A copy. So Norwegian. “Show me.”
He edged past me as though terrified I might rip his guts from his belly with my bare hands. He pulled open a drawer under the counter and extracted a sheet of paper. He checked it carefully. What he saw gave him confidence; he blinked but did not shake as he handed it over.
It was written in Norwegian. I crumpled it slowly in my fist. Rolf stepped back. Stupid. I was so stupid. I should never have let her go. So many mistakes. I fought to keep my voice level. “Did you speak to her before she checked out?”
He shook his head. Once started, he couldn’t seem to stop. “No. But don’t you see,” he pleaded, “it was after my shift. After my shift!”
“Give me the phone book.” I looked up Olsen Glass. Dialed. After seven rings a cheery recorded voice told me to call again tomorrow and to have a happy National Day.
When I slid into the car, the phone was still hanging from the counter, the two men standing like figures from a tableau.
Ten minutes to find Sampo.
It was a modern warehouse building. Sampo opened a loading bay and motioned the Volvo inside. He was compact and brown and much younger than I had expected. A man and a woman emerged from the concrete corners.
“Your army stands ready to serve,” Sampo said. He spared me the ironic salute. From the bench that ran around half the bay, he picked up something wrapped in dirty cloth and handed it to me. I unwrapped it. A massive old Lahti, nine millimeter. Full clip. “It’s old. Unregistered.” He held out his other hand. It clinked. “Extra rounds but no extra clip.” I dropped them in my pocket, tossed the Lahti onto the front seat of the Volvo, and took Julia’s passport from the glove compartment.
“This woman is Julia Lyons-Bennet.” Unsmiling, hair pulled back. Beautiful. “She was registered at the Bristol Hotel. She has an appointment with the board, or some members of the board, of Olsen Glass this morning at ten o’clock. It’s an informal meeting, and this is National Day, so it may not be at the Olsen building.” They passed the passport around. “There are two men who want to kill her. You will stop them. Their names are Ginger and McCall.” I gave their descriptions. “Find them. When you find them, get information on who sent them, then kill them. Protect this woman. That is your first priority. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Sampo mused. “And we don’t even know where to begin.”
“You’re not a fool. Check the Olsen Glass building. Find out who is on the board, find out where they live and check there. Find the woman. You have my phone number. Keep me informed.”
I was going to find Ginger and McCall.
In the bathroom of the Rainbow Hotek Stefan I flexed my face a few times and studied it in the mirror. A slightly nervous and rather young woman looked back. Good.
At the reception desk I smiled shyly. “Hello?”
Answering smile. “How can I help you?”
“Well, it’s…it’s silly, really,” I said in a rush, looking over my shoulder, “but, you know the Internet? I’m expecting to meet…well, to meet a man. He’s called Ginger. At least that’s what he tells me. He’s from America. We talked such a lot online. He says he’s young and unmarried and has ginger hair and, I don’t know, I said last week we could meet here this morning. ‘On National Day,’ I said. Only now, now that it’s the day…”
“You think you might have been a bit hasty.” She was only in her early twenties, but she was stern, playing the older and wiser woman of the world.
I nodded, shamefaced. “I thought maybe you could tell me if he’s here. Then I could get a look at him first, before I introduce myself. Just in case.”
“Much more sensible,” she said approvingly, and opened up the guest register screen.
“He was supposed to come here with his business partner, a man called McCall,” I said helpfully.
She ran down the names. “No. No, I don’t see anyone of that name.”
“Have you been on duty all week?”
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t seen a thin man with red hair?”
“No.”
I let my face fall.
“Perhaps it’s for the best.”
“I suppose so. Well, thank you.”
On to the Majorstuen, on Bogstadsveien. This time the desk clerk was an older woman who told me bluntly I was a fool and if I knew what was good for me I’d go home to my parents and forget this foolish nonsense. But she did tell me there was no one called McCall and no thin young man with ginger hair. When I left I realized how close I was to Vigeland Park and for one wild moment I thought: Julia will be in the sculpture park. But she wouldn’t be. She would be meeting with Edvard Borlaug and one or more members of the board. Somewhere. It was Sampo’s job to follow that trail.
The phone in my pocket remained obstinately silent. I pulled it out and called information, called four different Borlaugs before I heard Edvard’s brisk voice telling me to leave a message. “Edvard, it’s Aud. I need to talk to Julia. If you know where she is, call me. Immediately. It’s very important. You have the number.”
I had a sudden vision of Edvard lying on the carpeted living room floor, neck broken, while blood leaked from his eyes and my voice echoed from his machine. Perhaps Julia was lying next to him….
I called information again, this time gave them Edvard’s name and number and got his address in exchange. I called Sampo. “Send one of your people to this address. Break in if necessary. Make sure she’s not there. Check any schedules or calendars or address books.” It was ten-thirty. How long would the meeting last? “If you haven’t heard from me by eleven-thirty, put someone on E16, just past Nordehov.” She might come to it via some scenic route, but it would have to be very circuitous to join the highway north of Nordehov. “It’s a dark blue Audi.” I gave him the licence plate number.
This was all wrong. We were in too many places, like four people standing in the corners of a vast field full of horses with our hands spread. Too many gaps.
The second syrette of morphine was wearing off.
On to another hotel. McCall and Ginger had to be staying somewhere.
After I had exhausted the least expensive places, I started in on the moderately priced. Time was running out and the streets were beginning to fill with holiday crowds.
At the Continental on Stortingsgaten I gave the doorman two hundred Nkr to leave my car right by the entrance. The desk clerk was a young man, so this time when I gave my story I was a slightly older woman who had seen just a bit too much of the world and hadn’t liked the way it had treated her.
“Why, yes,” the young man behind the counter said. “They checked in this morning. I remember. They were here very early. They seemed tired. They were most insistent that they be given a room immediately. I thought they’d sleep. They certainly looked as though they needed it, but”—tapping of keys, nod of head at screen—“all they seemed to do was make a lot of phone calls.”
“Are they still here?”
“Oh, no. They left about twenty minutes ago.”
I beckoned over the doorman. “The two men who left here twenty minutes ago, what were they driving?”
“Dark green Toyota 4Runner.”
I nodded my thanks and he resumed his post by the door.
The only other person in the lobby was a fifty-year-old woman sitting on a couch with her eyes closed. I slid a hundred-Nkr note over the counter towards the clerk. “Can I see who they called?”
He pocketed the money and turned the screen slightly. Olsen Glass at 8:08. Edvard Borlaug at 8:09. That call had lasted ten minutes, too long for a message. What had Borlaug told them? Then information, followed by a local number I didn’t recognize. I tapped the number into my own phone, disconnected when the machine told me I had reached a sporting goods shop that was closed for the day. Short of ammunition? If so, they would stay short. Everything was shut on National Day.