The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller

by Stewart, A. J.

  “Leave it with me,” said Berg.

  “Keep me informed,” said the voice, and then the call went dead.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Flynn ate dinner alone in a small restaurant in Stege.

  Schmidt had dropped him back at the police station, having offered to leave him at the bus depot. He was hungry and asked her to join him for dinner—he figured it couldn’t hurt to talk more about Luna’s last hours, for Begitte’s sake if nothing else, and he had to admit he liked looking at her. She was attractive and distant, like a fine Roman statue. She declined his invitation without giving a reason for it and left him standing outside the library.

  “Thank you for taking me out there,” he said.

  “Of course,” she replied, and she drove her little car away.

  Flynn had wandered along the quiet, dark main street until he found a window that glowed with soft light. He stepped inside to scents that immediately made his stomach rumble. Couples and families were sitting at red-checkered tables enjoying mugs of beer with plates of fish and pork.

  A woman with glowing red cheeks offered him a smile and a seat and then a beer. He took water instead, then ordered whatever the house special was. She told him it was called stegt flæsk med persillesovs og kartofler and shortly after laid a plate before him of pork belly with potatoes in a parsley sauce.

  “It is perhaps the Danish national dish,” she said. It was essentially what his father had called meat and potatoes, and Flynn had eaten variations on it all over the world. The pork was crisp and rich and the potatoes smooth and creamy. He offered a smile to the woman with red cheeks, and she beamed at his delight.

  The restaurant was warm and cozy, and Flynn watched the people in conversation around him. He understood nothing—it was all in Danish—but he knew the expressions and the cues of family and friends enjoying good food together. In his experience, it was more about the people than the food; he had eaten sumptuous buffets in castles in France where there was nothing but stilted conversation and faces he cared nothing for, and he had shared week-old bread rolls with his unit in the deserts of Africa that were among the finest times he had ever lived.

  His unit had been his family for a decade, after his own family died in the attack in Abu Dhabi. For a time after the Legion, he had lived what many people called a normal life, but his past had not allowed him to keep that for long. He watched the smiles and taunts and the knowing looks around the room that only people who knew each other intimately could decipher.

  He kept his eyes off the two men at the table on the opposite side of the room.

  They were the odd men out, dressed in heavy leather jackets and denim jeans. The warmth of the room ebbed around them like rocks in a stream. They were not leaning into each other to talk, and they were not telling loud stories over the hubbub of the restaurant. They were not talking at all.

  Flynn swept his vision across them once, twice, three times, never lingering but taking it in. The men had beers but no food and wore blank expressions as if they were weary or bored with each other’s company. Flynn looked toward the front window of the restaurant and saw the two men casually look his way and then return to stare at their beers, like drunks at a bar.

  Flynn knew them. Not specifically these men, but the type. He had seen them in many guises in many countries, but recently at the cohousing community, running security for a couple of surveyors who shouldn’t have needed protection. They were built strong across the shoulders, and their hair was neat but their stubble was long. It was as if there were a production line of henchman but only a limited number of ways they could be configured.

  After dinner Flynn ate æbleskiver—a pancake-like dessert formed into a ball and served with sweet jam and sugar—and drank an espresso despite the late hour. He took his time and watched as families left the restaurant and their tables were left vacant. Stege was a small town, and small towns generally rolled up the sidewalks early, even in Europe.

  When most of the other patrons had gone, Flynn asked for the bill and left some kroner on the table. He thanked the woman, who bid him godnat, and stepped out onto the street. The sidewalk was pleasantly lit, and the air bore a slight chill. Flynn walked past the window and noted the two men getting up from their table.

  Once past the window, he took ten fast steps, not running but striding long, like the hop in a triple jump. He didn’t want to get too far away, but he did want to put some distance between himself and the men, whom he heard step out of the restaurant seconds later. The fact that he was walking slowly but had gotten so far ahead might confuse them or it might not, but the distance would give him time to evaluate his options, as long as they didn’t run to catch up.

  They didn’t run. They were still working on the assumption that Flynn hadn’t spotted the tail, and that suited him fine. He ambled along the street, glancing at store windows, some lit, some darkened, toward the bus depot. He replayed his approach from earlier in the day, thinking through the terrain, the buildings, the landscape, and the alleys and roads. Two men were not a problem. He was certain of three things: one, they were another crew from the same source as the guys Flynn and Gorski had taken down at the burned house; two, they had been warned about how he had taken down the other crew; but three, they would assume that the takedown was a function of the other crew being unprepared rather than anything to do with Flynn.

  He decided to walk toward the water, to lure the two guys into the darkness beyond the bus depot, diverting them from the eyes of passengers and the sight line of CCTV. He walked to the corner opposite the depot and then changed his mind completely.

  Outside the bus depot, leaning up against the building in the shadows, were two more guys. They wore trousers rather than jeans, but their broad shoulders and haircuts gave them the same look as the boys behind Flynn. They might have been passengers waiting for a bus back to Vordingborg, but they weren’t—passengers line up where the bus comes in, not around the corner, where they can’t see the bus. And if they did stand around the corner in the dark, they would do it because they were smoking.

  They weren’t smoking. They were leaning against the yellow brick wall watching the corner where Flynn had appeared. They had been waiting for him to arrive. The guys behind had clearly called it in.

  There were three passengers standing under the sickly light where a bus lingered in the shadows just short of the stop, the way buses do, until the moment they can flick on the headlights, move forward, and collect the first passengers according to the timetable. Flynn had given himself enough time to get the guys around the far side of the building, take them out, and then meet the bus without having to wait around. He had timed his walk just so. Now the two guys were four, and the math didn’t work so well.

