Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

He checked his watch again. Where the hell was he?

Bernt Brandhaug twirled the glass in his hand and checked his watch again. Where the hell was she?

They had arranged to meet at 7.30 and now it was getting on for 7.45. He downed the rest of his drink and poured himself another from the bottle of whisky room service had brought up: Jameson. The only good thing ever to come out of Ireland. He poured himself another.' It had been one hell of a day. The headlines in Dagbladet had meant that the telephone never stopped ringing. He had received a fair amount of support, but in the end he had called the news editor at Dagbladet, an old friend from university, and made it clear that he had been misquoted. As a quid pro quo he had promised them inside information about the Foreign Minister's major blunder at the European Finance Committee meeting. The editor had asked for some time to think. After half an hour he rang back. It seemed that this Natasja was new to the paper and she had admitted that she might have misunderstood Brandhaug. They wouldn't issue a disclaimer, but they wouldn't follow up the matter either. The damage limitation exercise had been successful.

Brandhaug took a large gulp, rolled the whisky around his mouth and tasted the rough yet smooth aroma deep down in the nasal channel. He looked around him. How many nights had he spent here? How many times had he woken up in the slightly too soft king-size bed with a bit of a headache after one drink too many? How many times had he asked the woman by his side-if she was still there-to take the lift to the breakfast lounge on the first floor and walk down the stairs to the reception, so that it looked as if she was coming from a breakfast meeting, and not from one of the bedrooms. Just to be on the safe side.

He poured himself another drink.

It would be different with Rakel. He wouldn't send her down to the breakfast lounge.

There was a light knock at the door. He stood up, took a last look at the exclusive bedspread of yellow and gold, sensed a tiny rush of fear, which he instantly brushed aside, and covered the four strides to the door. He inspected himself in the hall mirror, slid his tongue across his white front teeth, moistened a finger and ran it along his eyebrows and opened the door.

She was leaning against the wall with her coat unbuttoned. She was wearing a red woollen dress underneath. He had asked her to wear something red. Her eyelids were heavy and she gave him a wry smirk. Brandhaug was surprised-he had never seen her looking like this before. She must have been drinking or taking some kind of pills-her eyes studied him apathetically and he hardly recognised her voice when she mumbled something incoherent about almost not finding the place. He took her arm but she wriggled free, so he guided her into the room with his hand against the small of her back. She slumped down on to the sofa.

'A drink?' he asked.

'Yes, please,' she said, her speech slurred. 'Or would you rather I stripped off immediately?'

Brandhaug poured her a glass without answering. He knew what she was playing at. But if she thought she could ruin his pleasure by assuming the role of soiled goods, she was mistaken. Alright, he might have preferred it if she had chosen the role his conquests in the Foreign Department went for-the innocent girl falling for her boss's irresistible charm and his self-assured masculine sensuality. But the most important thing was that she succumbed to his desires. He was too old to believe in humanity's romantic motives. The only thing that separated them was what they were both after: power, career or custody of a son.

It had never bothered him that women were dazzled by his position as head. After all, he was too. He was Bernt Brandhaug, the Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office. For Christ's sake, he had spent all his life becoming the Under Secretary. If Rakel wanted to dope herself up and present herself as a whore, that didn't change the facts.

'I apologise, but I have to have you,' he said, dropping two ice cubes in her drink. 'When you get to know me, you'll understand all this better. But let me give you a kind of first lesson anyhow, an idea of what makes me tick.'

He passed her the glass.

'Some men crawl through life with their noses to the ground and are content with the scraps. The rest of us rise up on two legs, walk to the table and take our rightful places. We are in the minority because our lifestyle demands of us that occasionally we have to be brutal, and this brutality requires strength. We have to extricate ourselves from our social democratic, egalitarian upbringing. If it is a choice between that and crawling, I prefer to break with a short-sighted moralism which is not capable of placing individual actions in context. And it's my belief that, deep down, you will come to respect me for that.'

She didn't answer; she just knocked back the drink.

'Hole didn't pose any threat for you,' she said. 'He and I are only good friends.'

'I think you're lying,' he said, reluctantly filling the glass she proffered. 'And I have to have you to myself. Don't misunderstand me. When I made it a condition that you immediately broke all contact with Hole, it had less to do with jealousy and more to do with a principle of purity. Nevertheless, a few weeks in Sweden, or wherever it is Meirik sent him, will do him no harm.'

Brandhaug chuckled.

'Why are you looking at me like that, Rakel? It is not as if I were King David and Hole… what was his name again, the one King David made the generals send to the front lines?''

'Uriah,' she mumbled.

'Exactly. He died, didn't he?'

'Otherwise it wouldn't have been much of a story,' she said into her glass.

'Fine. But nobody is going to die here. And if I'm not much mistaken, King David and Bathsheba lived quite happily ever after, didn't they?'

Brandhaug took a seat beside her on the sofa and raised her chin with his finger.

'Tell me, Rakel, how come you know so many Bible stories?'

'A good upbringing,' she said, tearing herself away and pulling her dress over her head.

He swallowed as he gazed at her. She was attractive. She was wearing white underwear. He had specifically asked her to wear white underwear. It brought out the golden glow of her skin. You couldn't tell that she had given birth. But the fact that she had, the fact that she was demonstrably fertile and the fact that she had nourished a child at her breast made her even more attractive in Bernt Brandhaug's eyes. She was perfect.

'We aren't in any hurry,' he said, resting a hand on her knee. Her face did not betray any emotion, but he felt her flinch. 'Do whatever you like,' she said, shrugging her shoulders. 'Would you like to see the letter first?'

He inclined his head in the direction of the brown envelope embossed with the Russian embassy's seal, lying in the middle of the table. Ambassador Vladimir Aleksandrov's brief letter to Rakel Fauke informed her that the Russian authorities requested her to ignore the previous summons to the custody hearing on behalf of Oleg Fauke-Gosev. The whole matter was to be postponed indefinitely on account of the backlog of cases at the law courts. It had not been easy. Brandhaug had been obliged to remind the Russian ambassador of a couple of favours he owed him. And, in addition, to offer further favours. A couple of them were on the very margins of what was permissible for a Norwegian Foreign Office head.

I trust you,' she said. 'Can we get this over with?'

She hardly blinked as his palm hit her cheek, but her head danced as if attached to a rag doll.

Brandhaug rubbed his hand while thoughtfully contemplating her.

'You're not stupid, Rakel,' he said. 'So I assume you know that this is only a provisional arrangement. There are six months to wait before the case becomes time-barred. A new summons could come at any moment; all it takes is a phone call from me.'