The Serbian Dane

by Leif Davidsen

  Vuk sauntered along the canal side, thinking of Ole and his own gift for getting to know people. He had always had it. His mother had told him that even when he was just a little boy he could smile and charm his way to all the ice creams and lemonades he wanted, and that he had looked so sweet that folk just couldn’t resist patting him on the head and ruffling his blond curls. She had had him and his little sister late in life and spoiled them both dreadfully, and they had loved her with all their hearts. He saw his mother in his mind’s eye, and had to struggle to erase her image and concentrate on Lise’s husband.

  Ole had opened up quite a bit. He was a psychologist but evidently not so hot when it came to self-analysis. Or maybe it was just his nature to confide in others, to be so frank. Vuk now knew that he and his wife were not getting on, that he was sick of his job and felt that life was passing him by all too fast; that he didn’t really have any friends: all the people he knew, he had met through Lise. Although Ole never said so in so many words, it seemed pretty clear to Vuk that he was terrified of losing Lise, and so he skulked in the pub, even though by doing so he was only causing her to drift further and further away from him He couldn’t stand being in that empty apartment. If he sat there alone, he kept seeing Lise in bed with someone else. He had blurted this out the other evening when they were having a few drinks together. Maybe he just needed to talk about himself after spending the whole day having to listen to other people’s irresolvable problems. Ole had been easy to woo, to prime for recruitment as an agent, Vuk thought to himself. It had been nice to have a drink. It had been quite a while since he’d touched alcohol, and the beer and aquavit had slid down easily, but he had a strong head and a strong body and at no time did he feel drunk, while Ole’s speech had become more and more slurred.

  The recruiting of agents had been one part of the training at the Special Forces school at which Vuk had really excelled. People found it so easy to open their hearts to him. He was a good listener, and although he never gave away too much about himself, somehow he always left folk feeling that he had also taken them into his confidence. He could turn the charm on and off, like the sun appearing and disappearing behind a cloud. Once it had been only natural to him to be open and friendly, sweet and funny. That was just how he was. A happy and fairly uncomplicated child who grew into a cheeky, cheerful and charming young man, whom all the girls were wild about and all the boys wanted to be mates with. Until he was seventeen his life had been a pretty unproblematic one. Strolling through lovely timeworn Copenhagen he wondered how it might have turned out if the whole family had not moved back to Bosnia. It was his mother who had been so anxious to go home. She had wanted to spend her twilight years surrounded by their good friends in their old village and be buried in her native soil. His father’s back was no longer up to the work at the shipyard, and his invalidity pension would stretch so much further in the old country, but Vuk actually believed that his father would have preferred to stay in Denmark. Nonetheless, he followed Lea, just as she had followed him when they were young and he brought her to that far-off capitalist country in the north where they were so wealthy that they had to import foreign hands to do the dirty work. His parents had saved enough to build a little house back home in Bosnia. Vuk could easily have stayed on in Denmark, but he was fed up with high school, couldn’t be bothered staying on to take his diploma; the prospect of running off to Yugoslavia appealed to him, even though he knew this would mean having to do his national service there. But that was okay by him, and his father supported his decision. Yugoslavia’s sons had to serve the fatherland, to ensure that the Russians or the Germans did not try to invade them again. This was the lesson Comrade Tito had preached to them, and as far as his father was concerned, what Tito said was law.

  Then came the civil war. And with it the pain, the horrors and the rage.

  On Rådhuspladsen Vuk halted and gazed over at the weird, black outsize anti-tank barrier. All of a sudden he felt ice-cold, as if the temperature had fallen drastically. The square and the people and the pigeons on it swam before his eyes, the hotdog stalls pitched and swayed, his head reeled, he felt his heart skip a beat, and he was gripped by panic.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he heard a voice ask, a long way off. ‘You’d better sit down for a minute. There’s a bench just over there.’

