staring blankly back at him over the sights. It wasn't just a matter of his own and of the old man's life. The instructions were clear.
'I've come from Vibes gate. I've read your diary,' Harry said. 'Gudbrand Johansen. Or is it Daniel I'm talking to now?'
Harry clenched his teeth and crooked his trigger finger.
The old man mumbled again.
'What was that?'
'Passwort,' the old man said. His voice was hoarse and totally unrecognisable from the one he had heard before. 'Don't do it,' Harry said. 'Don't force me.'
A drop of sweat ran down Harry's forehead, down to the bridge of his nose until it hung off the tip, where it seemed unable to make up its mind. Harry shifted his grip on the gun.
'Passwort,' the old man repeated.
Harry could see the old man's finger tighten round the trigger. He could feel the fear of death squeezing his heart. 'No,' Harry said. 'It's not too late.'
But he knew it wasn't true. It was too late. The old man was beyond reasoning, beyond this world and this life. 'Passwort'
Soon it would be over for them both. There was only some slow time left, the time on Christmas Eve before… 'Oleg,' Harry said.
The gun was pointing directly at his head. A car horn sounded in the distance. A spasm flitted across the old man's face. 'The password is Oleg,' Harry said. The finger on the trigger paused. The old man opened his mouth to say something. Harry held his breath.
'Oleg,' the old man said. It sounded like a wisp of wind from his lips.
Harry was never quite able to explain it afterwards, but he saw it: the old man was dying at that very moment. And then it was a child's face looking at Harry from behind the wrinkles. The gun was no longer pointed at him and he lowered his revolver. Then he stretched out a hand and put it on the old man's shoulder.
'Do you promise me?' The old man's voice was barely audible. 'That they won't…'
'I promise,' Harry said. 'I shall personally see to it that no names will appear publicly. Oleg and Rakel will not suffer in any way
…'
The old man rested his eyes on Harry for a long time. The rifle hit the floor with a thud and then he collapsed.
Harry took the magazine out of the rifle and put it on the sofa before dialling reception and asking Betty to call an ambulance. Then he rang Halvorsen's mobile and said the danger was over. Afterwards he pulled the old man on to the sofa and sat down in a chair to wait.
'I got him in the end,' the old man whispered. 'He was about to slip away, you know. In the mud.'
'Who did you get? Harry asked, pulling hard on his cigarette.
'Daniel, of course. I got him in the end. Helena was right. I was always stronger.'
Harry stubbed out his cigarette and stood by the window.
'I'm dying,' the old man whispered.
'I know.'
'It's on my chest. Can you see it?’
‘See what?’
‘The polecat.'
But Harry couldn't see a polecat. He saw a white cloud scud across the sky like a passing doubt. In the sunshine, he saw the Norwegian flags wafting on all the flagpoles of the city and he saw a grey bird flap past the window. But no polecats.
Part Ten
THE RESURRECTION
105
Ulleval Hospital. 19 May 2000.
Bjarne Moller found Harry in the waiting room of the oncological department. The head of Crime Squad took a seat beside Harry and winked at a small young girl, who frowned and turned away. 'I heard it's all over,' he said.
Harry nodded. 'Four o'clock this morning. Rakel has been here the whole time. Oleg's in there now. What are you doing here?'
'Just wanted a little chat with you.'
'I could do with a smoke,' Harry said. 'Let's go outside.'
They found a bench under a tree. Wispy clouds hurried past in the sky above them. All the signs were that it would be another warm day.
'So Rakel doesn't know anything?' Moller asked.
'Nothing.'
'The people in the know are me, Meirik, the Chief Constable, the Minister of Justice and the Prime Minister. And you, of course.’
‘You know better than I do who knows what, boss.’
‘Yes. Naturally. I'm merely thinking aloud.’
‘So what was it you wanted to say to me?'
'Do you know what, Harry? Some days I wish I worked somewhere else. Some place where there is less politics and more police work. In Bergen, for example. But then you get up on days like today, stand by your
