One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (35 page)

Mixing powdered aluminium, microballoons and fertiliser was the worst task so far. The dust even stuck to the inside of his mask, because he had run out of filters. Once he got started he could not even take cigarette breaks. ‘I literally turn into the tin man, with a layer of aluminium dust all over me.’

Towards the middle of July he started feeling sick and dizzy, and feared
it could be the result of diesel poisoning. His work clothes had soaked up a lot of diesel. Such poisoning was not fatal, but it weakened you for a time and could lead to kidney failure. To counterbalance all the crap he had ingested these past months, he took vitamin and mineral pills with a herbal supplement that was supposed to strengthen the liver and kidneys. He felt worse and worse, and decided
to wear the protective suit while mixing the last four bags. He should have done this from the start, because it turned out to work very well, apart from the fact that his T-shirt and boxers were drenched in sweat by the time he finished.

Every day he took his dose of steroids and drank four protein shakes to build as much muscle as possible. It was important to have the physical advantage.

On Friday 15 July he went to Rena to catch the train to Oslo, where he would pick up the hire car he had ordered. There were a few people at the station waiting for the 15.03 to Hamar, where you had to change if you were going to the capital. An elderly man on his way to Elverum to fetch a computer that had been in for repair was standing by himself on the platform.

Anders went up to him and asked
if the train was expected on time. He told the man he ran a farm near by. The train arrived. Anders boarded it, and the man got on behind him. As he was passing the young man hailed him and invited him to sit with him.

Anders got straight to the point.

‘Islam is in the process of taking over Europe,’ he said. Muslims had been killing Christians throughout history. You could call it genocide.

The elderly man listened with interest. The boy was bright and well read, he thought, though their taste in reading matter clearly differed. The man pointed out that many Muslims had also been also killed in the name of religion in the Crusades. He counted as a political veteran, he said, and told the younger man about taking part in the first demonstration against the Vietnam War, in Los Angeles
in 1964.

‘So you must be a communist!’ exclaimed Anders. He was a Christian himself, he said.

The man replied that one should love one’s neighbour and follow Jesus’s example. Breivik became evasive. He was not interested in Jesus and love and caring and stuff like that, he said.

‘I earned twenty-six million kroner before I was twenty-eight,’ he said, and now he was using the money to support
people behind the scenes who would throw the Muslims out of Norway.

As the train approached Elverum station, the old man stood up to get off but Anders grabbed him and held him. The man tried to twist free but failed, and the train pulled out of the station.

The ticket collector came along and Anders released his grip. The old man hastily grabbed up his jacket and bag and followed the ticket
collector. All he told him was that that he had not got off at Elverum when he was meant to. He could get off at Løten and take the train back to Elverum, he was informed. The old man went to the exit and stood by the door for the rest of the journey to be sure of getting off in time. He was about to do so when the young man passed him a scrap of paper. On it were a name, a Hotmail address and a
telephone number.

It was several hours until the next train back, so the old man ended up taking a taxi to Elverum. There he told friends about ‘that idiot’, as he called him. ‘There was something burning him up from inside,’ he said. ‘I could hardly believe he was on the loose.’ There was indeed something about the young man that made him hard to forget; the older man wondered whether he needed
someone to talk to and rang the number. A little girl answered. He apologised and tried again. The same little girl answered. Oh well. Wrong number. Anders had actually written down his real number, but the man had read the zeros as sixes. He never tried to reach Anders at the other address he’d written down: [email protected].

Late that evening, Anders returned from Oslo in his hired
van. He removed all the Avis logos from the bodywork with a drill bit designed for taking off dealership stickers, and rubbed over the sticky patches with acetone. There was still a faint outline of the hire firm’s logo, but it would have to do. He started calculating the weight of the bomb, and whether the van would be able to carry it. The capacity of a Volkswagen Crafter was 1340 kilos, and now
he had 900 kilos of fertiliser plus 50 kilos of internal charge. He assumed his own weight to be 130 kilos including weapons, ammunition and body armour. He was also planning to take a small motorbike weighing 80 kilos. That meant he still had about a hundred kilos’ leeway.

