by Reevik, Carl
‘My father used this rifle in the winter war, when Stalin tried to swallow us like he then swallowed you Estonians. We resisted. So he only got a slice, not the whole country. This rifle killed many Russian men, Mister Tamberg. Men who were a lot younger than you, mostly. So please sit down now.’
There was a frosty silence. The incredulous look on Hans’s face was gone. There was no clock ticking, no birds singing outside. Not even the generic background hiss of wind and faraway traffic. There was nothing, only breathing.
At the gestured insistence of Mäkinen, Hans did sit back down.
***
Again it was Krohn who broke the silence. His blocking the door had been a token of loyalty to his professor, even though he clearly should have been siding with Hans. Although of course Hans had beaten him in the face and given him a bloody nose, he had even spat on him. No, Krohn should have been leaving altogether.
But he didn’t leave. Instead, he said to Mäkinen, ‘We don’t give all our isotopes away. I see where they go, they stay right here in Finland.’
Another demand for explanation, a reproach even. But Krohn was a fool. This was no time to pressure his boss.
Mäkinen kept aiming at Hans and, like before, answered him and not Krohn. ‘Like I said, our research benefits everyone. We can’t give all the isotopes away. We keep ten percent of them here.’
‘Look at me when I talk to you,’ Krohn said to his boss. ‘And tell me where the money comes from.’
Mäkinen glanced at Krohn, still pointing his rifle at Hans. He grinned slightly and a little helplessly.
Krohn continued, ‘The isotopes have to travel by plane if they go far from here. Planes need fuel. The reactor doesn’t run for free either. Who pays for it?’
Hans disliked the idea of the friendly uncle pointing a rifle at him while being distracted. He preferred for everybody to be focused. The table was too heavy to throw, the door was too far away to make a dash, especially with Krohn standing in the doorway and having decided that he was an investigator now. And Hans didn’t want to jump Mäkinen. The rifle’s relatively long barrel made it almost useless in close quarters, that’s why they had developed bayonets first and submachine guns later. But one shot would have been enough to kill, wound or cripple Hans, even allowing for the fact that Mäkinen was aiming from the hip, which wasn’t a very accurate way of using a weapon. Hans could still be shot and lose half his face. Or be shot in the stomach or even his thigh and bleed to death, that much he remembered from his army instructions. Or he could be shot in the foot, drop on the floor and be bludgeoned to death with the steel-plated butt end of that very same rifle. Or be executed by shooting. He’d seen how quickly and expertly Mäkinen had loaded the rifle in the first place.
Mäkinen sighed. ‘I wish I could sit down for this chat, but I aim better while standing up.’ He was speaking to Hans again. ‘The money comes from the customers, of course. Hospital doctors who also want to help their patients and cut short the waiting list for treatment. They pay half the market price.’
Krohn was getting angry. ‘What kind of a charity is that? Look at me! You corrupt pig! You steal from patients in Europe, you use the merchandise to advance your own academic career, and you sell the rest to needy hospitals. You help a gang inside A&C get rich running their own business on the side. And where do the hospitals get their money from, huh? From the poor patients’ families?’
‘Stop it!’, Mäkinen shouted at Krohn. Finally he was giving him some attention, but again he was diverting it away from the trigger finger where it was needed much more urgently. ‘Stop it. The payments cover the cost of transport, the operational costs of the production, the bribes. Yes, and some of it is profit. Not for me, but for the others. And for the hospitals themselves. And yes, naturally the patients pay, who else?’
Hans thought he saw a tear in Mäkinen’s eye. This wasn’t good at all, it was getting out of control.
‘But don’t be stupid,’ Mäkinen continued, talking to Hans again. ‘Having some available treatment is paradise compared to having none at all. And paying something for it is absolutely legitimate, if the alternative is no treatment, either because there is none, or because the waiting list is too long, or because you cannot afford it at real market prices. Think! And then you will understand. This is a good cause, on balance. The good minus the dirt is still better than nothing.’
