131

"So, there you are!" Georgio said as Bjorn approached him with Ante, Olga and Igor following close behind. "I don't have all day, you know."
"I´m sorry about that," Bjorn replied. "But... Is it all right if Olga and Igor here join us over to the apartments?"
"Well, that depends," Geoergio answered, turning to Olga. "Do you have your own car? I can't fit you all into mine."
"Sure," Igor replied with a smile. "I got mine parked over by the vicarage."
"Well then... I guess it's all right. I got my car parked over there too. Let's go!"

Georgio looked around as if looking for someone, muttering "where the hell is he" to himself.

"You're looking for someone?" Bjorn asked politely, joining Georgio in his slow wandering towards the church entrance.
"Yeah, I'm looking for a kid. A Norwegian kid called Einar.  He's helping me out. But I can't see him anywhere."
"Maybe he's outside?" Bjorn suggested.
"Yeah... Probably is."

"So, how did you get to meet Einar?" Bjorn asked as he stepped out into the cold arctic air together with Georgio.
"Ah... He just appeared one day at the building site, and... Oh there he is!"

Georgio pointed over to some kids over by the pillar with the armillary sphere, one of whom looked distinctly Norwegian. Georgio waved at him, and the kid responded by waving back before coming up to meet Georgio.

"So you're Einar?" Bjorn asked, switching to Norwegian.
"Yep... Are you here to arrest me?" the kid replied with an aggressive tone. "If you do, I swear I'll kill you."
"No, no... I'm just coming with you guys to have a look at the building site."
"So what's with the uniform? Don't you know we hate people like you?"
"So, so..." Bjorn replied, amused more than anything else. "Are you always this aggressive?"
"Only towards pigs like you."

Bjorn figured it useless to argue with the kid and simply tagged along with Georgio and Einar as they headed towards the vicarage. Then, when they caught up with Ante and the two Russians at the parking lot, Georgio introduced Einar to the others.

This time, Einar was considerably more polite, clearly having concluded that neither Ante nor Bjorn had any plans to interfere with whatever the kid was doing that warranted an arrest. They all exchanged a few polite phrases. Then they decided to split into two groups, with Bjorn and Ante sitting in the back of Georgio's car, with Einar next to Georgio in the front seats, and Igor and Olga using their own car to get to the building site.

"So, is this your car?" Ante asked as he fastened his seatbelt.
"It is indeed," Georgio answered before starting the engine with a sputter followed by a forceful roar.
"And you drove all the way up from Italy?"
"From Venice, yes."
"From Venice?"
"Yeah, I'm from Venice. Italy is a fiction."
"It is?" Ante asked looking bemused. "Well, anyway. It's a pretty long drive isn't it. All the way from Venice to Lundby."
"Three days to get to Oslo, and another three days to get to Lundby."
"And you're planning to drive all the way back when you're finished here?"
"I am! I'll save a few hours driving directly to Neiden, and not having to go via Kirkenes. I had to drive via Kirkenes coming up back in March."
"But still! It's a long drive!"
"Sure is! But I don't mind. I like driving."

Georgio drove along the ridge before taking a right turn towards the main street.

"Going by foot, you can cut across here," Georgio explained, pointing to his left as he took the right turn.
"I know!" Ante replied. "I grew up here, sort of. My grandparents had a place here."
"That's pretty special!" Georgio commented.
"To you maybe. But to me, this is what the world looked like. This is what I grew up knowing."

Georgio nodded thoughtfully, and there was a pause in the dialogue until they got onto the main street.

"So, what's going on up there? What are they building?" Ante asked as soon as they could see the big building site a the top of the main street.
"It's going to be a shopping centre," Einar answered, speaking English with hardly any accent.
"A shopping centre? In Lundby?"
"Yeah! And there will be offices and apartments and stuff like that," Einar continued.
"Really? How do you know?"
"I asked the builders, and that's what they said."
"And who's behind this?" Bjorn asked.
"I don't know."
"Someone with more money than sense, I guess," Ante suggested.
"Or someone like Pedro," Georgio commented. "Someone with a plan."

Georgio took a left by the building site, heading in the direction of the apartment building.

"And what exactly is Pedro's plan?" Bjorn asked, curious to hear what Georgio was making of the things going on in Lundby.
"He's going to turn this place into a city."
"Really? Why?"
"For the same reason he does everything else in life."
"Which is?"
"He's a billionaire," Georgio explained. "He's doing this to make money. Lots of money."
"But how?"
"I don't know. You'll have to ask him. His the billionaire after all."

