The Last Compromise

by Reevik, Carl

‘Not here, of course,’ Tienhoven hastened to add. ‘Let me invite you to a cup of coffee in the hotel lobby across the street, okay? My name is Willem Tienhoven.’

  He extended his hand, Zayek took it, and since he had gotten up to shake hands, it meant that he was already standing. Ready to go.

  ‘Please, after you,’ Tienhoven said.

  Zayek took his jacket off the hook and started putting it on as he walked outside. Tienhoven and Hans followed him.

  ***

  ‘Can you tell me now what this is about?’, Zayek asked as soon as they’d left the building, heading across the parking lot towards the street.

  Hans took over from Tienhoven, assuming that Tienhoven would do the talking again once they’d arrive at the hotel. ‘We’re looking into people’s property, like where they own a holiday home,’ he said. ‘But let’s do this quietly. We cannot just ask you questions about your boss, you have certain rights.’

  Together they crossed the street and turned left at the newsagent’s shop to walk to the hotel.

  ‘It’s pretty far away from the city centre, no?’, Hans inquired. ‘I thought this would be on Kirchberg.’

  Zayek nodded. ‘Most of the offices are there.’

  ‘At least you have a modern building,’ Hans said, encouragingly.

  Finally they reached the entrance to the hotel. Tienhoven hadn’t said a word.

  8

  The hotel lobby was identical to hundreds of other hotel lobbies, just like the hotel itself was identical to hundreds of other hotels in the chain. And in other chains, for that matter. The colours were an inoffensive mix of beige and brass, soothing the senses of anyone entering. A marble path led from the sliding glass doors past a round column in the middle of the room and straight to a reception counter at the far end of the lobby. The rest of the floor was carpeted. To the right of the counter there was a door to a staircase. At the counter itself a lone receptionist was talking to a guest. Hans could only see the guest’s back, but that was more than enough. It was an American army officer in a dark blue uniform with light blue trousers, a little black suitcase on rolls with a telescopically extended handle standing right next to him on the floor. The man was at least thirty centimetres taller than the receptionist, who himself was of ordinary height. Also, his shoulders seemed thirty centimetres broader. Above them both, the hotel chain’s logo on the wall constituted the only brightly colourful spot in the room.

  To the left of the counter there was an opening in the wall leading to a hallway. A pictogram on the wall, showing a man and a woman, indicated that this was the way to the restrooms. The rest of the lobby was filled with arrangements of round little tables and several low armchairs placed around each of them. In the windowless left-hand half of the room, a group of three young men in suits occupied one of the arrangements. These weren’t established bankers, they rather looked like junior consultants on their way up the corporate ladder. So far they weren’t high enough on that ladder to meet at a truly chic hotel.

  On the right-hand side, which was somewhat brighter because it featured a row of windows, their light dulled by beige net curtains, two of the armchair arrangements were taken. At the far end, closer to the staircase and the reception counter, two women were sitting opposite each other. Both had black hair, both wore black business suits. Both were silently swiping their thumbs over the screens of their phones. Nearer, and closer to the entrance, was the arrangement where Hans, Tienhoven and their guest of honour Mister Zayek needed to be. Frank Hoffmann was sitting in one of the armchairs, greeting them with a brief neutral smile.

  They sat down around the table, Zayek between Hans and Tienhoven, facing Hoffmann. A waitress arrived and brought them four cups of coffee, which Hoffmann must have ordered earlier, and which he now took and placed on the table. Hans put creamer and sugar in his. They all took their first sip.

  All four of them had serious faces as they sat in their armchairs, but the setup was almost comical. Hans had seen the movies, and surely Zayek had seen the movies as well. The same movies, with the same setup. He wondered how he himself would react, though, in Zayek’s position, in such a situation, having seen the same movies.

  ‘So, let’s start again,’ Tienhoven said. ‘My name is Willem Tienhoven, I am from here, from the Commission. That is Mister Hoffmann from the German BND.’ He let it sink in. Zayek looked at him, then at Hoffmann, then at Hans, then he looked down at his coffee cup and took another sip. Hans took a second sip, too. The coffee was nicely hot and fresh.

