The shot jerked yellow-green. Vee’s eyes flicked back to the screen. The camera was in the air again, looking down. There were the two girls looking up at the helicopter, desperate now. And there, at the edge of the frame, a man in police uniform. Paul Andersen looked up, locked eyes with the camera. The helicopter continued to climb.

The girls disappeared inside the shower block. The door closed.

The short man unslung his rifle, walked toward the door of the building. From the other side of the screen his brother appeared, walking toward the door at the other end, his rifle held casually in his right hand.

For a sickening moment nothing happened. There was the red-roofed shower block, there was the yellowed grass, and there, at each end, stood the two men. Avatars, foreshortened, black-clothed, blond-haired, each with rifle in hand.

Were they hesitating? Were they gathering themselves? Don’t do this, I wanted to say. There is hope. But of course there was no hope, because that story was already written. And so the men entered the shower block at precisely the same time, and in that building out of sight of the camera they would kill nineteen children.

For two minutes the camera held where it was. It stared dispassionately down at the yellowed grass and the red-rusted roof, observed the length of the shower block and the broken concrete steps at each side. If you saw this shot on its own, you would never know. It was peaceful—boring, almost—while under that cheap rusted roof nineteen young people were executed at close range. Enemy combatants, the men had called them in their psychiatric interviews, tomorrow’s treacherous elite, and for that those children paid with their lives. The oldest of the children in the shower block was fifteen; the youngest thirteen.

“It’s weird what your brain does,” said Vee. “A part of me expects the tactical unit to arrive and save them. But we both read the report. We both know that doesn’t happen.”

The men emerged from the steps at the left of the shot. They turned and looked up at the camera. The helicopter rose rapidly and turned, headed out across the fjord, still looking down.

Halfway across the fjord it stopped. There, in the middle of the frame, facing right to left, was the red rubber boat, with its black-clad special forces team. Spray was pluming from the engine; the boat was barely moving.

I looked at Vee. “They’ve turned . . .”

“Yeah,” she said. “They’re heading back to the mainland.”

“Fuck,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Fuck.”

As we watched, the two men at the front took oars and began to paddle.

“It’s sinking,” said Vee.

“Let’s put this on pause, Vee.”

Vee touched the screen, freezing the image of the red rubber boat, of the tactical unit pathetically paddling for the mainland. So this was what Bror had wanted me to know.