175

Bjorn reached for his thermos. "And it's going to get much worse," he thought to himself as he poured hot coffee into the cap of the thermos. "Starting this week, they are going to send thousands of people up here, including many violent and dangerous ones."

The people would not come in one go. They would come in batches, as it were, one batch at a time as the various asylum centers around Norway were closing down. However, the first batch would include the thugs from Lier, the guys that had just burned down their own asylum center. How on earth would they be able to keep these people from going completely bananas once they were let loose in the village?

Bjorn knew the answer to his own question. The fact that so many were armed down there would keep the whole thing in a sort of balance. If anyone tried to set fire to something, they would be shot on the spot. He had no doubt about that. But what about his own safety? Now that he was required to wear his uniform whenever visiting the colony, he would stick out like a sore thumb. If anyone felt like it, he or she could easily just kill him. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened. After all, assassinations of police officers patrolling cities like New York, London and Paris, was starting to become almost commonplace.

Bjorn felt suddenly claustrophobic in the glass cage, and an urge for a cigarette rose in him. "Time to get some sun and stretch my legs," Bjorn thought, emptying the coffee in the thermos cap that doubled as a mug. He put the cap on the ledge by the window, next to the thermos, and stepped out on the sunny side of the office.

He felt immediately refreshed. Then, as he grabbed his pack of cigarettes, he thought himself rather good in having postponed his first cigarette of the day by as much as an hour. And he had not had any dizzy spells either. Not that he was having those spells all the time, but the fact that he had not felt the least bit dizzy all morning was at the very least a confirmation that the medicine had not made thing worse.

A long narrow barge entered the bay area through the strait while Bjorn was taking his first few puffs of his cigarette. It passed the coastguard vessel. Then it turned and headed for the port, passing the ferry heading in the other direction. And by the time Bjorn had finished his cigarette, the barge had disappeared behind the hill preventing him from seeing the port itself. "It is getting crowded out there," Bjorn thought to himself, before tossing the butt of his cigarette onto the ground. It hissed as it rolled into a little stream of melt water trickling past the glass cage.