The Bat (40 page)

Harry nodded.

“I’m going!” the voice yelled.

He saw the wind take hold of the black outfit worn by the little man climbing out onto the stay under the wing. The hair protruding from under his helmet flapped. Harry glanced at the altimeter on his chest. It showed a little over ten thousand feet.

“Thanks again!” he shouted to the pilot. The pilot turned. “No worries, mate! This is a lot better than taking snaps of marijuana fields!”

Harry stuck out his right foot. It felt like when he was small and they were driving up Gudbrandsdalen Valley on their way to another summer holiday in Åndalsnes, and he opened the side window and stuck out his hand to “fly.” He remembered the wind catching his hand when he turned the palm into it.

The wind outside the plane was extraordinary, and Harry had to force his foot forward onto the stay. He counted internally as Joseph had told him—“right foot, left hand, right hand, left foot.” He was standing beside Joseph. Small patches of cloud floated toward them, speeded up, surrounded them and were gone in the same second. Beneath them lay a patchwork quilt of different nuances of green, yellow and brown.

“Hotel check!” Joseph screamed into his ear.

“Checking in!” Harry shouted and glanced at the pilot in the cockpit, who gave him the thumbs up. “Checking out!” He glanced at Joseph, who was wearing a helmet, goggles and a big smile.

Harry leaned away from the stay and raised his right foot.

“Horizon! Up! Down! Go!”

Then he was in the air, feeling like he was being blown backward as the plane continued its undisturbed flight ahead. From the corner of his eye he saw the plane turn before realizing that he was the one turning. He looked toward the horizon where the earth arced and the sky gradually became bluer until it merged into the azure Pacific Ocean that Captain Cook had sailed to get here.

Joseph grabbed him and Harry adopted a better freefall posture. He checked the altimeter. Nine thousand feet. My God, they had oceans of time! He twisted his upper torso and held his arms out to make a half-turn. Jeez, he was Superman!

Ahead, to the west, were the Blue Mountains, which were blue because the very special eucalyptus trees gave off a blue vapor that could be seen from far away. Joseph had told him that. He had also said that behind them was what his forefathers, the semi-nomadic Indigenous people, called home. The endless, arid plains—the outback—constituted the greatest part of this immense continent, a merciless furnace
where it seemed improbable that anything could survive, yet Joseph’s people had done so for thousands of years until the whites came.

Harry looked down. It seemed so calm and deserted below, it had to be a peaceful and kind planet. The altimeter showed seven thousand feet. Joseph let go of him as they’d agreed. A serious breach of training rules, but they’d already broken any rules there were by coming out here alone and jumping. Harry watched Joseph put his arms to his sides to gain horizontal speed and swoop down to his left at an amazing rate.

Then Harry was alone. As we always are. It just feels so much better when you’re in free fall six thousand feet above the ground.

Kristin had made her choice in a hotel room one gray Monday morning. Perhaps she had woken up, exhausted by the new day before it had even started, looked out of the window and decided enough was enough. What mental processes she had gone through Harry didn’t know. The human soul was a deep, dark forest and all decisions are made alone.

Five thousand feet
.

Perhaps she had made the right choice. The empty bottle of pills suggested that at least she’d had no doubts. And one day it would have to end anyway; one day it would be time. The need to leave this world with a certain style bore testimony, of course, to a vanity—a weakness—only a few people had.

Four thousand, five hundred feet
.

Others just had a weakness for living. Simple and uncomplicated. Well, not only simple and uncomplicated perhaps, but all that lay far below him right now. Four thousand feet below, to be absolutely precise. He grabbed the orange handle to the right of his stomach, pulled the rip cord with a firm wrench and began to count: “A thousand and one, a thousand and …”

Jo Nesbø’s books have sold more than eighteen million copies worldwide, and have been translated into forty-seven languages. His other Harry Hole novels include
The Redbreast, Nemesis, The Devil’s Star, The Snowman, The Leopard, Phantom
, and
The Redeemer
, and he is the author of
Headhunters
and several children’s books. He has received the Glass Key Award for best Nordic crime novel. He is also a musician, songwriter, and economist and lives in Oslo.

www.jonesbo.com