The Susan Effect

by Peter Høeg

  I recognise Gorbachev’s fatigue from that meeting and that television transmission now, in Andrea’s face. It’s the fatigue of a person who, unlike the rest of us, has not contented herself with earning her daily bread, but who instead has been driven by a vision. And who now must see it crumble.

  ‘You and Magrethe Spliid. You put together the Future Commission. She’s dead now.’

  She knows.

  ‘Henrik Kornelius is dead, too.’

  Her hand is cold. When death approaches, it draws all bio-electric energy away from the surface of the skin and inward towards the body’s core. She may die tonight. Or maybe this is another instance of her flouting the rules that apply to everyone else.

  ‘Magrethe and I were both unaware of the full potential of the group dynamic, Susan. But we were on the right track. I’d known her for years. Her position was unusual, a pacifist working for the military. They took her on for the sake of legitimacy. Woman, civilian, German background, yet unstained by the war. After only a few years they couldn’t do without her. They made the job permanent in 1964, the same year the first female cadet joined the officers’ academy. But even before that I’d noticed her articles. I put myself in touch. She was interested in getting people together, placing them in contexts that would bring out the best in them. Bohr excelled at it. We were worried about the direction in which society was heading. There wasn’t much ground for optimism. What we were after was realism, realistic prognoses. The Cuban missile crisis was a turning point for both of us. Magrethe was sent off on a tour of inspection with the air force, to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany. It was October 1962. She wasn’t yet twenty, yet they’d selected her. The first week was uneventful, but after that things hotted up for her. Magrethe was fond of men, a bit like you in that respect. She initiated a dalliance with Air Force Europe’s second-in-command. Part of his responsibility was being in charge of their forward-based deployment, the bomber planes that would be the first to fly in over the Soviet Union if a nuclear war broke out. He told her he had a minute and a half to get them airborne, their bases being top-priority targets in the case of a Soviet strike. He had pilots sitting in cockpits in shifts round the clock. And they knew their mission was one-way. There wouldn’t be a Germany left to come back to. The weeks she spent there were pivotal for Magrethe. They shook her very foundations. Some of her hair had turned white when she got back, like Christmas Møller when he came home from London after the war. From that moment on we were scouting for potential subjects. Individuals to be part of a group. But it took us another ten years.’

  ‘What did you tell the Folketing?’

  ‘That they were specialists. Which was true.’

  ‘You knew they could predict the future.’

  ‘No one can predict the future. It doesn’t exist until it becomes present. It’s a multi-dimensional field of virtualities. We knew they were excellent prognosticators. That was one of the criteria by which they were selected. We looked at how many of their published predictions had turned out true in each case. But it was only after the commission’s first two years, when we were going through the reports, that we realised how incredibly exact the material was. The group’s ability to see beyond the horizon of events was formidable indeed.’

  ‘And Thorkild Hegn?’

  ‘Magrethe and I didn’t show our report to the Folketing. It would only have given rise to panic measures. The politicians were jittery enough as it was, scared that the media would harangue them for employing fortune tellers. Worried that other experts would criticise them for the young age of the commission’s members. But we knew that what we had on our hands was a phenomenon far more powerful than we’d ever imagined. We went to the security services, and military and police intelligence. They tried to take control of the commission, but ended up having to back off. We decided to set up a group that was to monitor and evaluate the commission’s work. Hegn was at that time a head of department in the Ministry of Justice. The youngest ever. We put him in charge.’

  ‘At some point you realised you’d lost control of him.’

  A flicker of grief passes over her features.

  ‘The commission insisted on anonymity. They wanted to be self-supplying. They distanced themselves from me. Hegn took over. I’m not a politician, Susan. I’ve never fully grasped that particular power game. He uncoupled me. From the most successful experiment I’ve ever conducted.’

  ‘And Magrethe Spliid?’