There were tears in both his eyes now. It was all extremely worrying. If Krohn at least moved away from the door, but it was as if he was nailed to the floor. This had to end, but in a way that ensured everybody would stay reasonable, and calm, and alive.
Hans seized the initiative. ‘Listen, I don’t know why you just told me all this, instead of just chasing me the hell away. I’m sure you have your own reasons. But you need to know that it’s very likely that the investigation is closed anyway. If what you said is true, then nothing really happened. Your donors inside A&C conned their own shareholders, that’s not my problem. Some research reactors had to wait for their uranium a little longer, they’re insured. Somebody sold something that otherwise would have been sold by somebody else. Remember, I’m not the police. And see how I look, do you think I’m here on an official mission, looking like this? All I know is that there’s been some false reporting to the Commission, on as far as I know four occasions over two years, among the thousands of reports that come in every year. God knows how many errors there are in the rest of them. Or how much other fraud. Nobody cares, Mäkinen. Leave it alone, and everybody continues living their happy lives. But if I don’t return from here, then they will reopen the case for sure, and then you’re truly fucked. So use your brain, Mäkinen. Right now I’m your best friend.’
Mäkinen didn’t move his rifle, he was still aiming at Hans’s chest, but he didn’t say anything either. Finally he said, ‘You will understand in a minute why I told you all this. But first, tell me, what do you suggest will happen now, Mister Tamberg?’
‘So I will tell you,’ Hans said. ‘What will happen now is that you let me make a phone call to make sure that the investigation is closed.’
Mäkinen thought, then whispered, ‘Then they’ll know you called from here.’
Hans whispered back to mock him, ‘They already know I’m here. The question is, should I even be here?’
Mäkinen seemed to consider this.
Hans offered, ‘I’ll turn on the speakerphone if you like.’
Mäkinen nodded. He looked at Krohn over at the door. Krohn hesitated but nevertheless obeyed and brought Hans a cordless landline phone from a bookshelf on the wall opposite the fireplace.
Hans took it. ‘Zero-zero to dial abroad?’
Mäkinen nodded again. He was still aiming at Hans, who was still sitting at the wooden table.
Hans pressed the speakerphone button and dialled the number. He didn’t need the switchboard, because he knew Tienhoven’s extension by heart. He waited.
‘Hello?’ It was a female voice. Krohn and Mäkinen heard it, too.
‘Gabriela, is that you?’, Hans asked. It was Tienhoven’s secretary, meaning the phone line had again been transferred to her, but her voice sounded somehow unfamiliar.
‘Yes, Hans. It’s me.’
‘Where’s Willem?’
There was a pause. ‘Willem is dead, Hans.’
Hans didn’t pause, though. ‘How?’
‘His heart. Another heart attack. He died in a hospital here in Brussels at four o’clock last night.’
‘Is the investigation into the nuclear fraud still open?’
A pause. ‘Excuse me, what?’
‘The nuclear reports fraud, at atomic energy in Luxembourg. Is it open?’
‘No Hans.’ There was a bitter reproach in Gabriela’s voice. ‘No, it’s closed. Since yesterday afternoon.’
‘Zayek manipulated the reports and killed himself?’
‘Yes. It’ll be on the news.’
‘Thank you.’
Hans held the phone
away from his face, found a red button to hang up, and pressed it. He gave the phone back to Krohn, who put it back on the charger.
‘As you heard, the investigation into this matter is closed,’ Hans said to Mäkinen. ‘They are pinning it on somebody else, the dead Boris Zayek from your daughter’s unit in Luxembourg, for reasons that I don’t care about. Which means I’m done here. I don’t even have to bother your daughter about this, because there’s nothing to investigate.’
‘This is why I needed you to stay, and to understand,’ Mäkinen said quietly. ‘Do you think the donors, the helpers, do you think they will allow me to just extricate myself from this? Do you think they will let me just stop converting the uranium? Do you think they will leave my daughter alone, let her even change jobs, while the operation is still running? She is tied up in all this. She and my two grandsons.’
