The Serbian Dane

by Leif Davidsen

  She lit a cigarette and brought her mind back to the press release on the computer screen. It would all work out all right, she was sure, and even if the sky was grey, it wasn’t raining, and she was looking forward to the sail out to Flakfortet.

  The White Whale was a lovely, low-hulled, wooden boat. It was tied up alongside the quay in Nyhavn among all the other wooden boats. The pavement cafés at the feet of the old ochre-, red-and brown-painted houses were crowded with people. The sailboats bobbed gently, and the breeze tugged at their pennants. A canal-tour boat was chugging out of the harbour, and a hydrofoil from Sweden was on its way in. The whole scene was like something off a tourist board poster, Lise thought happily. The White Whale had a small quarterdeck, with a life raft slung above it in its canister. The boat could be steered from outside on the quarterdeck by means of a large, old-fashioned wheel and an engine telegraph with a lever for controlling the speed.

  Hanging in front of the wheel was a fine old bell, but the sleek motorboat was also equipped with both radio and sonar. The skipper was a man in his thirties who gave his name simply as Jon and introduced his deckhand as Lars. They seemed to know Per and John, who both hopped on board. Per helped her down onto the deck and showed her first the wheelhouse, from which Jon could steer the boat in bad weather, and then the cabin, where six to eight people could be fitted around the table. It was very cosy, with curtains at the portholes, and she also noticed a tiny galley. But it was slightly claustrophobic too. The thought of living on a cramped little boat, with sails or without, did not appeal to Lise. She much preferred the idea of being up on deck in the stern, where she could enjoy the view of Copenhagen’s lovely harbour as Jon headed the boat out into the Sound with deft finesse. Lise felt the wind in her hair and gazed at the water, which shifted from grey to bluish-green when the sun broke through the high clouds. A glass of home-brewed aquavit was popped into her hand by Jon, who was steering the White Whale from the large wheel on the quarterdeck. The aquavit was strong and bitter-tasting, but it was just the thing on such a bracing day. They made good speed past Tre Kroner Fort and on past the second old army fortress, Middelgrund. Beyond this she could now make out a little dark blotch on the waters of the Sound: the outermost fortress, Flakfortet. Jon did not bear straight towards their destination; instead he appeared to come at it in a wide arc. As if reading the puzzlement on her face he proceeded to explain about the waters on their starboard side, which he called the Dirty Sea. It sounded both alarming and poetic. The Dirty Sea was a large stretch of the sea off Flakfortet and the island of Saltholm where the water was no more than a couple of feet deep. For centuries Copenhagen had used this area as a dumping ground. It was full of railway sleepers and concrete blocks, building rubbish and the hulks of old ships. Only a dinghy or a very flat-bottomed boat could cross that patch. That was why they had to cut round it.

  ‘You get some right fat eels out here,’ Per said. ‘Don’t you, Jon?’

  ‘Oh yes. Over the years the local gangsters have sent a few dead rivals to the bottom well wrapped up in nice cement overcoats,’ Jon laughed.

  Lise gave him a little dig. The three men were flirting with her, but in a nice way; Jon and John were showing that they knew she and Per were an item. Lars the deckhand kept to himself. A rather shy young man, he busied himself with making coffee in the pantry. Per wrapped a demonstrative arm around her and gave her a quick kiss. He had never done that in public before. It made her feel very happy, taking it as she did as a sign that he wanted to show the world they belonged together.

  ‘So where do you know this buccaneer from?’ she asked.

  Jon laughed. He wasn’t a tall man but slim and compact, like a good midfield player. The skin of his face was tanned and covered in lots of fine and very becoming lines. His black beard was neatly trimmed.

  ‘Oh, the White Whale and I have been on Her Majesty’s Secret Service on quite a few occasions,’ he said.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Ah, I’m not sure James Bond here would let me tell you that,’ John replied, pointing at Per.

  ‘Hah, what did you ever do, except sit on your butt and get paid a packet by the government for doing sweet bugger-all?’ Per retorted.

  ‘Easy money, yeah. But if…’

  ‘Yes, I know…’

  Lise had no idea what they were talking about, but Per said oh, it was just that the White Whale was often pressed into service during visits by foreign heads of state or individuals whose lives had been threatened by madmen or fanatics. On such occasions the White Whale lay at the quay next to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Asiatisk Plads, thus affording the security service an alternative evacuation route if, as Per put it, the balloon should go up.

  ‘So the White Whale will be carrying Sara out to Flakfortet? Right? That is your plan, isn’t it?’

