“All right, then, sorry.” She stepped forward and we embraced. Franklin kicked enthusiastically in Elsa’s arms. “I keep calling the police,” she said quietly. “Because the first twenty-four hours are meant to be . . . I mean, they say that if you don’t . . . Fuck, Cal, it’s been, what? Sixteen hours? How exact is the twenty-four-hour thing?”

I really had no idea.

Franklin was lying on his cushion in front of the TV, staring up at his fingers, entranced. Vee was on the sofa.

Ninety-one were now confirmed dead, the majority of them children.

“A tragedy.” A man’s voice, warm and deep, yet full of melody. “And an outrage that they should attach our name to their racialist agenda.”

Vee put down the remote.

The man wore a gray shirt with a neat gray collar. He was forty, I guessed. His hair was wild and black and had not been combed. The gold bands on the shoulder of his shirt looked almost military; the vertical creases were ironed straight.

A voice from off-screen. “Do you distance yourself from the actions of these men?”

“We try to further God’s work. What these men have done is very far from that, no?”

I heard Elsa swear under her breath.

A caption on-screen:

Father Bror

Patriotic Order of the Temple Knight

A concerned smile was playing at the corners of Father Bror’s mouth. There was something familiar about the kindness that radiated from him. I remembered the coffee he had passed into my hands as we waited for news of Licia.

“That man,” I said. “He was on the shore by the slipway . . .”

“No, Cal,” said Elsa. “No, that isn’t possible.”

“Elsa, I swear. He handed me a coffee. Told me all would be well.”

“Father Bror . . .”

“It’s Bror,” he was saying. “No need for the Father.”

“Mr. Bror, your organization describes itself as ‘furthering the chivalric aims of the crusader knight.’ As do the Andersen brothers.”

The man Bror smiled a patient smile. “The Patriotic Order of the Temple Knight practices the chivalric virtues,” he said. “The so-called Tactical Brigades of the Knights Templar copy-and-paste our texts. We farm vegetables. They murder children. We seek enlightenment. They spread dark lies. You see the difference, perhaps?”

“But Mr. Bror—”

“Bror means brother,” he said. “So it really is just Bror.”

“In their press release the Andersen brothers link prominently to this film.”

A blocky Internet video filled the screen. Bror as a younger man, in jeans and a fisherman’s jumper. “These little flies,” he was saying. “On our fruit. Began to enter Norway in the 1970s. And at first the cold winters killed them. Now, though, they have learned to adapt and they are everywhere.”

In the studio Bror gathered himself. “As I have explained on countless occasions, I am talking, in that clip, purely about fruit flies. This is not a veiled reference to something else, no matter how others may wish to exploit it.”