  He felt a hand on his elbow. Rådhuspladsen stopped rocking like the deck of a ship. A young woman had him by the arm. She was leading a little boy by the other hand. The child goggled at Vuk, whose face was white as a sheet and covered in a fine layer of perspiration.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m all right now,’ Vuk said.

  ‘You looked as if you were about to pass out.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I had a bit of a dizzy turn, but I’m fine now. Thanks.’

  She let go of his arm and gave him a slightly embarrassed look.

  ‘It was just…’

  ‘I’m fine now, really. Maybe it was something I ate. Thanks for your help.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Okay. We’ll be on our way, then,’ and she made to walk off with the little boy, who was staring at Vuk with unabashed curiosity, as only a child can do. The mother also took another look at Vuk.

  ‘Haven’t we met before?’ she said.

  Vuk had the same feeling. He had seen her before. She was a couple of years older than him, the older sister of one of the guys in his class. Jytte, her name was.

  ‘I don’t think so. Unless you’re from Århus,’ he said.

  The woman laughed:

  ‘No, definitely not.’

  ‘But I am.’

  ‘Oh, well enjoy your stay… I just thought.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Vuk, said more brusquely than he intended to, and saw from her face that it had hit home.

  ‘Right, well I’ll be getting on,’ she said and led the child away. Vuk watched them go. She turned around once and looked back at him. He raised a hand and waved. He wanted her to forget this meeting. Not to think too much over it, to simply dismiss it as just another ordinary, everyday incident. He did not want to get rid of her, nor could he. He would have to risk it. Maybe if it hadn’t been for the child, he would have gone after her. Maybe Copenhagen was having an effect on him.

  Vuk stood for a moment, collecting himself. Everything returned to normal. The advertising signs stood chiselled into the facade of the Trade and Industry building. The Politiken house lay where it always had, there were queues at the hotdog stalls, and Hans Christian Andersen sat, as always, staring wistfully into space. Vuk hurried on down the street to the Central Station, struggling, as he went, to ward off the dreaded visions by thinking about Emma and the future he hoped they would have together.

  At the Central Station he bought a travel card and a copy of Ekstra Bladet and seated himself on a bench from which he could watch the streams of people passing to and fro. The station concourse was bustling with activity, but everything looked pretty normal. He spotted no signs of any sort of surveillance operation. From his bench he had a clear view of the stairs down to the left-luggage lockers, which lay at the far end of the station next to the Reventlowsgade exit. It was only a short step from the station to his hotel. Travellers young and old came and went, leaving or collecting holdalls, rucksacks, shopping bags and suitcases, but Vuk could not see anyone else observing movements in the area the way he was.

  He got to his feet and wandered about a bit, but even on this round he had no sense of anything untoward. The new shops and cafés were doing a brisk trade. He drank a cola and ate a hamburger in McDonald’s, then made another little round. A smartly dressed man came out of the florist’s carrying four long-stemmed roses. A party from a kindergarten had found itself a corner where the tots sat dutifully waiting. In another, a class of schoolchildren were gathered round a teacher. Vuk trusted his intuition implicitly: if he had had any sense that something was wrong, if one single detail had been out of place, he would have been out of there on the instant and never gone
back. Then they would have had to find some other way of getting the goods to him.

  Vuk made one more circuit of the station concourse. A couple of uniformed policemen paced slowly past him, but they didn’t so much as glance at the well-dressed young man. Their eyes did, however, dwell on a young girl in a pair of ripped and faded jeans and a grubby denim jacket. She had something that looked like a spear piercing one earlobe and rings through her nose and lips. Her hair was dyed red and green. Under all the self-mutilation she was quite pretty, and Vuk found himself wondering why anyone would willingly inflict pain and suffering on themselves. An extremely fat man with a white Santa Claus beard was sitting on a bench with his legs spread wide the way fat men do, watching the world go by. His great belly rested on his thighs. The place smelled of food and dust, but Vuk caught no whiff of danger.

