Norwegian by Night (35 page)

This was fifty-eight years ago.

It is all clearer now than it was then. Rhea would say it is the vivid fabrications of an ageing mind. More likely, though, it is the clarity that comes from ageing — from the natural process of releasing the mind from imagined futures, and allowing the present and past to take their rightful place at the centre of our attention.

The past is palpable to Sheldon now, in the way the future is to the young. It is either a brief curse or a gift before oblivion.

Just breathe.

It was an especially rainy day once on the firing range, and Hank Bishop was on Sheldon's left side trying to hit a two-hundred-metre target in a light fog.

Hank Bishop, bless him, was not very smart.

‘I can't tell if I hit it,' he'd say after each shot.

‘You didn't,' said Donny.

‘I can't tell if I hit it,' he said.

‘You didn't,' said Donny.

‘I can't tell if I hit it,' he said.

‘You didn't,' said Donny.

After more of this sort of conversation — of which Sheldon never tired — there was an unexplainable and miraculous event. Hank somehow reflected on his own actions, thus breaking the cycle and stimulating a question.

‘What makes you so sure I didn't hit it, Donny?'

‘Because you're shooting at my target, Hank. Yours is over there. Here — I'll find it for you.'

In the increasingly heavy downpour, Donny silently unzipped his chest pocket and removed a single red-tipped bullet. He ejected the magazine and laid it down next to him. Then he cleared the chamber of the remaining round and slipped in the tracer bullet.

He took a shallow breath, let it out halfway, took aim, and squeezed the trigger.

The red phosphorous round ripped through the fog like a burning dove through an alpine tunnel, then slammed into Hank's wooden target. It impacted almost dead centre, and the line of Marines started whooping and clapping, causing the rifle master to run down the line with his own rifle butt clanking on the helmets of every man in the squad.

Tracer bullets are not especially designed for penetration. So the burning round wedged itself into the wooden target, which immediately smouldered and hissed and caught fire from the inside out.

‘Horowitz, you numb nuts. What the hell do you think you're doing?'

‘Wasn't me, sir.'

‘It sure as shit wasn't Bishop!'

‘All right, it was me. But Hank couldn't hit his target, sir, and mine's already good and dead!'

Sheldon is using these same hands now to sew. He works as quickly as his fingers allow. He threads the fishing line through the needle, and uses the butt of the knife as a thimble to push it through the duffle bag to sew the net onto it.

He is conscious of the time, but he forces his mind not to imagine what might be happening in the summer house.

It takes him more than thirty minutes of deep concentration. He is worried that the needle is too thin to withstand the constant abuse of the task. The duffle bag is made of thick cotton but, thankfully, it is loosely stitched and Sheldon is able to run the needle carefully between the coarse threads.

When he is finished, he looks at his handiwork. It's reasonable, given how little he has had to work with. Now he needs to complete the Ghillie suit with brush and branches and tufts of earth from his surroundings. He surveys the forest again. He doesn't want to use only material from his immediate surroundings, and instead wants the camouflage to blend with the widest array of life around him. He wants to become one with the forest — for his suit to be an actual, living part of the world around him.

When he is finished, he digs silently into the soft earth to where it is moist, takes up a small handful of dirt, and then rubs it over his face and the white backs of his hands. He smears it over his shoes and rubs it into the still-green sections of the duffle bag. When he is satisfied, he places the Ghillie suit over him, with his head in the curved section of the bag's bottom. As a final touch, he punctures the suit to the left and right of his collarbone, and weaves the strap from the duffle bag through the holes. It now rides him like a squire's cape. And, with this, he is ready.

‘Now what?' asks Bill.

‘Precisely,' says Sheldon.

Chapter 20

It was always best to the keep the number of people involved in an operation as limited as possible. Enver had had problems back in Serbia with loose lips. Plans that had been made in darkened rooms after hours were too easily brought into the light and exposed.

‘Loose lips sink ships,' went the saying.

When he was a young man in his early twenties, it all shocked him. The capacity of the Serbs for horrific violence not only enraged. It … confused him. How could people hate strangers so intensely? Enver never fell entirely into that trap, and he prided himself on it. His militia only assaulted those who were connected to the crimes against his people. He was driven to avenge the dead and to restore the honour of his people. He wasn't fulfilling some mad ideology, and he wasn't killing in the name of God. He was perfectly content with the justifications for his actions.

The trouble, towards the end, was that almost every Serbian man was a killer and his wife a devilish harpy, offering up foul whisperings to stir his cold blood. How could it have been any other way? Men kill because they want to. Something makes them want to. But the choice is always theirs, and with that choice lies their fate.

The man who answered the call that Enver placed was well known in the KLA. He was known to Kadri. He was an unremarkable man of average height and no particular strength or speed. There was no special viciousness in his demeanour, or cruelty to his appetites. He did not drink to excess, and he did not justify his actions by wrapping them in words and history and emotion. He did not indulge in conspiracy theories to bond himself with other men.

Those who knew him did not talk to him much, because there was little to say and less to hear. When he was talked about, however, there was one point of common agreement. All believed that he no longer had a soul. He was the living dead. He was called
Zezake
: the Black.

The Black is Enver's protection. His bodyguard. His soldier. He was sent to Norway to hide Enver from the Serbs, and to stay close to him and be of service.

To be Enver's shadow.

