seconds the Cadillacs would be level with the booths. From the corner of his left eye he noticed a movement, a little bird taking off from the roof.
Whether to take the risk or not… the eternal dilemma.
He thought about the low neck on the vest, lowered the revolver half an inch. The roar of the motorcycles was deafening.
2
Oslo. 5 October 1999.
That’s the great betrayal,' said the shaven-headed man, looking down at his manuscript. The head, the eyebrows, the bulging forearms, even the huge hands gripping the lectern, everything was clean-shaven and neat. He leaned over to the microphone.
'Since 1945, National Socialism's enemies have been masters of the land; they have developed and put into practice their democratic and economic principles. Consequently, not on one single day has the sun gone down on a world without war. Even here in Europe we have experienced war and genocide. In the Third World millions starve to death-and Europe is threatened by mass immigration and the resultant chaos, deprivation and struggle for survival.'
He paused to gaze around him. There was a stony silence in the room; only one person in the audience, on the benches behind him, clapped tentatively. When he continued, fired up now, the red light under the microphone lit up ominously, indicating that the recording signal was distorted.
'There is little to separate even us from oblivious affluence and the day we have to rely on ourselves and the community around us. A war, an economic or ecological disaster, and the entire network of laws and rules which turns us all too quickly into passive social clients is suddenly no longer there. The previous great betrayal took place on 9 April 1940, when our so-called national leaders fled from the enemy to save their own skins, and took the gold reserves with them to finance a life of luxury in London. Now the enemy is here again. And those who are supposed to protect our interests have let us down once more. They let the enemy build mosques in our midst, let them rob our old folk and mingle blood with our women. It is no more than our duty as Norwegians to protect our race and to eliminate those who fail us.'
He turned the page, but a cough from the podium in front of him made him stop and look up.
'Thank you, I think we've heard enough,' the judge said, peering over his glasses. 'Has the prosecution counsel any more questions for the accused?'
The sun shone across courtroom 17 in Oslo Crown Court, giving the hairless man an illusory halo. He was wearing a white shirt and a slim tie, presumably on advice from his defending counsel, Johan Krohn Jr., who right now was leaning backwards in his chair, flicking a pen between middle and forefinger. Krohn disliked most things about this situation. He disliked the direction the prosecutor's questions had taken, the way his client, Sverre Olsen, had openly declared his programme, and the fact that Olsen had deemed it appropriate to roll up his shirtsleeves to display to the judge and colleagues on the panel the spider-web tattoos on both elbows and the row of swastikas on his left forearm. On his right forearm was tattooed a chain of Norse symbols and valkyria, a neo-Nazi gang, in black gothic letters.
But there was something else about the whole procedure that rankled with him. He just couldn't put his finger on what.
The Public Prosecutor, a little man by the name of Herman Groth, pushed the microphone away with his little finger, which was decorated with a ring bearing the symbol of the lawyers' union.
'Just a couple of questions to finish, Your Honour.' The voice was gentle and subdued. The light under the microphone showed green.
'So when, at nine o' clock on 3 January, you went into Dennis Kebab in Dronningens gate, it was with the clear intention of performing the duty of protecting our race which you were just talking about?'
Johan Krohn launched himself at the microphone.
'My client has already answered that a row developed between himself and the Vietnamese owner.' Red light. 'He was provoked,' Krohn said. 'There's absolutely no reason to suggest premeditation.'
Groth closed his eyes.
'If what your defending counsel says is correct, herr Olsen, it was therefore quite by chance that you were carrying a baseball bat at the time?'
'For self-defence,' Krohn interrupted and threw his arms up in despair. 'Your Honour, my client has already answered these questions.'
The judge rubbed his chin as he surveyed the counsel for the defence. Everyone knew that Johan Krohn Jr. was a defence constellation in the ascendancy-particularly Johan Krohn himself-and that was presumably what finally made the judge accede with some irritation: 'I agree with the defending counsel. Unless the prosecutor has anything new to add, may I suggest we move on?'
Groth opened his eyes so that a narrow white stripe could be seen above and beneath the iris. He inclined his head. With a fatigued movement, he raised a newspaper aloft.
'This is Dagbladet from 25 January. In an interview on page eight one of the accused's co-idealogues -'
'I object…' Krohn began.
Groth sighed. 'Let me change that to a man who expresses racist views.'
The judge nodded, but sent Krohn an admonitory glare at the same time. Groth continued.
'This man, commenting on the attack at Dennis Kebab, says we need more racists like Sverre Olsen to regain control of Norway. In the interview the word 'racist' is used as a term of respect. Does the accused consider himself a 'racist'?'
'Yes, I am a racist,' said Olsen before Krohn managed to interpose. 'In the sense that I use the word.'
'And what might that be?' Groth smiled.
Krohn clenched his fists under the table and looked up at the podium, at the two associate judges flanking the judge. These three would decide the fate of his client for the next few years, and his own status in the Tostrupkjeller bar for the next few months. Two ordinary citizens representing the people, representing common- sense justice. They used to call them 'lay judges', but perhaps they had realised that it was too reminiscent of 'play judges'. To the right of the judge was a young man wearing a cheap, sensible suit, who hardly dared raise his eyes. The young, slightly plump woman to the left seemed to be pretending to follow the proceedings, while extending her neck so that the incipient double chin could not be seen from the floor. Average Norwegians. What did they know about people like Sverre Olsen? What did they want to know?
Eight witnesses had seen Sverre Olsen go into the burger bar with a baseball bat under his arm and, after a brief exchange of expletives, hit the owner, Ho Dai-a forty-year-old Vietnamese, who came to Norway with the boat people in 1978-on the head. So hard that Ho Dai would never be able to walk again. When Olsen started to speak, Johan Krohn Jr. was already mentally shaping the appeal he would lodge with the High Court.
'Rac-ism,' Olsen read, having found the definition in his papers, 'is an eternal struggle against hereditary illness, degeneration and annihilation, as well as a dream of and a desire for a healthier society with a better quality of life. Racial mixture is a kind of bilateral genocide. In a world where there are plans to establish gene banks to preserve the smallest beetle, it is generally accepted that you can mix and destroy human races that have taken millennia to develop. In an article in the respected journal American Psychologist in 1972, fifty American and European scientists warned about the dangers of suppressing inheritance theory arguments.'
Olsen stopped, encompassed courtroom 17 in one sweeping glare and raised his right index finger. He had turned towards the prosecutor and Krohn could see the pale Sieg Heil tattoo on the shaven roll of fat between the back of his head and his neck-a mute shriek and a strangely grotesque contrast to the cool rhetoric of the court. In the ensuing silence Krohn could hear from the noise in the corridor that courtroom 18 had adjourned for lunch. Seconds passed. Krohn remembered something he had read about Adolf Hitler: that at mass rallies he would pause for effect for up to three minutes. When Olsen continued he beat the rhythm with his finger, as if to drum every word and sentence into the listeners' brains.
'Those of you who are trying to pretend that there is not a racial struggle going on here are either blind or traitors.'
