The Nautilus restaurant shootout

The Nautilus restaurant shootout is the violent climax of Simon Kefas and Sonny Lofthus’s attempt to confront the Twin and bargain for a truce. At a seafood restaurant opened for a meeting that the Twin has long anticipated, Simon and Sonny survive a staged welcome, turn a briefcase into a trap, and kill several of their attackers. Their counterattack wounds the Twin but does not capture him: by the time the two men reach the street, he has vanished, leaving blood—and then no trail at all.

The Meeting and Its Stakes

At 6:35 a.m., a woman in a trench coat delivered a bag to Jan Øhre at Tomte & Øhre Solicitors, saying it was arranged. The early-morning delivery precedes the meeting, while the narrative’s focus shifts to two men arriving at a restaurant: Simon, the older man, and Sonny, the younger. They wore matching petrol-station sunglasses and carried identical briefcases. Sonny’s grey suit was elegant but crumpled and stained; Simon’s checked jacket and mismatched trousers looked like a bargain. Their disguises made them look like a pair, though their different bearing and purpose would soon become clear.

They reached the restaurant by way of a deserted alley and a narrow iron staircase leading to a modest door marked as a fish-and-seafood establishment. A stocky blond man appeared behind the porthole, his face distorted by its glass, and ordered them to hold up their hands. The order made plain that this was no ordinary negotiation: the men entering had submitted themselves to an armed reception before they could speak with the Twin.

Inside, the Twin greeted them by name and said he had been waiting a long time. Simon had brought Sonny there believing the meeting could end the hunt and establish a truce. Sonny, Simon explained, had come voluntarily: he believed he had avenged his father and wanted the two sides to go their separate ways. In return for the hunt being called off, Sonny was prepared to return the money and drugs he had taken. The offer was conditional, however. He had brought only a third of the money and drugs in the briefcases; the remainder depended on the Twin promising a truce and allowing Sonny to leave alive.

The Briefcases Become a Trap

The Twin’s men controlled the briefcases from the outset. When Simon reached for one, the blond guard knocked his hand away. The Twin then ordered Bo to open them. One was locked, and Sonny quietly supplied the combination, 999. The delay and the order to unlock the cases shifted control of the meeting: the containers presented as repayment were also the concealed means by which Simon and Sonny had prepared to resist the men surrounding them.

When the second case opened, a small metal pin fell from its interior and bounced across the stone floor. The men were watching Bo’s knife rather than the briefcase, so they missed the pin. The case held a pistol, an Uzi, and an olive-green grenade resembling a bicycle handlebar grip. The opening had set off a stun grenade. Simon had enough time to close his eyes and cover his ears before the flash and blast struck; the briefcase’s hidden mechanism turned the moment of apparent compliance into the opening of the counterattack.

The Counterattack

Simon and Sonny had prepared for this exact possibility at the Bismarck Hotel. Simon had explained that the temporary paralysis would last no more than two seconds, and the two men had practised taking the weapons and firing. Even with that rehearsal, Simon had been unsure whether the plan could survive the unpredictable sequence of the confrontation. Once the grenade stunned the room, the preparation became decisive: he lunged for the pistol, while Sonny grabbed the Uzi.

The blond guard still had an arm around Sonny’s head and a knife in his hand. Simon shot him below the blond fringe. Sonny then opened fire. Two of the Twin’s men were already down; a third reached inside his jacket before bullets struck his chest. He remained upright for a moment before collapsing. The attack reversed the room’s balance of power within seconds: the men who had surrounded the visitors were now being shot by the two men they had expected to control.

The Twin had disappeared from his chair while Simon was dealing with the others. Simon spotted him by the aquarium and fired three times. The Twin’s jacket twitched, and the aquarium glass cracked. Its water seemed briefly to hold its rectangular form before crashing across the room like a green wall. Simon fell in the deluge, crunching a lobster underfoot and buckling his knee. Sonny offered him a hand, but Simon brushed it aside, insisting that the Twin must not get away.

The Escape and Its Consequences

Sonny pointed out the red stains on the blue-grey tiles. Simon recognized that one of his bullets had hit the Twin. They followed the blood through the kitchen and along a dark corridor, where Simon tore off his sunglasses, then up a staircase and along another corridor toward a metal door. A distant slam seemed to identify the route, but Simon did not trust the obvious answer: the Twin was too cold and calculating to be assumed to have fled by the shortest way out. He checked the side doors as they went, allowing for the possibility that the slam was intended to misdirect them.

Outside, the men found an empty street in the morning sunshine. It was Ruseløkkveien, where it meets Munkedamsveien and rises in the direction of the Palace Gardens. The Twin was gone. Simon initially identified the place where the blood stopped and reasoned that the fugitive must have managed to keep it from dripping onto the tarmac. The empty street and the interrupted trail left the central outcome unresolved: Simon and Sonny had survived the ambush and wounded their target, but the Twin had escaped, and the pursuit continued.

The scene’s reversal rests on objects and seconds: identical briefcases conceal an unequal plan, a falling pin goes unnoticed, and a stun grenade temporarily takes away the attackers’ control. Yet the counterattack does not convert survival into victory. The aquarium breaks, the room is flooded, and the Twin turns the confusion to his advantage; the final image is not his capture but the point where his blood trail ends.