The Last Compromise (16 page)

‘All
right,’ Becker said. ‘It’s about the security cameras.’

‘Yes,
another source of headaches.’

‘What
happened to them?’

‘I
don’t know,’ the manager said. His face was considerably less red than it had
been earlier that day. But its colour wasn’t completely natural yet.

‘Who
manages the cameras?’, Becker asked.

‘It’s
an outside contractor. They come here once a month for maintenance. For the
rest we never see them. Only their invoices.’

‘Where
are the recordings stored?’

The
manager grinned. ‘Nowhere. There are no tapes or anything. It’s a stream of
digital pictures that’s fed directly into the server of the contractor. And
they probably save money by storing it all in the cloud. If we need pictures
for a particular day we ask for them.’

‘You
have to ask in order to get your own pictures?’

‘Not
just ask,’ the manager laughed. This was a subject he was visibly enjoying. ‘We
have to pay for them, too!’

Becker
frowned, a fact that made the manager change his facial expression from amused
to triumphant.

‘You
see,’ the manager said. ‘This is how division of labour in a modern economy
works. I need security cameras, but I don’t want to hire my own technical guy,
or pay for the tapes. Because then I’ll have to raise my hotel room rates, so
fewer people will stay at my hotel. And I go out of business, and have to fire
not just the technical guy but also the cleaning ladies, and I stop paying the
caterers, and I stop paying taxes. Clearly that’s not what we want.’ He relaxed
in his chair as he continued sharing his wisdom. ‘So I pay somebody else to do
all that. What I pay him is less than what I’d have to pay if I hired my own guy.
But the contractor is thinking the same thing I was thinking. He can keep all
that stuff stored, and pay for it. But that would mean his prices would go up,
and so I, the client, will take my business somewhere else. So the contractor
differentiates. Pay a premium price to have full access to your recordings
anytime, or pay a basic price for access on demand, and pay for each demand.
And how often is there a demand?’ The manager promptly answered his own
question. ‘We can plan ahead, say ten times a month to check on what the staff
are doing. If every access costs let’s say ten euros, it’ll cost a hundred
euros a month. If that’s less than the premium access would cost, I take the basic
package because I don’t need any more than that.’

‘Now
you do,’ Becker said. ‘Someone died, we need the footage.’

‘Yes,
but that practically never happens,’ the manager said. ‘Even if robberies or
murders or I don’t know what other crimes happened in my hotel on average once
a month, which they don’t, it would still only add another ten euros to my
monthly bill. In reality it adds a fraction of a cent to my yearly bill, Inspector.
Because the likelihood is so low.’

Becker
had enough of this. ‘Where are the recordings for today?’

‘Like
I said, I don’t know. The contractor says there’s been a malfunction. Earlier I
told that your colleagues, too.’

‘And
now?’

‘And
now it’s a contractual non-performance,’ the manager said, caressing his tie. ‘They
promised access on demand, we demand, they don’t deliver. We don’t pay, and
they pay us a penalty.’ He grinned. ‘I’m sure their estimate of the penalties
they’ll have to pay out per year is lower than the cost of making their system
more secure. And why is it lower? Because the likelihood of a malfunction is
low, and the likelihood that it happens exactly on a day for which there is an
access demand is even lower.’

Becker
got up. ‘What’s the name of the contractor?’

The
manager also got up and told him. Becker wrote it down in his notepad and shook
hands with the manager. Now they had a working relation, which was a good
thing. The benefit of his helpful cooperation was higher than the cost of
having to listen to all this.

The
manager went into the kitchen in the back. Becker stayed in the restaurant. He
sat back down in his chair, took out his phone and searched for the website of
the contractor. Business hours were over, he tried anyway but only got a
voicebox and hung up. Tomorrow morning he’d go. Then he dialled a contact
number.

