One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (41 page)

Monica Bøsei, a slight woman in her mid-forties, came onto the stage. ‘Those who want to ring their parents can do so. Anyone who wants to talk can come and see us, we’re here for you,’ she said. Monica had been running the island on a day-to-day basis for twenty years, promoting the ideas of the labour movement and adding a few of her own. She had handled its
finances, put down mousetraps and seen to the upkeep of the buildings. When she had been working there for a few years, they advertised for a caretaker. Jon Olsen, an AUF member her own age, got the job. And Monica. They fell in love, moved in together and had two daughters. When the AUF bought the MS
Thorbjørn
to use as a ferry, Jon became its captain.

This was due to be Monica’s last summer
on the island. Mother Utøya, as she was known, had got a job as director of the Maritime Museum and wanted to hand the baton over to somebody else. But for now she was here to take care of anxious young people. ‘This evening we’ll light all the barbecues and you can have as many sausages as you want,’ she proposed, telling them Utøya was a long way from Oslo and that it was the safest place for them
rightnow.

Out of respect for the victims in the government quarter, the Friday disco was cancelled, and because of the rain the football tournament was postponed. There was no pitch left to play on. Monica recommended that the leaders of the county delegations gathered up their groups to talk through what had happened.

Simon and Mari went out together and headed for the tents.

‘We’re not safe
here,’ said Simon.

‘What?’ exclaimed Mari.

‘Well, if this is an attack on the Labour Party…’ he said.

‘Now you just shut up!’ Mari declared.

‘I’m only saying that it’s no coincidence they went for the government quarter. That means this is an attack on the Labour Party, and we’re part of the Labour Party…’

They came across Viljar. And Simon did not shut up.

‘If this is political, Viljar,
and against the government, we’re not safe here either.’

Viljar had just been talking to his mother and was wondering what to tell his younger brother Torje. During Gro’s talk the fourteen-year-old had collapsed from lack of sleep after his all-night session followed by the football tournament. Now he and Johannes were asleep in their tent. Viljar and his mother had agreed it was best not to
wake him until after the meeting, and then to give him a toned-down version. It must be time to get him up now.

Up in the Troms camp, Mari was delegating tasks. She set some of the activists to buttering bread and making up fruit squash. She went round pouring the sweet drink into plastic cups. When you’ve had bad news, your blood sugar levels fall, she reasoned. So it was important for them
to have a bite to eat now.

It was wet, grey and mucky. The whole campsite had turned into a huge pool of mud. But soon they were all sitting round on whatever they could find in the way of dry camping stools, boxes and tree stumps.

‘Take big breaths, stay calm,’ Mari told herself. But it was beyond her.

*   *   *

Anders Behring Breivik was now driving through Nordre Buskerud, the police district
to which Utøya belonged. In Hønefoss police station no one had yet received any instructions to look out for a silver-grey delivery van with a particular number plate.

He drove along the winding road from Sollihøgda, looking down at the Tyrifjord. There was an arrow pointing down the narrow road to the left. The sign said Utøya. Not that the driver needed the sign; the car’s GPS had already told
him this was the place to turn. Just before half past four, the van left the highway.

He did not want to drive down to the jetty yet, so he pulled into a small clearing a little way above it. This was how he had planned it; if he arrived in good time for the next crossing, he would stop in a place where he could be seen neither from the road nor from the jetty. The boat ran on the hour. He had
checked the timetable on the AUF web pages, and the next boat was not until five.

He drank a little water and a Red Bull, and got out of the car to pee. The drawback with ECA was that it made you want to go. The steroids did not give you a high in themselves, but they thinned the blood so your heart got more oxygen. They helped you concentrate and speeded up your perception. Your visual skills
were enhanced and your reaction times were shorter.

But now he had to wait, and that did not suit him.

While he was waiting, Kripos was formulating a nationwide alert about a potential perpetrator. Forty minutes after the vague phone conversation with the joint operations centre in Oslo, the one in which it was said that ‘It might be interesting to maybe issue a warning’, the alarm was sounded.
It was one hour and eighteen minutes since the explosion, and one hour and nine minutes since Andreas Olsen had rung in to tip them off about the uniformed man with a pistol, and the number plate of his car.

