A single tear escaped and trickled down Johanne's cheek.

Americans and their big words, she thought. Americans and their pompous, high-flown, beautiful choice of words. She smiled quickly and wiped the tear away with the back of her hand.

'Are you ready to order?'

The waiter reappeared, looking from one to the other.

'Yes,' said Johanne. 'It would be very helpful if you could go through the menu in English so that I don't have to translate for my friend.'

This was no problem for the waiter. He spent almost ten minutes explaining and describing each dish and answering all of Karen's interested questions. When they had finally agreed on food and wine, Johanne realized that Karen was far more worldly than she was. Even the waiter seemed impressed.

They began with oysters.

There were no oysters on the menu, and the waiter didn't mention them at all during his comprehensive account of what the restaurant had to offer. Karen shook her head when he had finished, smiled her dazzling white smile and suggested that every self-respecting master chef always has a few oysters tucked away.

Always, she insisted.

It was true.

The problem was that Johanne had never eaten oysters.

She was an academic with a PhD. Well-travelled and financially secure. She liked food. She had eaten dog in China and deep-fried spiders from a shack in Angkor Wat. But she had never dared to try oysters.

She looked at the plate. The half-sh.e.l.ls lay there on a bed of ice, smelling faintly of the sh.o.r.eline. n.o.body could claim that the slimy, dirty white blobs looked appetizing. She glanced at Karen, who trickled a mixture of white wine and vinegar over each oyster from a small bowl, before picking up the first sh.e.l.l and sliding the contents into her mouth. She closed her eyes and rolled the oyster around in her mouth, then swallowed and exclaimed: 'Perfect!'

Johanne followed suit.

The oyster was the best thing she had ever tasted.

'Johanne,' said Karen when the dish was empty. 'Tell me more. Tell me everything. Absolutely everything!'

They talked their way through two more courses. They talked about their time at college and mutual friends from those days. About families and parents, about their joys and frustrations. About their children. They talked over each other, laughed and interrupted each other. The acoustics in the small restaurant were hopeless; Karen's loud laugh bounced off the bare walls, disturbing the other guests. However, the waiter remained friendly, discreetly topping up their gla.s.ses as soon as they were almost empty.

'Karen, I have to ask you about something.'

Johanne looked at the fourth course as it was placed in front of her: quail on a bed of artichoke puree. The little bird was surrounded by a circle of fine strips of Parma ham interspersed with pickled cherry tomatoes.

'Tell me about the APLC,' she said.

'How do you know I work there?' Karen carefully wiped her mouth with the thick fabric serviette before picking up her knife and fork again.

'I googled you,' said Johanne. 'At the moment I'm working on a project that-'

Karen laughed, making the gla.s.ses clink.

'We've been sitting here for over two hours, and we still haven't got round to telling each other what we do! You first start talking!'

And Johanne talked. She talked about her job at the Inst.i.tute of Criminology, about the doctoral thesis she completed in 2000, about how she loved research but found the teaching obligations which went with her current position something of a trial, and about the joys and frustrations of having to combine her career with two demanding children. Gradually, she got around to talking about the project on which she was currently working. By the time she had finished, the quail were tiny skeletons on otherwise empty plates.

'You must come over and see us,' Karen said firmly. 'What we do is highly relevant to your research.'

'And now it's your turn,' said Johanne. 'Off you go.'

She asked the waiter if they could have a short pause before the next course. She could feel that she had had a little bit too much to drink, but it didn't matter. She couldn't remember when she had last eaten out, and she definitely couldn't remember when she had felt this good. So when the waiter refilled her gla.s.s, she smiled appreciatively at him.

'We started in 1971, and we're located in Montgomery, Alabama,' Karen began, holding her gla.s.s of red wine up to the light to a.s.sess the colour. 'The two founders who are white by the way were part of the civil rights movement. They founded the company mainly to work against racism. It doesn't make any money, of course.'

She paused, as if trying to work out how to tell a long story in the shortest possible time.

'From the start you could say we acted as an organization providing free legal aid. Not that I was there at the time!'

Once more her laughter echoed around the room, and an elderly couple two tables away glared in their direction.

'In those days I hadn't even finished elementary school. In 1981 the company set up an information department, simply to make it easier to reach our only real goal: an America that works in agreement with its once revolutionary const.i.tution. For the first few years the struggle was mainly focused on white supremacy groups.'

'Ku Klux Klan,' Johanne said quietly.

'Among others. We've won a series of cases against members of the Klan. A couple of times we've even managed to close down their training camps and busted pretty big active cells. Of course the problem is ...'

She gave a little sigh and took a sip of her wine.

