The Redbreast Read Online Free PDF Page A

turned to the woman with the high cheekbones who mouthed the name.
    ‘Oh, yes, William McKinley. In . . .’
    ‘1901,’ Brandhaug said with a warm smile and a glance at his watch.
    ‘Exactly. But there have been a great many more attempts over the years. Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan were all targets of serious attacks while they were in office.’
    Brandhaug cleared his throat: ‘You’re forgetting that the present incumbent was shot at a few years ago. Or at least his house was.’
    ‘That’s true. But we don’t include that type of incident as there would be too many. I doubt that any American president over the last twenty years has completed his term of office without at least ten attempts on his life being uncovered and the perpetrator arrested. The media were none the wiser.’
    ‘Why not?’
    Crime Squad chief Bjarne Møller imagined he had only thought the question and was as surprised as the others when he heard his own voice. He swallowed when he noticed the heads turning and tried to keep his eyes on Meirik, but couldn’t help them wandering in Brandhaug’s direction. The Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs winked reassuringly.
    ‘Well, as you know, it’s usual to keep attempted assassinations under wraps,’ Meirik said, taking off his glasses. They looked like the glasses which go darker as you go into the sun, worn by Horst Tappert in the Oberinspektor Derrick role, very popular with German mail-order catalogues.
    ‘Attempted assassinations have proved to be at least as contagious as suicides. And besides, we in the field don’t want to reveal our working practices.’
    ‘What plans have been made regarding surveillance?’ the Under Secretary of State asked.
    The woman with the cheekbones passed Meirik a sheet and he put on his glasses again and read it.
    ‘Eight men from the Secret Service are coming on Thursday. We will then start going through the hotels and the route, vet all those who will come into contact with the President and train the Norwegian police officers we’re going to deploy. We’ll need to call in units from Romerike, Asker and Bærum.’
    ‘And they will be used to what end?’ Brandhaug asked.
    ‘Mainly observation duties. Around the American embassy, the hotel where the entourage will be staying, the car park —’
    ‘In short, all the places where the President isn’t.’
    ‘POT will take care of that. With the American Secret Service.’
    ‘I thought you didn’t like doing surveillance jobs, Kurt?’ Brandhaug said with a smirk.
    The memory caused Kurt Meirik to grimace. During the Mining Conference in Oslo in 1998, POT had refused to offer surveillance on the basis of their own threat assessment. They concluded it was ‘medium to low security risk’. On the second day of the conference the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration drew the conference’s attention to the fact that one of the Norwegian drivers POT had cleared for the Croat delegation was a Bosnian Muslim. He had come to Norway in the 1970s and had Norwegian citizenship for many years. But in 1993 both his parents and four members of his family had been butchered by Croats at Mostar, in Bosnia Herzegovina. When the man’s flat was searched they had found two hand-grenades and a suicide letter. Of course, the press had never got a sniff of it, but the repercussions reached government level, and Kurt Meirik’s career had hung in the balance until Bernt Brandhaug himself had intervened. The matter had been hushed up after the police inspector in charge of the security clearances had resigned. Brandhaug couldn’t remember the man’s name, but ever since then his working relations with Meirik had been excellent.
    ‘Bjørn!’ Brandhaug exclaimed, clapping his hands together. ‘Now we’re all keen to hear what it was you wanted to tell us. Come on!’
    Brandhaug scanned the room, swiftly moving past Meirik’s assistant, but not so swiftly that he didn’t notice her looking at him.