Monday evening, 18 July: he took the last batches of picric acid and DDNP out of the oven. The bomb was ready. He packed
the explosives in the sturdy sacks he had got from China and the internal charge was in two plastic bags. When it got dark he loaded it into the van. He had cut up a mattress and used three sections to pad a cardboard box. In this box he would transport the booster and the detonator, separate from the bomb. He put in the heavy case containing the rifle, pistol, shotgun and ammunition – more than
three thousand bullets in all. Once he had satisfied himself that it all fitted and was in its proper place, he filled up both vehicles with diesel. In the morning he would strap everything down tightly.

He was ready to go.

That evening he took an extra dose of steroids.

But now he had to sleep. He was shattered. ‘At this point I should be fearful, but I am too exhausted to think much about
it,’ he wrote in the log.

All We Could Dream Of

‘Have you packed?’

The evening sun sent streaks of light across the living-room floor at Heiaveien. Simon stretched his long body and shook his head. Here on the floor was where Simon generally put out what he was taking with him when he went away. His first solo trips had been to football tournaments and track and field meetings. His parents had often accompanied him
to the Norway Cup events. His father as trainer, his mother as a contact point and extra mum for all the little boys. Tone had carried on doing her son’s packing for a long time, but then she decided they should do it together. Simon would come up with heaps of clothes which he laid out on the living-room floor: boxers in one pile, jerseys in another, shirts, trousers and socks, all in their separate
piles. Then Tone would go round the various heaps like a judge, approving or rejecting. Simon usually put out too much; he always liked to have a choice, clothes-conscious as he was. He often stopped his younger brother on his way to the door with a ‘You’re not going out in
that
, are you?’ and ordered him to change.

This late summer evening, the living-room floor was empty.

Simon’s almost nineteen,
Tone thought, and after the summer he’ll be called up for his military service, I can’t carry on sorting his things out for him. Soon he would be leaving the nest, going out into the big world. He had to learn to cope on his own.

She and Gunnar were just back from a fortnight in Turkey. It was their first holiday without the boys.

On one of their last evenings away, they had dinner at a restaurant
by the beach.

‘I’m just sitting here thinking,’ Gunnar said, ‘that if someone asked me whether there was one thing I wanted to change about my life, anything at all, I wouldn’t be able to think of a single thing.’

Tone stroked his arm and smiled. ‘Well, life has given us all we could dream of.’ They had been together for over thirty years and were now in their late forties. Ever since they met
on the dance floor that dark St Lucia night in Lavangen, they had known that this was the love of their life.

They sat there with their arms round each other. ‘If there was one little thing, right this minute,’ smiled Tone, ‘it would be that we’d brought the boys with us and they were here now.’

They laughed. Gunnar nodded.

The boys had been offered the chance of a sunshine holiday, but they
preferred to work. They both had summer jobs in the technical services department at Salangen District Council. Håvard’s was cutting the grass and undergrowth on verges and in car parks, while Simon’s was keeping the churchyard neat and tidy. He was expected to turn his hand to all sorts of odd jobs and maintenance. ‘It’s just that it’s a bit awkward sometimes, Mum,’ he said just before his parents
left for Turkey, ‘having to go round with that noisy mower when people are visiting graves and want to be left in peace.’

He usually got round it by finding something else to do for a while, like painting one of the toolsheds over by the new graves. The paint was red and he had already done three sides. He would do the fourth when he got back from Utøya.

All year he had had a part-time job as
a reporter on
Troms Folkeblad
and the summer had brought with it more assignments than ever. ‘Think I must have one of the coolest summer jobs in the whole of Troms!’ he wrote on Facebook the time they sent him to cover the Millionfisken festival, with free access to all the concerts. That day he had also been honoured with a visit from Bardu, and his friend Anders Kristiansen had gone round with
him to interview people. It was one of the best days of the whole summer. Anders was more fun than ever, inspiring people to give entertaining answers. Perhaps he wanted to be a journalist.