‘Yes,
hello Felten, it’s Becker. Yes, I heard about the hospital. Yes. No, still at
the hotel. Did any of the consultants from across the street come forward yet?
Hm, okay. Yes, I know, who wants to talk to the police during business hours.
Or during any hours. Did you put up a notice or talk to some managers there?
Thanks. Yes, I know. Now listen, please. The victim lived in Wincheringen, I’ll
send you the address as soon as I have it. Please contact the German side,
notify them that possibly one of their residents is dead, if it’s him. No,
we’re not, there’ve been lots of suspicious people going in and out of that
toilet, I want to be sure it’s him. Yes. Well, we can’t show them that, can we,
but he still has fingers. So to be sure we need to compare fingerprints and get
a tissue sample from his apartment to match it to the body. The Germans open
the door, we match everything here at our own lab. And when you go there, chat
to the neighbours, okay? And send crime scene to the victim’s office to take
some fingerprints off his desk and keyboard, just in case the Germans are
reluctant to let us take prints at his home. Well, tissue you can just bag anywhere,
but they feel that taking prints inside a person’s home is more intrusive. It
takes more paperwork. Yes, today, tonight. Of course. Yes. Thanks. Bye.’

Becker
hung up and inhaled some smoke. His colleague Felten had done the consultancy
building, maybe this would yield results from people who’d finally remember
being in the lobby and seeing something useful, and who’d find the time and the
kindness to tell the police about it. But that would be probably tomorrow, too.

Becker
tried Hans Tamberg’s mobile phone number again, but nobody answered. Then he
looked up the Commission’s switchboard number and asked to talk to Willem
Tienhoven’s colleagues or secretariat in Brussels, to see whether they knew
anything about the man’s whereabouts, or could tell him more about this
surprisingly light heart attack. But nobody answered that call either.

This
day was over, Becker decided, at least as far as this case was concerned.
Tomorrow he’d go to the firm that lost the camera footage. Then he’d need to
talk to the chief prosecutor about where to find Lieutenant Lawrence, US Army.
Then he’d need to wait for Doctor Offerbrück’s autopsy, nothing to be looking
forward to. Not because of the gory details, but because of the man himself. Then
he’d need to wait for the chemical analysis of the explosive, and the prints
matching and the DNA results. Only once the identification was positive would
he notify the Bulgarian embassy about the demise of one of their citizens.

In
the meantime Becker would need to get a hold of Willem Tienhoven plus Hans
Tamberg from the European Commission. Becker refused to regret having let Tamberg
leave. There’d been no reason to deprive him of his liberty by locking him up. The
young man was a witness, and he wasn’t a mafioso. But it was clear that he
hadn’t even told him half of what he knew.

France,
Motorway E25, direction Thionville

‘Mama,
he’s doing it again!’

Anneli
held the steering wheel and blocked out the shouting from the back seats. She
was thinking. About the day, about her conversation with the police inspector.
The headlights were on, because it was getting dark. In Finland they always had
to be turned on, even in daylight.

‘Mama!
With his chewing gum!’

She
had answered all the inspector’s questions in Theodorakis’s office. How are you
feeling? I’m all right, thank you. How do you know Monsieur Zayek? We work in
the same unit. What do you do? We process reports for the Commission. And Zayek?
He, too. We all do.

‘Mama,
I’m telling you, it’s getting worse!’

‘He’s
lying, I didn’t do anything!’

What
happened here today, Madame Villefranche? Someone came into his office. How do
you know? I heard it, our office doors are always open. How many people? Two, I
believe, but he talked with only one man. What language? English. What did they
say? I don’t know, I didn’t hear and I didn’t listen. And then? They left
together. Then after a while I heard police sirens on the street. How well did
you know Monsieur Zayek?

‘Mama,
he won’t stop!
It’s
disgusting!’

‘He’s a liar, a liar!’

‘Stop
it, both of you!’, she snapped. ‘Eric, leave your little brother alone! Matti,
stop whining because of every petty little thing!’

She
hated it. She knew that she shouldn’t yell at them. Of course it was she who
had given them the chewing gum Boris had bought her on Monday in the first
place, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that she and her husband had
agreed that they would try to avoid the yelling. That they would check on each
other in case things got out of hand. They had agreed a number of times
already. Because every time she or her husband yelled at them, the mood turned
even more aggressive. The boys would snap back at them, and at each other. It
was a vicious circle. The only way out was to stay calm and patient. If you are
calm, they are calm, they behave more normally, which allows you to be even
calmer and nicer and happier. And then they are happier. But by God, it cost
her so much energy.