Nationwide Alert – Explosion Potential Bomb(s) in Central Oslo

All units requested to be on the alert for a small grey van, possible reg. 24605. As of now unknown relationship between explosion and vehicle, but if it is located, alert Desk or Oslo pending further instructions. Units requested to exercise relative caution in approaching the vehicle.

Sincerely, Kripos Desk.

It was 16.43. There was nothing in the wording to indicate that the driver of this van, for which Kripos had incidentally omitted the initial letter code of the registration number, had been observed in a guard’s
or police uniform. What was more, only very few police stations actually received the alert. Many did not have the relevant communication equipment switched on, or the alarm signal was wrongly set.

This certainly applied to Nordre Buskerud police district, where Breivik was now located. The computer that was able to receive alarms was some distance from the three desks in general use. When the
PC was not being used, its screen went dark. In order to check whether there had been any alarm calls, one had to go into Shared Files > Alarms > and then select the police district from the list of all the districts in the country. Only then could one see if any alerts had come into the police station.

Nobody did that at Hønefoss police station in Nordre Buskerud.

So, while the alarm was going
out from Oslo and not being received by the police station a few kilometres away, the man with the pistol sat waiting in the van. The fjord was grey and sombre. The rain lashed the surface of the water. No boat arrived.

It would have to be here soon if it was to leave at five.

*   *   *

Simon was worried and wanted to ring home, but his phone needed charging. Julie Bremnes lent him hers. As
the daughter of the musician and songwriter Lars Bremnes, she could usually never get anywhere near Anders, Simon and Viljar without the trio starting to squawk her father’s lyrics:
Oh, if I could write in the heavens, yours is the name I would write!

But not this time. At five to five, Simon rang his father in Salangen, where he was sitting watching the news with Håvard.

‘Dad, what’s the latest?’

‘They say it’s a bomb.
One
person confirmed dead so far,’ answered Gunnar, and described the pictures he could see on the TV screen. ‘They still don’t know, Simon, it’s just speculation.’

‘It’s important for us to get as much concrete information as we can. Ring me if you find out any more, then.’

‘Yes I will,’ answered Gunnar. ‘All the best, then!’

Simon had sounded stressed. Gunnar settled
back into his seat. Tone was sitting beside him, knitting.

At the same time, just across the water from their son, Breivik decided to drive down to the jetty to find out what had happened to the boat. He drove slowly down the steep dirt track to the landing stage. There were a few youngsters with rucksacks standing about. They watched him curiously as he parked. A young blond man with a security
vest and a walkie-talkie came over to him. Breivik got out of the car and waved him away. He did not want the boy to come any closer.

‘Routine check because of the bomb in the government quarter,’ he told the young guard. ‘Officers are being posted at various locations.’ He paused. ‘To make sure nothing more happens.’

The guard was a bit surprised when he heard this. It was strange for an armed
police officer in uniform to arrive unaccompanied in a civilian vehicle. But there was probably a shortage of police cars in a situation like this, he reasoned.

‘Where’s the boat?’ Breivik asked the AUF guard.

‘Cancelled because of the explosion,’ replied the nineteen-year-old.

The policeman asked him to call the boat over. ‘There are two more men on their way from the security service,’ he
said, but he stressed that he wanted to get over as quickly as possible himself, to secure the area. The boy rang over to the island.

There was a car at the landing stage with its windows down and the news blaring out at high volume. Some teenagers stood hunched over as they tried to keep their mobiles out of the rain. They were making calls, sending texts and checking the internet on their iPhones.
They all knew someone in Oslo, and most of them had been on the bus on their way to the island when the bomb went off. They were talking among themselves about who could be behind the attack. Al-Qaida seemed the likeliest candidate.