  ‘Uh-huh. She may look old, but she can do seventeen knots when she has to.’

  ‘Well, I only hope Sara is a good sailor. Or that we get good weather.’

  ‘Yeah, it wouldn’t be very funny if she threw up all over the world’s press the first time they got the chance to ask her a couple of questions,’ Per said.

  The White Whale overtook a lumbering flat-bottomed ship with a wheelhouse in the stern. On the bow was a name in indecipherable Cyrillic script, and Lise recognized the Russian flag fluttering abaft, but in style the boat reminded her more of the barges she had seen on French rivers. The barge was flaking with rust and looked as poor and forlorn as the old Russian women she had seen begging on TV.

  ‘It looks like an old barge,’ she remarked.

  ‘It’s a filthy, rotten old shitheap of a Russian river barge,’ Jon said. ‘They’re an accident just waiting to happen, those things. They were built for quiet river waters, not the open sea. They’re flat-bottomed, unstable and don’t have enough engine power. They stink to high heaven, they foul the water, and they’re destroying the last vestiges of Denmark’s small craft traffic.’

  ‘They have to make a living, I suppose,’ Lise said.

  ‘So do the Danish seamen,’ Jon rejoined, so curtly that she did not pursue the matter. It was too nice a day to argue about anything, especially politics. She looked back at the barge, butting laboriously through the waves, even though there was only the slightest of swells. She shuddered: it would be no joke if one of those were to go down off the Danish coast with its cargo of oil or coal. Actually, there was quite a good story there – she must remember to mention it to one of the other reporters.

  Old Flakfort was looking its best when the White Whale nosed its way through the gap in the breakwater and into the harbour. The breakwater ran all the way round the fort. From the air, it looked rather like the ramparts encircling a medieval castle. The harbour entrance was the main gate, and the six-foot wide band between the breakwater and the fort was like a moat, protecting the fortress from the sea. A big break in the clouds allowed the sun’s rays to turn the water blue and glint off the gleaming surfaces of the two sailboats moored in the harbour. The fort itself rose up into a grassy hillock surrounded by low bushes; Lise spotted a restaurant, a circular pavilion with a pointed roof reminiscent of an old-fashioned Chinese coolie hat and a small souvenir shop. Two men sat on a bench, shivering slightly as they tried to hang on to the last shreds of summer. Alongside the jetty lay a large boat that might have been an old, converted fishing boat. It had an open quarterdeck with a green canopy strung over it. A small group of people, mostly dads with young kids, were making their way on board. Jon eased the White Whale gently into the quay. Lise had never been out to Flakfortet before, but living in Copenhagen as she did, she knew of course that it was one of three forts designed as a defence against attack from the sea. But it had never seen battle, not even on the 9th of April 1940 when German bombers and troopships passed over and by it unchallenged. Its cannons had failed to function. The fort had been decommissioned after the war; it had fallen into disrepair and been vandalized by weekend sailors landing on the isl
et illegally and plundered by people on the hunt for stone or copper, of which there was no shortage out here. But the old fortress was now a listed building and a favourite spot for summer outings. Renovation work was currently being carried out on it, but still intact inside – and out of bounds to the general public – were a lot of the old casemates and ammunition stores.

  Per pointed to the fishing boat, the M/S Langø it was called:

  ‘We close off Flakfortet for the day of Simba’s visit. There aren’t so many pleasure boats around at this time of year, and if there should be a couple in the harbour, we’ll check them out. We’ll go over the fort with a fine-tooth comb the evening before and again the next morning.’

  The last passengers had climbed aboard the M/S Langø, and Lise could see from the water that the propeller had started turning.

  Per carried on:

  ‘We ferry the press across first in that boat there. We simply charter it for the day and close the fort to the general public. Then we bring Simba over in the White Whale and hold the press conference in the restaurant…’

  ‘The television people are going to love this,’ Lise interjected.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, look at the pictures they can get out here.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Loads,’ Per countered dryly. ‘Because I’ll be putting three or four men with rifles and machine guns on top of the fort. There’s a clear view for miles around. Not so much as a rowboat can get anywhere near without them seeing it. And a couple of men down below, outside the restaurant. Also armed, of course. Screeds of pictures. But it’ll be as secure as anything can be in this world.’

  ‘Well, well. I’m impressed. You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?’

  ‘No, that you can never do.’

