Holy Terror (38 page)

No response. They waited and listened for over a minute and then Conor rang the bell again. Outside the window the clouds sailed by on their way to Russia and the Arctic Circle. Still no response.

Conor took out his keyring and opened the black leather pouch in which he kept his lockpicks. He
fiddled with the door for a moment. It wasn't a difficult lock: only a three-lever household affair, but the type was unfamiliar. After two or three minutes, however, he managed to open it, and the door to apartment 206 swung open.

The living room was stacked with all of the boxes that had arrived this morning, as well as dozens more. There were six or seven cartons with the Coming logo on them, and the legend Scientific Glassware, Handle With Care. There were other trade names, too, which Conor couldn't identify. Bechtüngsglasfabrik GmBh; Logosystems Inc.; Waalmans Industrie; Schneider BioSeals.

The rest of the apartment was almost bare. The kitchen had no food in it, only a large can of Douwe Egberts coffee and three bottles of Norwegian spring water. None of the saucepans looked as if they had been used, and there was a musty smell in the dishwasher. In the main bedroom there was nothing but a large bed covered by a green duck-down quilt and a single nightstand with a glass of water and a bible. Magda opened the closets. ‘Two dresses, three skirts, a couple of sweaters.' She peered at the labels. ‘All very expensive. But what revolting taste. I mean, this purple thing is Chanel, but look at it. I wouldn't wear it to my own execution.'

There weren't many men's clothes, either. Two coats, two pairs of pants, three folded sweaters, all in somber grays and blacks and browns.

The second bedroom was far more cluttered and the single bed was unmade. A small china troll stood on the wooden chair which served as a nightstand. A Norwegian-language motoring magazine
Autobil
had been dropped on the floor. Inside the closet the clothes smelled of cigarette smoke and they all bore chainstore labels. ‘My God, a reindeer sweater,' said Magda, picking it up and dropping it again with undisguised disgust.

‘Go through all the pockets,' said Conor. ‘Look under the beds, too; and underneath the mattresses.'

He went across the hallway to the bathroom. He saw himself in the mirrored medicine cabinet over the washbasin, tired and still bruised, but it was like meeting somebody that he hadn't seen for over a year. Conor the detective. Same intent look. Same quick, questioning eyes. He opened the medicine cabinet over the washbasin. It contained a woman's razor, a small pack of band-aids and a half-used tube of Bepanthol emollient cream. No medication, no cosmetics, no eyebrow pencils, no sexual lubricants.

‘What do you think?' asked Eleanor, appearing in the bathroom door.

‘I'm not entirely sure … but I think this place is nothing but a staging-post – someplace these people could stay while they waited for their money to arrive from New York. Someplace to store their equipment, whatever it is. My feeling is that they won't be here much longer.'

He went back into the living room. He was cautious about opening any of the boxes because they were all sealed and he didn't want Dennis Evelyn Branch to suspect that anybody had been here – not until he knew what he was planning. But Magda had mentioned that Victor Labrea talked about ‘biohazards' and much of the equipment
was marked with company names that suggested biological screening. Micro-Org, s.a. Protective Air Systems, Inc.

‘So what do we do now?' asked Magda. ‘Maybe we smash everything?'

‘There's no point in doing that. They probably have more than enough money to replace it all. What we need to do is keep them under surveillance and follow them wherever they go – especially if they try to move any of this stuff away from here.'

‘So, what do you think they are doing?' asked Magda. ‘What is worth killing people for – killing poor Ramon.'

‘I think they've found a way to convert every man, woman and child on this planet to the Global Message Movement. Join us, repudiate your own religion, or we'll kill you.'

‘Am I understanding you right?' said Eleanor. She had a fresh cigarette in her holder, but she didn't light it. ‘You're talking about
germ warfare
?'

‘What do you think all of this equipment is for – growing tomatoes?'

‘Of course not. But how can one man make the world change its religion? Think of the Taliban. Most of them would rather die than convert to Christianity.'

