The Last Compromise

by Reevik, Carl

  The grand ducal palace was actually a whole complex of government buildings. It was not just the residence of the Grand Duke but also home to the parliament and several government services. The sand-coloured façade facing the pedestrian zone provided the backdrop for the post of the ceremonial guard. Becker watched the soldier in his greenish brown uniform stamp his foot as he did one of his rounds. Becker’s country found it appropriate to stress its sovereignty by placing a guard to protect the palace, the monarchy, the self-determination of the nation. But it was all within reason. There was one soldier, not two. The soldiers looked on stoically on their post, but they didn’t have the completely frozen expressions other countries’ equivalent guards had. And they marched up and down a granite path to stretch their legs every now and then, but there was no extravagant goose-stepping. It was earnest but not exaggerated.

  Becker ordered a coffee, and took a sip when it arrived. The guard resumed his post and stood still, a black automatic rifle held across his chest. Jacques Majerus emerged from the palace, coming out of the door of the parliament on the far right of the building. Majerus saw Becker, approached and sat down next to him. The waiter came out of the café’s interior again and took his order. Majerus ordered an espresso. This put a limit on how much time he was able or willing to spend on this, Becker thought.

  Majerus asked, ‘Has Pascal made a decision yet about his job offer? His geology?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Becker said. ‘He’ll tell me tomorrow. Should I ask you now, or will you tell me yourself?’

  Majerus absent-mindedly touched his nose, then his ear.

  His espresso arrived, he thanked the waiter politely.

  So Becker asked. ‘Jacques. How is my European arrest warrant for Hans Tamberg coming along?’

  Majerus took a sip of his espresso without sweetening it.

  ‘Please don’t feel bad,’ he said. ‘I will tell you now the result of your investigation, and then I’ll tell you what led to it. And then I’ll explain why it all makes sense. Ready?’

  Becker took out his e-cigarette and inhaled. Clearly Majerus took that as a yes, and started.

  ‘The case is closed,’ he said. ‘But I guess you sensed that yourself. Now I’ll tell you what happened.’

  Becker exhaled. Yes, he had sensed it.

  Majerus continued as promised. ‘The German ambassador spoke to our foreign minister. She presented him a full copy of an investigation report of their foreign intelligence service into this matter. At the same time the European Commission handed over a full copy of their own investigation report to our minister of the interior. Both their investigations are closed. Both conclude it was a suicide by an exposed lone Russian spy.’

  Becker waited before answering. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes Didier, I am. Your victim worked for Russian intelligence. He got installed in the Commission five years ago. The Commission and the Germans confronted him based on intelligence the Germans had obtained. That’s why they all were at the hotel. Two Commission people plus one German agent, acting together in a joint operation. Zayek panicked, ran to the toilet, and killed himself.’

  Becker slowly shook his head.

  He asked, ‘Who breached the security cameras?’

  ‘Some unrelated hacker.’

  Becker sat still. He didn’t touch his coffee, and he was still holding his e-cigarette in his hand. It was as if the café and the palace and the guard had all disappeared. It was just Becker and Majerus, all alone.

  Becker kept asking. ‘Who is Lieutenant James F. Lawrence?’

  ‘An American officer who happened to be at the hotel during the suicide.’

  ‘Hans Tamberg had a brawl with Lawrence and one other man.’

  ‘They bumped into each other, this happens. I bumped into someone earlier today, I apologised, no problem.’

  Becker could hardly believe was he was being told, what he was expected to embrace as the truth. ‘How can you say that there is no problem, Jacques? A man died on our soil. And of course he was killed. Think about the cyber-attack on the cameras. What are they, hiding a suicide?’ Becker kept his voice low, because he didn’t want the women at the other table to look over. ‘It’s the opposite, Jacques,’ he continued in a hiss. ‘It’s as if whoever did this wanted to make a show of it. Not just a silent disappearance, but a spectacle, with a big computer hack, and with blood all over the wall.’