  They went ashore, and Per made the necessary arrangements with the restaurateur, who had not the slightest objection to being closed to the public for a day once he heard that a whole boatload of reporters would have to kick their heels in his restaurant for an hour. He happily provided them with details of his staff: the chef, a waiter, an assistant in the kiosk, a guide and a washer-up. It was off-season, so they didn’t need a lot of staff unless they had to cater for a large party, and they had no big bookings at the moment. The staff worked on a rota. One lot came over on the boat on Tuesday and stayed until Saturday, when a fresh team took over until the following Tuesday. The second team was slightly bigger: they were always busier at weekends. The staff lived in small, well-appointed rooms in the renovated section of the casemates. It was rather like being on a ship at sea. They could see the lights of Copenhagen but couldn’t simply pop over to the city if they felt like it. It was a somewhat unusual working situation, a bit like being on an oil platform in the North Sea, but you could get hooked on it, and most of the staff had been working out at Flakfortet for years, not least because the pay was good. Yes, the police could have a list of their names. No, he was sure they wouldn’t mind. He knew every one of them. There was no strange, Danish-speaking foreigner among them. A boat came over every day with fresh raw ingredients, but it was the same boat as always, and he knew every member of the crew.

  Per and Lise walked up onto the top of Flakfortet hand in hand. The Danish and Swedish coastlines stood out sharply in the limpid light. Grass grew over the roof of the fortress. Lise saw that Per was right. From huge container ships to tiny yachts, every craft on the blue waters of the Sound was clearly visible. Nothing would be able to get close to the fort. They wandered past the old gun carriages and down into the bowels of the fortress. Some of the bunker passageways were well lit and clear; others were dank and dark. Some of the casemates lay open; others were blocked off by steel doors or chains and padlocks. It must be pretty cold and damp in the locked rooms, Lise thought. She had visions of rats and all sorts of other creepy-crawlies inhabiting the old ammunition stores – but, Per told her, one thing she certainly wouldn’t have to worry about was spiders: with a constant temperature of ten degrees Celsius down there in the dark, flies and other spider fodder could not survive.

  As they walked Per gave her the bare bones of what he had been told by his informant. He also broke his usual rule by telling her that, in keeping with the new spirit of the times, it had been friends in the Russian secret service who had assisted Denmark in this matter. But he didn’t tell her how the information had been obtained. They now had a description of sorts and confirmation that a contract had been taken out, so there would probably not be as much resistance within the system to according him the necessary resources. The politicians still refused to meet Simba, and nothing seemed likely to change that. Even in the Danish political system the financial considerations outweighed the human.

  ‘They’re a bunch of bloody hypocrites,’ Lise muttered.

  Per did not answer.

  ‘Don’t you think so?’

  ‘It makes no difference what I think,’ he said and drew her away from the musty gloom into a brightly lit passageway.

  She was a little put out by this, but he didn’t appear to notice, had already changed tack.

  ‘Actually it’s quite comforting to know that the contract has gone to a professional.’

  ‘You don’t mean that, surely!’

  ‘Yes, I do. Because there’s a chance this man could infiltrate Flakfortet – always assuming he finds out that this is where the press conference is being held. And how is he supposed to do that? I mean, so far everybody seems to be keeping their lips sealed about the actual schedule for the visit. But just suppose he did – there’s no way he can get off again. And our man’s a pro. Not some crazy Muslim with his heart set on martyrdom, showing up here with ten pounds of explosive under his shirt.’

  ‘So why is he doing it?’

  ‘Quien sabe? Who knows? Money probably. Isn’t that usually what drives people? That or sex.’

  ‘What a cynical character you are.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Yes, you are. There are other people in the world, you know, besides the sort you mix with.’

  ‘They may have a little more polish, but everybody can be bought. You just have to know their price, sweetheart.’

  ‘Don’t call me “sweetheart”,’ she snapped, letting go of his hand and walking ahead of him towards the light at the end of the concrete passageway. She was annoyed with him and with herself, and those dark corridors gave her the willies. But she wasn’t going to let him talk down to her as if she were a child. She hated the shallow cynicism that seemed to her to permeate modern society. Through her work for Danish PEN, she had been given detailed insight into the appalling cruelties devised by regimes and, hence, individuals to plague and torment their fellow human beings. She had spoken to lots of authors and journalists who had been imprisoned, tortured and abused. She had learned more than she wanted to know about repression and evil. But she was not going to allow that to discourage her or make her cynical. Because then the torturers would have won. She had to believe in the good, believe that it could win through.