25

The two cranes that Bjorn had been observing from the check point were suddenly fully visible as the car reached the perimeter of the village, just a few minutes after passing the apartment building under construction at the other side of the low hill to the east of the village.

This was a much bigger construction site than the apartment building, and very far from being finished, at least as far as Bjorn could judge. Unlike the apartment building which had people working on it everywhere, only a handful of people could be seen, putting up scaffolding and preparing for concrete to be poured into huge moulds, all with a mesh of iron rods sticking out of them.

The impressive but quiet building site was located at the top of a long, moderately inclined street, leading all the way down to a square by the fjord. A few houses lined the street, but in a rather random fashion, with some houses drawn quite far back from the road, while others were practically next to it. The old village had clearly been constructed without much planning, and the only place with any indication of proper planning was the square which was lined with buildings neatly positioned around the open space in the middle.

The road circling the central square had sidewalks on both sides, and was as far as Bjorn could see, the only bit of road with a sidewalk. No such luxury had been afforded for any of the other roads, of which there were quite a number, all leading into the square.

A small low knoll of a hill, separating the square from the fjord served as a parking space, with several cars placed semi-randomly along its perimeter, and Geir drove the red sedan up next to a car already parked on this hill, adding to the pattern that had been established for the day.

The trip down from the check point had taken less than ten minutes, which left the two men with a bit of time to spare before going over to the fish processing plant. Geir suggested they walk up on top of the knoll as a short detour before going to the plant, and Bjorn was more than happy to comply, feeling an urge for a cigarette and eager to get a fuller view of the village.

The two low hills on either side of the village formed the valley in which the village was nestled, and protruding into the fjord, the same two hills formed a small bay, with the fish processing plant located on the eastern shore, and several houses located on the western shore.

Standing on the top of the knoll separating the town square from the innermost point of the bay, the layout of the village seemed less random than first impression had given cause to believe. The layout was simply following the natural lay of the land, and the wooden houses, painted in all sorts of bright colours, especially blue, red and yellow, were almost all located in spots that were both elevated and shielded at the same time.

A small church, located on top of a steep incline from the road joining the fish processing plant and the village square, perfectly illustrated this fondness for elevated yet shielded locations, located as it was on a rather commanding little hill, but shielded to the east and the north by a rock formation, dwarfing it while simultaneously protecting it from the hostility of arctic winds and weather.

There were quite a number of people out and about in the village considering that it could not possibly be housing more than a few hundred inhabitants and that it was anything but a pleasant summer day. Bjorn had noticed several people selling stuff from little stands in the village square, there had been a gang of people mending holes in the long, straight road leading up the valley from the square to the building site, and others were just walking about, seemingly with no purpose or business at all.

The mending of the road had struck Bjorn as extremely primitive and inefficient, as it was done with no help of any type of machinery, except for a big pan to heat the asphalt, which was poured into buckets as Geir and Bjorn had crawled past in their car on their way down to the square, careful not to hit any of the men. And the asphalt, once poured into the various potholes was made flat by men manually dragging a heavy roller across the soft, oily mess.

From the top of the knoll, Bjorn could see that the asphalt was simply broken up from the sidewalk in front of the casino, at the west side of the square, and taken in buckets up to the pan where it was heated and made into road repair. The process seemed totally nonsensical since the road repair clearly was at the expense of the sidewalk in front of the casino, but by the time Bjorn pointed out the strange spectacle to Geir it was time to go and inspect the fish processing plant.

"We can look at it later," Geir said as they wandered down the hill towards the plant. "I have a few things to buy for Ante while we are down here. Pingo is right across the square from the casino. Maybe it makes more sense once we take a closer look at what they are doing."

17

Bjorn sat down in the office chair in front of the control panel, put his thermos on a small ledge by the window in front of him, and felt immediately at ease as he gazed out at the panoramic view of the fjord, with snow capped alpine mountains rising up from the icy marsh land on the other side.

Lundby, partially hidden from view by two low hills shielding it from the weather on either side, looked positively idyllic with houses scattered in a seemingly random fashion on the barren rocks, between which a road could be seen, with the occasional car driving by. The pace of life in the village, which Bjorn derived solely from the cars coming and going, seemed neither stressful nor sedated. From the distance, everything looked both normal and peaceful.

The port, completely hidden from view by a hill to the east could nevertheless be detected due to the regular comings and goings of the ferry. And there was almost always a little rush of cars driving by, down by the fjord, every twenty minutes after a ferry arrival. People were coming and going, and the woman that Bjorn had briefly talked to on the ferry was probably not the only one doing business in the village. Some of the cars coming in from the port were fairly large trucks, clearly carrying goods of various kinds.