  Tienhoven continued. ‘Let me first tell you that you’re not a suspect, Mister Zayek. I consider you a witness. I was hoping you could help me understand something.’ Smart move, Hans thought. It sounded sympathetic, like he was doing him a favour. In fact a suspect had a lot more rights than a witness had. The right to have another person of his choice present at the questioning, for example.

  ‘There are all kinds of theories about how you got here, Mister Zayek,’ Tienhoven continued. ‘I think that there was nothing really serious. Probably some papers got mixed up somewhere. But you need to tell me, so that I can be sure.’

  ***

  Zayek placed his cup back on the saucer. He was nervous. He wasn’t sweating or trembling, but his heart was racing. He kept silent, not just because of the nerves. He was angry, and he wanted the skinny anti-fraud guy to wait for his answer. He would not give him any answers right away. Not with the smooth talking, and not with the yelling and threatening that they would surely start in a few moments. And anyway Zayek was afraid his voice would be shaking if he were to say anything. He didn’t want to drink the rest of his coffee either, because he was afraid the cup would tremble against the saucer.

  ‘Tell me,’ the Tienhoven guy repeated. ‘How did you come to the Commission?’

  Zayek still said nothing, just stared at the carpeted floor, his heart still racing. He was still angry. He wanted to shout something back, but he didn’t know what to say. He was waiting for the guy to say something to which he could say something defiant, something that would throw him off balance.

  ‘There is a police car waiting at the German side of the border,’ the man from the BND said. He was not shouting. He was informing Zayek about a fact. ‘We will arrest you. Not for fraud, but for espionage.’

  Zayek listened to him, and he suddenly felt happy, his nervousness receding for a moment, because now he could say something back. ‘The BND cannot torture me.’

  ‘Fuck the BND,’ the man said, right into Zayek’s face. Zayek reeled back in his armchair, his mouth still open.

  The man continued in a vicious hiss. ‘We’ll arrest you, and we will take you straight to Ramstein airbase and give you to the Americans. And they will put you sorry fucker on one of their planes to God knows where.’

  ***

  Hans was somewhat taken aback by Hoffmann’s sudden aggression, even though he hadn’t yelled. But Tienhoven had stayed calm. Zayek was trembling now. He stammered, in a weak voice, ‘But Germany cannot extradite a German citizen.’ It was more a question than a statement.

  ‘You are no German citizen, you’re a Bulgarian,’ Hoffmann whispered. ‘You accepted a foreign passport.’

  ‘Look,’ Tienhoven said calmly. All this time he had kept looking at Zayek. ‘No-one is taking you anywhere as long as you are here. Just tell me what happened to you.’

  Zayek jerked forward, his cheeks swelling. He covered his mouth with both hands, vomit oozing out between his fingers. He got up and stumbled past the column and the reception counter towards the restrooms. The junior consultants looked over to him. The American soldier at the counter turned around and watched him as he passed him. The two women with the phones didn’t react at all. Hoffmann got up from his armchair and followed Zayek, hurrying to catch up with him, presumably to make sure he was all right. Or that he didn’t do anything stupid.

  Hans looked at Tienhoven. They must have been thinking the same thing. Hans nodded, got up and followed Hoffmann. Nobody
should be doing anything stupid today.

  Zayek and Hoffmann disappeared around the corner, Hans followed. He had already reached the reception counter. What a bizarre scene, he thought. The questioning had only just started, and already Zayek was falling apart. Hans took out his phone and held it out in front of him to check the time. It couldn’t have been more than one or two minutes.

  He felt a sudden pain in his fingers as someone grabbed them and made him drop his phone on the floor. Hans looked down, then up at the man who was continuing to forcefully crush the fingers of his right hand like a tuft of rigid straws. A man he didn’t know. Dark hair, blue eyes, an incredibly tense expression in his face. The man’s lips were tightly pressed together. The pain got worse, Hans opened his mouth in a mute scream, trying to free his right hand with his left.

