Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

'I beg of you, do not do or say anything you might come to regret, Helena. What you have told me changes nothing. The deal remains the same.'

'No!' Helena stood up so quickly that her chair toppled over and now she smacked the letter she had been kneading in her hand on to the desk.

'See for yourself! You no longer have any power over me. Or Uriah.'

Brockhard glanced at the letter. The opened brown envelope didn't mean a thing to him. He took out the letter, put on his glasses and began to read.

Waffen-SS

Berlin, 22 June

We have received a request from the Chief of Norwegian Police, Jonas Lie, to hand you over with immediate effect to the police in Oslo for further service. Since you are a Norwegian citizen, we see no reason not to comply. This order therefore countermands your previous orders to join the Wehrmacht. You will be advised of details regarding the meeting point and timing by the Norwegian police authorities.

Heinrich Himmler

Oberkommandierender der Schutzstaffel (SS)

Brockhard had to look at the signature twice. Heinrich Himmler in person! Then he held up the letter to the light.

'You can check it if you like, but I assure you it is genuine,' Helena said.

Through the open window she could hear birds singing in the garden. Brockhard cleared his throat twice before speaking.

'So you wrote a letter to the Chief of Police in Norway?’

‘Uriah wrote to him. I simply posted it.'

'You posted it?'

'Yes. Or no, actually. I telegraphed it.'

'A whole application? That must have cost -'

'It was urgent.'

'Heinrich Himmler…' he said, more to himself than to her.

'I'm sorry, Christopher.'

Again the dry laugh. 'Are you? Haven't you accomplished exactly what you wanted, Helena?'

She forced a friendly smile.

'I have a favour to ask of you, Christopher.'

'Oh?'

'Uriah wants me to go with him to Norway. I need a recommendation from the hospital to be able to apply for a travel permit.'

'And now you're afraid I'll put a spoke in your wheel?'

'Your father is on the governing board.'

'Yes, I could create problems for you.' He rubbed his chin. The intense stare had fixed itself on to a point on her forehead.

'Whatever happens, Christopher, you can't stop us. Uriah and I love each other. Do you understand?'

'Why should I do a favour for a soldier's whore?'

Helena's mouth hung open. Even from someone she despised, someone who was clearly acting in passion, the word stung like a slap. But before she managed to answer, Brockhard's face had crumpled as if he were the one to have been hit.

'Forgive me, Helena. I… damn!' He abruptly turned his back on her. Helena wanted to get up and leave, but she couldn't find the words to liberate herself. His voice was strained as he added: I didn't mean to hurt you, Helena.'

'Christopher…'

'You don't understand. I'm not saying this out of arrogance, but I have qualities which in time I know you would grow to appreciate. I may have gone too far, but remember that I always acted with your best interests at heart.'

She stared at his back. The doctor's coat was a size too big for his narrow, sloping shoulders. She was reminded of the Christopher she had known as a child. He'd had delicate black curls and a real suit even though he was only twelve. One summer she had even been in love with him. Hadn't she?

He released a long, trembling breath. She took a pace towards him, then changed her mind. Why should she feel sympathy for this man? Yes, she knew why. Because her own heart was overflowing with happiness although she had done little to come by it. Yet Christopher Brockhard, who tried every day of his life to gain happiness, would always be a lonely man.

'Christopher, I have to go now.'

'Yes, of course. You have to do what you have to do, Helena.'

She stood up and walked to the door.

'And I have to do what I have to do,' he said.

Police HQ. 24 February 2000.

Wright swore. He had tried all the knobs on the overhead projector to focus the picture, without any luck. Someone coughed.

'I think perhaps the picture itself is unclear, Lieutenant. It's not the projector, I mean.'

'Well, at any rate, this is Andreas Hochner,' Wright said, shielding his eyes with his hand so that he could see those present. The room had no windows, so when, as now, the lights were switched off it was pitch black. According to what Wright had been told, it was bug-proof too, whatever that meant.

Besides himself, Andreas Wright, a lieutenant in the Military Intelligence Service, there were only three others present: Major Bard Ovesen from Military Intelligence, Harry Hole, the new man from POT, and Kurt Meirik, the head of POT. It was Hole who had faxed him the name of the arms dealer in Johannesburg. And had nagged him for information every day since. There was no doubt that a great number of people in POT seemed to think that Military Intelligence was merely a subsection of POT, but they obviously hadn't read the regulations, where it stated that they were equally ranked organisations working in partnership. But Wright had. So, in the end he had explained to the new man that low priority cases had to wait. Half an hour later Meirik had rung to say that this case was top priority. Why couldn't they have said that at the outset?

The blurred black and white image on the screen showed a man leaving a restaurant; it seemed to have been taken from a car window. The man had a broad, coarse face with dark eyes and a large, ill-defined nose with a thick, black, droopy moustache beneath.

'Andreas Hochner, born in 1954 in Zimbabwe, German parents,' Wright read from the print-outs he had brought with him. 'Ex-mercenary in the Congo and South Africa, probably involved with arms smuggling since the mid-eighties. At nineteen he was one of seven men accused of murdering a black boy in Kinshasa, but was acquitted for lack of evidence. Married and divorced twice. His employer in Johannesburg is suspected of being behind the smuggling of anti-air missiles to Syria and the purchase of chemical weapons from Iraq. Alleged to have supplied special rifles to Karadzic during the Bosnian war and to have trained snipers during the siege of Sarajevo. The last has not as yet been confirmed.'

'Please skip the details,' Meirik said, glancing at his watch. It was always slow, but there was a wonderful inscription from the Military High Command on the back.

'Alright,' Wright said, flicking through the rest of the papers. 'Yes, here. Andreas Hochner was one of four held during a raid on an arms dealer in Johannesburg in December. On that occasion a coded order list was found. One of the ordered items was a Marklin rifle, bound for Oslo. And a date: 21 December. That's all'

There was silence, only the whirring of the overhead-projector fan could be heard. Someone in the dark coughed. It sounded like Bard Ovesen. Wright shaded his eyes.

'How can we be sure that Hochner is the key person in our case?' Ovesen asked.

Harry Hole's voice came out of the dark.

I talked to an Inspector Isaiah Burne in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. He was able to tell me that after the arrests they searched the flats of those involved and found an interesting passport in Hochner's. The photo was of himself, but the name was completely different.'

'An arms dealer with a false name is not exactly… dynamite,' Ovesen said.

'I was thinking more of one of the stamps they found in it. Oslo, Norway, 10 December.'

'So he's been to Oslo,' Meirik said. 'There's a Norwegian on the company's list of customers, and we've found spent cartridges from this super-rifle. So Andreas Hochner came to Norway and we can assume a deal went ahead. But who is the Norwegian on the list?'