The Last Compromise

by Reevik, Carl

  ‘What?’, Visser laughed. ‘It’s like a simple hotel room, for free. If you feel better I can interrogate you for a little while, see what crimes you have committed. Then I’d even have a proper reason to put you in, yes?’

  He walked around the desk, slapped Hans on the shoulder, and said, ‘Something always comes out, if you ask long enough, right?’

  Right. Stalin’s secret police had made people confess to the most outlandish of crimes. Of sabotaging the economy. Of spying for the British, the Germans, the Japanese, or for all of them at the same time. The police had been given arrest quotas, which they sometimes had met by rounding up people in alphabetical order from the phone book. But to this day historians had difficulty understanding where this obsession with confessions had come from. They could have just put them on a cattle train to Siberia right away. Which, in fact, they had done, on several occasions, to several population groups.

  ‘Thank you,’ Hans said in a neutral voice. ‘I’ll be in that corridor over there, maybe get something to eat and to read from the kiosk.’

  Visser nodded and left to go fill his cup.

  While he was still sitting at the computer, Hans used the opportunity to check his e-mail. He couldn’t access his work e-mail from here, but his private mail he could open.

  There was only a message from Julia. The first line of the text was displayed. It mentioned her not being able to reach him on his mobile phone.

  Hans didn’t open the whole message. He closed the account, got up and left the noise of the room behind him, mentally preparing himself for a long, long afternoon.

  Brussels

  Anatoly Slavkin picked up the receiver of the phone that was sitting on the heavy table. This time he didn’t answer the phone. This time he made a call himself.

  ‘This is Brussels station. Tamberg, Hans, booked tomorrow’s Estonian Air morning flight from Amsterdam to Tallinn. If you need the services of our embassy there, they no longer use the green numbers. They now use the blue ones.’

  Pavel hung up without saying a word to him.

  Slavkin put the receiver back down. Now some sweet tea would be nice. Or some orange juice. He’d have to drink it somewhere else, though, any stains would ruin the wooden table. It was a hulk the weight of a small car, with decorative stars, oars of wheat and hammers and sickles cut into it. Legend had it that they had put the table down first, and built the embassy around it. Probably that was a variation of another legend. Diplomats’ lore from the embassy in East Berlin, where they had put down a giant Lenin’s bust and built the reception hall around it. After the end of communism old Lenin hadn’t fit through any of the doors, so they’d put a blanket over his head.

  The building of the old Soviet embassy to East Berlin now housed the modern Russian embassy to unified Germany. Its architecture wasn’t too subtle. Slavkin had never been posted there yet, but he had visited twice. It was more of a statement than a building, a triumphant temple of Stalinist architecture saying: we own this half of the city. The message conveyed by the embassy to Estonia in Tallinn was more complex in comparison. The building had housed the Soviet embassy to independent Estonia before the war and then, when Estonia was Soviet, it had been the seat of the local branch of the secret police. After the end of communism Russia had reclaimed it as an embassy, stating that it was the legal successor to the Soviet Union. Arguably the logic was a bit mixed. On the one hand, Russia said it had inherited the old Soviet embassies; on the other hand, it insisted that by the time the Red Army had returned after Hitler’s invasion, Estonia had already been a part of the Soviet Union, and that it had therefore been liberated rather than occupied. But if Estonia had already been part of the Soviet Union, then there shouldn’t have been a Soviet embassy. Embassies were for foreign countries. Yes, the logic was complex. Everything is complex, Slavkin thought. Only American movies are simple. Private Ryan jumps off the boat when the war is almost over and saves the day. Ridiculous. The Battle of the Bulge, which they glorified so much, was nothing but a skirmish in the woods, in comparison to the meat grinders of Kharkov, Kursk and Stalingrad.