'KKK aren't the only ones in that particular arena. We've got the Imperial Klans of America, the Aryan Nations, the Church of the Creator ... You name it. Over the years our information service has become pretty comprehensive, and today I think we have an overview of 926 different hate groups distributed across the whole of the US. And they're extremely active.'

She emphasized the word extremely.

'I presume they're not all working against African-Americans?'

'No indeed. For example, we have black separatist movements that want to get rid of the rest of us. The Jews also have enemies everywhere. In the US, too.'

Karen suddenly looked older. The lines around her eyes were not laughter lines, as Johanne had thought. Now that Karen was serious, they were much deeper.

'The Inst.i.tute for Historical Review, Noontide Press ... way too many. On the other side, the Jews have the Jewish Defense League, which is most definitely a hate organization. So, there is enough hatred to go round in this world. We've got groups who are against South Americans, against Native Americans, for Native Americans, against all immigrants on more general and less prejudiced grounds ...'

An ironic smile ended the sentence. She was speaking more quietly now, but the married couple who had been sitting over by the wall still glared reproachfully at them as they got up to leave. As they pa.s.sed behind Johanne she heard something about a ruined evening and the fact that there ought to be a limit, even for Americans.

'And then, of course, there are all those who hate gays,' said Karen.

Dessert arrived at their table.

'Strawberry carpaccio with a vanilla crust and a miniature champagne sorbet,' said the waiter, placing the plates in front of them. 'I hope you enjoy it.'

'How big are these groups?' asked Johanne when they were alone again.

Karen stuck her spoon into the slices of strawberry. She rested her elbows on the table and gazed at her food as she answered slowly.

'That's not an easy question to answer, actually. As far as the purely racist organizations are concerned, they're bigger than you can imagine. Some of them are really old, and are run like military forces. As for the others, particularly the anti-gay groups, it's much more difficult to ...'

She put the spoon in her mouth and closed her eyes in bliss as she chewed. She searched for the right words.

'How shall I put it? ... More difficult to define.'

Johanne nodded. She was also trying to find the right words, and asked: 'Because of strong links with church communities, which are actually legitimate?'

'Yes,' said Karen. 'That's one reason. Initially, we define a hate group as a more or less established organization that fosters hatred against groups, or promotes this hatred in some other way. They're not cla.s.sified as criminal until they overstep the mark with regard to the rules on freedom of speech to which most countries subscribe, incite others to carry out actions punishable by law, or carry out such actions themselves, where the individual focus of this criminal action is targeted because they belong to a large group of people with specific, recognizable characteristics.'

She let out a long breath.

'That's not the first time you've said that,' smiled Johanne.

'I might have gone through it a few times.'

She was eating more slowly now. Johanne was full to bursting, and pushed her plate away.

'To give you one example,' said Karen. 'This happened in 2007. A young man, Satender Singh, was on holiday at Lake Natoma in California. He was from Fiji, and one day he was at a restaurant with some Indian friends. A group of people who spoke Russian decided that they could tell Satender was gay, and, to cut a long story short, they killed him.'

Johanne sat in silence.

'It does happen that h.o.m.os.e.xuals are killed just because they're h.o.m.os.e.xuals,' Karen went on. 'The particular thing about this case was that the murderers belonged to a very large group of Slavic religious immigrants in the Sacramento area. Their church communities are extreme in their condemnation of h.o.m.os.e.xuality. We're talking about almost a hundred thousand people, divided among seventy fundamentalist congregations in an area which used to be heavily populated by gays. To say that the relationship between these groups is now highly charged would be something of an understatement. The Christians are running an intensive anti-gay propaganda campaign, using both their own TV and radio stations and an enormous capacity to mobilize. At some protest meetings held by gay organizations, there are more anti-demonstrators than demonstrators.'

She took a deep breath and sc.r.a.ped up the remains of her sauce with her fork before going on.

'But when do they take that extra step and become criminals? On the one hand, it's clear they feel hatred. Their use of language and not least the disproportionate amount of attention they give to this whole issue makes it very clear that this is a question of pure, insane hatred. In addition, several of their spiritual leaders have refused to distance themselves from the murder of Satender, for example. On the other hand, freedom of speech is, and will remain, quite far-reaching, and many of those within such communities right across the US are very careful not to incite violence and murder directly.'

'They build the foundations for actions based on hatred, they refuse to condemn such actions when they occur, and afterwards they wash their hands of the whole thing because they didn't come straight out and say "kill them".'

'Exactly,' said Karen, nodding. 'And when a priest proclaims into the ether that h.o.m.os.e.xuals are wallowing in sin and will die an agonizing death, they will burn in h.e.l.l, they will ... Well, he can simply say he was referring to the word and the will of G.o.d. If one of G.o.d's children took him literally, that's not his problem. And as you're well aware, religious freedom and the freedom of speech are ...'