How
well did you know Monsieur Zayek? Like I said, we were co-workers. We went for
coffee sometimes, but not often. Did you like him? You shouldn’t say this about
the dead, but to be honest: a little, but not very much. Why do you think the
anti-fraud people came to talk to him? I didn’t know they were anti-fraud. Did
he have enemies, were there any other reasons he might have been in trouble? I’m
sorry, Inspector, I have no idea.

Everything
she had told him was the truth.

She
took a deep breath.

‘Okay
boys, I’m thinking of an animal, it’s a mammal, and it starts with the letter V.’

‘La
vache!’

‘In
Finnish, Eric.’

‘Oww,
Mama!’

‘Villisika!’

‘Yes!’
The wild boar, exactly. The younger one was always a little quicker.

‘Do
another one! But a difficult one, not one for babies.’

In
another twenty minutes they would be back home. She needed to talk about the
news of her dead colleague, a man who had worked in the office right next to
hers, and whose life had ended so abruptly and so violently, and so close to
her workplace. She had talked to Ilona and Pedro, of course. She’d had to
listen to Stavros’s hypocritical sermon, like the other two. But she felt she
needed to end the day by reading to the boys and, once they’d be in bed, by opening
a bottle of wine, calling to talk to her father, and, once her husband would be
home, talking it all through with him, too, sharing a quiet evening with him.
It had been a tough day.

She
turned the steering wheel by just a few degrees to follow the slight bend of
the motorway heading south.

Hans and Viktor had
just crossed the Belgian border and were heading north and west in the
direction of Brussels. Viktor kept a steady speed. It was a smooth ride through
the wooded landscape that was slowly turning dark green and grey.

‘Are
you sure this isn’t a problem, Viktor?’

‘It’s
fine, Hans. Let me just quickly call my wife.’

He
took his phone from his pocket and touched the screen to dial a contact’s
number. He held it to his ear.

‘Hi,
listen, is it okay if I take the car?’ He spoke to his wife in English. Mixed
marriage. ‘I’m bringing a colleague to Brussels. No, the colleague from
anti-fraud. I’m giving him a lift to his office. Yes. Yes I know they are, I
just wanted to be sure. Okay. Yes, tonight, of course. Ciao!’

He
touched the screen again and pocketed the phone. Then they drove on in silence.

‘Is
everything all right?’

‘It’s
fine,’ Viktor replied. ‘I’ll just drop you off and head back home. I have to be
at home tonight because tomorrow morning we’ll need the car to bring the kids
to school.’

‘And
now?’

‘The
kids are visiting friends of ours anyway, they will bring them back to our
place later tonight. My wife’s at home, but she doesn’t need the car right now.’

Hans
looked around him. He had seen cars of friends with children, they were rubbish
bins on wheels, full of crumbs and empty packages and fossilised fried potatoes.
He had also seen childless people’s cars, immaculate, without a speck of dust. Like
Tienhoven’s car, which was hopefully still parked outside the Commission
building in Luxembourg, because otherwise it would have meant the fool had
driven his own car after a heart attack. Hopefully he’d be in a bus or taxi
now. Either way, Hans had expected Viktor’s car to be either very clean or very
dirty. But Viktor’s car was in the middle. Not immaculate, but not messy
either. In fact, Hans realised he didn’t care very much. He touched his
eyebrow. The crust was gone, but it still hurt.

Viktor
asked, ‘Why were you in Luxembourg?’

Hans
put his hand back down. Viktor was right. It was time to put some order into
the questions that needed answering.

Hans
turned his head left to face Viktor. ‘We were investigating the falsified
nuclear reports. And, by extension, the missing uranium.’

Viktor
kept his eyes on the road ahead of him. The headlights were on. Hans faced forward
again, watching the red tail lights of the car in front of them.

‘We
talked to a man from the atomic energy department,’ Hans continued. ‘We went
there together with someone from the German foreign intelligence agency.’

Viktor
didn’t react.

Hans
added, ‘The Germans think the man was a Russian spy.’

A
car with a noisily powerful engine overtook them. Viktor kept his speed steady.

‘And
then this man died,’ Hans added. ‘During the questioning, in the hotel where
you picked me up.’

‘So
you think the man who might have been a Russian spy was the one who falsified
the nuclear reports.’