  And Slavkin had seen better war movies, too. A Russian miniseries about the Soviet penal battalions, for example. The plot and dynamics had been mercilessly equivocal. Hitler’s armies crush one Soviet division after the other, the country is on the brink of collapse. The Soviet government decides to recruit volunteers from among the population of its own labour camps: freedom in exchange for military service, an offer to allow the inmates to pay back in blood the debt they owed their country. The volunteers are put into the penal battalions, expendable units that are used to charge and clear minefields by trampling across them, for example. No, nothing had been straightforward in that plot. The inmates who were expected to do their patriotic duty for a system that had incarcerated them, often for no reason other than mass terror itself. The army that was expected to defend the country, after seeing its most experienced officers shot or put into the camps in a wave of purges just before Hitler’s invasion. Regular army units assisted by secret police units whose job it was to shoot their own soldiers in the stomach if they retreated, and to shoot them in the back if they weren’t charging enthusiastically enough. Soviet soldiers of different ethnic backgrounds suspicious of each other. Foot soldiers suspicious of their officers and vice versa. Army soldiers suspicious of penal soldiers, who were their former comrades deprived of their rank and life expectancy for often trivial or made-up infractions. Penal soldiers from the army suspicious of those from the camps. Men from the camps who had been political prisoners suspicious of those who had been actual criminals, thieves and murderers. Political prisoners who had been put into the camps for belonging to different factions of the communist party during the purges who were still squabbling, even though both had ended up in Siberia and were now expected to fight for Stalin and the motherland.

  It was a good thing Stalin had industrialised the country in time though, Slavkin knew. Even if that had come at the price of displacing and starving and enslaving and breaking and killing millions. The old Russian monarchy, the Tsar’s archaic and rotten regime, would not have withstood the Nazi onslaught. Russia would have fallen in the same way the rest of the European mainland had.

  Slavkin gently ran his fingers over the surface of the table, the wheat, the stars, the hammers, the sickles. No, he thought. Simplicity was a luxury that his country didn’t have, didn’t need, couldn’t afford. Everything was tainted, everything questionable. Everything was a price paid for something else. Maybe some systems made a greater effort to create an illusion of democracy or global harmony for their population. But reality was the same everywhere, in every single country on this sad, beautiful planet.

  Luxembourg

  Becker’s mobile phone rang just as he had sat down comfortably in his big black SUV outside the hospital. He touched the screen and said his name.

  ‘Good afternoon Inspector Becker, this is the US embassy,’ the male voice said. ‘The statement from Lieutenant Lawrence which your government had requested just arrived. Please ask for Mrs Kate Harrison.’

  Becker wasn’t sure whether this had been an actual person who had called him, or whether it had been a recording. The effect was the same: a brief monologue in American English followed by the click of a receiver. The United States didn’t have time to chat with some village cop from a country not much larger than the village itself. If he wanted his witness statement, he’d have to pick it up himself, thank you and have a nice day.

  This again could be either very good or very bad, Becker thought. It was good in the sense that the administration of the superpower that still more or less guaranteed Europe’s tranquillity had moved at an amazing speed. Majerus could have dispatched his request only around noon, and a few hours later he had his answer. Then again, noon here means early morning in Washington, he thought. Still, it was amazing. Which brought him to the worse possibility: the speed was not just amazing, it was improbably fast. There wa
s no way Lieutenant Lawrence would have just written something down by himself. He would have had a whole national security bureaucracy looking over his shoulder; or writing the statement for him, to make things even easier. There was the distinct possibility that what was waiting for Becker at the American embassy to Luxembourg was not a statement at all, but basically an acknowledgement of receipt of the request. Or a letter with whole sentences covered by black bars, sparing only words such as ‘and’. Or a letter saying nothing, citing some of their national security legislation empowering the US President to wish Inspector Becker happy Easter holidays, and nothing else.

