He was about to give one when the front door opened again. Flynn looked down the short hallway to see Peder Thorsen kicking off his boots. He walked into the room with a frown and nodded to Flynn and Gorski.
“I saw a Lund van on the road,” he said.
“Ja,” replied Begitte.
“They were here again?”
“Ja.”
“What happened?” Thorsen looked at Flynn as if he held the answer.
“They were surveying,” said Flynn. “The burned house.”
“It gives them line of sight,” said Thorsen.
“They’ve been here before?”
“Yes, but I ran them off.”
“All of them? By yourself?”
“There were only two,” said Thorsen. He stepped into the small kitchen and faced Flynn and Gorski.
“The surveyors?” asked Flynn.
“Yes.”
“No security.”
“No. They brought security this time?”
“Of a sort,” said Flynn.
“What happened?”
Flynn glanced past Thorsen at his wife, who was busy pouring coffee. “Begitte challenged them.”
Thorsen nodded but said nothing.
“They got physical,” said Flynn.
“Physical?” Thorsen looked to his wife. “Er du okay?”
Begitte nodded. “I’m fine.” She passed two coffees across the counter and left a third in front of her husband.
“So what happened?” asked Thorsen.
Gorski smiled. “We encouraged them to leave.”
Thorsen nodded. “How many guys?”
“Three.”
Thorsen thought for a moment and then sipped his coffee.
“They waited for me to not be here,” said Thorsen.
“Maybe,” said Flynn.
“But they didn’t know you were here.”
“They do now.” Flynn sipped his coffee. “Who are they?”
Thorsen directed Flynn and Gorski to come and sit in the living area. The two sat on the small sofa, and Thorsen pulled a chair with a curved wood frame from the corner and bounced when he sat down.
“So?” asked Flynn.
Thorsen opened a laptop that was sitting on the coffee table and tapped the keys, then he slid the computer around so Flynn and Gorski could see the screen.
“His name is Hans Lund,” said Thorsen.
“He’s a big boy,” said Gorski.
“Yes, he is a large man.”
“There’s large and there’s large,” said Gorski, smiling. “This guy is Sumo large, without the athleticism.”
“Agreed.”
“And old.”
“He’s probably in his seventies.”
“Not bad going for a guy that big.”
“So why is this Lund sending surveyors and enforcers here?” asked Flynn.
“It goes back to the beginning. The start of the cohousing community. Begitte’s father was one of the original members, back in the seventies. There had been some other communities started around the country. You have heard of Christiania?”
“No,” said Flynn.
“It is a commune that was started in Copenhagen in the early seventies. It began as an illegal squat on a disused military site, then grew and grew. It was more like what Gorski called a hippie commune. Minimal rules. Drugs were tolerated. Over the years it was formalized and rules were established, but in the beginning it was very loose.
“The original members of this place wanted to replicate the communal aspects but without the hippie elements. All the first inhabitants were families with kids. Unlike Christiania, this place was not a squat. It was legal. The community leased the land from a local farmer.”
“Leased it?”
“Yes. The man who was the founder of the community, Frederickson, had worked in Hong Kong and liked the idea of a long-term lease. It meant they did not have to find the money to buy the land up front.”
“And the farmer was happy to lease his farm?” asked Flynn.
“Very happy. See, it was the seventies—the OPEC oil crisis. Farmers were struggling to get petrol for their machinery, and what fuel they got was so expensive that many stopped farming or cut back on the amount of land they worked. It was like free money for him, at the time.”
“So they leased the land . . .”
“Yes.” Thorsen sipped his coffee. “See, in Denmark, leases are not usually time bound, but this man, Frederickson, copied the ninety-nine-year lease between the English and the Chinese in Hong Kong.”
“Okay.”
“So the economy was not strong, but the government saw the investment the people were making, and they liked the idea of the communal housing and saw this place as an experiment, perhaps the beginning of something bigger, so they provided services to the community—city water, sewer, and power. It all comes from a hub in Stenløse.”
“So what happened?”
“The OPEC crisis finished and the economy started to recover, and the price of fuel made it economical for the farmer to work his land again, so they kept this one tract and he farmed the rest. In the eighties, the population of Denmark actually fell, so the government forgot about the experiment—there was no need for more housing. When the population began to rise again, it did so slowly, slower than most of Europe, and most of the growth was movement into Copenhagen.
“So now we have a cohousing community on leased land with city sanitation and power, and the commuter suburbs of the capital creep farther out every year. The villages around here are becoming popular with people who work in Copenhagen but cannot afford to live there.”
“That’s happening everywhere,” Gorski chimed in.
“It is,” said Thorsen. “Villages on the train line—like Veksø, where you came through—are seeing prices skyrocket. So developers are looking for new fields, so to speak.”
“Especially ones with sanitation and power already in place,” said Flynn.
“Exactly. This land has become valuable. To the owner and Lund, the developer.”
“So the farmer wants to sell?”
“That’s part of the problem. The farmer is dead.”
“What happened to him?”