‘Sure. But look around you. It seems pretty plain to me that he thinks it's achievable. That's the difference between a man like Dennis Evelyn Branch and people like you and me. You and me, we'd think that the whole idea of trying to convert everybody in the world to the same fundamentalist religion was absurd. Impossible.

‘But Dennis Evelyn Branch doesn't see it that way. As far as he's concerned, he's always right and anybody who disagrees with him is in the wrong. If he kills a few hundred people, then that will be
our
fault, for not recognizing his religion, for not giving him air time, for defying a direct instruction from God. You can't win with people like him. You can't reason with them. The only thing you can do is stop them. Dead.'

‘So what now?' asked Magda.

‘We have to keep on watching him, that's all. See where he moves all of this stuff.'

‘I was afraid you were going to say that.'

‘You don't have to stay if you don't want to. You can always go back home.'

‘What then? Wait for them to find me? Wait for them to kill me?'

Conor took her arm. ‘Come on,' he said. ‘Let's get out of here before they come back. There's no point in tempting fate.'

They kept watch on 17 Hammerfestgata for over three weeks. By mid-September, the air was beginning to grow cold and the nights started to draw in. Occasionally they saw Dennis Evelyn Branch leaving the apartment block; and occasionally they saw the dark-haired woman and the man in the brown leather cap. But they never saw any of the boxes moved and they never saw any other visitors.

They began to grow frustrated and irritable with each other. Magda couldn't stand Eleanor's smoking and used to throw open the living-room windows every time she lit up. That hadn't been
such a dramatic gesture when the weather was warm, but now the temperature was dropping daily, and whenever she opened the windows a chilly draft blew through the entire apartment.

The bland Norwegian food quickly became a daily punishment. Eleanor said that if she had to eat another pickled herring she would commit seppuku all over the
koldtbord
. They tried reindeer at the Restaurant Blom and salmon at Raymond's Mat Og Vinhus and in desperation they even went to a restaurant on Kirkeveien called Curry and Ketchup. The endless servings of fish and more fish and plain boiled potatoes sprinkled with dill made Conor long for a real Irish stew or a big pot of bacon and cabbage, or even some of Lacey's Swedish meatballs.

They played cards. Magda could read the Tarot and predicted that Eleanor would find the love of her life, while Conor was facing a critical and dangerous choice. As for herself? ‘I have to decide if I want security or passion.'

‘Supposing they do nothing for months?' Eleanor asked Conor, on the last day of September. It was 5:15 p.m. and already it was dark outside. They had noticed an air of encroaching gloom amongst all of the Norwegians they knew. At first they had laughed about it, but now they were beginning to feel the same way. Winter was coming: hours of darkness and sub-zero temperatures, and nothing to eat but fish. And no relief until May next year.

Conor said, ‘They're going to make a move soon. I can feel it. If they weren't going to do anything, why did they ship in all those boxes? And that apartment
… how long is anybody going to stay in a place like that, with only a couple of changes of clothes?'

The next day, October 1, they sat for most of the day in the Café Baltazar talking to the owner, Bjornstjerne. He couldn't have been older than 35 or 36, but he was prematurely gray, with deep shadows under his pale blue eyes, and a scraggly little gray mustache. They had never told him why they had spent nearly every day for a whole month sitting in his café looking out of the window, and he had never asked.

‘You like
gravet laks
?' he wanted to know.

‘I think I've had enough fish for one lifetime,' said Eleanor.

‘It's very good. You can have some to taste, for free. You're my best customers now.'

‘You ever wondered what we're doing here?' Conor asked him.

‘No business of mine. So long as you pay your bills.'

‘Seriously – aren't you even curious?'

‘Well,' said Bjornstjerne, with a wink, ‘I think you could be spies.'

‘In a way, yes. Almost right.'

‘
Ja
? Spies? But what can you find to spy on, around here?'

‘That apartment block, across the street. There are three Americans living there.'

‘That's right,
ja
, I've seen them. They came in here two or three times. Just for a Coca-Cola and a sandwich. I thought they were strange. Not friendly.'

