Carver looked up. As he’d expected, the two men had thrown themselves to opposite sides of the ramp, which was much narrower on this side of the building. A stone parapet ran up the outside edge, just as it did on the roof. One of the men was crouched against it, already bringing his pistol to bear. The other was directly above Carver, pressed against the glass. The way he’d thrown himself, he’d got his gun hand stuck slightly behind him, between his body and the side of the building. It would barely take a second to free his weapon, but that was enough.
Carver didn’t hesitate. He dealt with the immediate danger: the man by the parapet. Carver put two rounds into his chest, then swung the gun round and shot the other man in the head. He’d just managed to free his gun hand and was bringing it up as Carver fired. They were so close that Carver could see the look of surprise in his eyes.
A little over five seconds had passed since Carver had jumped down on to the ramp. In that time he had halved the odds against him. But the survivors still outnumbered him three to one. He might not get lucky again.
43
Carver got to his feet, shoved the pistol into his waistband, and charged down the ramp until he was close to the bottom. Then he ran to the parapet and vaulted over the side. He dropped fifteen feet and landed on a narrow path that ran beside the opera house and the sea. He turned left, making his way back towards the rear of the building and the motorway beyond that. He stuck as close as possible to the wall of the opera house, so that anyone looking over the parapet, up above, would have to lean right out to see him.
He could hear shouts and running footsteps above him, but they hadn’t spotted him yet. In the distance there was another sound, something new: a helicopter, and getting closer, too.
A side door opened and a man walked out, a kid, really, early twenties at most. He was dressed in a red and beige seventies-style Fila tracksuit top, carrying a motorbike helmet. He stopped by a moped propped up against the wall. It wasn’t what Carver would have chosen. For urban getaway work, he’d always specified fast, nimble trailbikes, with 400-cc engines as an absolute minimum. This kid’s machine had about as much power as an old washing machine. But Carver had long since ceased to be in any position to be fussy.
The kid was bent over, taking the chain off his bike. The helmet was resting on the moped’s seat. Carver slowed to a walk, came up behind him as quietly as possible and jammed the tip of the gun barrel into the back of his neck, just below the skull.
‘Don’t move. Don’t say anything. Just listen. OK?’
The kid’s head nodded frantically.
‘Undo the chain, then place it on the ground beside you.’
The order was obeyed. Carver slid his foot across and shifted the chain out of the kid’s reach.
‘Now stand up slowly, nice and easy, no sudden movements.’
He waited while the order was obeyed.
‘Turn around and face me… Now, your keys, please. And again, easy does it.’
Holding his gun in his right hand, Carver took the keys in his left and shoved them into a trouser pocket. The kid began to tremble, his panicked eyes focused upwards at the gun pointing directly at the middle of his forehead. He was trying to grow a beard, Carver saw: little more than a dusting of mouse-brown hair across cheeks still not completely clear of teenage acne.
‘Please, don’t kill me,’ he begged, his voice little more than a whimper.
‘I don’t plan to,’ said Carver, darting a quick glance back down the path. It was clear. They hadn’t yet tracked him down. ‘Not if you do exactly as you’re told.’
‘Sure, sure,’ said the kid. ‘Anything.’
‘OK, then, take off the jacket and put it next to the helmet. I’m putting my gun away now.’
The kid was half turned away from Carver, leaving the jacket on his moped. Carver saw the tension ease from his shoulders as he realized the gun was no longer aimed at him. And it was then, at that brief moment of relaxation, that Carver grabbed the scrawny young man and spun him round, kept him moving across the narrow path and flung him into the water. It was hardly any drop, but the slick marble stonework would make it impossible for the kid to climb back ashore. He’d have to swim round to the front of the building, and that would give Carver all the time he needed.
He looked at the kid, who was treading water and looking at him with an expression that had changed from fear to indignation.
‘I’m taking your bike,’ said Carver. ‘But I’m not going far. Go to Aker Brygge. Your bike will be there. I won’t.’
Carver went back to the moped, put on the jacket and the helmet, turned on the engine, and moved away. He was thinking about the ferry that had just set sail. That was his way out of Oslo. And he’d worked out how to get on it.
44
‘What now?’ Police Superintendent Ole Ravnsborg, senior duty officer at the Oslo police headquarters in Hammersborggata, just a short way away from the site of the explosion, looked up at the young officer standing nervously in front of him holding two sheets of paper.
‘We just had a tip-off, sir. About the bomb at the King Haakon.’
Ravnsborg was as big and shaggy as a dog with a cask of brandy round its neck. He emitted a rumbling, disgruntled growl and his massive shoulders seemed to slump even lower in his chair.
‘Put it on the pile,’ he muttered, ‘with all the other crazies.’
The youngster stood his ground. ‘I think this one might be different, sir,’ he insisted. ‘They gave us specific names of the bomber, and two associates. There’s even a photograph, taken at the hotel, exactly when the bomb went off.’
Ravnsborg gave a little wave of the fingers, as if summoning a waiter. ‘Give it here,’ he said, taking the paper. A hush seemed to fall on the crowded incident room as the hurriedly assembled investigation team – an ad hoc mix of officers on duty at the time of the blast and other detectives hauled back to HQ as and when they could be tracked down – waited to see what their leader would make of this new information.
Ravnsborg read the email and looked at the photograph, scratching his head through a mat of tousled, dirty- blond hair as he did so. Though his body – a little soft around the edges now, but still possessing vast reserves of strength, like a weightlifter retired from competition – was virtually motionless, his mind was darting from one subject to another with a gymnast’s agility.
The bomb had come as a total, devastating surprise. There had been no threat from a terrorist group, nor any warning from the nation’s intelligence service, or its anti-terrorism unit. The city’s police, fire and medical services were stretched to their utmost just coping with the immediate aftermath of the blast in the vicinity of the King Haakon Hotel. He had no officers to spare for a wild-goose chase, looking for a man who was either an innocent irrelevance or a calculating killer with an escape route planned as meticulously as the attack itself. There had not yet been time or enough available manpower to interview hotel staff. Nor was there, as yet, any forensic evidence linking the explosion to the hotel’s internal phone system.
To cap it all, Ravnsborg was profoundly suspicious of the tip-off itself. It had been given anonymously, but who would do such a thing, and to what end? It was, he supposed, possible that the bomber had been sold out by his own people. But, if so, he would surely in turn give up the men who had betrayed him. Perhaps it was a rival group, wanting to undermine its competitors, or a foreign spy, determined to preserve his anonymity. Ravnsborg did not like any of these explanations. Yet he could not afford to ignore a lead as good as this, either.
He looked up to see every eye in the room trained upon him.
‘Berg, Dalen,’ he snapped. ‘Go to the Gabelshus Hotel. It’s in Skillebekk. Pick up a guest, an American, name of Madeleine Cross. Also a friend of hers, one of ours, Thor Larsson. Bring them here. Tell them they are wanted for