The Black is a model citizen in Oslo. He waits for the lights to change before crossing. He signals before he turns. He holds doors open for women with strollers at United Bakeries. He never mumbles over the length of the lines at the Wine Monopoly.

The Serbs know he is here. It is unlikely that the Norwegians do, though. He travels quietly, with false papers. He rents rooms and moves on. He leaves nothing behind. He is a ghost, and knows how to move through Europe as only criminals do.

The Kosovars and Albanians are ordered and well mobilised in Oslo. They do not constitute a large population, and many of them know each other. They look out for each other, and one task in doing so is watching out for the Black so that the Black can watch out for Enver.

And now he has a job to do. The Black has received the call from Enver, and has set about doing what Burim and Gjon failed to do. He is to recover the boy, for the simple reason that he is instructed to, and that is what he does — follow instructions. He has gone to the black market and bought an aged but functional Colt 1911A1 .45-calibre pistol and an old Winchester repeater with a wooden stock. The stock of the rifle has a swastika that has been etched into the wood by its former owner. The Black has purchased it, not for political leanings, but because of the reduced price and the likelihood that the owner would want to forget the transaction.

The rifle uses an iron sight, and holds five rounds. The Black has tested it in the hills outside the city, and found it reliable and accurate.

He has been told to gather the weapons and come alone to the summer house. Enver has given him the address. He will find his own way.

The Black does not know that the young hunters have taken the boy. What he does know, however, is what the boy looks like and what his real name is.

His special-operations training has taught him to always fuel a car or truck just before reaching a mission's destination, because it prepares the vehicle for the return trip or the rushed escape from it. So as he pulls into the Esso station in Kongsvinger, it surprises him to see the boy through the window. He is holding a piece of moose jerky amidst five young Norwegian men.

The Black sidles up to the pump and drives slowly past the mini-market where the boy is standing with the jerky. He opens the glove compartment and removes a bright-red plastic folder. Inside the folder is a series of photos of the boy. His passport photo. A few surveillance photos. There are photos of him with and without his mother. With longer and shorter hair. With an ice-cream cone.

The Black holds up the photos and compares them to the boy. The boy sees the man in the small car looking at him and stares back. There is no recognition. The two have never met.

The Black realises immediately that their chance encounter changes the calculus. It rearranges the pieces on the chessboard. The assault on the summer house was to attain a single goal: to find the boy. If the boy has been found, there is no need for any of it.

Considering this, his face remains unchanged.

The Black takes a mobile phone from his jacket pocket and calls Enver. He knows the lines can be traced, which is why he only uses pay-as-you-go cards. He knows his own phone can give away his location and can even be used as a microphone by the police, who have the ability to remotely activate the phone without him knowing it — which is why he discards the cards each time he makes a call to Enver.

The phone rings and is answered.

‘What is it?' says Enver.

‘I've found the boy.'

There is silence for a moment.

‘Do you have him?'

‘No. But I will soon.'

‘What about the old man?'

‘I don't see an old man.'

‘Who is the boy with? The police?'

‘No. He's with local vacationers. Hunters. Maybe fishermen.'

‘Take the boy.'

‘Should I bring him to the house?'

Enver sighs slightly into the phone. If only this call had come last night, the answer would have been no. Enver, Gjon, and Burim could have returned to their vehicles and met the Black at a random location, switched cars, and Enver could have made for the Swedish border on an unguarded side-road where Norwegian black marketeers traffic alcohol and cigarettes.

But the call did not take place last night. It is taking place now.

‘Yes. Matters have already been set in motion. Bring him here after you finish your business. And bring the weapons. We won't stay long.'

There are five of them, plus the boy. All are in their late twenties, early thirties. He watches them leave the mini-market with groceries. Each carries a bag, and the boy walks slightly behind them. He is an odd one, this son of Enver's. It was known that he lived with his mother and that the mother was odd — a fast-talking liar who, it was said, turned some tricks to pay the rent. Whatever she did, though, she did for her son. It is unclear why Enver upset the routine and decided to take the boy from Norway. But the reasons people do what they do is no longer a question that haunts the Black.

So here he is, silently following a group of men about whom he has no information. Why would the boy be here without the old man? He can think of no reason. The old man must be inside, buying something, or urinating. It is what old men do. He decides to wait for the pensioner to emerge.

But he does not emerge. Instead, all five men and the boy get into the pick-up truck and start it up. Then pull off.

The Black follows the truck out of the Esso station and on to a subsidiary road. It is paved and quiet. There are a few cars on the road, but not enough to protect them. The odds are in his favour.

The forest is thinner here on the outskirts of town. Brown and yellow grasses edge the road, and poke through old potholes and cracks. The weather is fine. The surface of the road is dry.

The Black puts the small car into third, and overtakes the truck. The driver with the lined face looks at him as the two cars ride parallel for just a moment. Then the moment passes. When the Fiat is a full five car-lengths in front of the pick-up, the Black slams on the breaks and spins out the back of the car with the hand brake.

The pick-up truck slams on its breaks and screeches to a halt just before hitting the Fiat. The Black opens his door quickly and is already out of the car. The driver's side faces away from the pick-up. He stands up — looking over the silver, rusted roof of the old Italian car. Then, in a smooth gesture so as not to waste time, he swings the Winchester into play, chambers a round by flicking the lever down forty-five degrees, and takes aim at the driver.

The boy is not in the cabin. He is sitting in the flatbed of the truck with three men. The Black watched them as he drove behind.