Extricate. Mäkinen wanted out himself. That’s why he was talking. He was tired of believing his own lies about his noble charity which he’d initially tried to sell Hans.
‘My daughter sent me an e-mail just this morning,’ Mäkinen continued, almost in a whisper. ‘Where is the exit from all this? I cannot just stop. And even if I did and they found a replacement for me, they will still force my contact inside the Commission to keep manipulating the figures.’
Hans needed to help the rifle-wielding man out quickly. He asked, ‘Do your donors know that it’s your daughter who takes care of the statistics?’
Mäkinen shook his head. ‘No, and at first they didn’t even care about it. I was the one who told them that they had to think about that as well. All they know is that I have a person on the inside.’
‘So perfect,’ Hans said. ‘You tell them it’s been Zayek, who is dead now, so it can’t continue. They either stop their operation now, and get no more money out of it, or they do one more shipment and have the police destroy their business completely. And they should thank their good fortune that the current anti-fraud case is closed because the suspect is dead, and they should pray that no-one will reopen it.’
Mäkinen seemed to be thinking of something else. Then he focused on Hans.
Finally he asked, ‘How will I know the case is really closed? Or that you won’t reopen the case yourself?’
‘Take a picture of Krohn here, in his present state, and save it,’ Hans replied. ‘Call the number that called his office number earlier today. It’s a guy from the street I asked to call him down. He saw that Krohn’s face was intact when I entered the building, and he can confirm that I lied to him about being your nephew. Let him make a written declaration before a lawyer and lock it in a safe. If I come back, press charges for assault, insubordination by ignoring the closure of a case, and abuse of official function outside investigative authority. I showed you my anti-fraud identification in order to extract information, that alone was illegal. That’s all I have. My case is closed, and now I’m going home. And you will call a taxi, or one of you takes me to the airport. I’ll book a flight right there, I don’t want to book it from your computer.’
Mäkinen didn’t move. He looked, aimed, breathed, thought. A tear escaped from his left eye and ran down his cheek into his white stubble.
Finally he lowered his rifle, and pulled the action back. The cartridge was flung out of the chamber and fell on the floor with a metallic ring.
***
Mäkinen went into the kitchen and returned to the living room carrying a laptop. He put it on the wooden table and turned it on. Hans was already standing at the door with Krohn. Mäkinen took Hans’s seat, sitting with his back to the window. He had put the rifle on the table, too, it was lying there like a giant paperweight for his exams.
Hans said, ‘Goodbye Professor Mäkinen.’
Mäkinen didn’t reply. He started typing something on his laptop.
They waited for a few moments. Then Hans stepped outside. Krohn followed him without saying goodbye to his boss.
Krohn closed the front door behind him, and together they walked through the garden gate. Hans looked back, to make sure Mäkinen wouldn’t change his mind and shoot them in the back, but there was no-one standing at the window.
Hans and Krohn reached the car and got in. For a moment they sat in silence.
That’s when they heard the gunshot. There was no impact on the car, though. Hans looked back at the house. Krohn got out of the car and had a look, too. The glass of the window next to the front door had turned red.
Krohn went back to the house, peered through the window, then returned to the car. He sat back in the driver’s seat, closed the door and firmly held the steering wheel.
‘The postman will find him on Monday,’ he said. ‘He squeezed the trigger with his toe.’ He chuckled. His knuckles turned white. He grimaced and started weeping. He lowered his face and his shoulders started shaking. Tears dripped off his cheeks and fell on his shirt. He breathed heavily. Then his breath became softer and slower and more regular. He sniffed.
Then, without letting go of the steering wheel, and without looking at Hans, he said, in a clear and rational voice, ‘I don’t believe that lying to the Commission was ever the biggest part of this. I don’t even think that they really needed anyone on the inside for that. There are plenty of other points where you can lie about your containers, before it even gets to the Commission. What they really needed is someone to run a reactor for them. And now they have lost both. Your dead man in Luxembourg will no longer manipulate any reports, if that’s what they’ll believe. And the dead man in here will definitely not make any more isotopes. Not for himself and not for them. They’ll have to find somebody else to do it. And his daughter and her family can live in peace.’