  Becker started the engine and drove down the length of the Kirchberg, past the European institutions, past the law firms and banks and consultancies, towards the city centre plateau with which it was connected by a wide, pale red steel bridge across a gorge. Becker reached the other end of the bridge and turned right, and after a few more turns he arrived at his destination. The American embassy was a complex of mansions near the gorge. He could see the Kirchberg on the other side, the twin office towers he’d just passed guarding the narrow tip of the plateau.

  Becker was given the privilege of being allowed to drive through the gate up the driveway to a small parking lot. Good thing he had the black SUV, he thought, it made an impression appropriate to the surroundings.

  A staff member came towards him and said, ‘Inspector Becker? This way, sir.’

  Becker followed him through the doorway of one of the mansions, where he was made to understand that parking privileges didn’t mean exemption from the security check. He had to walk twice through a detector gate, and was searched by a man wearing rubber gloves. It was a private security contractor, he wasn’t even given the courtesy of being frisked by one of the Marines he’d seen outside. Becker’s body wobbled as the man patted him down. It was deeply undignified. Becker stared into the distance while letting it happen to him.

  The staff member, a young man in a black suit and a dark blue tie, had walked around the gate and was waiting for Becker near a door on the left that led into a corridor. When Becker was finished he approached him and followed him. The corridor was decorated in the same style that, according to pictures and movies Becker had seen, dominated the interior of the White House. Becker found it somehow grandmotherly, with all the beige wallpaper and curtains and armchairs beneath extravagantly framed oil paintings of historical naval battles.

  ‘Mrs Harrison will be right with you, sir,’ the young man said and showed him to one of the offices. It had been furnished by the same interior decorator. Stars and stripes in the corner behind the host’s empty chair reminded visitors where they were.

  Becker sat down in the visitor’s chair and waited. He looked around. The oil painting on the wall in his host’s office was the portrait of a statesman wearing nineteenth-century clothing, after the wigs but before the suits. Probably one of their presidents somewhere between Washington and Lincoln, Becker thought. In the end he had ten minutes to try and figure it out, because this was how much he had to wait for his host.

  She strode into her office, prompting Becker to turn around in the visitor’s chair. He cut short his turn, because by the time he’d completed half the rotation the woman was already right next to him. By the time Becker wanted to offer her his hand, she was already sitting behind her desk. ‘Kate Harrison, welcome Inspector,’ she said. She didn’t find it necessary to wait for Becker to introduce himself, because she knew who he was and why he was here. She didn’t waste any time discussing her late arrival, either, because Becker hadn’t been given a fixed appointment to begin with.

  She came straight to the point. ‘Your government requested a statement from Lieutenant Lawrence, US Army, for an ongoing criminal investigation. I am pleased to tell you that we have received such statement.’

  She took a folded letter from her drawer and placed it on the desk in front of her, without opening it. She folded her hands, rested them on the letter, and said, ‘Lieutenant James F. Lawrence was staying at the hotel in question for the duration of his three-day visit to Luxembourg city. The purpose of his visit were consultations regarding the stationing of reconnaissance aircraft in the Luxembourg region within the context of NATO’s rapid response capacity in Europe. When checking out of the hotel, he saw two unknown men struggle. He intervened to end the struggle. Moments later he heard an explosion, and sought to protect both men. Afterwards one of the men left the hotel, while the other went to check the restroom area from which the sound of the explosion had come. Lieutenant Lawrence followed, saw a dead body with a severed head on the floor, and asked the receptionist to call the police. Afterwards he helped another man in the hotel lobby who had apparently suffered a heart attack, and finally he left for the airport in a taxi, and returned on his scheduled flight to the United States.’

  The woman handed Becker the letter. Becker unfolded it. It bore an American eagle in its letterhead. Below it he saw a printed text. It contained exactly what the woman had just told him, word for word. There hadn’t been a single deviation from the manuscript.

  Becker folded the letter again. ‘Is there anything else that you might tell me?’, he asked. ‘Anything that isn’t also written in here. A description of the man who left, for example.’