Having spent some time taking in the initial impression from the commanding view of the glass panelled office, Bjorn leant back in the chair with a mug of hot coffee in his hand, letting his eyes wander freely in search of things of interest. With the road to Neiden still blocked by snow, there was no chance of anyone coming up to the checkpoint, unless in an errand for the checkpoint itself, so there was literally nothing for Bjorn to do but to let his mind wander with his gaze.

The view both barren and motionless, made any motion draw immediate attention to itself, and two cranes, partially hidden by the near hill between the check point and Lundby, drew Bjorn´s attention every time they made an occasional turn, and so did cars coming and going on the bits of road visible from the check point, as did a mobile crane getting into place at a building site down by the fjord, at the near side of the hill obscuring the view of Lundby.

It soon became intensely sleep inducing to just sit and watch the view, and Bjorn realized he had to entertain his mind in order not to nod off with his wandering eyes and mind. He decided to scrutinize the building site down by the fjord, and lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes to take a closer look. By the look of it, the building being erected was some sort of low apartment building, and the site was very busy with people, many of whom did not seem to have much else to do than to carry materials from one place to another. Others, presumably more skilled workers, were busy finishing the ground floor façade, while others were putting in place scaffolding higher up.

Everything seemed to be happening all at once, and looking through the large openings, still without doors or windows, people could be seen in the light of harsh incandescent lamps, tiding up and getting started on the interior. For every skilled worker, there seemed to be at least five people busy sweeping floors and carrying stuff around, and Bjorn got a strong feeling that what he was witnessing was nothing less than modern day slavery. The only thing missing was any sign of armed guards. And the slaves did not seem as discouraged as he would have expected. They did not work excessively hard. But they did not seem to drag their feet either.

8

It did not take long before the two men reached an abandoned air field with a surprisingly long runway, considering the modest size of the nearby village. And Bjørn remarked on this, also mentioning that he had seen the control tower from the ferry on the way into the port.

"It is a cold war relic," Ante explained. "The idea was to air lift soldiers and equipment into the area on short notice. This whole bay was to act like a fortress, impenetrable by the advancing red army. There are nuclear bunkers out there, remnants of a missile defence system, and all sorts of stuff."

"It was never properly opened," Ante continued. "All of Finnmark was unilaterally declared a demilitarized zone by the government to please the Russians, so this complex was never officially anything but a local air field. But it was closed down almost immediately after the fall of the Berlin wall, and it was completely abandoned when the village was de-inhabited after the iron mine closed a few years later."

"So it never saw much activity," Bjorn asked, intrigued by the strange site.
"Never. There were about twenty men here at the most, back in the sixties. The idea was to get troops and equipment up here super fast in the event of an attack, not to have stuff parked up here before hand. There was almost no interaction with the locals, though. I guess they were under strict orders not to mingle, so as not to give away any secrets. You see, the missile defence system was parked here all along, and it was fully operational. This was top secret of course. Very few knew of it before they started shipping the missiles out of here, and everyone could see what had been transported in at night over the decades, in big anonymous crates, so not to let anybody see what they were up to. The missiles were hidden in under ground silos. All part of a large system of bunkers."

Bjorn looked back at the empty expanse of tarmac, the tower, and a few barracks, as Ante approached a hill and a curve. The airfield disappeared out of view, and Bjorn turned back to look at the road ahead of them. When they reached the crest of the hill, they could see Lundby clearly in the distance. There was an intense orange glow from the setting sun illuminating the cloudy sky from behind the mountains to the west of the village.

Little wooden houses were scattered around on the side of a hill protruding out into the fjord, partly hidden from view by a nearer hill. Two cranes sticking up from behind the nearest hill bare witness of building activity, presumably in anticipation of the great influx of asylum seekers that would be moved to Lundby from other centres around Norway in the coming months.

More than ten thousand asylum seekers would have to either move to Lundby, or get out of the country by the end of the year. And this ultimatum had already had the effect of dramatically reducing the flow of asylum seekers to Norway, especially since all new arrivals were moved directly to Lundby. The expectation was therefore that less than half of all the asylum seekers currently in Norway would choose Lundby to deportation. But that would still mean an influx of several thousand people, so the building activity was still warranted.

Bjorn's thoughts drifted back to the woman on the ferry. He felt anxious on her behalf at the thought of the many desperate people who would soon be living in close proximity of her. He wondered if she fully realized what sort of danger she was setting herself up for. Moving into her grandparents' place at a time when the whole place was being turned into a modern day gulag was such an insane thing to do that he could not make any sense of it.