Death In Oslo

Wolf Blitzer himself was in the studio, as he had been for the past fourteen hours. The programme, The Situation Room, had taken over the entire broadcasting network, and judging by the activity in the studio, they had no intention of ending soon. The anchorman was, as usual, immaculately dressed. Only his tie was a smidgen looser than earlier in the day. With expert ease, he switched from a correspondent in Washington DC over to New York, before politely interrupting the journalist to give the word to Christiane Amanpour. The world-famous journalist was on the slope in front of an illuminated Norwegian royal palace. She was wearing thin clothes, and she seemed to be shivering.

‘It’s impressive how quick they are,’ Adam mumbled. ‘They’re up and running within a few hours.’

‘I don’t see what the palace has got to do with the case.’ Johanne stifled a yawn. ‘But it’s a good report, I agree. Everything is getting slicker and quicker. Did you run? You’re sweating, my love.’

‘Picked up speed a bit towards the end. It was great. More like jogging.’

‘In a suit?’

He smiled disarmingly and kissed her. She plaited her fingers into his.

‘Strange, really…’ She stopped and stretched to get her wine glass. ‘Can you tell the difference?’

‘Between what?’

‘The Norwegian and the American programmes. The mood, I mean. The Americans seem to be efficient, quick, nearly… aggressive. Everything here is a bit more… restrained. People seem to be paralysed in a way. Almost passive. At least, the interviewees certainly do. It’s as if they’re frightened to say too much, and so what little they do say just sounds silly. It all feels a bit like a parody. Look at the Americans, they’re so much better at it.’

‘But then they’ve had more opportunities to practise,’ Adam said, trying to hide the irritation he always felt when confronted with Johanne’s ambiguous relationship with anything American.

On the one hand, she never wanted to talk about the period when she had studied in the US. The two of them had known each other for many years now. They were married; they had children and a mortgage together. They shared dreams and daily life. But there was still a substantial part of Johanne’s past that was secret, that she protected more vehemently than even the children. The night before their wedding, she had forced him to take an oath: that he would never, under any circumstances, ask her why she had suddenly broken off her psychology studies at the FBI’s academy in Quantico. He had sworn on his dead daughter’s grave. Both the formulation of the oath and the consequences of it made him feel unwell whenever the topic was raised, and Johanne was consumed by a rage that she never demonstrated otherwise.

But at the same time, Johanne’s fascination with everything American was bordering on manic. She read almost exclusively American literature and had a large collection of American low-budget films, which she bought over the Internet or got a friend of hers in Boston, whom he had never met and knew practically nothing about, to send. The shelves in her small office were full of reference books about American history, politics and society. He was never allowed to borrow any of them, and it really bothered him that she locked the door on the rare occasions that she went away on her own.

‘Not really,’ she said after a long silence.

‘What?’

‘You said that they’d had more opportunity to practise.’

‘I meant…’

‘They have never lost a president outside the country’s borders. American presidents have been killed by random madmen in their own country. Never abroad. And never as part of a conspiracy, for that matter. Did you know that?’

Something in her voice made him not answer. He knew her well enough to know that if he turned this into a dialogue, she would quickly change the subject. If she was left to carrying on talking without interruption, she did.

‘Four out of forty-four presidents have been assassinated,’ Johanne said thoughtfully, as if she was actually talking to herself. ‘Is that not nearly ten per cent?’

He tried to withstand the urge to interrupt.

‘Kennedy.’ She gave a faint smile and beat him to it. ‘Forget it. Lee Harvey Oswald was a strange man who may have planned it with another couple of weirdos. Possibly not. It was certainly no great conspiracy. Except for in the film.’

She reached out for the bottle of wine. It was too far away. Adam grabbed it and poured some into her glass. The TV was still on. Wolf Blitzer’s forehead now looked slightly damp, and when he handed over to a reporter in front of the White House, you could see the shadows under the anchorman’s eyes. No doubt they would be concealed with make-up after the adverts.

‘Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley,’ Johanne continued, without touching her glass. ‘They were all killed by lone fanatics. A confederate sympathiser, someone with mental-health problems and a mad anarchist, if I’m not wrong. Mad fellow countrymen. The same is true of all the many attempted assassinations. The guy who tried to kill Reagan wanted to make an impression on Jodie Foster, and the man who tried to bump off Theodore Roosevelt thought that he would get rid of the pain in his stomach if he killed the President. Only the two Puerto Ricans who…’

Christiane Amanpour was on the screen again. She had a warmer jacket on. The fur collar was perhaps intended to give a more Arctic mood. She was trying to keep it shut with one hand. This time she was standing outside the police headquarters in Gronland. Nothing new from there either. Johanne squinted at the screen. Adam turned down the volume with the remote control and asked: ‘What about the Puerto-’

‘Forget it,’ Johanne interrupted. ‘My point wasn’t to lecture you in elementary American history.’

‘What was the point then?’ he asked, and tried to keep a friendly tone in his voice.

‘You seemed to think the Americans were prepared. And they are, of course, in many ways. Certainly the television stations are.’

She nodded at Christiane Amanpour, who was having difficulties with her microphone. Behind her, a group of men in dark suits hurried down the slope to Gronlandsleiret. They turned their collars up at the TV cameras and were not to be stopped by the questions shouted by around thirty journalists who obviously had bunkered down for the night. Adam immediately recognised the Chief of Police. Terje Bastesen turned away from the press and pulled his uniform hat down lower than regulated as he strode towards the cars that waited by the road.

‘But the American people,’ Johanne said, focusing on a point far above the television. ‘They’re hardly prepared. Not completely, not for this. Their entire history tells them that when it comes to the assassination of presidents, they have to watch out for confused fellow Americans. I should imagine that the Secret Service has outlined a number of assassination scenarios, mostly involving anti-abortionists, women-haters and the most zealous supporters of the war in Iraq – groups that include Helen Bentley’s most ferocious opponents on the home front, and the sort of environment that fosters the kind of fanaticism that is empirically proven to be requisite. America’s more recent history…’

She paused for a moment. ‘More recent history has, of course, generated other scenarios. Post-nine eleven, I assume that the Secret Service would ultimately like to keep their president in a cement bunker. The US has never been so unpopular with the rest of the world at any time since the War of Independence. And as the concept of terrorism has been extended in recent years, certainly for the Americans, their fears of what might happen to the president have also changed. The fact that she would simply disappear into thin air on a state visit to a small, friendly country was probably a long way off what they anticipated. But…’ The wine glass nearly toppled over as she suddenly reached out for it. ‘… what do I know about that?’ She finished on a light note. ‘Cheers, my love. Let’s go to bed soon.’

‘What’s it like in the real Situation Room at the moment then, Johanne?’

She extracted herself from his arm.

‘How should I know? I have no idea about-’

‘Yes you do. If nothing else, because you’ve got a book that’s actually called The Situation Room…’ now it was Adam who could not restrain his irritation, which was about to spill over into real anger, ‘that’s lying on your bedside table. For Christ’s sake, Johanne, it must be possible to share…’

In one swift movement she got up from the sofa and was on her way to the bedroom. A few seconds later she came back. Her face was bright red.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘You’ve got the title wrong. And if you’re so interested, you’re free to read it. It’s not exactly