By the time his parents were flying home from Turkey, Simon had updated his Facebook status again: ‘Time to rush round and make sure there’s domestic harmony when Mum and Dad get home. 14 days on our own has
left its mark.’

So now the freshly mopped living-room floor was empty. It was nearly midnight and the sun hung like a ball just above the surface of the sea. Tone could hear Simon rummaging about downstairs and went down to check what he was doing. It was time the boy was in bed; he had to be up early tomorrow to catch the flight to Oslo.

She came into Simon’s room just as he was zipping up
the family’s largest suitcase.

‘Oh, have you packed your stuff in the suitcase, Simon?’

‘Yes, it’s practical. There’s room for the tent, the ground pad and my clothes, all in the same case.’

‘But it’s huge; you’ll never even get it into the tent, will you?’

Simon had borrowed a little two-person tent. He shrugged expansively and said, ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’

Gunnar came
in as well, to wish him a good trip. He expected he would still be asleep when they left the next morning. He looked at the big suitcase and shook his head.

He gave his son a goodnight hug and a few words of advice.

‘Be yourself and stand up for what you believe in!’

*   *   *

It was a short night.

Early on Tuesday morning, Tone crept quietly out of the bed where Gunnar was still sleeping.
She wondered how she was going to wake Simon; they had, as always, stayed up chatting too long last night.

She put on the coffee machine, got some food out ready and went downstairs, through the basement sitting room and into Simon’s room. The pale morning light filtered through the blue curtains and their pattern of the boy with the football and skateboard. The luminous heart above the bed,
which at night shone with a greenish tinge, merged almost entirely into the ceiling in the early-morning light.

Simon was lying on his back with his arms flung straight out. His breathing was deep and even.

‘Simon, time to wake up!’ called Tone. ‘You’ve got a plane to catch!’

Not a murmur.

‘Simon!’

Not a grunt.

‘Simon! You’re off to Utøya!’

Tone stood there admiring the peaceful face of
her tall elder son and decided she might just as well lie down beside him and wake him in a more gentle fashion. ‘Simon,’ she said, this time in a coaxing whisper. She stroked his shoulder and chest. It was tempting just to fall asleep there.

Simon had always been a cuddly boy; from an early age he had liked curling up beside his mother in bed and sleeping where she was. He could lie there for
ages, close and cosy. Imagine him still being happy to snuggle up to his mum!

Tone had made herself comfortable on his arm. She pinched his chest, where just a few wisps of hair had started to grow. He wriggled slightly and went on sleeping. She lay there dozing for a moment before she looked at her watch and leapt up.

‘Simon!’

She pulled him with all the strength she could muster.

He was
in his usual morning daze; it would take at least an hour for him to wake up and that was an hour they did not have. He hauled himself into a sitting position in bed and put on his clothes as she passed them to him. He could not face eating anything, but Tone had made sure there were some slices of pizza left over from the one she had made the previous evening and put them in a bag in the outside
pocket of his suitcase.

She wondered if he had packed everything he would need. It was the first time he would be going on a trip without her knowing exactly what he had with him. But there was no time to worry about that now.

The eighteen-year-old got into the driver’s seat. He enjoyed driving, but this morning he pulled in at the first bus stop.

‘You’ll have to drive, Mum. I’m too tired.’

Tone smiled. Simon was dozing off, but then he came to with a start. ‘Did I say I’d promised Mari Siljebråten a lift?’

Tone put her foot down a little. The birch forest was glimmering, pale and beautiful. For the first part of the journey they had a view over the fjord and later, as they approached Bardu, they could see up to the mountains of Troms. Simon had woken, and mother and son now talked
about love. Simon and his girlfriend had just decided to split up, and Tone was the first person he had told. They had been drifting apart, and at the end of the summer he would go off for his military service in Stavanger and she would start her teacher training course in Tromsø. But what was love, really?