“Shh,” she said, because as he spoke the smaller of the men appeared on the steps, his pistol in his right hand. If the man turned, if he saw them . . .

She must be calm. The fjord here was shallow, the water dark.

“Listen to me.” She put her arms on Arno’s shoulders. “Take two deep breaths and dive to the bottom.”

“Two?”

His eyes widened. She could feel the panic in him. He wanted to look back.

At the steps in the cliff the man was looking to his right, straining to see up to the ledge. In a moment he would turn to his left and he would see them as they swam for their lives, and everything would be lost.

She felt Arno gasping air. “Swim down, Arno. Grab a rock. Hold on.”

She pushed his shoulders beneath the surface; she turned, caught the eye of one of the girls. The girl nodded and slipped below the surface.

She kicked down to the bottom. The water was peaty and dark, but she found the boy quickly, his arms wrapped around a boulder. Bubbles spilled upward from his mouth. She wrapped her own arms around his, brought her face very close, made sure that he could see her.

She smiled, but Arno did not respond. She could feel him trying to free his hands.

She shook her head, tightened her grip on his arms.

Panic in his eyes. Arno, please, she thought, you have to hold on.

He was grimacing, making a strange kind of Mmmm sound.

Please. Just a little longer.

He began to struggle. So tiny, yet so strong.

She let him go. She saw a dark shadow above her as his body reached the surface. He thrashed there for a moment. She watched, certain that he had given himself away, certain that the bullets would strike him, that his body would seize, that blood would leak from him in dark clouds.

Instead his body calmed; she saw him begin to swim again. She released her own grip on the boulder, came up facing the rock staircase, certain that they were discovered, but the man in the police uniform was gone. Ahead of them the three girls surfaced. They swam on, the island to their left, treading water from time to time to wait for the boy.

No one spoke.

As they swam she began to see corpses at the water’s edge. You could see people hiding too, boys and girls whom the men had not found, though you could see them clearly from here, cowering in crevices in the cliffs or hiding in the underbrush. Gathering above the children were the news helicopters: three of them now. Filming the children as they hid for their lives. Revealing their presence.

Where were the real police? The army? The camp staff, even?