Free The Lion's Mouth by Anne Holt

only long training in official decorum that kept her upright. Her curls trembled sadly on her head, as though they too were mourning the loss of a close friend.
    She hammered three times on the table with a gavel before clearing her throat, then stood for so long without uttering a word that the atmosphere in the chamber became even more tense. In the end, she swallowed so loudly and so close to the microphone that the sound could be heard in every corner of the chamber.
    “Parliament is lawfully convened,” she said finally, before reading out the list of deputies, for once rather short, which was good, since formalities seemed misplaced on a day such as this.
    “Prime Minister Birgitte Volter has passed away,” she said at last. “And in the most brutal fashion imaginable.”
    Lost in his own thoughts, Finance Minister Tryggve Storstein missed out on the memorial speech. Everything around him seemed to blur. The golden decorations on the ceiling, the burgundy carpet at his feet, the sound of the Parliamentary President’s voice; a glass bell jar formed around his chair and he felt totally alone. He was going to become Party Leader. Ruth-Dorthe did not have a chance. She was far too controversial for that. But would he also become Prime Minister? He did not even know if he wanted to. Of course, the thought had been there. Earlier. Before the final confrontation in 1992, when Gro Harlem Brundtland had resigned as Leader of the Labor Party, thus launching the cat-and-dog fight that Birgitte Volter had won. But now? Did he want to be Prime Minister?
    He shook his head peremptorily. People did not ask such questions. One did what the situation demanded. What the party required. Frowning at the old cliché, he closed his eyes. For one fleeting, liberating moment he considered the possibility of theopposition taking over, but that blasphemous notion was swiftly displaced. They had to retain power. Anything else would mean chaos. Defeat. He was tired of defeat.
    “In conclusion, I propose that the costs of Prime Minister Birgitte Volter’s funeral be borne by the state,” the President said.
    Tryggve Storstein straightened up.
    “Carried unanimously,” the woman at the front declared, hammering the gavel, and stroking her cheek rapidly, in a gesture of vulnerability. “The Foreign Minister has asked to speak.”
    The ungainly man appeared even skinnier and more exhausted than he had that morning. Once installed at the Speaker’s chair, he seemed to forget himself entirely, before pulling himself together sufficiently to face right.
    “Madam President,” he said with a brief nod, glancing down at a small scrap of paper he had set in front of him. “I have taken the liberty of asking to speak in order to say that, as a matter of course, all members of the government place their positions at your disposal now, since the Prime Minister herself is deceased.”
    That was all. Hesitating slightly, he adjusted his glasses, as if he was considering continuing, then stepped from the Speaker’s chair and back to his place without taking the slip of paper with him.
    “Then I would like to ask for one minute’s silence,” the President of the Parliament said.
    The intense, empty silence lasted for two and a half minutes. Now and again a sniff was audible, but even the press photographers did not disrupt the solemn pause.
    “The meeting is closed.”
    The Parliamentary President banged the gavel again.
    Finance Minister Tryggve Storstein stood up. Thirty-six hours without sleep was now beginning to make him feel intoxicated; he was out of sorts and remained on his feet, staring at his hands, as though they belonged to someone else entirely.
    “When’s the Cabinet meeting, Tryggve?”
    It was the Minister of Culture, in a charcoal-gray suit and makeup that looked as though it had been a long time since she’d glanced in a mirror.
    “Two o’clock,” he said abruptly.
    They all immediately left the chamber, in a quiet and