  Majerus finished his espresso, and said calmly, ‘I say there is no problem because there is no problem. I just talked to the prime-minister in there.’ He pointed at the palace. A group of tourists had arrived to take pictures of the soldier, the tour guide holding up an umbrella.

  ‘There is no problem,’ Majerus repeated. ‘Next week our little country will continue negotiating with the Commission about our corporate and banking tax exemptions. It’s difficult as it is, our economy depends on it. We need all our political capital for that. And the German ambassador will go to the philharmonic concert hall with the prime-minister, and the Grand Duke is coming, too. The premiere of some new symphony, they love that sort of thing. I’m going, too, by the way. It’s what keeps the wheels greased between good neighbours.’

  Becker didn’t know what to say.

  Majerus raised his hands in the air, a cross between a shrug and an apology. ‘I told you not to feel bad, Didier,’ he said. ‘You have a fine job, and you’re very good at it. You have a bright son. You don’t have a wife, but I don’t blame you. I don’t like my cousin either. And you have a big fat wristwatch. And on Monday you’ll return to your job, helping keep the murder rate in our homeland down to basically zero per year.’

  He called the waiter and paid for his espresso and Becker’s coffee. Then he added, ‘The computer hacker will never be identified, probably it was some lonely nerd who has nothing else to do.’

  There was a silence. Becker had little to add. Nobody cared about his dead guy.

  ‘What about Hans Tamberg?’, he nevertheless asked. He didn’t even know why he was asking, since he knew the answer. It was perhaps a formality. A ceremonial statement, like the soldier outside the palace. That man wasn’t going to defend the building all by himself in an actual battle either. But something would be missing if he wasn’t there, doing his duty.

  Majerus smiled faintly as he got up. ‘You know the answer, Didier. There will be no Luxembourgish arrest warrant, there will be no European arrest warrant. We leave Tamberg alone, because he’s not a suspect, not even a witness. The case is closed.’

  Majerus made a point of extending his hand. Becker took it. They said goodbye, and Majerus left in the direction he’d come from. Probably his car was waiting in the yard behind the palace.

  The tourists had left, the soldier was still there. Becker finished his coffee. He knew what would come next. He was old enough to know it well by now, to anticipate its balm, the satisfaction, the peace of mind it always promised and always delivered. It was the psychological cleansing process called rationalisation. It was what a healthy mind did. It acknowledged a mistake, or an injustice. Its own participation in a disgrace, in the upholding of a lie. Or in some other event that was morally wrong but that had already happened. And the mind started to construct reasons, justifications or excuses around it all, to reconcile the ugly truth with its own values. To find a way to accept the sheer necessity of the event, and to make itself even look good in it. It was all vital for staying sane. A mind that wasn’t capable of rationalisation would sooner or later implode. Or explode; what a tasteless metaphor in relation to this case. But it was Zayek’s own fault, too. He was a Russian spy, after all. He knew what he was getting into, and he ended up dead. That’s what you get, it’s part of their game.

  Becker checked his grotesquely big watch. He might as well call it a day, he thought. It was Saturday. Tomorrow he’d know which direction his son’s career would take, cash or honours or both. Ideally both. For now there was nothing Becker could do. He looked over to the other guests sitt
ing outside the café. One of the women at the other table smiled back at him.

  Becker ordered another coffee. The soldier marched off to stretch his legs one more time. What a beautiful day this was, after all.

  25

  Professor Mäkinen was still smiling.

  Hans hadn’t moved for a second from his readiness position behind the table. He added some tension to his lower leg muscles. His hands lay palms down on the table in front of him, not too far apart.

  He said, ‘The container from A&C contains uranium. For medical use you need the isotopes you get from it, not the uranium itself. And to get them you need a reactor.’

  ‘Absolutely. We convert it here in Finland, we have a small research reactor. It’s not as big as Petten, but it gets the job done.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘The Russian freighter Bogatyr,’ Hans said. ‘It pretends to pick up the uranium which actually goes to you. Even though the container could just as well go from Rotterdam to Helsinki directly, without any stopover.’

