‘I’m basing it on what I – or I should say Katrine Bratt – found out about what Juliana Verni has been doing recently.’

Hagen started to make a move towards the man at the cash desk on a podium by the right-hand wall. ‘Verni’s dead, Harry.’

‘Do dead people catch flights? Turns out Juliana Verni – or let’s say a woman with curly brick-red hair – has bought a plane ticket from Zurich to the end of the world.’

‘The end of the world?’

‘Goma, the Congo. Early tomorrow.’

‘Then they will arrest her when they discover she has a passport belonging to a person who has been dead for more than two months.’

‘I checked with ICAO. They say it can take up to a year before the passport number of a deceased person is crossed off the books. Which means someone may have travelled to the Congo on Odd Utmo’s passport, too. However, we have no cooperation agreement with the Congo. And it’s hardly an insurmountable problem buying your way out of prison.’

Hagen let the cashier tot up his goods while he massaged his temples in an attempt to pre-empt the inevitable headache. ‘So go and find her in Zurich. Send the Swiss police to the airport.’

‘We’ve got her under surveillance. Lene Galtung will lead us to Tony Leike, boss.’

‘She’ll lead us to perdition, Harry.’ Hagen paid, took his items and marched out of the shop into rainy, wind-blown Gronlandsleiret where people rushed past with upturned collars and downcast faces.

‘You don’t understand. Bratt managed to find out that two days ago Lene Galtung emptied her account in Zurich. Two million euros. Not a staggering sum and definitely not enough to finance a whole mining project. But enough to bridge a critical phase.’

‘Idle speculation.’

‘What the hell else is she going to do with two million euros in cash? Come on, boss, this is the only chance we’ll get.’ Harry stepped up the pace to stay level with Hagen. ‘In the Congo you don’t find people who don’t want to be found. The fucking country is as big as Western Europe and consists largely of forest no white man has ever seen. Go for it now. Leike will haunt your dreams, boss.’

‘I don’t have nightmares like you do, Harry.’

‘Have you told the next of kin how well you sleep at night, boss?’

Gunnar Hagen came to an abrupt halt.

‘Sorry, boss,’ Harry said. ‘That was below the belt.’

‘It was. And actually I don’t know why you’re hassling me for my permission. You’ve never considered it important before.’

‘Thought it would be nice for you to have the feeling you’re the man in charge, boss.’

Hagen fired a warning shot across Harry’s bows. Harry shrugged. ‘Let me do this, boss. Afterwards you can give me the boot for refusing to obey orders. I’ll take all the flak, it’s OK by me.’

‘Is it OK?’

‘I’m going to resign after this anyway.’

Hagen eyed Harry. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Go.’ Then he set off again.

Harry caught up with him. ‘Fine?’

‘Yes. Actually it was fine from the very beginning.’

‘Oh? Why didn’t you say so before then?’

‘Thought it would be nice to have the feeling I was the man in charge.’

PART NINE

83

The End of the World

She dreamed she was standing before a closed door and heard a cold, lone bird’s cry from the forest, and it sounded so peculiar because the sun was shining and it was hot. She opened the door…

She woke up with her head on Harry’s shoulder and dried saliva in the corners of her mouth. The captain’s voice announced they were about to land in Goma.

She looked out of the window. A grey stripe in the east presaged the arrival of a new day. It was twelve hours since they had left Oslo. In a few hours the Zurich flight with Juliana Verni on the passenger list would land.

‘I’m wondering why Hagen thought it was alright to shadow Lene like this,’ Harry said.

‘He probably valued your cogent arguments,’ Kaja yawned.

‘Mm. He seemed a bit too relaxed. I reckon he’s got something up his sleeve. There’s some guarantee he’s got they won’t bollock him for this.’

‘He might have something on someone in the Ministry of Justice,’ Kaja said.

‘Mm. Or on Bellman. Perhaps he knows you and Bellman were having a relationship?’

‘Doubt it,’ Kaja said, peering into the dark. ‘There are hardly any lights here.’

‘Looks like a power cut,’ Harry said. ‘The airport must have its own generator.’

‘Light over there,’ she said, pointing to a red shimmer north of the town. ‘What’s that?’

‘Nyiragongo,’ Harry said. ‘It’s the lava lighting up the sky.’

‘Is that right?’ she said, pressing her nose against the window.

Harry drank his glass of water. ‘Shall we go through the plan one more time?’

She nodded and straightened her seat back.

‘You stay in the arrivals hall and keep an eye on the landing times. Make sure everything is going to plan. In the meantime I’ll go shopping. It’s only fifteen minutes to the centre, so I’ll be back in plenty of time before Lene’s plane lands. You watch, see if anyone is there to collect her, and stay on her tail. As Lene knows my face I’ll be outside in a taxi waiting for you. And should anything untoward happen, you ring me at once. OK?’

‘OK. And you’re sure she’ll stop over in Goma?’

‘I’m not sure of anything at all. There are only two hotels in Goma that are still functional, and according to Katrine there’s nothing booked, neither in Verni’s name, nor in Galtung’s. But the guerrillas control the road to the west and north, and the closest town south is an eight-mile drive.’

‘Do you really believe the only reason Tony has brought Lene here is to milk her for money?’

‘According to Jens Rath, the project is at a critical stage. Can you see any other reason?’

Kaja shrugged. ‘What if even a killer is capable of loving someone so much that he simply wants to be with her? Is that so inconceivable?’

Harry nodded. As if to say ‘yes, you have a point’, or ‘yes, it is inconceivable’.

There was a humming and a clicking, like a camera in slow motion, as the wheels were lowered.

Kaja stared out of the window.

‘And I don’t like the shopping, Harry. Why the weapons?’

‘Leike is violent.’

‘And I don’t like travelling as an undercover cop. I know we can’t smuggle our own weapons into the Congo, but couldn’t we have asked the Congolese police for assistance with the arrest?’

‘As I said, we have no extradition agreement. And it’s not improbable that a financier like Leike has local police in his pay who would have warned him.’

‘Conspiracy theory.’

‘Yep. And simple mathematics. A policeman’s wage in the Congo is not enough to feed a family. Relax, Van Boorst has a wonderful little ironmongery and he’s professional enough to keep his mouth shut.’

The wheels emitted a scream as they hit the landing strip.

Kaja squinted out of the window. ‘Why are there so many soldiers here?’

‘UN flying in reinforcements. The guerrillas have advanced in the last few days.’

‘What guerrillas?’

‘Hutu guerrillas, Tutsi guerrillas, Mai Mai guerrillas. Who knows?’

‘Harry?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s get this job done quickly and go home.’

He nodded.

It had already grown lighter when Harry walked along the line of taxi drivers outside. He exchanged a few words with each and every one until he found someone who could speak good English. Excellent English, in fact. He was a small man with alert eyes, grey hair and thick blood vessels above the temples and sides of his high, shiny forehead. His English was definitely original, a kind of stilted Oxford variant with a broad Congolese accent. Harry explained to him that he would hire him for the whole day, they quickly agreed a price and exchanged handshakes, a third of the agreed sum in dollars, and names, Harry and Dr Duigame.