Hans took a last look at the house. Krohn started the engine and they drove off.
***
Within this town Leppävaara they took the same route they had come, through the rural parts, then past the family homes, past the apartment buildings, and onto the motorway. But then they didn’t drive back along the coast again. Krohn drove north and east instead, in a wide arc around Helsinki, to the international airport.
Neither of them spoke a single word. Krohn certainly needed to do some thinking. About his tainted research perhaps, or his association with Mäkinen, or his future. He had every reason not to know anything, if this ever came out. As for Hans, he was done thinking. No Mäkinen, not even Tienhoven, nobody deserved his thoughts at the moment. He wasn’t sleepy. He was just tired, with his injured face and the shirt he’d been wearing for three whole days. He was tired and indifferent and free.
Krohn brought Hans to the departures gate. Before getting out, Hans looked at him for a long while. They looked at each other in silence. It was a handshake, an apology, an agreement. A mutual understanding with no words. Then Hans got out, shut the door and entered the airport hall without turning around.
Booking a flight at the last-minute counter was easy, there was still enough credit on his card and there had been economy class seats available.
Now he had another twenty minutes before the plane would start boarding. He didn’t have any luggage, he could check in at the machine, and as a European Union citizen he could take the fast lane to get through passports control. So it would be just the security check where he would have to wait a little.
He went through the routine and finally stood at the end of the queue in front of the security gate. To his right he saw a flat television screen on the wall. The sound was muted, but there were subtitles running along the bottom edge of the screen.
Commissioner Maria Schuster-Zoll was standing in front of microphones, in a dark blue business suit against the light blue background wall of the European Commission’s press centre. She looked physically fragile and very earnest.
‘The suicide of Mister Boris Zayek, one of our staff members in Luxembourg, filled us all with great sadness, as well as incomprehension. Mister Zayek took his own life when he was exposed as an agent of a foreign intelligence agency. Our thoughts are wit
h his family and unsuspecting friends, in what must be a very difficult time for them.’
The next image was an enlarged personnel file picture of Boris Zayek. The picture almost filled the screen. A blank stare into the camera. The subtitles kept running below the picture: Media reports cast doubt on Commission’s version, suggest liquidation by Russian intelligence.
‘Your phone, watch, keys, anything metallic in here, sir.’
Hans turned around and followed the procedure without saying a word. Now he felt really weak. On the plane he intended to sleep. No thoughts, no dreams. He intended to sleep like a baby. And he did.
26
Hans landed at Brussels airport, went through the fast-lane passports control, past the luggage claims, past the symbolic customs check, and into the arrivals hall. He took the escalator down to the level below arrivals, stepped outside into the dark chilly evening and took a bus to the city centre. He had gained an hour on Helsinki, but since Brussels was much farther south it was nevertheless much darker when he’d arrived. He sat in the bus, his head leaning against the glass, and watched the lights outside. He arrived at his stop, got out, and walked the few hundred metres to the anti-fraud building. He showed the lonely guard his Commission badge and went to the elevators. The guard hadn’t said anything about the way Hans looked. The elevator doors opened, Hans stepped in and pressed the button to reach the floor three levels above his own. The doors closed.
He got out as the doors opened again, turned left and started walking down the corridor. All the offices which had their doors open were dark and empty, only the corridor itself was illuminated in a bright white light. His own office would also be deserted now, Tienhoven’s would be as well, the same as the small conference room with the oval table and the nine chairs, three floors below him. This wasn’t his floor. This was the floor where the director-general resided. Maybe he would be there to hear Hans’s report. Hans was paid to find out things and to report on them, after all, so that’s what he would do, no matter what he looked or smelled like.