“Old age. And the same with Frederickson. So the two signatories of the lease are deceased, and the family of the farmer and the developers have argued that the lease is null and void because the signatories have passed away. But because Frederickson signed on behalf of the cooperative, the court has said the lease is valid. The developer made offers to us, but we don’t own the land, so the offers are low because they are for buildings they plan to tear down and replace with apartments. They have lobbied the local member of the—” Thorsen rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What do you call it? Folketinget—the parliament, yes. They lobbied one of the members of parliament for this constituency, and the local government has made a similar offer, but if we leave we will never be able to re-create what we have. We couldn’t even afford to buy homes elsewhere. And now because of the house fire, they are claiming that the property is derelict.”
“Can’t you rebuild it?”
“Of course, but clearing the debris is expensive, and we can only rebuild when we have a new member join the community. But we think Lund is scaring potential members away.”
“How did the house burn down?” asked Gorski. “Was it suspicious?”
“There’s no evidence of that. The fire brigade said it looked like an electrical fire; old wiring and a bad junction box.”
“Whose house was it?” Flynn asked.
“It was Begitte’s parents’. It’s where she grew up.”
Flynn glanced at the kitchen and noticed Begitte was wiping the stovetop but clearly keeping an ear on their conversation.
“Is that why they left here?” he asked.
“No,” said Thorsen. “They had already gone.” Thorsen took a deep breath. “Begitte’s sister lived there.”
Chapter Six
F
lynn had questions, but his questions were not asked, let alone answered.
Thorsen slapped his thighs and stood as if he suddenly recalled an errand he had to run.
“I am taking some people to the farmers market in the village. Would you like to come?”
Flynn glanced at Gorski and then back at Thorsen. “Sure, if there’s room.”
“Oh, yes, there will be room. I will collect Mrs. Carlsen and meet you out the front.”
Thorsen deposited his coffee cup in the sink and dashed to the front door. Begitte went up the stairs and left Flynn and Gorski alone. They gave each other another glance, an unwritten form of communication honed through many years spent in many places where keeping quiet kept them alive.
Flynn took his and Gorski’s cups and washed them in the sink. He could see the fields through the back window, spring barley wafting in the breeze. It was a fine day outside, but Flynn sensed a cloud had descended over the community. He couldn’t tell if it would bring life-sustaining rain or a terrible destructive storm.
Begitte came back downstairs in a denim jacket and asked if they were ready. They all put on their shoes, and Begitte collected some burlap shopping bags that were hanging near the door. She led them across the lawn and past the communal building to the parking lot.
She stopped by a well-used Mercedes minivan and slid the rear door open.
“Do you mind being in the back?” she asked. “Not everyone here moves as well as you do.”
She looked at Flynn, and he wondered if there was some kind of double meaning in her words, but he smiled and stepped up into the van. It was tight to weave in between the seats, and he planted himself in the back row with a thud, and Gorski followed suit. Begitte got up into the driver’s seat and waited in silence. Flynn glanced at the rearview mirror and saw her looking at him. When she saw him look up, she didn’t turn away; she just watched him watching her.
Thorsen appeared a few minutes later leading a small group of mostly older people. Some got up into the van, and Thorsen helped an older lady into the passenger seat in the front. He clambered inside, slid the door closed, and flopped down into the row in front of Flynn. Begitte started the van and pulled away.
Thorsen put his arm on the seat back and turned to the rear row. “We try to use carpooling whenever possible,” he said. “There are some people in our community who don’t drive at all, mostly older people but some younger, like Luna.”
“Luna?” asked Flynn.
Thorsen looked down as if he had spoken out of turn. “Begitte’s sister,” he whispered. “Anyway, we do all we can to make the community carbon-neutral.”
Flynn nodded but said nothing. He walked pretty much everywhere he could, so he figured he was as carbon neutral as anyone.
Begitte drove them into the village of Østvand. Unlike Flynn’s previous rainy visit, the sun broke through the patchy clouds and he noticed the flowers in the window boxes. There were more people around—a lot more, Flynn figured, for such a small village.
They parked where the shopfronts began and walked the rest of the way. The sidewalks were alive. People stood in groups chatting, catching up on the latest news. Children were skipping and running and eating French fries from paper cones.
The market was in a parking lot beyond the hardware store. Tables were erected under popup canopies, displaying fresh produce and breads and local honey, knitwear and flowers and pasture-raised meat. There were stalls selling food—pastries and shawarma and even tacos—and a small van that pumped the scent of roasted coffee across the space.
The group divided up. They had a process, a pattern unknown to Flynn and Gorski. Some went one way, others went in the opposite direction. Flynn hung with Thorsen, who followed Begitte.
“It’s busy,” Flynn said.
“Yes,” said Thorsen. “It’s a small village, but there are many rural people in the area. Some people also come out from Copenhagen for a bit of the fresh air. For many people in the area, it is tradition, a chance to catch up with friends who live on farms or in other villages. Of course, we all have phones and email now, but people still like to see each other, in real life, as they say.”