  ‘The Bogatyr is a ghost ship,’ Mäkinen smiled. ‘It just goes back and forth between Saint Petersburg and Tallinn. I understand other organisations also use it for similar purposes, to pretend containers that don’t exist are actually being shipped. And the Karelia has to stop somewhere, so it stops in Tallinn, which is closer to Russia and less tightly controlled than Rotterdam. It changes crews, fuels up, and pretends to take Russian uranium on board, so if anyone checks we can all say it’s from Moscow and not from A&C.’

  Hans preferred not to shake his head in disbelief at the extent of this operation. His head didn’t move. He summarised, ‘The uranium delivery intended for Petten is officially cancelled, and then, in a first layer of lies, it disappears into Russia, but actually it disappears into Finland, straight to you.’

  ‘This is not my problem, to be honest,’ Mäkinen replied. ‘It’s the donor’s problem. Maybe he needs to tell his shareholders that the material goes into the acidic swamp that is the Russian government administration, and that’s why he uses that ghost ship. Maybe the shareholders prefer even murky business like that to spending their precious money on a project like ours. But I have nothing to do with the Bogatyr and how exactly the donor gets his material to us. What is important to me is that it arrives in Helsinki in the end. The donor also takes care of the delivery of the finished medical isotopes to the countries where they are needed.’

  Hans had been wrong. The uranium was not being intercepted on its way to Russia by an outsider. It had been intended for Mäkinen’s research reactor all along.

  Mäkinen’s research.

  Publish or perish.

  ‘You don’t just get medical isotopes from it, do you,’ Hans said. ‘You write academic papers about the additional experiments which you can afford to run with your free uranium.’

  Krohn moved around uncomfortably at the door. Mäkinen sat completely still.

  ‘Our research helps even more people in the long run than the isotopes do in the short run,’ Mäkinen replied softly.

  ‘What about the patients here in Europe? You supply medium-rich cancer patients in medium-rich countries with medical isotopes that had been intended for European hospitals. It’s cancer treatment that’s missing here.’

  ‘This is a compromise, Mister Tamberg,’ Mäkinen said, his voice regaining volume again. ‘Like every other redistribution of resources. Like everything else in life. Here in Europe the material is used to make images of heart arteries in patients who should eat less and move more. Or to zap a tumour in a well-fed, happy sixty-year-old who has lived a life in peace and wealth. Our charity supplies people who need it more.’

  ‘Not all cancer patients are sixty years old.’

  ‘And they should get priority over people who are. If resources are limited. Which they always are.’

  Hans swallowed.

  ‘What?’, Mäkinen laughed. ‘What did you expect? That we help the poor in a noble cause, at exactly zero cost to ourselves?’ He slowly shook his head. ‘Like I said, it’s a compromise. Research is a compromise between our curiosity and our own vanity. An easy compromise in fact, because it benefits both. Charity is a compromise between our compassion for one person and our compassion for another. One side loses. The most difficult compromises are those involving things that we prefer not to trade in at all.’ He slightly tilted his head and looked into Hans’s eyes. ‘You came all the way here, Mister Tamberg. To find the truth, I presume. And you don’t look too good, not to mention my colleague Krohn. Tell me, during that voyage, did you never have to reach a compromise with your values, your ethics? Not a single time? Have you never reached a compromise with the law, Mister Tamberg?’

  Hans said nothing. He didn’t frown, he didn’t take a breath.

  Krohn broke the silence. From his position at the door he addressed Mäkinen in a low but firm voice. ‘This cannot be done by just one man, even if it’s the owner.’

  It was in fact a question, a demand for Mäkinen to explain himself. Krohn had been hearing everything for the first time, too.

  Mäkinen didn’t look at Krohn; he continued talking to Hans as if it was he who had asked. ‘It’s not just one man, obviously. The donor helps by turning a blind eye and leading attention away from the charity. The actual operation is run by a dozen company people, regional supervisors, ship captains, middle management.’

  Hans smirked for the first time. That was dangerous, though, it meant he lost focus. He concentrated again. All those middle managers hardly helped along out of sheer compassion. This was a professional black-market operation, a mafia with a cynical or deluded friendly uncle as its spokesman. The more Mäkinen was telling him, the more dangerous it was getting for Hans to stay in this isolated house.

