159

What exactly was Pedro having in store for him on Tuesday, Bjorn wondered. Now that it was established that Pedro was right about Wednesday, it seemed unlikely that he would be wrong about Bjorn's schedule on Tuesday. There would be some sort of test, and Bjorn would be judged according to his performance, but what exactly the test would entail was unknown.

It did not matter much what it was all about, though, Bjorn concluded, since the test was no doubt set up to test his personality in some way. There was some final test for him to clear before his assignment on Wednesday, and all he had to do on Tuesday was to act naturally, and pretend that he did not know that he was being tested.

But now that Pedro had hinted on the test, it was impossible for Bjorn to completely rid himself of the sense of self consciousness that comes with such knowledge. He felt watched and monitored, even in his own room. And on that note, his attention was drawn to a sun glare coming from a window or similar reflecting surface down in the village.

Suddenly, Bjorn got the creepy feeling that the whole village was watching him, but he lay the absurd thought quickly to rest, focusing instead on where the glare was coming from. He picked up a pair of binoculars and directed them towards the village, but the glare was gone before he found its source. Instead, he found himself studying Gus's gun store, partly hidden behind the little hill where Gus had set up the installation of fences and other defensive hardware.

"He has a clear view of us from that top window," Bjorn thought to himself as he studied the house that had once belonged to Ante's grandparents. "But he'd be an idiot to fire anything at us from that position. It is too far away and too obvious a target for a counter strike."

However, Bjorn could not completely free himself from an uneasy feeling that the bunker boys might have been right after all. Some of the stuff Gus had on display on his posters were hardly defensive, and if people were stocking up on that kind of weaponry, an attack on the checkpoint could easily be made. But it would be suicide for whoever attempted it. The air force would be called in, and the rebels would quickly be crushed. They would never reach Neiden, and even if they did, what could they do?

Only a suicidal bunch of madmen would attempt an attack on the checkpoint, and as far as Bjorn could judge, Lundby was not exactly brimming with such people. True, some of the folks down there were running away from the law, and Einar had even killed a man. But everyone seemed to have purely defensive concerns. And then there were people like Pedro and Jan who would hardly approve of such an attack. Those men would only stand to loose if things went completely haywire,

An attack on the checkpoint would be both suicidal and meaningless. If it ever happened, it would be a random act of violence, or an act of desperation, a final retaliation against a great injustice. And as long as no one was pushing them up against a wall, an attack was extremely unlikely, even if technically possible.

And while thinking of this, Bjorn realized that he was not much more exposed to violence where he was than he would have been on any other military base. Military personnel were increasingly being targeted by islamists and other loonies. He was probably no more exposed to such random violence at the checkpoint than anywhere else. But Gus' clear line of sight was nevertheless a little unsettling.