The Susan Effect

by Peter Høeg

  I finish up the planting work. We’re still on the strawberries. Several of the varieties are named after women: Hedy Lamarr, Königin Luise, Zsa Zsa Gabor.

  ‘The war was a mistake. We left a bigger mess when we pulled out than there was in two thousand and six when we went in. The central government in Kabul had no control over the provinces. The Taliban were stronger, the opium trade more widespread. The general level of conflict escalated. Danish soldiers died in vain. The blame has yet to be apportioned.’

  I say nothing. What have I done, that everyone should be talking to me about war?

  ‘Seven thousand Afghan civilians dead. Hundreds of thousands displaced within the country’s own borders. Fifteen thousand Taliban killed. Eight thousand Afghan police and soldiers. A thousand NATO troops. All to no avail.’

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ I say. ‘Find somewhere else to weep.’

  I go over towards the farm buildings. He calls after me. I ignore him, and he comes limping.

  I wash my hands.

  ‘Killing is a hard business, Susan. Harder than you might think. Even killing animals is hard. Not many hunters would admit to it, but most are familiar with what they call buck fever. You’ve got the deer in your sights, and it’s as if the body only then realises that you’re about to take a life. It protests. The body has its own will. You start to tremble. The more you try to control yourself, the worse it gets. And, of course, it’s all the more intense with humans. In combat you immerse yourself in a very particular state. You no longer see the enemy as human at all. In that state it can be done. But outside of combat, without your unit, it’s different. That’s why good contract killers are so few and far between.’

  ‘Oskar,’ I say, ‘I haven’t had breakfast yet. You’re making me lose my appetite.’

  ‘You have to listen.’

  He’s completely exposed now, as he was yesterday when I walked him home.

  ‘Once in a while, Susan, very occasionally, someone gets to like it. Jason Alter. I’ve studied him. He likes it. Alter is Danish. Normal background. Nice, ordinary home. But at some early stage he realises he likes killing. First hens and geese. Then larger animals. The dossier on him stemmed from a KGB interrogation in the early eighties. They used chemicals, truth serum. He applies to join the special forces, Navy Frogman Corps. He passes all the tests, but then he takes a chance and slits the throat of some vagrant. They suss him out, though nothing can be proved, and he’s dismissed from service. He disappears off the radar for a few years, then turns up in South Africa, working for Armscor under Botha. They reckon that’s where he met up with the Duke. Normally, killing is a messy business, Susan. Psychotic. The movies make it glitter, but in the real world it’s base and primitive. Alter’s different. He’s intelligent. Keen. I watched him in Greenland, when those corpses were doctored. He did the last one himself. He’d absorbed the whole technique, could have passed for a surgeon. There’s nothing he can’t do. Besides speaking any number of languages he’s a highly professional photographer – all the photo documentation was his work – and he knows all there is to know about computers.’

  Without being aware of it, he spreads his fingers and studies them. Then he passes his hand over the stubble of his skull, above the nape of his neck, the site of his haemorrhage.

  ‘I’ve never been afraid of men, Susan. Women, yes, but never men. But I’m afraid of Jason Alter.’

  ‘You work with him,’ I say. ‘I met him on the quayside in Copenhagen. He would have killed Thit. He tried to kill Harald and me. He’s a part of this.’

  He looks away.

  9

  THAT EVENING AFTER dinner I place Dorthea’s mobile phone on the table in front of Laban and the twins.

  ‘Dorthea slipped me this. Right under the noses of our guards before they brought us here. There’s a charger, too. I’ve called the bank. Our credit cards were blocked a week ago.’

  They look like they’ve suddenly turned to stone, the way all people do when something happens to their credit cards. In the modern world there’s a direct biological feedback function between people’s credit cards and the vital processes of life.

  ‘Who blocked them?’

  The question is Harald’s.

  ‘The bank says we did. Each one of us. With our own PIN codes and our secure logins.’

  I put the two code cards for my own login down on the table.