  Hans jerked back as the man suddenly turned around, releasing his grip. The giant American had turned away from the reception counter and had forcefully grabbed the attacker by the shoulder. ‘Is there a problem, sir?’, the soldier said in American English. He had a deep and determined voice. It was an order, not a question.

  As Hans was wagging his hurt hand, thinking what to say to the man who’d just made him drop his phone, he heard a sudden loud bang, a shot or explosion, somewhere behind a wall to his left. It had come from the bathrooms. Glass shattered, some people in the lobby shrieked, coffee cups fell on the carpeted floor without breaking. Hans had no time to decide what to do, whether to run towards or away from the blast or to stay put, because the giant American jumped on him and the man with the tight lips. He felled them both, Hans fell on his elbow and his head hit the marble floor. The soldier pressed both their heads firmly to the ground, Hans felt the cold stone against his cheek. Hans had been in the Estonian army for a year as a conscript, they had mostly been hiking through the woods carrying heavy equipment, and he hadn’t developed any lasting soldier’s reflexes. This American was clearly a professional military man, though. Hans lay on the floor, facing the tight-lipped blue-eyed man whose tense face was also pressed against the marble, the American lying on top of them both.

  As soon as the soldier relaxed his pressure the man jumped up, scanning the floor for a moment, and made a stunning dash towards the front exit. He was gone within two seconds. Hans still lay on the floor. He watched as the attacker left, then saw Tienhoven stare blankly into the distance. He hadn’t left his armchair near the entrance. The three consultants from the other arrangement had gotten up and looked like they were undecided where to go now. The two women who were sitting just a few metres away looked at Hans, their phones still held in their hands.

  ‘You okay, buddy?’, the American asked Hans, kneeling right next to him. Hans turned around and saw his square-jawed face. This time it had been a genuine question, not an order. Above the American’s face, leaning over the counter, he saw the receptionist look down on him.

  Hans put his head back on the floor. His fingers hurt, and he had hurt his elbow and his head when the American had tackled him. He scanned the floor around him from his horizontal viewpoint and saw two objects under an empty armchair two metres away. One was his phone, the other a small black box about the same size as the phone. The box wasn’t his, so it had been either lying there before or the tight-lipped assailant had dropped it. Or the American had. Hans crawled over to the armchair and picked up both items. He showed the American the box, a question in his eyes, but the American shook his head and got up. Not his, either. Hans put the phone and the box in the right pocket of his dark grey jacket and zipped it close.

  Then he got up, too, and, without answering the American whether he was okay, started walking towards the bathrooms. The three consultants had already come closer, having evidently decided not to flee the scene but to see what the blast had been. Hans went ahead, leaving the others behind him. He may have been somewhat disoriented, very much so even, but he clearly remembered that he had originally set out to follow and check on Zayek. Hans entered the gloomy hallway he had wanted to reach. To the right it continued as a long corridor, an emergency exit at the far end. To the left there were two doors, the ladies’ to the left and the gents’ to the right.

  Hans opened the gents’ room door and stepped inside. Then he bent over forward, his face red, his heart racing, and threw up on the floor. His stomach hurt, he couldn’t breathe. The floor was covered in vomit, and blood, and teeth, and shards of skull, and chunks of brain, and shreds of flesh. A green pack of menthol cigarettes was half submerged in it. It was still sealed. The walls and the sinks and the broken mirrors and the ceiling were sprayed with dark red blood. In front of him, leaning awkwardly against a cubicle door, sat Zayek’s body. It had no head.

  Hans tried to breathe, but the stench of the vomit was making him feel sick again. He coughed, spit, and left the room. In the hallway he took a deep breath. Then another one. Where was Hoffmann? Then another one. The American came around the corner, squeezed past him, opened the door, looked inside, closed it again, and asked Hans a direct question. ‘Did you see anybody who’s still here?’

