I lifted the headphone off my right ear. Absolute silence in the courtroom. Beside me, Elsa was quietly shaking her head. The chief judge sat stock-still, staring at the man. The defendant looked around to his brother, nodded, then turned toward the back of the courtroom, stared defiantly out at the survivors, at the families of the dead. No one spoke. There were no camera shutters. I turned to look at my daughter, but Vee would not meet my eye. She was staring back at John Andersen.

The judge leaned across and consulted with a colleague, her hand across her microphone. She turned, sat watching the man for a few seconds. She took her hand from her microphone.

“Defendant Andersen, J., a refusal to enter a plea will be recorded as a plea of not guilty.”

“I understand.”

“Then your plea will be entered as not guilty.”

“I do not recognize the authority of this court.”

He looked across at his brother, who nodded, then leaned forward and spat a gobbet of chewing tobacco into his water glass.

The judge remained composed, but you could feel her anger. She spoke two words.

“Noted,” came the voice in the headphones. “Sit.”

Elsa leaned toward me. I raised an earphone.

“Look at them with their little uniforms, their little salutes, their little speeches.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Look at the fact that they rehearsed the whole thing. Like, We are the Knights of the Round Table. That’s funny, isn’t it? It’s like fucking Monty Python.”

From the bench the chief judge was staring at Elsa.

“Elsa,” I said. I nodded toward the judge.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Okay.”

Now the prosecutor stood looking out across the faces of the public. An accomplished woman, blond-haired, eyes of granite. Elsa and I sat up and faced the front.

The prosecutor spoke slowly, left long pauses between sentences, gave the translator time to catch up. She turned to address the judges. In the headphones the translator was affectless and calm, her words seconds behind the prosecutor’s. “In the time between the parking of the van and the explosion, a witness called the police to say she had seen two men in navy overalls as they walked toward a small white car. Something in the men’s demeanor caught in her mind: their behavior was hurried, feverish even.

“The eyewitness gave the police an accurate physical description of the men you see before you: the high foreheads, the wide-set eyes, the West Oslo accents. Both men were blond, she reported, though the eyewitness wondered if the shorter of the men you see before you, Paul Andersen, had dyed his hair; there was something about the eyebrows that did not match. The eyewitness had the presence of mind to note the license number: XR310701. This was indeed the license number of the car that the men drove to Garden Island.”