by John Schou
will obtain an agreement tomorrow, at least he arranged for your son to be liberated, which with the aid of my lawyer was effectuated immediately ... Yes, you are welcome to meet him here, but afterwards, just take him to the hotel, where one of my assistants, the young lady you met earlier today, will guard him until the case is solved. You should certainly not invite him home before ... No, I shall unfortunately not be here when you come, but Mr. Gusto shall let you in and take care of you ... No, I believe we can talk about money when the case is solved, it is really not important yet ... Thanks, and a good evening to you, Sir.”
I listened intensively to this half of the telephone call and kind of envied the Echelon guys, who would hear it all. My translation was that Mr. Wilson would come this evening and my long day had not ended before he had left, that Mr. Smith would prefer to be in bed, leaving it to me to play the host, and that he would not tell Mr. Wilson about his bill to the ambassador. If two persons paid for the same service and both were satisfied, why should you split the bill? I had to admit that Mr. Smith, even he was only a mediocre detective, leaving all the work to me and other working horses, was absolutely superior at making his work being paid for. He awoke me of my thoughts.
“Eric, are you sleeping? Mr. Wilson told me he would come right away and I need to go before he comes. Would you continue your demonstration of 9/11 to Mr. Stewart now?” and then facing Jack: “Mr. Stewart, it has been a pleasure to meet you. I hope we shall soon meet again.”
Translation: He did not want to show the wheelchair or the gymnastic masterpiece performed in order to enter it. While I showed Jack the way out, I just remarked, “I shall be here half an hour later tomorrow, OK?”
“OK,” he answered in order to get rid of me now. “You can use this room when Mr. Wilson comes. I shall be gone in 10 minutes.” He must have pressed the button under the table, Juanita was already there with Rosinante, the toilet called for an urgent visit.
We did not use the room. Mr. Wilson instead suggested a ride with the car and agreed to take me to the hotel – it was only the second time I was inside a Cadillac and should Mr. Smith see it from his bedroom window, I was still on duty. Also part of my duty was the beer I enjoyed with Susanne at the hotel. Mr. Wilson wanted to change for a larger, more exclusive hotel-chain, but Jack and I talked him out of it.
“It is really rather cosy here – more so than the cell at the police-yard in Copenhagen. When you have shown Jack the village, you can come and assure yourself. For the coming first hour, I shall be at the bar with Miss Pihl.” I had to explain the name of the village: Copenhagen. Towards American megalomania, it is better to be modest.
An hour later, Jack and his (real) father joined us in the hotel while the driver guarded the car outside. There is not more to tell from the long day.
The following day may have been a busy one for the ambassador. To us, it was a rather trivial one, meaning I had ample time to continue my review on 9/11, something I never completely finished as details keep emerging. I talked by phone a couple of times with Susanne.
In the evening, the ambassador called. I connected to Mr. Smith and wanted to keep a line, but my boss waved me off.
“Yes, Bartholomew ... great, we shall take care of the necessary discretion ... thanks, I shall send the bill ... you don’t need a bill? OK, let’s talk about it next week, when can you come here? ... A good evening also to you.”
He looked at me: “Call both Mr. Stewart and Mrs. Wilson and tell them that the White House in Washington DC agreed to the deal. Our surveillance will end tomorrow, and then Jack can move to new surroundings.”
“What about the luxurious salary from the embassy? Are you going to give some to Mr. Stewart,” I asked.
“Why should I do that? His father received five times the sum from the American government and he is very rich. If money can solve his ... eh ... discomfort, he shall be in the right place soon.”
“I understood that I would not need to write a bill.”
“No, the ambassador would bring it around personally next week.”
I do not know what Mr. Wilson might have added later, it was also not to be found in any book, but at least, my position was saved for the nearest time being from what we received officially. Jack was, as Mr. Smith had suggested, adopted by the Wilsons soon after. He is still under psychiatric treatment for a stress disorder, something he did not seem to need when he was on the run. Some humans need the stress; their symptoms only derive when they try to relax.
When I finished my study on 9/11, nobody really wanted to read it – probably, it was too detailed and long, but if I had made it shorter, nobody would have believed it for containing unsubstantiated evidence. Perhaps they simply don’t want to believe it. In contrast, the official fairy tale is short and simple and repeated a million times.
Honour the Liars
1 – Fight for Work
She came to the house at 2 p.m. Actually she came before, so nervous as would-be clients used to be, and as equally usual, Juanita led her into the music room without disturbing me. Mr. Smith was upstairs sleeping, which the visitor could impossibly be informed about. I was the filter for evaluating new clients and currently, my task was a simple one, my employer thought: I should simply avoid any new tasks for the time being. We had earned enough recently, and the Danish tax system would punish any additional income, so Mr. Smith found that it was time to rest for a few months, at least until the new year had started.
However, I had no need for rest this autumn. Rest meant months of boring or negative activity, sad persons leaving the house while their hopes for aid had been turned down. My payment was safe, the occupation not, quite in contrast to many others who had lots of work to do but would never know if it would also be paid for.