  ‘So much for digital security. These have never been out of my keeping. Yet someone got to them. Or got round them. And there’s more. Three days ago our accounts were blocked too, then closed.’

  They can’t keep up any more. Their trust in the state and all it does is too deep-seated.

  ‘Everyone in Denmark has to have a bank account. Anyone who hasn’t doesn’t exist. I called the estate agent on Jægersborg Allé. I asked if they had anything for sale on Evighedsvej. They did. Ours. We put it on the market ourselves last week.’

  ‘What’s going on, Susan?’

  I turn to face Laban.

  ‘Someone,’ I tell him, ‘is writing us out of the libretto.’

  Later that same evening I go up to the farm. I’ve never been there after dark. I don’t even know exactly which part of it Oskar lives in.

  I walk round the side. In one of the small windows a light is on. I approach and peer inside. In a room, small and as sparsely furnished as a cell, I see him sitting on a bed reading the Bible. He’s wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt. On the table next to the bed is a crucifix. Through an open door I see a hallway leading to a bathroom and a small kitchen a few square metres in area.

  I go back round to the front, passing the lab and the utility room. I move swiftly, it takes me less than thirty seconds, but before I reach the door someone grabs me from behind.

  It’s an expert hold. I can’t move, even my feet are locked. I hear a sniff and am released as quickly as I was seized. Oskar steps back. Before his eyes have even adjusted to the dark he has identified me by smell and touch, the way an animal might. In his hand is a knife. It vanishes as if by itself, and yet I have time, even in the dim light, to see it’s not a grafting knife. The blade is double-edged and twenty-five centimetres long. A maliciously designed instrument.

  We go inside, into his room. He sits down on the bed, I on the only chair.

  ‘Our bank accounts have been closed, our credit cards blocked, and someone’s put our house up for sale. Someone’s not counting on us going back. I want the rest of the story.’

  He looks like someone who’s just had a stroke.

  ‘It’s all about an island.’

  I wonder if his brain might have been damaged after all.

  ‘Denmark has purchased land, Susan. In the tropics. All the specimens here are to be shipped out there. SecuriCom are taking care of the transport.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with us?’

  He shakes his head. He doesn’t know.

  ‘The security’s the tightest I’ve ever seen. There are very few people involved, considering the scope of it.’

  ‘But it’s why you’re here looking after us?’

  He nods.

  ‘Hegn uses as few people as possible.’

  I pick up the crucifix from the bedside table.

  ‘I see you’ve kept your faith, Oskar.’

  He gives me a look of defiance.

  I sense the masculine stringency of the room. The place is spotless. If there’s something both it and the man next to me need, it’s the female touch.

  I get to my feet.

  ‘There’s not much a woman can’t forgive, Oskar. Even killing. There’s bound to be some tropical beauty awaiting you on that island. All you have to do is forgive yourself.’

  ‘It’s uninhabited.’

  Nothing is more self-destructive than a man’s gloom.

  ‘That’s just an excuse, Oskar, for being afraid of women. You’ll meet a stewardess on the plane.’

  I pull the door to on my way out.

  ‘
They’re using Atlas military transporters, leaving from Kronholm. There won’t be any stewardess.’

  ‘Goodnight, Oskar.’

  10

  I’M TRYING TO fall asleep, but can’t. All of a sudden I hear something outside. Or rather, it’s not something I hear at all, more a kind of registration of some subtle change in the atmosphere. The door of my room opens. The night is cloudy and dark, but large expanses of water always give off light. I can’t see his face, but the shape is Oskar’s.

  I put some clothes on and we go into the living room. After a few moments Laban and the twins join us. We sit down at the table.

  ‘I got a call. You’re to be picked up the night after tomorrow. An hour after you’ve gone they’re bringing six others in. They’ll be here for six hours, to clean up after you.’

  ‘How can cleaning up after us take thirty-six man hours?’ I ask. ‘We’re tidy.’

  ‘They want to remove every trace. Including fingerprints. They’ll be very rigorous, so not even a forensic investigation will reveal you were ever here.’