  He sauntered across to the flight of steps above which hung a sign saying ‘Reventlowsgade, Left Luggage Office, Lockers’, then made his way down the steps and to the left. The walls were grey and cement-like. Vuk descended another flight of steps. He peered through the double doors leading to the left-luggage area. He saw a long room with banks of lockers running down either side. There were lots of people milling around them, mainly kids. With rucksacks and small holdalls. Above each bank of grey steel lockers was a sign with a number on it. Vuk stopped in front of section 22, locker number 02. There was no one at the actual baggage counter, but Vuk noted that the whole area was monitored by closed-circuit cameras. Most of the lockers were taken; he could tell by the red squares in the little windows on their fronts: when a locker was free a green square showed instead. These new-style lockers were worked by means of ticket consoles, he slid his card into the slot on the one nearest to him. He felt his pulse quicken as he stood there with his back turned and unprotected, but there was no hint of that tingling in his spine that had so often alerted him to danger. The sounds behind him fell sharp and clear on his ears. Time seemed to stand still for a moment. The machine swallowed his ticket. He heard it chuntering away for a second or two, then his locker opened with a little click. He lifted out a locked grey, hard-sided Samsonite suitcase and headed for the exit without a backward glance: past another counter, then a bike shop and up the stairs branching off to Reventlowsgade and platforms 1-12.

  Suitcase in hand he headed towards the platform for the suburban lines at a normal walking pace, slipped his travel card into the machine on the platform and clipped it once, then hopped onto the first train to pull into the station. He alighted at the next station, stood for a moment looking up and down the train before jumping back on just as the doors were closing. Everything seemed normal. No panic on the platform. Nobody frantically trying to make contact on a walkie-talkie or a mobile phone. He stayed on the train for another two stops then took a taxi back to the hotel. Normally he steered clear of taxis, preferring to use buses and trains. Taxi drivers are given to being alert and observant. They tend to have better memories than most other people.

  Back at the hotel he made sure the door was locked before opening the case. Inside were the items he had requested: a Dragunov sniper rifle with telescopic sight and a Beretta 92F pistol, together with ammunition for the two guns, both of which looked new and well-oiled. The rifle was separated into three parts. He proceeded to assemble it with CNN running quietly in the background. Working with this gun that was so familiar to him had a soothing effect on him. He knew he could hit a target bang-on at up to eight hundred yards with the long-barrelled rifle, developed by Soviet weapons technologists as the SVD. It had a relatively short butt, and the magazine could hold ten bullets. Vuk had trained with and used many weapons in his time. The SVD might not be the most sophisticated of weapons, but he found it reliable, pleasant to handle and accurate.

  Now all he needed was a time and a place and these he was certain his new agent, Ole, could obtain for him, willingly or otherwise. As he worked, his thoughts went to Emma. He would write to her from wherever he went once the job was done, and ask her to start a new life with him. He had been giving more and more thought to the idea of Australia. Not only was it a new country, it was a new continent too, offering every opportunity for a fresh start. He had had enough of Europe. It was splitting into a rich side and a poor side, but both the rich and the poor sides of the old continent were doomed to disaster. Yugoslavia had been only the beginning, he thought, carefully wiping every single tiny section of the guns with one of the washcloths he had bought a few days earlier. With Emma he could start again. They each bore their own psychological scars, but Australia and Emma would put an end to the nightmare, and the blood-roller could stop running. In Australia he would be able to shut off all the horrors. In Australia he would find it possible to feel again, and the hollow empty sensation inside him would be gone.