  It was time to return to the relatively narrow issue that was of direct interest to him, and then to get out. He said, ‘Your operation includes the falsification of reports of the European Commission. That’s the only reason I’m here. That’s how I tracked you down.’

  Mäkinen breathed out.

  ‘Yes, I suspected as much. The responsibility is entirely mine.’

  ‘No it’s not,’ Hans said.

  Let’s see.

  ‘You can write that I pressured her.’

  Her?

  ‘Who will believe that? Pressured her how?’

  ‘I don’t know. That I threatened to disinherit her.’

  ‘What, you’re millionaire?’, Hans asked, looking around, ostentatiously mustering the wooden furniture.

  Mäkinen said, ‘I asked Anneli for help, and she agreed. A favour to her father, a widower helping a charity, how could she refuse?’

  Hans shook his head. ‘Why was it even necessary? A container doesn’t arrive, a test is cancelled, the insurance pays. It happens. Why falsify reports about it?’

  ‘I thought it was necessary,’ Mäkinen said. ‘Each disappearance concerned not a half-empty container, but a container that had been wholly filled and that went missing completely. The statistics had to hide it. They did. You found out nonetheless.’

  ‘You’d have to report your additional uranium to the Commission, though.’

  ‘We do. And then Anneli makes it go away again. Otherwise all the missing uranium from the rest of Europe would show up here in Finland, that would be absurd.’

  Hans had seen the personnel records back in Brussels, but he needed to be sure now. ‘Why is her last name not Mäkinen?’

  ‘What do you think? Now I’m a bit disappointed, Mister Tamberg. She married a Frenchman named Villefranche. So it’s Anneli Villefranche.’

  ‘How did you pressure the other one, Zayek?’

  Mäkinen frowned, then slowly shook his head to say that he had no idea what he was talking about. ‘I talked to Anneli on Thursday, it’s the man who died, isn’t it?’

  He had no reason to lie about that if the rest was true.

  ‘Professor Mäkinen,’ Hans said, slightly leaning forward. ‘Befo
re his death, has your daughter ever mentioned that Bulgarian or German colleague named Boris Zayek?’

  Mäkinen thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. No, she hasn’t, it was the first time I’d heard the name, two days ago. When she talks about her work she usually speaks about her colleague Ilona, I believe they are close. And she speaks about a man named Viktor. He also works for the Commission, also in Luxembourg but not in her department. Him she mentions quite a lot, in fact.’

  The mother of one of the kids in our daughter’s class works over there. She hates it. It tires her out.

  Yes, I know the hotel.

  Wait right there, don’t move. I’ll come and pick you up, and I’ll drive you to Brussels. We can talk in the car.

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

  That’s why the Russian on the ferry didn’t mind Hans sniffing around in Helsinki. He just wanted his empty box back. The Russians weren’t involved at the Luxembourg end of this operation. Zayek wasn’t involved. Anneli was. Viktor was.

  ‘All right,’ Hans said. ‘It seems the involvement of Anneli Villefranche is relatively minor. I can talk to her to make sure it goes away quickly and without much trouble.’

  Hans got up from his chair.

  Mäkinen cleared his throat, and said, ‘I cannot let you leave, I’m afraid.’

  Hans gave him an incredulous look. ‘You are threatening me? With your kitchen knife? With your grandfather’s hunting rifle? I’m half your age, Mäkinen, I’ll beat you to death.’

  ‘That? Oh, that’s not a hunting rifle,’ Mäkinen said as he got up and walked over to the wall. ‘That’s a military rifle. An M91, a Finnish modification of an old Russian model. It belonged to my father.’

  He took it from the wall and, in a sequence of swift moves, pulled back the action by the metal knob on the side, inserted a steel cartridge that had come out of nowhere, pushed the action forward, locked it and swung the rifle around to aim from the hip across the room directly at Hans’s stomach. Hans was still standing behind the table. Krohn instinctively blocked the door to the hallway.