‘Pardon me?’ Warren Scifford snapped, obviously irritated.
‘So he called in sick,’ Adam interjected quickly. ‘It must have been something pretty serious, eh? For the person in charge of security at the hotel to call in sick twelve hours before the President arrives – can’t happen very often. I would assume that-’
‘The Secret Service had enough people,’ Warren interrupted. ‘And anyway, everything was on schedule. The hotel had been examined, plans had been made, parts of the area were cordoned off, a system had been set up. The Secret Service is never sloppy. They’ve got back-up for pretty much everything, no matter how unlikely it may seem.’
‘Well, I’m afraid it has to be said that they’ve been sloppy here,’ Adam said. ‘When one of their own special agents is involved in the disappearance of the elected president of the United States.’
The room was silent. The Director General of PST, Peter Salhus, unscrewed the lid of his Coke bottle. Terje Bastesen had finally put down his coffee cup.
‘We’re taking this very seriously indeed,’ he said after a while, and tried to catch the American’s eye. ‘You must have realised fairly early on that one of your own people was involved. The fact that you didn’t-’
‘No,’ Warren exclaimed sharply. ‘We were not…’
He stopped. Again he passed his hand over his eyes. It almost seemed that he wanted to hide them on purpose.
‘The Secret Service was not aware that Jeffrey Hunter had disappeared until late in the day yesterday,’ he said, after a pause that was so prolonged a secretary had had time to come in with yet another lukewarm pizza and a case of mineral water. ‘They had other things to think about. And yes, his illness did seem to be serious. A slipped disc. The guy couldn’t move. They tried pumping him full of painkillers in the morning of the sixteenth of May, but all he managed to do was lie in bed, dozing.’
‘Or so he said.’
Warren looked at Adam, and gave a hint of a nod. ‘Yes, that’s what he said.’
‘Was he examined by a doctor?’
‘No. Our people are medically trained. A slipped disc is a slipped disc, and there isn’t much to be done about it, except rest or have it operated on. And if that was going to happen, it would have to be after the President’s visit.’
‘An X-ray would have shown the truth.’
Warren didn’t bother to answer. Instead he leant over towards the pizza, wrinkled his nose ever so slightly and did not help himself.
‘And as far as the FBI are concerned,’ he said, taking a bottle of water instead, ‘we were not aware of anything until you showed me that film this afternoon. We have, of course, made our own investigations since. Compared them with what the Secret Service has found out…’
Warren got up and went over to the window. They were in the Chief of Police’s office on the sixth floor of the Police HQ, and had a fantastic view of the grey May night. The lights from the media village on the grass outside the window were stronger now, and continued to grow in number. It was only an hour or so now until the darkest time of night, but the grass was bathed in artificial light. The trees along the road to the prison were like a wall against the dark on the other side of the park.
He drank some water, but said nothing.
‘Could it be something as simple as money?’ Peter Salhus asked quietly. ‘Money for his family?’
‘If only it was that simple,’ Warren said to his own reflection in the window. ‘It was the children. And now there’s a desperate widow sitting somewhere in a residential area between Baltimore and Washington DC who realises that she and her husband have done something terrible. They’ve got three children. The youngest is autistic, but given the circumstances he’s doing OK. He goes to a special school. It’s expensive and Jeffrey Hunter presumably had to watch every penny to make it possible. But he had never accepted black money. There is nothing to indicate that. However, the boy has been kidnapped twice in the past two months. Each time he reappeared again before a full alarm was raised, but he was gone long enough for the parents to panic. The message was clear: do what you’re asked to do in Oslo, or the boy will disappear for good.’
Peter Salhus was genuinely shocked when he asked: ‘But would an experienced Secret Service agent let himself be blackmailed in that way? Couldn’t he just make sure that his family was put under protection? A government agent, if anyone, must surely be able to withstand such a threat.’
Warren was still standing with his back to them. His voice was flat, as if he nearly couldn’t bear to get involved in the story.
‘The boy was taken from his school the first time, which should, in practice, be impossible. Public and especially private schools, like this one, are hysterical when it comes to the safety of their pupils. But someone managed to do it. The boy was then sent into hiding with an old school friend of his mother’s in California. Here he was given home tutoring, and no one, not even his brother and sister, knew where he was. But he disappeared from there too, one afternoon. He was only gone for four hours, and neither the school friend nor anyone else could explain how it had happened. But the message was crystal clear.’
With a short burst of dry laughter, Warren finally turned around and went back to his chair.
‘They would find the boy, no matter what. Jeffrey Hunter felt like he had no choice. But obviously the betrayal was too much to live with. The shame. He realised full well that sooner or later someone would discover that he was involved; that someone at some point would think about checking the CCTV footage from the time after the kidnapping.’
‘So he wandered the streets of Oslo until it was late enough to take a bus up to the forest,’ Bastesen summarised. ‘And then he walked into the forest for a while, hid himself in a ditch and killed himself with his own government-issue weapon. Poor man, he can’t have been in a good way, walking up towards Skar, knowing that he only had a few more minutes to live. That he would never-’
Adam felt a slight flush rising in his cheeks as a result of the Chief of Police’s clumsy speech, and quickly interrupted. ‘Could Jeffrey Hunter’s suicide be an explanation for why we haven’t heard anything from the kidnappers? After all, they said in the note that was left in the suite that they would be in touch.’
‘I doubt it,’ Warren said. ‘Particularly as Jeffrey Hunter was nothing more than a cog, really. There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that he was involved in anything other than getting the President out of the hotel.’
‘I’m afraid I have to contradict you a bit there,’ Adam said. ‘I don’t see how the information about the President’s clothes can have come from anywhere other than inside.’
‘What do you mean? Clothes?’
‘The two cars that were driving around…’ Adam lifted two fingers, and then interrupted himself. ‘We’ve found the driver of the second car, by the way. We’re getting just as little out of him as we are from Gerhard Skroder. Same sort of lowlife good-for-nothing, same methods, same incredible fee.’
‘But the clothes,’ Warren repeated. ‘What about them?’
‘The red jacket, the elegant blue trousers. White silk blouse. The national colours of the States and Norway. Whoever is behind the kidnapping must have known what she was going to wear. The lookalikes had the same clothes on. Not exactly the same, but they looked similar enough to make the decoy successful. We lost a lot of valuable time and effort chasing shadows.’
Adam took a deep breath, hesitated and then continued: ‘I take it as given that Madam President has both a hairdresser and a dresser with her when she travels. What have they got to say?’
Warren Scifford was obviously having problems. His poker face, which normally made it possible for him to lie without blinking, had disintegrated into a dejected, tired expression. His mouth seemed narrower and Adam could see the muscles in his face tensing.
‘I’m actually quite impressed by the way you consistently manage to underestimate us,’ Adam said in a low voice. ‘Don’t you think that we considered that problem a long time ago? Don’t you realise that we have long feared that it might be an inside job? Don’t you understand that you, by playing Mr Secret, have poured petrol on the flames?’
‘The President’s clothes are recorded on a computer,’ Warren said.
‘Which anyone has access to?’
‘No. But her secretary has an overview. And she has a very good relationship with Jeffrey Hunter. They are… were good friends. They had talked about the… national day that you celebrate here at an information lunch in early May. We have of course questioned the secretary and she can’t for the life of her remember who brought up the