'The very basis of America's existence,' Johanne concluded.

'More coffee?'

The waiter must have had a first-cla.s.s degree in patience. They had been the only customers in the restaurant for more than half an hour. The staff were just waiting for them to finish. And yet the waiter took the time to top up their coffee cups and fetch more hot milk.

'None of this is good news,' said Karen when he'd gone. 'And apart from these extreme church groups, we have more established organizations in several parts of the US. Like the American Family a.s.sociation. Of course, they don't incite murder either, but they make a h.e.l.l of a lot of noise, and constantly create a bad atmosphere when it comes to public debate. A little while ago they started a boycott of McDonald's, of all things.'

'Actually, that sounds quite sensible,' said Johanne with a smile. 'But why?'

'Because the chain had bought advertising s.p.a.ce at one of the Gay Pride festivals.'

'And how did it go?'

'The whole thing failed, of course. On that occasion. But some of these groups are powerful and influential; they have plenty of money, and they don't care what methods they use. They certainly express hatred, but you can't call them criminal. But the most frightening thing of all is that ...'

She raised her gla.s.s in a silent toast.

'Recently we've seen signs of a more systematic persecution. Six murders of gay men during the past year are still unsolved: three in New York, one in Seattle and two in Dallas. Each case was thoroughly investigated over a long period by the local police. The murders were all carried out using different methods, and other circ.u.mstances varied. However, our investigators gradually discovered that two of the victims were cousins; the third had been a school friend of the first; the fourth had travelled around Europe by train with the second; and the last two had had brief relationships with the fourth two years apart. The FBI has taken over the cases. Not that they've got any closer to finding the perpetrator. But our department isn't going to let this go until it's solved.'

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l,' Johanne mumbled. 'What theories do you have?'

'Plenty.'

The noise from the kitchen had increased in volume. Whisks and ladles crashed down on metal worktops, and they could clearly hear the dishwasher. Johanne looked at her watch.

'I think we ought to make a move,' she said, hesitating briefly before she added: 'Do you still enjoy walking, Karen?'

'Me? I walk all the time!'

Johanne asked for the bill. It had been ready for a long time, and Karen grabbed it before Johanne had even realized the waiter was there.

'My treat.'

Johanne didn't have the energy to argue.

'Shall we walk back to my place and have a nightcap?' she asked as Karen got out her credit card. 'It's only about twenty minutes from here. Maybe a bit more in this weather.'

'Fantastic,' said Karen delightedly. She showered the waiter with compliments, picked up her coat and headed for the door.

'Oslo is a really quiet city,' she said in surprise when they got outside.

The traffic lights at the junction between Hans Nielsen Hauges Vei and Sandakerveien changed from amber to red with not a car in sight. The dirt and fumes from the day's traffic were concealed beneath a thin layer of fresh snow. There was hardly a footprint to be seen on the pavement. The clouds hung low over the city, and towards the southwest a pale yellow glow shone from the street lamps in the centre.

'This is mainly a residential area,' said Johanne. 'And in any case people don't go out much at night after Christmas. Norwegians party themselves to a standstill in December. January is the month of good intentions.'

They pa.s.sed the video shop on the corner and set off along Sandakerveien.

'Where were we?' said Karen.

'Your theories,' Johanne reminded her. 'About those six murders.'

'Ah yes.'

Karen knotted her scarf more tightly as they walked. Johanne had forgotten how tall and long-legged her friend was; she had to hurry to keep up with Karen.

'As far as the anti-gay movement goes, we've seen some strange new alliances. Jews and Christians, Muslims and even extreme right-wing groups haven't been able to live in peace for hundreds and hundreds of years, but now they've found a common enemy: the gay community. We've just registered a group who call themselves "The 25'ers". The curious thing about them is that they work very quietly.'

'Quietly? Isn't the whole point of groups like that to make as much noise as possible?'

'As a rule. But these people are different. We think they originate from more traditional fundamentalist environments on both the Muslim and the Christian side. It's as if they think everything is moving too slowly. That it's time to do something radical. It's the same people as before, but in a different combination, so to speak. They have the same goals, but are planning to use completely different methods to achieve them.'

They walked on for a while in silence. The conversation had taken an unpleasant turn, and Johanne wasn't sure she wanted to follow it to its conclusion.

'What methods?' she asked anyway as they reached the point where Sandakerveien levels out and curves towards the north-west.

Karen stopped so abruptly that Johanne had gone a couple of metres before she realized.

'Oslo isn't exactly a beautiful city,' said Karen, looking around.

Johanne smiled.