  While Vuk was cleaning his guns, Per Toftlund was parking his car next to Fælledparken, on the side just behind Rigshospital, close to the Pavilion. He had called Igor and arranged to meet him there. The circular building was closed and deserted. Behind its pale slender columns, the café inside was in darkness. Some teenage boys were playing football on the grass in front of the old bandstand that, in the summer, formed the setting for music, eating and drinking. A couple of tables and chairs still stood outside. Per sat down and watched the boys playing. A woman in shorts jogged past with her dog on a leash, a lone cyclist rode slowly by and a couple strolled arm in arm. A mother and her baby were sitting on a bench. Normality. Everything in Denmark seemed so normal, but Per had a strong suspicion that they had an assassin in the city. The undercover guys were starting to ask around, and Per had had meetings with the uniformed branch and the crime squad. He had informed them of Sara Santanda’s visit and told them what he knew. The most critical point would come with the press conference out on Flakfortet. And even though the politicians could have seen her far enough, the top brass at police headquarters were nothing if not professional. On the day itself he would be given all the officers he needed. They would guard the Østerbro apartment, provide an escort and lend assistance at Flakfortet, which Per himself would be making a recce of, along with Lise Carlsen. Everyone was taking seriously the Russians’ averred certainty that a contract had been taken out on Santanda and that this contract would be carried out. But they didn’t have a helluva lot to go on: the back of a blond head, a Serb – possibly. No name, no nationality, no description. Well, maybe the Russians could help. They would have to.

  He saw Igor coming down the road. The Russian stepped onto the grass, prodded it with the toe of his shoe to see if it was wet, discovered that it wasn’t and cut across the green to where Per was sitting. Igor was wearing the same dark suit and navy coat as before, but he looked a little nettled. As far as he was concerned, the case was closed, he had not welcomed the idea of another meeting, but Per had insisted.

  The policeman stood up, and they shook hands briefly. Per came right to the point. This was not going to be quite so pleasant a meeting as last time, and he saw no reason to pretend otherwise by asking after the wife and kids, indulging in chitchat. When he played his ace, he wanted Igor to know that he had had it up his sleeve all along. He owed the Russian that much at least.

  Per said curtly:

  ‘I want you to bring in that guy in the picture, Kravtjov or whatever his name is, for a little talk. And I want it done yesterday!’

  Kammarasov would make a good poker player, Per thought. He saw the Russian’s eyes narrow, but his face remained impassive.

  ‘It can’t be done,’ was all he said.

  ‘In Berlin. To tell us who he’s talking to in that picture. As soon as possible.’

  ‘It cannot be done, Toftlund.’

  Per considered Kammarasov for a second: held his eye while he drew a black-and-white photograph from the inside pocket of his jerkin. He lifted it up to the Russian, who broke free of his gaze and glanced down at the photograph. Per studied Kammarosov intently. God, what a pro, he thought, impressed in spite of himself. The Ru
ssian merely blinked once or twice but remained otherwise unmoved. Per turned the picture round to have a look at it himself. It was a good clear shot, showing Igor together with a young boy who could not have been any more than fourteen or fifteen. It had, Per knew, been taken in HC Ørsted Park one spring evening. Igor’s features were slightly distorted by the pleasure of what the boy’s mouth was doing to his rigid member, but there was no doubt as to who the man in the photograph was.

  Per turned the picture round again, to let Igor look at it. He didn’t want to, Per could tell, but he couldn’t help himself. The boy’s name was Lars and he was seventeen now, but he had been just fourteen when the photograph was taken. It was only four months since they had stopped seeing one another. Per had interviewed Lars personally and got him to describe the nature of their relationship. Per could see from the look on Igor’s face that he knew this, but Per kept him dangling a while longer before saying:

  ‘Democracy or no, this sort of thing is still a no-no back home, isn’t it, Igor?’

  Kammarasov made no reply. They could hear the shouts of the boys playing football; other than that, they were alone in the world. They stood facing one another, like old chums getting together for a good old natter. Kammarasov did not seem able to drag his eyes away from the picture. Per thought it filthy and disgusting and felt nothing but contempt for the Russian, not least because he knew from Lars that Igor had honestly loved the bloody little rent boy.

  ‘It’s illegal in Denmark too, you know, Igor. Not being queer – screwing minors, I mean.’

  A tremor passed across the Russian’s features, a fleeting flicker of pain before he regained control of his facial muscles and said, in a voice that shook only very slightly: