theories will follow. This will be a feast for the paranoid. But no one listens to them. And so the world will continue to limp on, until it’s no longer possible to know what’s true and what’s false, and no one is that bothered any more. It’s easiest that way. For everyone. Bloody hell, that hurts!’
He winced.
‘…
‘Turn it off,’ Adam said and put his arm round Johanne.
He kissed her on the temple.
‘We’ve heard enough. It’s all just stories and lies anyway. I can’t be bothered.’
She picked up the remote control. There was quiet in the room. She snuggled in to him and gently stroked his hairy arms. They sat like this for a long time, and she breathed in Adam’s smell and was happy that summer had finally made an appearance.
‘Johanne,’ Adam said quietly. She was nearly asleep.
‘What?’
‘I want to know what Warren did to you.’
She didn’t answer. But she didn’t pull away either, as she always had done before, at the slightest mention of the hornets’ nest that had hung between them since they met on a warm spring day almost exactly five years ago. She didn’t hold her breath, or turn away. He couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t feel that she had closed up and was pursing her lips tight, as she normally did.
‘I think it’s time,’ he said and put his mouth to her ear. ‘It’s high time, Johanne.’
She took a deep breath.
‘I was only twenty-three, and we were in DC to…’
It was three in the morning by the time they went to bed.
The new day had just started to peek over the trees to the east, and Adam would never know that he wasn’t the first to share Johanne’s painful secret.
It didn’t matter, she thought.
The first was the President of the United States of America, and they would never meet her again.
FRIDAY 20 MAY 2005
When the news that President Bentley was still alive had made its way round the world on Thursday evening, European time, Abdallah al-Rahman had stopped all his usual activities and locked himself away in his office in the east wing.
It was now nearly six in the morning. He didn’t feel particularly tired, despite having been awake all night. He had tried to take a nap several times, on the low divan in front of the plasma screen, but a growing unease had kept him awake.
The President was about to land at an unspecified military base in the US. The CNN reporters were all talking over each other in their eagerness to guess where it was. The US Air Force photographers and cameramen who sent the images to TV channels all over the world, were extremely careful to avoid showing any of the surroundings or buildings that might indicate where the President was to touch American soil again.
It wasn’t over yet.
Without turning off the television, Abdallah sat down in front of his computer.
He typed in a number of search words, for the sixth time in six hours. Several thousand hits came up on the screen, so he narrowed down the search, which meant that he only got a few hundred. He was uncertain, but then he added yet another word in the search field.
Five articles.
He scrolled quickly through four of them. Nothing of interest there.
The fifth told him that the Trojan Horse attack would never take place.
He realised that after scanning only the first few lines, but forced himself to read the whole article three times before logging out and turning off the computer.
He went back to the divan, lay down and closed his eyes.
The FBI had swooped on a small town in Maine, with helicopters and lots of men. Local reporters had made a speculative link between the operation and the Helen Bentley case, and within the hour, the place was surrounded by journalists from all over the state. However, the local police soon assured people that the incident was in no way related. They had been working with the FBI for some time now, trying to catch a gang who were trapping endangered birds for sale on the black market. A local vet had been very helpful to the investigation. Unfortunately, one of the gang had been killed during the raid, but the police now had everything under control. The article included a photograph of the vet, who was so like Fayed that only the moustache would distinguish them.
Fayed had let him down.
Fayed was supposed to launch the attack, following the instructions in the coded letters that Abdallah had had to sacrifice three couriers to send.
Fayed was dead and Madam President was back in place.
Abdallah al-Rahman opened his eyes and got up from the divan. He started methodically to pull the pins out of the map. He sorted them by colour. They could be used again later.
There was a knock on the door.
He was surprised, given what time it was. But he opened the door. His youngest son was standing outside, dressed in his riding clothes. He was inconsolable.
‘Father,’ Rashid cried. ‘I was going to go with the others for a morning ride. But then I fell off and the others just rode on. They say I’m too little, and…’
The boy sobbed and showed his father a graze above his elbow.
‘There, there,’ Abdallah said, and hunkered down in front of his son. ‘You’ll just have to try again, that’s all. You’ll never manage to do anything if you don’t try and try again. I’ll come with you. Let’s go for a ride together.
‘Yes, but… I’m bleeding, Daddy!’
‘Rashid,’ Abdallah said, blowing on the wound. ‘We don’t give up just because we’ve had a minor defeat. It hurts for a while, but then we try again. Until we succeed. Do you understand?’
The boy nodded and dried his tears.
Abdallah took his son by the hand. As he was about to shut the door behind them, his eyes fell on the big map of America. The odd coloured pinhead could still be seen, stuck in at an angle, in a webbed pattern with no system or structure.
He stood there, wondering about dates. 2010, he thought to himself. By then I’ll be strong enough to try again. By 2010.
‘What did you say, Father?’
‘Nothing. Come, let’s go.’
He had already decided.
Author’s postscript
I have taken liberties with several public figures in this book, putting words into their mouths. I have made every effort to do this with the utmost respect, and hope that I have succeeded.
I have also taken liberties in relation to a specific building in Oslo, Thon Hotel Opera, which is called Hotel Opera in my book. I needed to use the hotel’s location in order to tell the story, and have been true to reality with regard to the building’s exterior and location. Inside, however, the hotel in this book is entirely the product of my own imagination. The same is true of the hotel employees who feature in the book.