  The woman smiled, but her eyes stayed as serious as they had been all along. ‘Sir, I believe that the US administration has been exceptionally forthcoming in this matter. The State Department, the Pentagon and the Justice Department have swiftly coordinated to provide you with a full written statement within a single day. There are countries which have to wait for a whole year, and then they receive a statement that is much less substantial. I am not talking of European countries, of course.’

  The young man in the blue tie came in and called her outside.

  She nodded to him and said to Becker, ‘Please do not hesitate do go through the usual channels in case you require any additional information. Good day to you, sir.’ She extended her hand as she got up from her chair, shook Becker’s, and left.

  Becker turned around in his chair. The young man was still standing at the door. ‘Sir, this way please,’ he said.

  20

  The first thing Becker did when returning to his office in the building next to the airport was to ask whether there had been any messages from anyone, in particular from the Commission. The answer was as he’d expected. He sat down at his desk and picked up the receiver of his phone. He assumed that his chief-prosecuting ex-cousin-in-law had already made an official request, but he wanted to keep trying himself as well, just in case. He redialled Hans Tamberg’s numbers. No-one answered. Then he pressed the button down and let the Commission put him through to Willem Tienhoven, the boss with the rude health.

  ‘Director Tienhoven’s office,’ the female voice said. It was the secretary again, the same as before, even though something seemed to have changed slightly in her voice.

  ‘Inspector Didier Becker, Luxembourg police,’ he said. ‘Is your boss still in a meeting, or is he running a marathon?’

  The woman hesitated. ‘Er, no, Inspector Becker,’ she said. ‘Mister Tienhoven will not be available.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He is out of the office. For at least a few weeks. I’m sorry, there is nothing I can do.’

  ‘Where did he go?’, Becker asked, but the secretary had already hung up.

  At least he had something from the American, namely some kind of statement that had been checked and approved by at least three different ministries before being cleared for transmission. And he had at least one sign of life from Tamberg’s boss, in the sense that he’d been given an approximate timeframe within which he wouldn’t receive any answers. Now he was missing only Hans Tamberg himself, and the man he’d had a fight with, plus the mysterious outsider in Tamberg’s group.

  ‘Excuse me, Inspector Didier Becker?’

  Becker turned around. A young Luxembourger with gelled hair and a black suit stood in h
is doorway. His tie was silky orange, crowned by an extravagantly thick knot.

  ‘Please, come in,’ Becker said and pointed to his visitor’s chair.

  The man nodded his thanks and said down. ‘I’m Josy Losch,’ he said. ‘I work across the street from the hotel. You’re still looking for witnesses, no?’

  Becker nodded.

  The man nodded in return. ‘I was there when it happened.’

  Becker took out his e-cigarette and inhaled. He decided not to ask his visitor why he’d come forward only now. As he exhaled he pocketed the device and said, ‘Thank you for coming. What do you do at your work?’

  Young Mister Losch evidently hadn’t expected to chat about his work, but that was the point. Becker wanted the conversation to build up before the witness would deliver the line he’d prepared in advance. Sometimes the pre-formulated line didn’t entirely match the story that came before. Starting that story at the beginning allowed Becker to notice if the witness had to reformulate his core statement on the spot.

  ‘It’s a consultancy, Mullenbach & Roth,’ the man said. ‘A business consultancy.’

  ‘What kind of businesses do you consult?’

  Losch looked like he wasn’t sure whether Becker was pulling his leg by not coming to the point. But he chose seriousness and answered, ‘Medium-sized enterprises, mostly. We specialise in downsizing and cost optimising to help firms that go through difficult times.’

  ‘A lot of business, in times like these?’

  ‘More than before in any case,’ Losch said. He had accepted that this was now the topic of their conversation. ‘There are big consultancies that had specialised in mergers and acquisitions, they boomed when companies were swallowing each other indiscriminately. Many of those went broke during the crisis, together with their clients. But those consultancies that did liquidation advice were suddenly in a much better position. Now it’s balanced out again.’