Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

The dull thud of a distant explosion broke the silence, followed by the chatter of machine guns.

'Opposition's stiffening,' Gudbrand said, more as a question than a statement.

'Yes,' Edvard said. 'It's this damned mild weather. Our supplies lorries are getting stuck in the mud.’

‘Will we have to retreat?'

Edvard hunched his shoulders. 'A few kilometres perhaps. But we'll be back.'

Gudbrand shielded his eyes with his hand and looked towards the south. He had no desire to come back. He wanted to return home and see if there was still a life for him there.

'Have you seen the Norwegian road sign at the crossing outside the field hospital, the one with the sun cross?' he asked. 'With one arm pointing down the road to the east, showing: Leningrad five kilometres?'

Edvard nodded.

'Do you remember what's on the arm pointing west?’

‘Oslo,' Edvard said. '2,611 kilometres.’

‘It's a long way.’

‘Yes, it is a long way.'

Dale had allowed Edvard to keep the rifle and sat on the ground with his hands buried in the snow in front of him. His head hung like a snapped dandelion between his narrow shoulders. They heard another explosion, closer this time.

'Thank you very much for -'

'Not at all,' Gudbrand said quickly.

I saw Olaf Lindvig in the hospital,' Edvard said. He didn't know why he had said that. Maybe because Gudbrand was the only person in the section, apart from Dale, who had been there as long as he had.

'Was he…?'

'Just a minor wound, I believe. I saw his white uniform.'

'He's a good man, I hear.'

'Yes, we have many good men.'

They stood facing each other in silence.

Edvard coughed and thrust a hand in his pocket.

'I got a couple of Russian cigarettes from the Northern Sector. If you've got a light…'

Gudbrand nodded, unbuttoned his camouflage jacket, found his matches and struck one against the sandpaper. When he looked up, the first thing he saw was Edvard's enlarged cyclops eye. It was staring over his shoulder. Then he heard the whine.

'Down!' Edvard shrieked.

The next moment they were lying on the ice and the sky burst above them with a tearing sound. Gudbrand caught a glimpse of the rudder of a Russian fighter plane flying so low over the trenches that snow whirled up from the ground beneath. Then they were gone and it was quiet again.

'Well, I'm…' Gudbrand whispered.

'Jesus Christ,' Edvard groaned, turning on to his side and smiling at Gudbrand.

'I could see the pilot. He pulled back the glass and leaned out of the cockpit. The Ivans have gone mad.' He was panting with laughter. 'This is turning into a right old day, this is.'

Gudbrand stared at the broken match he still held in his hand. Then he began to laugh too.

'Ha, ha,' Dale went, looking at the other two from where he sat in the snow at the side of the trench. 'Hee, hee.'

Gudbrand caught Edvard's eye and they both began to roar with laughter. They laughed so much they were gasping for breath and at first they didn't hear the peculiar sound, coming ever closer.

Clink… clink…

It sounded like someone patiently hitting the ice with a hoe. Clink…

Then came a sound of metal against metal and Gudbrand and Edvard turned to see Dale slowly keel over in the snow.

"What the hell -' Gudbrand started to say. 'Grenade!' screamed Edvard.

Gudbrand reacted instinctively to Edvard's scream and curled into a ball, but as he lay there he caught sight of the pin which was spinning round and round a metre away from him. A lump of metal was attached to one end. He felt his body freezing into the ice as he realised what was about to happen.

'Move away!' Edvard screamed behind him.

It was true, the Russian pilots really were throwing hand-grenades from aeroplanes. Gudbrand was on his back and tried to move away, but his arms and legs slipped on the wet ice.

'Gudbrand!'

The peculiar sound had been the hand-grenade bouncing across the ice into the bottom of the trench. It must have hit Dale right on the helmet!

'Gudbrand!'

The grenade spun round and round, bounced and danced again, and Gudbrand couldn't take his eyes off it. Four seconds from defusing to detonation, wasn't that what they had learned at Sennheim? The Russians' grenades might be different. Perhaps it was six? Or eight? Round and round the grenade whirled, like one of the big red spinning-tops his father had made him in Brooklyn. Gudbrand would spin it, and Sonny and his little brother stood watching and counting how long it kept going. 'Twenty-one, twenty-two…' Mummy called from the window on the second floor to say dinner was ready. He was to go in; Daddy would be coming home any minute. 'Just a minute,' he shouted up to her, 'the top's spinning!' But she didn't hear; she had already closed the window. Edvard wasn't shrieking any more, and all of a sudden it was quiet.

Doctor Buer's Surgery. 22 December 1999.

The old man looked at his watch. He had been sitting in the waiting room for a quarter of an hour now. He'd never had to wait in Konrad Buer's day. Konrad hadn't taken on more patients than he could manage in his schedule.

A man was sitting at the other end of the room. Dark-skinned, African. He was flicking through a weekly magazine, and the old man established that even at this distance he could read every letter on the front page. Something about the royal family. Was that what this African was sitting reading? An article about the Norwegian royal family? The idea was absurd.

The African turned the page. He had the type of moustache that went down at the ends, just like the courier the old man had met the previous night. It had been a brief meeting. The courier had arrived at the container port in a Volvo, probably a rented car. He had pulled up, the window had gone down with a hum and he had said the password: Voice of an Angel. He had had exactly the same kind of moustache. And sorrowful eyes. He had immediately said he didn't have the gun with him in the car for security reasons, but that they would drive to a place to get it. The old man had hesitated. Then he thought that if they had wanted to rob him, they would have done so at the container port. So he had got in and they had driven to the Radisson SAS hotel, of all places, in Holbergs plass. He had seen Betty Andresen behind the counter as they went through reception, but she had not looked in their direction.

The courier had counted the money in the suitcase while mumbling numbers in German. Then the old man had asked him. The courier had said that his parents came from some place in Elsass, to which the old man said, on a whim, that he had been there, to Sennheim. An impulse.

After he had read so much about the Marklin rifle on the Internet at the University Library, the weapon itself had been something of an anticlimax. It looked like a standard hunting rifle, only a little bigger. The courier had shown him how to assemble it and strip it; he called him 'Herr Uriah'. Then the old man put the dismantled rifle into a large shoulder-bag and took the lift down to reception. For a brief moment he had considered going over to Betty Andresen and asking her to order a taxi for him. Another impulse.

'Hello!'

The old man looked up.

I think we'll have to give you a hearing test as well.'

Dr Buer stood in the doorway and made an attempt at a jovial smile. He led him into the surgery. The bags under the doctor's eyes had become even bigger.

'I called your name three times.'

I forget my name, the old man reflected. I forget all my names. The old man deduced from the doctor's helping hand that he had bad news.

'Well, I've got the results of the samples we took,' he said, quickly, before he had settled into his chair. To get the bad news over and done with as fast as possible. And I'm afraid it has spread.'