Why
hadn’t he asked how exactly the man had died?

‘I
can’t be sure,’ Hans replied. ‘You told me yourself that it seems like uranium
really is disappearing. Based on the samples so far. It could be that the man
was involved, it could be that he was a spy. It could be that he died because
of his involvement. It could be that he just died and that the other things
have nothing to do with each other.’

‘How
did he die?’

There
you are. Hans thought about it. Indeed, how
did
he die?

Hans
said, ‘I lost my phone. Do you have an internet connection to a Belgian network
on yours?’

‘Yes
I do.’

‘Can
I borrow it to check the news? Maybe they’ll tell us what they think happened.’

Viktor
handed him his phone. Hans opened the internal news outlet of the European
Commission. It had happened close to one of their offices, involving one of
their employees, maybe there would be a notice to staff or a press release.

Viktor
asked, ‘Should you be using a mobile phone right now?’

‘Why
not? I’m not a fugitive. I think. And it’s your phone. Here, I found it.’ He
read it out aloud. ‘This afternoon a staff member died a violent death near his
workplace at the European Commission in Luxembourg. He died in the blast of a
small explosive charge, a spokesman of the Luxembourgish police said. Police
refused to comment on whether they considered it a killing, an accident or a suicide.
The European Commission has offered full cooperation to the national
authorities, Commissioner Maria Schuster-Zoll told the press.’

Viktor
didn’t reply. Hans closed the news. He noticed that the phone was down to its
last bar of battery life.

He
gave Viktor his phone back, and said, ‘I think we can rule out an accident. The
explosive charge was probably inside his mouth.’

‘So
either he killed himself, or someone shoved in a hand grenade.’ Viktor hadn’t
paused at all, not even for a second.

‘A
military hand grenade wouldn’t have fit. They trained us on them back in
Estonia.’

‘I
assume the head was damaged or missing?’

‘Missing.’

‘Maybe
it wasn’t inside his mouth, just near his face.’

Hans
shook his head. ‘Still, even one of the smaller, offensive hand grenades would
have torn apart the body, too. It was something very small.’

Viktor
veered left and overtook a heavy lorry. He smoothly got back into the right
lane. Then he cleared his throat and said, ‘So let’s assume the dead man was a
Russian spy. You come to investigate and he kills himself, or someone else
kills him, either because you came or because of something else.’

Hans
almost showed a content grin. He was pleased to hear Viktor’s logic. That was
precisely the value of talking things through with somebody else.

‘Okay.’

Hans
waited for a continuation of Viktor’s train of thought. It came one kilometre
later.

‘Let’s
assume it’s not something else, but the fact that you came to investigate. In
that case, whether he was killed or whether he killed himself, he had to die in
order to protect something. A secret.’

Another
noisy sports car overtook them.

Viktor
continued, ‘And that secret could be that he was inside atomic energy and
involved in making uranium disappear, or it could be something else.’

‘Or
that he was a spy, but didn’t steal the uranium.’

‘Why
not?’

Hans
shrugged. ‘Because I guess that Russia has enough uranium already. On the tips
of their missiles.’

Viktor
turned the wheel and overtook an empty tourist coach.

‘It’s
not necessarily for themselves,’ he said as he veered back into the right lane.
‘It could be to embarrass someone, or to drive a wedge between two other
parties.’

This
was more or less what Tienhoven had said, too. To expose someone or something at
the right moment, right before a gas deal or before elections.

Viktor
continued, ‘I’m not an expert, but as far as I know uranium is traceable. Its
origin can be determined based on its physical properties. Russia has Russian uranium.
So why would Russia be interested in obtaining quantities of Western uranium?’

To
disrupt something. At the right moment.

‘Okay,’
Hans said. ‘Coming back to the earlier choice. Either he blew himself up, or he
was blown up, because he was exposed. Or it could be because of something else,
and because that something else is happening right now. His time had simply
come.’

In
that case it was unlikely to be a suicide. Which Hans thought wasn’t very
likely to begin with. Earlier today he had seen an alleged professional Russian
spy collapse and vomit after a few moderately threatening questions. He’d seen
an unknown man hurt his hand, trying to grab his phone thinking he’d been
photographed. And he’d seen a German spy following the supposed Russian spy
towards the bathroom, then hiding, then beating and suffocating Hans in order
to steal his phone. Some suicide.

