158

Back in his room, Bjorn put the little bottle of medicine on the table in front of the window. Then he sat down and studied it idly for a while before putting it in a drawer together with the little measuring cup that came with it. The label said nothing about what was actually in the bottle. There was no list of ingredients, and no mention of the cannabis oil that David talked about. The full text on the label was "David's Anxiety Relief" with "secret recipe" as a sub-title. That was it, plain and simple.

The lack of information on the bottle did not bother Bjorn, though. In fact, it was probably for the better. If it had said cannabis oil on the label, and someone like Geir happened to come across it, it could easily mean trouble. This way, no one would know just by looking at it that it was in fact contraband.

Bjorn felt confident that the medicine was as harmless as David had said, not least because he knew from experience what sort of effect he could expect. Way back, before he met his ex, he had been smoking pot quite regularly. And the warm and fuzzy feeling he got from it was nothing but pleasant. But he dropped the habit when he became a father, and even during his extended period of unemployment, he had not bothered to take it up again.

Holding the bottle in his hand, reading the label, he had been tempted to try the medicine right away, but remembering David's instruction, only to take it just before going to bed, he had put it away in the drawer instead. He felt terribly anxious, though. The day had been way more eventful than he had imagined, and much of it with a sinister undertone. Like Pedro's shameless claim to know his weekly schedule.

And someone in Oslo was apparently also taking a personal interest in Bjorn's schedule. It was all a little spooky. Why were these people singling him out, he wondered.

Bjorn had to admit he knew the answer, though. Bjorn and Espen were being asked to check out the airport precisely because they were so bad at that kind of things. And the one most likely to benefit from this was Pedro. Pedro was behind this, and someone must have told him who to pick for the assignment on Wednesday, and that someone was most likely Frank.

Frank was no doubt corrupted, and Pedro was pulling his strings, either directly or via Oslo. In fact, leaving Oslo out of the picture, simplified things quite a bit. Oslo was probably just a lame excuse invented by Frank to divert the attention away from himself. Frank had most likely been in direct contact with Pedro who had simply called Frank and told him to send his two most incompetent men.

But knowing who had been talking to whom, did not really solve the mystery. The real mystery was not who were behind this, but rather why. What was Pedro up to out at the airport? What was he hiding out there? And then there was the added question of what Bjorn should do about this, now that he had evidence that he was used as a pawn in a game of sorts.

"I'm dealing with gangsters," Bjorn thought, feeling a sudden cold rush up his spine. "I better not do anything stupid, like playing the hero."

But to play the hero, he would have to know what the game was all about, and he didn't. He was clueless as to the game being played. And this thought was strangely comforting. "Some things are better left alone," Bjorn thought to himself. "And this whole mess is definitely one of them. I'll simply be my usual clueless self. That way I'll probably sail through this whole thing without any trouble."