Begitte stopped at a stall offering tomatoes that were more purple than red, and she took her time selecting a few. As they waited, a person walked by handing out flyers. He pushed one into Flynn’s hand and spoke to him in Danish, but he didn’t wait for any response, continuing instead through the gathered crowd. Flynn looked at the flyer and then at Thorsen, who was frowning.
“It’s for a rally,” he said.
“A rally?”
“Yes. A political rally. Here, today. Typical stuff, politicians telling us about the problems in the world, as if we can’t see for ourselves, and then telling us how they are uniquely placed to fix them.”
Flynn nodded. He knew that kind of thing. He had seen political rallies of every kind in his time. Some were given by presidents and others by dictators; some talked about solving problems and others about creating them. He didn’t care for any of them, so he dropped the flyer into a recycling bin nearby.
Thorsen whispered to Begitte, who nodded, and then he turned and tapped Gorski’s shoulder and led them away to the end of the parking lot, where picnic tables had been placed beside a small stage. After they found an empty table, Thorsen walked away to a stand nearby that was set up like a field kitchen. He returned with plates covered in open-faced sandwiches.
“This is called smørrebrød. We eat this for lunch a lot.”
“I remember in the Legion,” said Gorski. “You could never eat a proper sandwich; it was always one piece of bread with you.”
“Two pieces of bread is designed for eating while moving, and we Danes prefer to sit and enjoy our meal. At home it’s usually not so fancy—maybe a piece of ham or some cheese, perhaps some paste. But here, well, you can see.”
The plates held dark rye bread covered in a variety of ornately presented toppings. They were works of art, like tiny floral arrangements, almost too good to eat.
“This is leverpostej, a liver paste with bacon, mushrooms, and pickles. This one is herring, and this one is roast beef. This one is my favorite, røget ål med røræg, which is smoked eel with scrambled eggs and chives.”
They each selected one and ate. Each open sandwich was small, but the flavors were bold, and every bite presented something different—sometimes sour, sometimes savory, sometimes even a hint of sweet.
As they enjoyed the sandwiches, there was movement on the small stage, and a man tapped a microphone, which sent a high-pitched squeal across the market. He appeared to be testing that it was on, but every eye turned to him. He began speaking. Flynn and Gorski watched for a moment and then turned to Thorsen, having not understood a word. Thorsen leaned in close and translated quietly.
“He is welcoming everyone. He is introducing a politician.”
“A local member of parliament?” asked Flynn.
Thorsen pursed his lips and nodded.
The guy at the microphone raised his pitch and got louder, clearly trying to incite the crowd into some kind of frenzy, but this didn’t appear to be a frenzy kind of gathering. He yelled the name Victor Berg, and then he started clapping, encouraging the audience to join him. Only a few did.
Another man stepped up onto the small stage. He was tall and lean and handsome, a full head of dark hair, indicating some Mediterranean blood in his lineage somewhere. He was younger than Flynn expected a politician to be, maybe in his late thirties. He offered a winning smile and waved both hands at the near-silent crowd. He took the microphone from the stand and paused, as if his words required a level of reverence.
Then he spoke. Firmly but softly, clearly understanding the benefit of a microphone. He moved around the small stage, back and forth like a caged animal. His cadence slow and rhythmic but building. Flynn couldn’t understand the words, so he listened to the sounds, the pacing growing gradually but definitively, like a symphony.
“He’
s talking about his past,” said Thorsen. “How he grew up around here, in the most Danish of circumstances—a cohousing community. How his roots are buried deep in Danish soil. And how his roots are withering, how the EU are allowing the fields of barley to be poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” asked Gorski.
Thorsen nodded as Berg picked up the pace, delivering his message with growing urgency. “He says we all know what has happened in the ghettos, all the trouble and crime that the immigrants in Copenhagen have caused. He warns that these people who do not understand the Danish way of life, do not support our egalitarian society, are sucking at the teat of our social system. He says the blight spreads into the towns and villages of Zealand, and that to preserve our heritage, we must act.”
The politician stopped, allowing the meaning of his words to soak into the crowd before him. Flynn heard murmurs of agreement and dissent, the kinds of quiet rumblings that he had seen in other places develop from a ripple into a tsunami, a tidal wave of discontent and anger and revolution. But the murmurs remained just that, and then Berg began speaking again.
“Now he is talking about his Danishness,” said Thorsen. “That he shares with everyone here.”
Flynn watched the man on stage cast his eye around the crowd, making a connection with each person and their mutual heritage. Then Berg saw something that made him freeze in place. It was a flash, a short pause that wasn’t noticed by most, perhaps only Flynn. For a second Berg’s mask dropped, and Flynn saw the man beneath. And that man had seen something he had not expected.
Flynn twisted in his seat and followed Berg’s line of sight and found himself looking at Begitte.
Chapter Seven
The frown on Begitte’s face was firm, but by the time Flynn looked back to the man on stage, his mask had returned. He spoke for a few more minutes, about the need for all Danish people to protect their heritage, but he didn’t incite the crowd. There was no chanting or fist-pumping. In fact, as Flynn watched the audience, he noticed people becoming quieter, their facial expressions stoic.
The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller Page 4