‘What
are the current affairs related to Russia that could have triggered all this?’,
Hans asked both Viktor and himself, although his thoughts were already pointing
in a particular direction.

‘Number
one news are the youth protests in Southern Europe,’ Viktor said.

‘Er,
yes,’ Hans replied. That was the last thing he would have brought up. ‘But this
is hardly the Russians scheming. It’s more that half the youths there have been
unemployed for such a long time.’

‘Half
the workforce,’ Viktor said.

‘Excuse
me?’

‘The
unemployment rate is calculated in relation to the workforce, not in relation
to the whole population.’

Hans
wasn’t sure what Viktor meant.

‘Let’s
say you have ten young people,’ Viktor continued, still as calmly as before. ‘Six
are studying at university, two have a job, two are unemployed. How high is the
unemployment rate?’

‘Well,
two out of ten, no? Twenty percent.’

‘No.
It’s two out of four. Fifty percent. The students do not count because they are
not jobseekers. They’re sitting exams. It’s shocking to hear it’s fifty, but
out of the total it’s actually only twenty. Which is still high of course.’

Hans
thought about it. ‘There are young people who stay at university simply because
they cannot find a job.’

‘If
they are jobseekers even while they study they count as unemployed, because
they are actually part of the workforce. Hence the need to talk to people about
their work situation, instead of just looking at registered unemployment.’

Hans
remembered what Viktor had said on the phone the other day about taking samples.
But this had nothing to do with either Russia or uranium. What was he talking
about?

They
drove on for another few kilometres.

Hans
resumed, ‘So what’s currently important, apart from the riots?’

‘Lots
of things are important, and lots of those things have an actual or potential
link to Russian interests, either now or at some point in the future,’ Viktor
said as he overtook a sportive but slow car. ‘It could be anything between the
Middle East and what Russia considers to be its sphere of interest in Eastern
Europe. Already before Ukraine, many have seen Russia as a long-term continental
security threat.’

‘But
that’s the point,’ Hans said. ‘Maybe that’s why I’m not getting it. The
Commission plays hardly any role in security matters. Each country wants to
decide these things on its own, so they keep all their powers to themselves.
The Commission takes the back seat. It’s NATO they should be interested in.’

‘Maybe
they have put a hundred times more spies into NATO than in the Commission, I
don’t know,’ Viktor shrugged. ‘I certainly would have, if I were them. But I
just don’t know. It could be nothing at all. It could be something relatively
grave, such as the building of a dirty bomb. Or it could be something
relatively innocent, such as theft of uranium for financial gain, black-market
operations. Or something in the middle. A scheme to obtain or divert Western uranium
in order to harm certain interests and advance some others.’

‘A
dirty bomb?’ Hans turned to look at Viktor again.

‘A
regular bomb that is stuffed with radioactive material. It’s not a nuclear
bomb, but if it goes off it contaminates the area around it.’

A
dirty bomb with Western uranium in Russian hands. Hans’s thoughts were racing.
But Viktor was right, neither of them was an expert. Can you even use uranium
from a reactor for that? Was it necessarily from a reactor?

‘Viktor,
it doesn’t have much battery life left, but can I please use your phone again?’

Viktor
handed it to him. Hans dialled the switchboard number. It wasn’t too late yet, it
should be fine.

‘Siim
Kruuse, please. Transport. Thanks.’

The
usual sounds and noises.

‘Tere
Siim, it’s Hans. I’m on my way to Brussels.’

‘Hans,
was that you in Luxembourg? The guy in the explosion was from atomic energy,
wasn’t that the department you called from my phone?’

‘Yes,
and that’s why I’m calling now. I need a favour.’

‘Another
one? Last time you said there wouldn’t be any trouble, now people die in
explosions.’

‘It
wasn’t people in the plural, it was only one person. Listen, I need to talk to
your fiancée.’

‘Clarissa’s
not my fiancée yet. We’re only thinking about it.’

‘Where
is she at the moment?’

‘I
told you, in Holland. The research reactor in Petten.’

‘I
need to talk to her.’

Siim
waited for a moment. ‘You know what? Me too.’