  He looks away. Then he puts a key down on the table. When he speaks he’s still not looking at me.

  ‘This is for the pickup in the garage building. If you follow the track due east you’ll come to a gate in the fence. It’s locked with a chain.’

  He puts a second key down next to the first.

  ‘Wait in the truck three hundred metres from the gate. There’ll be a power outage at 01.15. That’s an hour from now. It’ll last ten minutes. In that space of time, all cameras and sensors will be out of action. Once you’re out, you’ll have forty-eight hours.’

  I pick up the keys.

  ‘The children stay,’ he says.

  The twins rise to their feet, like a pair of cobras. I’m paralysed. It’s not physically possible for me to leave them.

  Laban spreads his fingers on the table in front of him.

  ‘If your mother and I succeed, we’ll come back and get you within thirty-six hours. If we’re not back by then …’

  He and Oskar exchange glances.

  ‘… then there’ll be another power outage. You’ll hitch or take the bus to Copenhagen. You’ll go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Strandgade. There you give them my name and say you want to speak to Falck-Hansen. He’s a sort of acquaintance of mine. And then you tell him everything.’

  The twins can’t believe what they’re hearing. What Laban has said isn’t an order. An order can be ignored, at least in theory. This is a statement of irrefutable fact.

  I unfold the copy of Magrethe Spliid’s list and hand it to Harald.

  ‘That last name,’ I tell him. ‘Gaither. There were no Danish hits. Was there anything in those articles?’

  His memory boots up inaudibly. But I can feel it.

  ‘H. Rowan Gaither. Former president of the Ford Foundation. Headed up a committee set up by Eisenhower. They wrote a report in nineteen fifty-seven recommending a seven-to-ten fold increase in US atomic capabilities. As well as a forty-billion-dollar programme for the construction of nuclear shelters. They were convinced the US civilian population could survive a nuclear war. As long as there were enough shelters.’

  I go into my room and pack a small bag, then return to the kitchen.

  Oskar rises from the table and I follow him out. We stand and face each other in the night, outside the door.

  ‘Your plant trials, Oskar. The deliveries they want. Rice and all the rest of it. There must be a figure. You must know how many people they need to sustain.’

  ‘Four thousand.’

  And then he is gone.

  PART THREE

  1

  THE PICKUP BUMPS slowly east along the track. I call Dorthea. She sniffles.

  ‘Ingemann died an hour ago. I’m sitting here holding his hand. I haven’t even rung the doctor yet. He was just sitting there with his eyes open. He wanted to see the angel.’

  ‘Did he see it?’

  ‘He smiled. He still is smiling. He’s so beautiful.’

  I hear the love in her voice. It’s always been there. She has a way of saying his name, as if it gives her a lump in her throat.

  ‘Your house has been put up for sale. There was a gentleman here on Thursday, said you’d agreed to that witness protection programme. You’d be away for at least a year, he said. We weren’t supposed to try to contact you during that time.’

  ‘We’re doing a bunk, Dorthea. We’re on our way to Copenhagen and will need a place to sleep. Two nights, that’s all.’

  ‘The beds are made up in the annexe for you. They have been since you left.’

  Nothing was ever too much for Dorthea and Ingemann. It’s part of what always made me so unsure. If the kids knocked something over, broke a window, dropped something, there was never a harsh word. And now, with her husband of sixty years dead, his body not yet cold, there’s not a moment’s hesitation to her hospitality.

  ‘They’ll be looking for us.’

  ‘I was a big girl in the final years of the war, Susan. My childhood home was a hotel for fugitives. Saboteurs, communists, Jews.’

  We conclude the call.

  Reaching the gate, we wait until seventeen minutes past before I get out and unlock it. Laban drives through. I close the gate behind us and lock it again.

  We are silent most of the way to Copenhagen. Laban turns on the radio. We listen to the news. A march on parliament has drawn a hundred and seventy-five thousand protesters. The city centre and the districts of Østerbro and Nørrebro have been hit by riots, the worst since the EU referendum vote on 18 May 1993. Some one hundred and fifty casualties. Cars set alight by the score. Laban turns it off.

