The heavy plastic case on wheels gouged deep grooves in the gravel on its way to the boat. At the gangway, the policeman see-sawed it on board. The rifle was still only half covered, and Monica found another plastic bag in the wheelhouse to cover the stock.
The engine spluttered and the boat put out from the landing stage. Everyone had been counted and registered, all the luggage had been checked; well, except for the wheeled case. It had not occurred to anybody to check the representative of law and order.
Everything on board was wet after the rain and there was nowhere to sit or lean. The green paint of the deck had a sleek, slippery sheen to it. Raindrops massed on the ship’s rail. It had turned a little brighter and the heavy rain had stopped; the sky was now more white than grey. It offered some prospect of a clear evening.
Monica wanted to talk. About the bomb, about what the police were doing and the officer’s specific tasks. The uniformed man was taciturn, giving short, brusque answers while he drank thirstily from a CamelBak, a little backpack with a drinking tube. He seemed irritable and did not look at the kids next to him on the deck. The waterproof case stood at his side, black and heavy.
He was a solid, broad-shouldered figure; he looked very tense. Feeling the seriousness of the moment, the young guard left on the landing stage had thought.
The crossing only took a few minutes. As the boat came alongside the jetty on Utøya, just after a quarter past five, the crewman threw the hawser, jumped out and tied up.
The skipper emerged from the wheelhouse to help with the case. Bomb-detection gear, he thought. The policeman asked if someone could drive it up to the main building. The captain offered to do it. He went to get the only vehicle on the island, heaved the case into its boot and drove off to the admin building a little way up the steep slope.
The youngsters who had been on the boat straggled up the gravel path with their rucksacks. Down at the jetty, the policeman was left with Monica. One of the guards on the island, a police officer called Trond Berntsen, came and shook the new arrival by the hand.
‘Hello,’ was the terse response of the man disguised as a policeman, who introduced himself as Martin Nilsen. That was the name of a friend of his, a name he ought to remember.
Before long the other guard on the island, Rune Havdal, came to join them. The AUF had hired two security guards, as the teenagers rarely spent the whole night asleep and some adult supervision was necessary to settle them down at times. The guards had the daytime off, and on this particular Friday they were meant to be taking their sons to the Tusenfryd amusement park, but with rough weather forecast, they had gone the previous day instead. Their boys, aged nine and eleven, were the island’s mascots. They built tree houses and played hide-and-seek in the woods.
Trond Berntsen asked which police district the new arrival came from, and the man answered ‘PST: Police Security Service, Grønland station.’ Breivik was aware of stumbling over the police terminology, that these were codes he had not mastered. The guard continued questioning him about his assignment.
This man is the greatest threat on the island, thought Breivik. He is the one who could expose me.
He suddenly felt paralysed. His limbs felt heavy, his muscles stiffened, his nerves seemed numbed. He felt a sense of dread. He wasn’t going to pull this off.
Berntsen went over to exchange a few words with one of the Norwegian People’s Aid volunteers, a woman who had come over on the boat. ‘Odd guy,’ he said, referring to the policeman. But the woman, shaken by the bomb attack, was in a hurry to go up and join her colleagues in the camp. She merely nodded. Trond Berntsen turned back to the little group on the landing stage.
‘When are the other two arriving?’ he asked the bogus PST man.
Under his police outfit, his heart was pounding, he was sweating and his breathing was uneven.
I don’t feel remotely like doing this, was the thought running through his head as he stood there with Monica Bøsei and the guards.
‘They’ll be here later,’ he replied.
‘Do you know Jørn?’ Berntsen asked suddenly.
Breivik shrugged. It could be a trick question. There might not be a Jørn. Or perhaps Jørn was somebody that anyone who worked for the PST would be bound to know.
He had to take control of the situation or he would be done for. He pulled himself together and put an end to the interrogation by suggesting they go up to the main building. He could brief them on the bomb in Oslo there.
Berntsen gave him an appraising look and then nodded, leading the way up the grassy slope.
‘A policeman’s come over.’
Anders Kristiansen was standing in the Troms camp a little way from the others, who were sitting eating their bread and butter. He was a supervisor that Friday, equipped with a walkie-talkie and a high-visibility jacket. The news of the policeman’s arrival had come over the radio.
‘Oh good,’ said somebody, relieved.
‘The police want everyone to gather in the middle of the island,’ Anders Kristiansen went on, once the instructions had come through.
The middle of the island, where’s that? thought Mari. It was more or less exactly where they were now. In the Troms camp, at the campsite.
So they stayed where they were.
‘Now or never. It’s now or never.’
The Commander of the Norwegian anti-communist resistance movement took a few steps up the slope behind Berntsen. On his feet he wore the black army boots. The spurs on the heels were hidden in the wet grass.
He had a firm grip on Gungnir, which was still covered by the black bin liner. Mjølnir was in the holster on his thigh.
His body was fighting against it, his muscles were twitching. He felt he would never be able to go through with it. A hundred voices in his head were screaming: Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it!
I must either let myself be caught now or carry through what I have planned, he thought as he reached the point where the hill grew steeper.
He forced his right hand down to his thigh, unfastened the holster, took hold of the pistol.
There was a bullet waiting in the chamber, seventeen more were ready in the magazine.
The case and the three thousand cartridges inside had been driven to the main building. It was behind the building, closed and locked. The key was in his pocket.
There were three people ahead of him, and two behind. If they started suspecting anything, they could overpower him.
So. Now. He slowly raised the Glock and pointed it at Berntsen.
‘No!’ cried Monica. ‘You mustn’t point it at him like that!’
He fired at the guard’s head. Monica Bøsei turned but there was no time to run. A bullet hit her at close range.
The two were lying close together, where they had fallen. The killer straddled Berntsen and shot him twice more in the head, then fired two more shots at Monica. She lay face-down in the damp, newly mown grass.
The boat captain, who had parked the car and left the case in the boot, came round the corner of the building as Berntsen fell. Seconds later his eyes were fixed on the spot where his beloved had slumped to the ground.
He ran up over the hill, expecting to be shot in the back. ‘Run for your lives!’ he shouted to everyone he met.
Screams filled the air.
The killer was breathing rapidly.
From now on, everything would be easy.
His eyes, his body, his brain, his hand, they were all coordinated.
The other guard, Rune Havdal, was heading for the clump of trees. He was the next to be gunned down, first with a bullet in his back to incapacitate him, then murdered with a shot to the head.