  ‘She kept me informed. But we had to be very careful. Eventually, it became near-impossible to keep in touch. But there was something else, too. It was as though something about her changed …’

  I lean towards her.

  ‘They got greedy, Andrea. Even Magrethe did. And you knew. I’ve seen some of the places they live in. They got rich. Far richer than any of their civilian professions would allow. They found a way of cashing in on their talent.’

  ‘Like you, Susan.’

  For a moment, my whole body hurts.

  ‘Yes, but I wasn’t that smart. I never got rich.’

  There’s a kind of Lorentz contraction that applies to honesty. As you approach full clarity it’s like everything contracts and starts to resist. That’s when to press ahead. That’s where your chance lies.

  ‘What did Hegn do about it?’

  ‘He left the ministry. After consultations with the government, who for their part had secured the support of key politicians across the Folketing. They gave him the green light to keep it secret. Exemption from the rules of open administration. Offices all over the place, most recently at the former Radiohuset. The commission hated him, but at the same time they couldn’t do without him. They knew that what they had on their hands was comparable to Los Alamos, a kind of radioactivity, only in information instead. They were scared. Magrethe admitted as much. They knew they needed government protection, help to keep things out of the public eye. To assess what predictions were actually coming true. Many were little more than feelings in need of verification. They needed guidance to find out what could be made public and what couldn’t. Once they got started, I became superfluous. But not Thorkild.’

  Now I’m able to identify her fatigue. It’s not only hers. It’s also the disillusionment of the natural sciences. At having made such discoveries, delivered such opportunities for the world to advance, provided such great tools. Only then to see itself outmanoeuvred, by government, the police, business.

  ‘You and Magrethe created a little monster. And then you lost control of it.’

  It’s quiet all around. Anyone else in her position would be surrounded by doctors, nurses, priests, backslappers telling her what a monumental legacy she’ll be leaving behind. But not Andrea Fink.

  ‘Thorkild came to me a month ago. I hadn’t seen him in twenty years. There was a piece of information crucial to him: the minutes of a meeting. He asked my advice. I told him about you. Was that wrong of me, Susan?’

  My feelings for her well up inside.

  ‘They’re being killed. Harald and I only just survived an attempt on our lives. Did Hegn have anything to do with that?’

  She can’t bear to hear it. All her life, she has looked only into the eyes of kindness.

  ‘I don’t know, Susan. I’m not a part of it any more. But he turned the Institute of Future Studies into an independent organisation. He severed all links to the Ministry of Justice. Until the end of the seventies he was referring directly to the incumbent government. That’s long been a thing of the past. It’s harder now to control him. Governments come and go. The civil service is what guarantees continuity. There were always the decent heavyweights. Erik Ib Schmidt. Seirup at the Directorate of Social Affairs. But then there were the dangerous exceptions too.’

  There’s something more she wants to say. Something she’s hiding.

  ‘You and I,’ I say. ‘We started out like mother and daughter. But we’ve come a long way since then. It’s what I always dreamed about, in life as well as in physics. T
o proceed to the very limit, to the place where all knowledge comes to an end. And then to step out into empty space. We can go there now, Andrea.’

  She turns her head away from me. I get to my feet.

  The moon has vanished. Christmas Eve is over.

  I flag a taxi on Pile Allé. The traffic is a flow of people returning home from family and friends.

  As we pass the bridge that arches across Maglemosevej, the taxi’s interior is engulfed by the flashing blue lights of a police car. A motorcycle officer waves us over to the oncoming lane, and on the other side of the bridge we pass the wreck of a car.

  It’s wedged between two trees, the roof peeled back so whoever was inside could be extricated. An area of road is cordoned off, and police are busy measuring skid marks.

  The car is a Jaguar. Its windows are smashed. But in the lower corner of the windscreen I see the characteristic parking permit. I can’t read what it says. But I can see the emblem. A golden pair of dividers superimposed on a golden theodolite.