  ‘Not long after I was awarded the university’s music prize, someone came to see me. At the conservatory. A man from the Ministry of Defence. He asked me for a mobile phone number and wanted me to make sure they were informed if I ever changed it. They had to be sure they could get in touch with me. In case of events unforeseen, as he put it. Military or civil.’

  ‘Did you give it to them?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Didn’t they ask for my number, too? Or the children’s?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘What were your thoughts, Laban?’

  He says nothing.

  ‘Your thoughts were the same as anyone else’s would have been. That they were up to something. In case of war or something equally nasty they would gather the nation’s finest and lead them to safety.’

  We approach Copenhagen. More lights, more traffic. Laban exits the motorway in the direction of Bagsværd so as to avoid the congestion of the city centre, and the police who may already have been mobilised. We pass by the detached residences facing out to the ring road. As yet they are in darkness, asleep, with gardens full of trampolines and climbing frames.

  ‘With so many dead,’ he says pensively, ‘the question is if one would even want to be among the survivors.’

  We drive along the lake.

  ‘I never got back to them,’ he says. ‘I suppose it was a mixture, really, of having the same thought as you and finding it so unpleasant to consider.’

  ‘We’ll go to Kirsten Klaussen,’ I say. ‘She’s famous. She can go to the papers with us.’

  There has always been a very singular mood surrounding the dead people whose bodies I have sat beside.

  I once had an aunt whose corpse at the Frederiksberg Hospital resembled someone very beautiful who had been lost at sea. Laban’s mother looked like she had achieved what she came here for, which was to make an effort on behalf of others, and now finally she had been able to close the door and get some peace. The girl who drowned in the marlpit when I lived at the home at Holmgangen looked exactly like what she was: a child who had been calling for her mother without anyone having heard.

  Ingemann certainly does look like someone who has seen an angel. His lips are ever so slightly curled, as if he were about to exclaim, ‘Blimey, this is going to surprise y
ou!’

  We sit for half an hour in silence. I reach out a couple of times and pass my hand across his brow. At one point, Laban gets up, is gone for five minutes, then comes back with a violin. He plays a little piece. The violin has never been his instrument. And yet somehow he makes it sound so very heart-rending.

  During the course of this brief half-hour, Ingemann’s presence already seems to fade. Perhaps it’s the chemistry of decomposition beginning to kick in, or maybe it’s just something I imagine.

  Dorthea comes in with a tray.

  ‘I got my driving licence renewed. The day before that gentleman came by, the one who put your house up for sale.’

  She hands us plates with bread and butter, and pours the tea.

  ‘As soon as he was gone I got in the car and drove after him. He never noticed. Who could imagine being followed by an old woman of eighty-four?’

  She puts a jar of honey on the little table.

  ‘A saintly gentleman, as it turned out. And kind to animals. He drove out to Bagsværd Church to feed a dog. A Dobermann pinscher, it was. He brought it raw meat, but it wouldn’t touch it. On Sightseeing Day in nineteen sixty-four the police dogs gave a display, at those red prefabs the police college had down on Islands Brygge. They had Dobermann pinschers as well. I remember they put a chunk of meat down in front of them, but they wouldn’t move until they got the command. It was the same with this one. It just stood there looking at him. He tried several times. Eventually he gave up. I’m not very quick on my feet any more. By the time I got back to the car he’d gone.’

  2

  DORTHEA’S ANNEXE CONTAINS two rooms. Laban and I sleep apart.

  I wake at five in the morning. Laban is immersed in deep sleep and I haven’t the heart to wake him.

  I step out into the garden. The sun isn’t up yet and the ground is covered with frost. I stand at the hedge and stare towards our house.

  The beech trees in the garden will soon be in leaf. Perhaps they possess some rudimentary form of intelligence. I’ve watched them, year after year. They seem to be able to delay the moment of their buds bursting open until the final frost releases its hold.