  It was good to be back out in the open air. The sky had clouded over again; a sudden shower of rain swept over the Swedish coast, a grey striated curtain masked the horizon, but it rained itself out before it reached the Sound, and only minutes later she beheld a perfect rainbow arching over the mainland. She took it as a good sign and for the first time felt sure that everything would turn out all right in the end. With Ole, with Per, and with Sara.

  Like a film with a happy ending.

  Chapter 16

  Ole Carlsen and Vuk had dinner together in a small French restaurant in the city centre, a place where Ole had dined with Lise a few times when they first met. He had chosen it in a burst of nostalgia, although to be honest he felt the food there was overpriced. But it was highly rated, had become quite trendy again, and he was keen to impress his new young friend. As soon as they stepped through the door Ole noticed one of Danish television’s new light-entertainment hosts sitting with a party at a good tab
le in the corner. ‘Aha, so Carl Ohmann comes here,’ he remarked, but Vuk merely eyed the gentleman in question indifferently, as if he had no idea who his companion was talking about. Although that couldn’t possibly be the case, not after all the coverage the man had received. He had devised a totally new form of Saturday-night entertainment that had been the talk of the country over most of the winter and spring. But there were a number of things about Vuk that Ole found odd and not quite in keeping with his job as a plastic-bag salesman. He was interested in the wrong things.

  Vuk was smart but casual in a light-coloured shirt, neatly pressed blue flannels and a grey tweed jacket, but no tie. Several times during the course of the day Ole Carlsen had considered getting out of dinner and plucking up his courage to have it out with Lise instead. He had called the newspaper office only to be told that she was out on a job. No, they couldn’t say where she was. So he had pulled himself together and attended to his clients, listened to their problems and endeavoured to solve them, although increasingly he had the feeling that there was nothing he could say, nothing he could do to cure the neuroses from which more and more Danes seemed to be suffering. If he had had to find one word to describe his state of mind it would have been ‘confused’. Like most of the Danish population apparently.

  But he was glad he had kept the date. He enjoyed having dinner with the engaging young Jutlander, who appeared to be quite content with his life and his job selling plastic bags to supermarkets, for people to put their potatoes into and weigh them themselves. The Danish people were now said to be living in a service economy, when the truth was that the one thing of which there was less and less now was service. Back in the days when a petrol station was known as a filling station, it actually provided a service. An attendant filled up your tank, checked your oil, topped up the air in your tyres and washed your windscreen. Then they started calling them ‘service stations’, and the customer had to do everything himself. Ole could see the paradox and found it funny when Carsten – as he thought Vuk was called – pointed this out over dinner, in the course of all their chat about this and that, everything and nothing. Ole felt so at ease with this young man. They had drunk some excellent wine, were onto their second bottle in fact, and going by the way he felt, Ole realized that he must have consumed the lion’s share of it. Although he had to admit that he had had a head start. It was a bad habit, he knew, but he needed a little nip every now and again throughout the day, so he kept a bottle of vodka at the clinic. It was better than pills anyway, and soon, once he had more control over things in his private life, the bottle would be history. But the last few years had been a living hell: following the derout, from the outside as it were; looking on as a marriage crumbled and two people stopped caring about one another. How had this happened? He was a psychologist, but he could not come up with the answer. He could analyse the problem: they did not talk to one another, they meant nothing to one another, they were forever rubbing each other up the wrong way, but he could not put his finger on how or when it had all started to go downhill. When the love they shared had died. Over the past couple of weeks things had gone from bad to worse. He was afraid he was going to lose Lise if he did not get a grip on himself. If he left it any longer, it would be too late. He freely admitted to himself that he was still in love with her and that he would miss her terribly if she left him. But he found it impossible to come out of his shell and talk the whole thing over with her, put his longing and his love for her into words. And this despite the fact that he belonged to a generation which believed implicitly that everything was up for discussion and that there was nothing that couldn’t be straightened out by a good heart-to-heart. Now, suddenly, words failed him. He was convinced that Lise had taken a lover. He was insanely jealous, although deep down he considered jealousy to be a destructive, immature emotion, not to say a character flaw, which had a part to play in the breakdown of most relationships. That, at any rate, was what he had often told the couples whom he counselled. Was that why he could not bring himself to simply go down on his knees in front of Lise and beg her to take him back, to talk to him so that together they could try to make a fresh start and see if they could rekindle the flame which had once burned between them and was now dying out? There might still be a spark into which they could breathe life. Why didn’t he just beg her to help him? Could it be that he was somehow incapable of begging? Helped along by the wine, he became quite weepy at the thought of a reconciliation.