  The house on Evighedsvej is dark and still. I take off my clothes and stand under the shower. At Holmgangen we had to take cold baths, yet another trauma for life. Long hot showers are the one luxury I’d have difficulty doing without.

  There are two shower heads in our shower, hooked up to two different heat exchangers, both equipped with boosters, an unlawful installation I put in myself. Whenever my work at the lab didn’t keep me too late, Laban and I would shower together. Standing there under our separate shower heads we would talk softly, the door ajar in case one of the children should wake up. It was like a ritual cleansing. First we’d tell each other what kind of day we’d had, as if to rinse away its pollution. Gradually we’d make contact, and the hot water and the Effect combined to wash away our protective layers, until finally we were naked together.

  He knocks on the door. I know it’s him, I know the way he knocks. The same way as he introduces himself: softly and apologetically, and yet impossible to ignore.

  I wrap myself in a bath towel and open the door. His hair’s all over the place and he’s drowsy from sleep. But he heard me come in and wanted to get up and greet me.

  ‘The Future Commission was Andrea’s work,’ I tell him. ‘Once it was established, it got the better of her. She knows nothing about the killings. It was she who picked me out for Hegn. There’s something she’s not telling me. On the way home I saw Keldsen’s car, or what was left of it.’

  He nods. I stroke his cheek. His eyes investigate behind my back.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  He steps away, towards the door.

  ‘Just checking, Susan. To make sure you haven’t got your drill driver and deck screws handy.’

  36

  IT’S CHRISTMAS MORNING, the time a quarter to five: fifteen minutes before the arsenic hour.

  Less than half an hour ago I squeezed through the hedge and crouched in the cold, waiting to make sure there were no signs of life on Evighedsvej. And then I drove here, to Holte. In Dorthea’s Volvo.

  Andreas Baumgarten, former Governor of the National Bank, resides at something called Rudersdal Manor. I turn off Kongevejen down a gravel track that winds its way between snow-dusted fields and patches of woodland, before arriving at a wall and a set of tall, wrought-iron gates. The gates are open. On the wall is a For Sale sign.

  I carry on down a dark avenue of trees that seems endless and yet eventually reaches a conclusion in front of the main house, which looks like a castle.

  All the lights are on. Steps lead up to a large set of doors at the foot of a tower. In front of the steps is a Bentley. A man dressed in black is busy loading suitcases into it. Stacks of removal boxes line the outside wall. The windows are without curtains. The place is being vacated.

  A woman in black trousers, a black pullover and riding boots comes towards me. She looks stand-offish, as intransigent as a road block.

  ‘I need to speak to Andreas,’ I say. ‘Tell him it’s Susan from Fanø. I’ve been to the doctor. I’m four months gone. I need to speak to him about what we’re going to do. Is he going to marry me or what?’

  She swivels on her heels. I follow her through a hall and into a drawing room as big as a ballroom. Down a staircase from the first floor comes Andreas Baumgarten.

  His thick grey hair is like the mane of a lion. He himself is the lion king.

  ‘I’ve brought you a Christmas card,’ I tell him. ‘From Magrethe Spliid. It’s the last thing she wrote before she got throttled.’

  He didn’t know. He halts in his tracks, albeit briefly.

  ‘I’m on my way to the airport. Can you come with me?’

  We go outside and down the front steps. He puts out a hand for my car keys and passes them to the man in black. We climb into the Bentley. The woman in the riding boots gets behind the wheel. The cockpit of a car is a kind of laboratory and she’s a specialist: her movements are few and economic. The car doesn’t run, it floats.

  ‘Henrik Kornelius is dead,’ I say. ‘Keldsen too, probably. I saw his car yesterday. It was totalled.’

  The snow in the fields brightens the dark. Following on behind us in my car is the black-clad lugger of suitcases.

  ‘And who might you be?’

  ‘Susan Svendsen. I’m a physicist at the University of Copenhagen. I’ve got a lot of experience in questioning people. Thorkild Hegn asked me to question Magrethe Spliid. About the last two meetings of the Future Commission.’