‘I guess that just about sums them up.'

‘You know them? I wanted to talk to them. My
apartment is upstairs here, you know, and they wake me up so many times. Always slamming their doors at two o'clock in the morning. Sometimes three o'clock.'

‘Slamming their doors? What doors?'

‘The doors of their van. Carrying boxes. Bringing boxes in. Taking boxes away.'

Conor thought:
shit
. No wonder we haven't seen them. They've been shifting their equipment in the early hours of the morning. And of course we haven't been able to keep up round-the-clock surveillance.

‘Did you see them last night?'

‘No, not last night. But the night before that. They made a lot of noise, and took away a lot of boxes. They drove off and I haven't seen them back since then.'

‘It sounds like they're gone,' said Magda. ‘How are we going to find them now?'

‘I don't know. God, I wish I was still in the police department. I could ask the Oslo cops to trace that van's registration plate. I could lay my hands on their telephone records.'

‘Maybe they left some kind of clue in their apartment,' Eleanor suggested. ‘It would be worth taking a look.'

Conor checked his watch. ‘Let's wait till it's dark. Bjornstjerne hasn't seen them come back, but they could have slipped in when he wasn't looking. The poor guy's got a business to run, after all.'

‘You want another beer?' asked Bjornstjerne. ‘How about some
gravet laks
? Just try a little. Best fish you ever tasted.'

* * *

They waited in the café until twilight. An evening mist turned the streetlights into thistledown. Nobody left the apartment block, nobody came to visit. At last Conor said, ‘I'm going to have to risk it. I'm going to take a look inside.'

‘What if Branch is still there?' asked Magda.

‘Then I'll improvise. Maybe I'll make out that I want to join them. After all, if I've been accused of extorting all of that money, I might as well have my share of it.'

Eleanor took hold of his hand. ‘You will be careful, won't you, Conor? I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you.'

He looked at her with a question in his eyes but she turned away and sat down, and gave him a brief, flickering smile.

‘I should come with you,' said Magda. ‘You know, back-up, that's what you say, isn't it?'

‘OK… but do whatever I tell you to do. No grand gestures. You're not on the stage of the Shubert Theater, you're out on the streets.'

‘“Down these mean streets a man must go, who is not himself mean,”' Eleanor quoted.

‘“A man who is neither tarnished nor afraid,”' added Magda.

‘Where did you learn that?' Conor asked her.

‘Well, I have been in many places, done many things.'

Something about the way she said it made him feel that she was being evasive. All the same, he needed all the support he could get. He took her arm and they walked out of the Café Baltazar and across the street.

* * *

Apartment 206 was empty. All the boxes had gone, both of the beds were stripped. The china troll had been taken away and the wooden chair was tipped over on the floor.

Conor searched through every room. The closets were empty. There was nothing to indicate where Dennis Evelyn Branch and his associates might have gone. Not even a scribble on a scrap of paper.

Conor was still searching through the kitchen drawers when he heard the front door open. He paused and listened, and said, ‘Magda? Is that you?'

Before Magda could answer, the man in the brown leather cap appeared in the kitchen doorway, pointing a small automatic pistol at him.

‘Who are you? What do you do here? Put up your hands.'

‘We were told this apartment was for rent,' said Conor. ‘My wife and I just came around to take a look at it.'

The man's eyes darted suspiciously from side to side. ‘It's not free. Somebody lives here still.'

‘No,' said Conor, ‘that can't be right. The rental agency told us that it was free from today.'

‘Well, a mistake,' the man replied. ‘You have to leave here now.'

‘We've come a long way. All the way from Bergen. You're absolutely
sure
this isn't for rent?'

‘A mistake, sorry.' The man put his gun back in his windcheater pocket. ‘You will have to speak to the agent.'

At that moment Magda came into the kitchen. ‘Well …' she smiled. ‘Are you from the rental agency?'

‘No, no. I was telling your husband. A mistake.'

‘A
mistake
?' said Magda, with exaggerated shock.