The young people had registered with the guards on the landing stage and their bags had been searched for alcohol and drugs – standard procedure at the summer camps.
‘I’ve just got to check you haven’t got any sawn-off shotguns or revolvers with you,’ the volunteer guard from Norwegian People’s Aid had said to them in an attempt to lighten the mood.

MS
Thorbjørn
put out from the jetty on Utøya and chugged towards the mainland. The uniformed man stood waiting by his van at the far side of the parking area. The AUF guard could see he was sorting out something
in a case.

The rain was easing off as the captain steered towards the quay. His vessel was a military landing craft built back in the 1940s and used by Swedish navy commandos for a generation. The AUF had bought the boat cheaply fifteen years earlier. The hull, made of 10mm steel, was painted red to the waterline, and black up the sides. The windows of the wheelhouse were steaming up. The Norwegian
flag on its roof hung wet and heavy.

Once he reached the mainland, the skipper lowered the front of the boat and the prow became a gangway. Monica Bøsei hurried ashore to meet the policeman on the landing stage.

‘Why haven’t we been informed of this?’ she asked in some agitation.

‘It’s chaos in Oslo at the moment,’ the policeman replied.

‘Fine,’ said Monica. She turned back to the boat, while
the policeman went over to his van. He had to bring some equipment over, he had told her.

He came back dragging a heavy black case. He was holding a rifle. Monica approached him again. ‘You can’t bring that rifle onto the island. You’ll frighten everybody,’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ll have to keep it hidden, at least.’

This time it was the policeman who said ‘Fine.’

He went back to his vehicle for
something to cover the rifle. In the front seat he had the Benelli shotgun in a black bin liner. He took the powerful weapon out of the bag and left it lying there uncovered. He decided he was not going to need the shotgun after all.

The heavy plastic case on wheels gouged deep grooves in the gravel on its way to the boat. At the gangway, the policeman see-sawed it on board. The rifle was still
only half covered, and Monica found another plastic bag in the wheelhouse to cover the stock.

The engine spluttered and the boat put out from the landing stage. Everyone had been counted and registered, all the luggage had been checked; well, except for the wheeled case. It had not occurred to anybody to check the representative of law and order.

Everything on board was wet after the rain and
there was nowhere to sit or lean. The green paint of the deck had a sleek, slippery sheen to it. Raindrops massed on the ship’s rail. It had turned a little brighter and the heavy rain had stopped; the sky was now more white than grey. It offered some prospect of a clear evening.

Monica wanted to talk. About the bomb, about what the police were doing and the officer’s specific tasks. The uniformed
man was taciturn, giving short, brusque answers while he drank thirstily from a CamelBak, a little backpack with a drinking tube. He seemed irritable and did not look at the kids next to him on the deck. The waterproof case stood at his side, black and heavy.

He was a solid, broad-shouldered figure; he looked very tense. Feeling the seriousness of the moment, the young guard left on the landing
stage had thought.

The crossing only took a few minutes. As the boat came alongside the jetty on Utøya, just after a quarter past five, the crewman threw the hawser, jumped out and tied up.

The skipper emerged from the wheelhouse to help with the case. Bomb-detection gear, he thought. The policeman asked if someone could drive it up to the main building. The captain offered to do it. He went
to get the only vehicle on the island, heaved the case into its boot and drove off to the admin building a little way up the steep slope.

The youngsters who had been on the boat straggled up the gravel path with their rucksacks. Down at the jetty, the policeman was left with Monica. One of the guards on the island, a police officer called Trond Berntsen, came and shook the new arrival by the
hand.

‘Hello,’ was the terse response of the man disguised as a policeman, who introduced himself as Martin Nilsen. That was the name of a friend of his, a name he ought to remember.

Before long the other guard on the island, Rune Havdal, came to join them. The AUF had hired two security guards, as the teenagers rarely spent the whole night asleep and some adult supervision was necessary to
settle them down at times. The guards had the daytime off, and on this particular Friday they were meant to be taking their sons to the Tusenfryd amusement park, but with rough weather forecast, they had gone the previous day instead. Their boys, aged nine and eleven, were the island’s mascots. They built tree houses and played hide-and-seek in the woods.