As for Mr. Smith, I knew that too much rest was not good for him either. His brain needed exercise, now where the rest of his body refused any command – Mr. Smith was confined to a wheelchair and was also excessively fat. His brainwork could be understood as kind of the organism’s compensation. An over-compensation, you can find, since Mr. Smith’s brainwork really was the money worth for those who had special need and could afford it.
If Mrs. Lockwood belonged to these wealthy persons was presently beyond my imagination. She had arrived by taxi, and nowadays, you cannot evaluate people’s social standing from their clothes – to a certain extent, at least. What interested me was not her money but her case, and my brainwork was presently not related to solving this case, but to persuade Mr. Smith to take it. It was even more complicated: I should find an occasion simply to talk about it, something he had strictly forbidden me to do. To be on the safe side, Mrs. Lockwood had been acquitted a few minutes to 3 p.m.
Describing her is a lot more pleasant than describing Mr. Smith. She can in many instances be considered his opposite. Not only that he is a man and she a woman, he is fat and has an obtrusive appearance; she is slim, beautiful and attentive. I wish for my own sake that Mr. Smith will become as old as he already looks (he must be around 50 but could go for 70 without raising suspicion) while Mrs. Lockwood should be at the end of her twenties. He is sitting in a wheelchair or placing himself upon a throne in his ‘inner temple’ most of the time when he is not in bed, and she has an athletic body which never rests. His hair is some sort of blonde with discrete transition to a grey colour and standing up, while she has shortcut read hair and freckles all over her face, signalizing a history of allergy in her medical story. Mr. Smith has a full beard and claims that it permits him to sleep five minutes longer each day; besides, with his appearance, a waste of time to make anything for beauty. In one regard, this controversy comparison cannot be used: Mr. Smith is a genius but Mrs. Lockwood did not, in her conversation with me, appear stupid. Her blue eyes were flattering around her long, thin nose as she told me her story.
“Very interesting, Mrs. Lockwood. Mr. Smith is presently much occupied, but I shall try my best to persuade him. Where can I reach you tomorrow evening?” I said.<
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“Why so late?”
“As I mentioned, I must try my best to persuade him. It will not be easy, since he has actually forbidden me to accept any new clients.”
“You can call my mobile phone at any time, today or tomorrow – if I am still alive. Can you yourself give me any recommendation, how to behave in this situation?”
“I can myself only be at your disposition late this evening, say at 9.30 p.m. Till then, I may have a suggestion on, how to deal with the problems. You said you live not far away from here?”
“No, just two kilometres Northwards in Charlottenlund. Oh, that would be nice. Would you really consider visiting us in the evening? My husband and I shall be so grateful. Perhaps you could also bring Mr. Smith on that occasion?”
“Certainly not,” I hastily added. “Mr. Smith never leaves his castle and, besides, he has not yet agreed to take your case. He hasn’t even heard about it.” I was considering if I myself could break my daily monotony in a sensible way, perhaps even earning some extra money. Not that Mr. Smith paid me badly, on the contrary, but do you know of anybody else who simply have ‘enough’ money? The more wealthy people are, the bigger are their demands. ‘Could I just buy me a bigger car, a boat, some jewellery,’ they dream – not my case. What I then need the money for? None of your business! Let us get back to Mrs. Lockwood.
“Your husband is fully informed about the case, as you described it?”
“Of course. He was the one suggesting that I came here. I never heard of Mr. Smith,” she said.
“Not even about Eric Gusto?” I added.
She laughed. “No, not even about him. But if you will come to our home this evening, I may get a deeper impression.”
“And a positive one, I hope. Shall I call you a safe transport vehicle?”
“Actually I want to walk home. It is not so far away and the weather is tolerable.”
“I think it is raining,” noticed I.
“There is no bad weather, only bad clothes,” she cited. “Mine are watertight.”
“From what I can understand, you may be in danger. I can recommend you a bodyguard, if you want.”
“The danger arises only when my husband makes his public statement tomorrow.”
“Which suggests that he does not make that statement,” I replied.
“Tell him that in the evening, Mr. Gusto. I did my very best in that direction,” she finished. I opened the big and heavy front door and she escaped down the stairs and half walked, half ran through the rain. Perhaps uncomfortable, why not at least take a taxi, you may ask, but if you know you are to be locked in your house for days or weeks to come, beginning tomorrow afternoon, it may even be joyful to feel a soft spraying shower as a symbol of freedom.
Such a freedom would be understandable to Mr. Smith. I am sure he wouldn’t mind the rain if that was the price for being able to run – which also demanded that he got rid of about 100 kg superfluous body weight. Now I could hear the elevator coming down, his siesta was finished and I still had no strategy. I decided for utilizing his generally controversial attitude: if you want something from him, just suggest the opposite.
“How was your day, Eric?” he started as we met in his large central room.”
“Which day? They are all more or less alike. Now that we are not supposed to take any clients, I enjoy the vacancy. I started to look at a film, which I shall finish tomorrow.” I knew he despised these films on the computer, and this was just one of the small incitements I gave him for making it impossible that I would complete my film, which I anyhow had seen completely.
“The house is full of precious books, unknown to