  His face is expressionless. But I can hear the whirr of mental calculations. He doesn’t need an abacus.

  ‘I’ve seen Andrea Fink’s report,’ I tell him. ‘Her summary of the commission’s work. Kirsten Klaussen had it hidden away in the National Archives. I retrieved it. I need to call Hegn within the next fifteen minutes. Otherwise there’ll be an army waiting for you at Kastrup.’

  He says nothing.

  ‘I’ve got a prison sentence hanging over my head. They offered to drop all charges if I could get hold of the minutes of the last two meetings.’

  ‘And what crime did you commit?’

  I gauge his systems. And proceed on a hunch.

  ‘Grievous bodily harm. Against a lover.’

  For some reason it does the trick.

  ‘Nothing was written down. Nothing at all from the final meetings. The prognoses were too gloomy. Our point of departure was a hundred global risks, divided into six categories: economics, environment, geopolitics, society, technology, global resources. We picked out five main issues: chronic financial imbalances, greenhouse gas emissions, unsustainable population growth, extreme income inequality and a shortage of resources that would give rise to highly volatile prices for energy and agricultural products.’

  We hit the motorway, passing Lyngby and Denmark’s Technological University.

  ‘We drew a picture of a future world in which attempts at global leadership have been feeble and failed. A world in which the Western welfare-society model has partially broken down as a result of national debt, and where young people under the yoke of mass unemployment are saddled with the burden of looking after history’s largest-ever elderly population, a billion and a half people over the age of sixty by 2020. Where social unrest is rampant. Where education systems are failing because their programmes are still facing backwards, preparing students for twentieth-century jobs and economies that don’t exist any more. A world in which everyday lives are lived in the shadow of metacatastrophes like the great oil and chemical leaks of the twentieth century, only now with the further complication of microorganisms and nanomaterial that can’t be contained because response capabilities are inadequate and outdated. A world in which resource shortages lead to neotribalism and war. A world that still retains a nuclear capacity equivalent to one thousand tons of TNT for every man, woman and child on earth. Even the smallest tactical strikes, for example in a border conflict between India and Pakistan, would release at minimum one thousand times the explosive force of Hiroshima. The ash from the burning cities al
one would spark off a new ice age across the northern hemisphere.’

  We pass Herlev.

  ‘No one’s infallible,’ I say. ‘Your sums are wrong.’

  He smiles. It’s a physiological smile, restricted to the facial muscles.

  ‘Europe’s a comfort zone. We live in a cinema with family entertainment projected onto all four walls. The collapse isn’t some far-off future. It’s already started.’

  ‘Imbalances will be corrected.’

  ‘They haven’t even been acknowledged yet. Look at the day-today reality. Politicians jostling for position. Interest groups fighting for a slice of the cake. The media, who know the truth, but can’t get it across because no one’s listening. The problem isn’t outside us. The problem is us. Our overconsumption and borrowing.’

  We’re nearing the airport. I start to sense his anger beneath the smile, behind the elegance.

  ‘We’ve been saying all this for forty-five years, and no one’s batted an eyelid! There isn’t a single politician in Europe who isn’t talking growth. But growth in its present form isn’t viable any more. It’s past its use-by date.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  The car swings into an area of the airport I’ve never seen before, passing through a gate and pulling up in front of a low fence. On the other side of the fence is a Lear jet. Two stewardesses and two uniformed pilots stand to attention by its steps.

  They’re waiting for Andreas Baumgarten. When he gets out of the Bentley they salute.

  ‘We gave them six different scenarios of collapse.’

  Two airport staff open the gate for him. There’s no ticket procedure, no boarding pass, no security check.

  He goes through the gate, turns and comes back to the fence.

  ‘There’s a detail you might like to think about, Susan. All six scenarios involve more dead than in the First and Second World Wars put together.’