Nautilus Restaurant is a discreet establishment at Aker Brygge whose quiet, commercially plausible setting conceals a violent showdown. First noticed by Simon Kefas as a possible money-laundering venue, it later becomes the site where Simon and Sonny Lofthus confront the Twin, and where the struggle erupts into a shootout that leaves four people dead.

Setting and First Impression

The restaurant lies within Aker Brygge, a seafront development of shops, offices, expensive flats, and roughly fifty cafes and bars. Simon is brought there in heavy rain, two hours before a deadline. The men escorting him lead him along the waterfront, past the ferry arriving from Nesoddtangen, and into an alleyway. A small iron staircase descends to a door with a porthole, beside a modest sign reading Nautilus Restaurant.

Inside, a narrow hallway leads to an unmanned cloakroom. No one is visible. The restaurant’s unobtrusive entrance and apparently empty interior prompt Simon to consider how well it could serve as a money-laundering operation: it is neither so large nor so conspicuous that its takings would invite scrutiny, while its rent and location make genuine profitability plausible. In his assessment, an ordinary-looking business could provide cover precisely because legitimate profits are seldom questioned when taxes are paid.

The Dining Room and Its Occupants

The restaurant’s interior is marked by a large aquarium, whose green light silhouettes a large man as colourful fish move among the plants and bubbles. A crystal rests on a large white stone; lobsters with wired claws lie at the bottom. This striking arrangement makes the dining room a stage for the meeting, but the impression of composed spectacle soon gives way to threat.

When two newcomers enter and hand over their briefcases, the older man slows at the threshold. One of them asks where the mole is; the older man insists that he will arrive. The large man identifies the newcomers as Chief Inspector Simon Kefas and Sonny Lofthus, says he has been waiting a long time, and orders them to sit. A broad-shouldered man then slips in through the kitchen’s swing door and reports that the pair came alone. He joins the welcoming party, which forms a semicircle behind Simon and Sonny as they take their seats opposite the Twin.

The Shootout

The restaurant becomes the site of a carefully prepared counterattack. Simon and Sonny have practised at the Bismarck Hotel for the brief interval after a stun grenade incapacitates those around them. When the Twin opens the briefcase and triggers the grenade, Simon shuts his eyes and covers his ears before the flash and blast. As the temporary paralysis takes hold, he seizes a pistol from the briefcase and shoots a blond man holding Sonny by the head with a knife. Sonny takes the Uzi.

The men had planned for only a couple of seconds before the paralysis wore off. Although Simon had feared the plan would fail, their rehearsal enables them to turn the ambush against the welcoming party. Sonny fires, and two of the Twin’s men are already down; another is hit across the chest while reaching inside his jacket. Simon then turns his attention to the Twin, who has escaped his chair and moved to the kitchen swing door beside the aquarium.

Simon fires three times. The Twin’s jacket twitches, but the shots also crack the aquarium. Water surges out in a wall, carrying the restaurant’s carefully staged calm into chaos. Simon falls in the flood and crushes a lobster underfoot; when he looks up, the Twin is gone, visible only by the flapping kitchen door. Sonny offers him a hand, but Simon knocks it aside and insists that the Twin must not escape, fearing he will disappear for good.

Aftermath and Significance

The location’s final toll is reported after the violence. Kari Adel tells Commissioner Parr that four bodies lie at a fish restaurant called Nautilus. Her report fixes the cost of the confrontation in the same ordinary place first introduced through its discreet signage, empty cloakroom, and potential as a laundering front.

Nautilus Restaurant thus changes function over the course of the story: a plausible commercial cover becomes a meeting place, then an ambush site, and finally a scene of mass death. Its aquarium gives the confrontation a vivid physical center. When the glass breaks, the water and fish tank do not merely decorate the action; they turn the room itself into part of the violence, while the open kitchen door marks the Twin’s escape. The restaurant’s ordinary business façade and spectacular destruction sharpen the contrast between respectable appearances and the criminal power operating behind them.