  Hans shook his head. The American took a step back and told the receptionist to call the police, there’s a dead man in the restroom. The consultants, who were already crowding the entrance to the hallway, looked at each other in discomfort and disbelief, again undecided about what to do and where to go. Hans stood there for another moment, and then slowly turned around the corner back into the lobby, squeezing past the consultants. The receptionist was quietly but urgently talking on the phone. The two women were still sitting in their armchairs. They had pocketed their phones and were staring at Hans, who must have looked very bleak. Now the receptionist was squeezing past Hans to take a look at the scene in the men’s room himself. Hans looked over to where his own group had sat. Tienhoven was the only one sitting in the far half of the room near the entrance. Hans saw him and frowned. His boss was staring into the distance as he had done before. Then his body started tilting to the side, and the man fell off his chair.

  At the same moment Hans heard the receptionist shout just behind him, ‘Everybody, get out of the hotel now!’ The man had seen enough to decide to evacuate the guests from the lobby.

  As the consultants slowly started moving towards the exit, Hans hurried towards Tienhoven, past the column in the middle of the room, and knelt beside his boss’s body. The man was grimacing in pain, his face was sweaty, he was clenching the shirt on his chest, breathing heavily. The heart. The heart medication.

  ‘Call an ambulance!’, Hans shouted into the room while still looking at Tienhoven’s bleak, distorted face. Then he turned around, still kneeling, and added, ‘Heart attack!’

  He saw the receptionist wave to him from the reception counter, the receiver held against his ear. He was already saying something into the phone. Good, Hans thought. He himself had just recovered his mobile phone, but he would have been unable to explain what had happened, and where exactly, in this foreign city in a foreign country. He still felt weak and nauseous and disoriented. He understood very clearly that while he saw what was happening around him, he could only think of one thing at a time. Now it was Tienhoven and his heart. Now it was the women and the three consultants, who had stood to stare at Tienhoven lying on the floor for a few moments, and who were now leaving at the repeated insistence of the receptionist. Then it was the view of the far end of the lobby again. The only guest who hadn’t left was the uniformed American, who was now approaching Hans, carrying his black suitcase in his hand. He had pushed the telescopic handle back inside. He knelt next to Hans and checked Tienhoven’s sweaty neck for the pulse. Tienhoven had regained some face colour, but not much.

  ‘Look buddy,’ the soldier said to Hans in his deep, determined voice which absorbed all of Hans’s attention. ‘This man has a pulse and it’s not fibrillating, which is good. The medics will take care of him. If the pulse stops use a defibrillator, there’s one in a green box on the wall back in the hallway. I have to catch my plane
now. The police will come about the dead man in there. My name’s in the computer if they need me.’

  Without waiting for any reaction, the American got up, took his suitcase and left through the sliding doors. There was a black taxi waiting for him outside. He got in, closed the door, and the taxi drove off.

  Hans looked down at Tienhoven.

  ‘I think,’ Tienhoven whispered. ‘I think. I can get up now. And sit in the chair. Help me up Hans.’

  Hans wanted to object, but Tienhoven was already exerting himself to get up. Hans allowed his boss to lean on his shoulder. Without getting into a fully upright position, Tienhoven fell into the armchair he’d been sitting in. Hans got up as well and sat in the armchair next to him, the one Zayek had sat in. Hans was facing the lobby and the reception counter again. He saw the receptionist come closer. The man stopped in front of them and said, ‘An ambulance is coming, police are coming. Can I get you anything? A glass of water?’

  Hans and Tienhoven both nodded mutely.

  ***

  Hans was sitting in his armchair. Tienhoven was sitting next to him, staring, saying nothing. He was just breathing, which was a good sign. It meant he was alive.

  Slowly Hans started sobering up. The receptionist had just brought him a glass of water and gone into some backroom somewhere. The glass was empty now and stood on the small table in front of him. Tienhoven had already drunk his, too. The receptionist had carried away the coffee cups from before.

  Hans asked Tienhoven, ‘Was it your heart?’

  His boss answered, ‘I feel much better now.’ Although that wasn’t really an answer, and he didn’t sound like feeling much better at all.

  Hans knew that in fact several much bigger questions were waiting for an answer, but there was no particular order in which he could arrange them. Not now. He held his breath, worried, then relaxed. No, he didn’t need to throw up again.

  Perhaps the simple question first.

  No, perhaps sitting around a little first, then the questions.