  Flynn slowed and waited on the street corner for a moment. The guys opposite bounced their hips off the wall but stayed put. Flynn heard no footsteps behind, suggesting those boys had stopped. He blew into his hands as if he was cold and then wandered across the street toward the passengers. His theory was to take the guys out but do it away from eyes both human and electronic, and he assumed the four guys would have the exact same plan for him now that the odds were in their favor.

  He walked over to the other three passengers, took up the rear in their little line, and then glanced back to the street he had just crossed. There was no sign of the guys from the restaurant.

  They waited in the cool night air, a gentle breeze wafting in off the water. The other three all stared at smartphones until they heard the hydraulic huff of a bus door closing and the throaty roar of the engine firing up. The interior lit up, the headlights burst on, and the bus crawled forward with a creak and, a few bus lengths later, eased to a stop before the waiting line.

  The other three people in front of him had some kind of pass. Flynn showed his return ticket and took a seat at the back. He pressed against the side of the bus so he would see all comers.

  The bus driver waited for a minute. Flynn check
ed his watch.

  Then, at the appointed time, the driver looked down the steps one last time, and the two guys from the shadows stepped up onto the bus.

  The driver eased onto the gas before the guys sat down. They held on to the seat backs as they edged along the aisle, their eyes canvassing all the faces. Eventually they hit the back, where they saw Flynn.

  It was a smart move to change the tail. They would know Flynn had gotten a good look at the boys in the restaurant, so putting the other crew on the bus made sense. That didn’t mean they were pros. Not by a long shot. Pros wouldn’t have broadcast their position on his approach, and pros would have scoped out the bus starting from the rear and ending at the front. These guys seemed mildly surprised that he was at the back, as if taking the seat where he could see everyone else on the bus without craning his neck wasn’t the most obvious plan in the world.

  The two guys gathered themselves and then sat on opposite sides with their backs against the wall of the bus, half facing each other, perhaps risking a glance at Flynn. He didn’t know and didn’t care. No one was going anywhere, not without a lot of advance warning, so he stared at his reflection in the dark window and relaxed.

  The trip took forty-five minutes. Flynn didn’t sleep, but he slowed his heart rate and allowed himself to fall into a semi-trance that was restful but milliseconds from action. There was no action. The bus pulled into the banegårdspladsen in front of the train station in Vordingborg, and the passengers disembarked.

  The two guys went with them. There was nowhere else for them or Flynn to go. It was the end of the line for the bus. Flynn walked down the aisle so he was right behind the guys as they stepped down, then he strode across to the train station with the other passengers, pulling a plain Nike ball cap from his pack as he walked.

  The train was waiting for them. It was a regional train, not an intercity, so it had fewer cars, no dining, all one class. He boarded the rearmost car and sat at the very end, with the entire train ahead of him. The two guys got on and took seats together farther up the carriage—one guy facing Flynn, the other with his back to him.

  As the train pulled away, Flynn watched for the two restaurant guys to board. He didn’t see them, and he didn’t expect to. No doubt they would be in whatever vehicle the four of them had driven down to Møn. That meant there would be only two guys on him until they changed trains at Ringsted, and most probably until Copenhagen, at which point the odds would again tip out of Flynn’s favor.

  It was late and the passengers were few, so once the train was up to speed, Flynn pulled down his ball cap and waited for the conductor to appear. He handed over his ticket without looking up, as if half-asleep, and then relaxed again. He wanted to be closer to the transfer in Ringsted before he moved.

  About fifteen minutes before the train was due to pull in, Flynn took a Swiss Army knife from his pack and slipped it into his pocket, left the pack on the floor, and walked down the aisle. The guy facing him watched for a moment and then turned his eye to the reflection in the window until Flynn passed.

  Flynn reached the end of the car, where it thinned into a tight passageway with the rest of the space taken by a toilet facility. Beyond that, the car opened up again to a vestibule with a map of the train line on the wall, a set of doors leading to a small platform between the carriages, and then a set of doors to the next carriage.

  Flynn looked through the doors into the next car. The tinting on the window made it hard to see, so Flynn turned, swung the door open, and stepped into the toilet. He didn’t lock the door, instead holding it closed by the tiny latch and listening closely. It was difficult to hear anything above the thunk and rattle of the train, but he strained hard for the sound of the carriage door sucking open.

  It didn’t come. He felt a pull on the door and lost his grip on the latch. The door opened, and he saw the guy who had been facing him in the carriage. For a second they stared at each other, as if surprised to see the other, and then the guy drew back his arm and threw a right jab at Flynn’s face.

  Flynn eased away as the jab swept past his nose, and as it did, he grabbed the guy’s shirt and used the guy’s momentum to pull him into the room. The space was about three times the size of an aircraft bathroom, plenty of room to wind up and throw definitive punches. Flynn didn’t want to wear one of those, so he pushed the guy onward toward the toilet, and as he slipped by, Flynn stuck out a leg and tripped him.

  The guy fell face-first into the steel toilet bowl. There was a solid crack as his head hit the edge of the bowl, and then there was nothing. He slipped sideways so his head dropped in between the bowl and the wall, and his body slumped.

  Flynn took a breath and watched the guy not move. It had happened faster and more easily than he had assumed it would, but sometimes life was like that. He took the easy ones when they came, because the hard ones came often enough.

  He pulled his cap down tight and hunched over so the CCTV in the ceiling wouldn’t capture his face and stepped out of the bathroom. He moved quickly, not wanting to encounter another passenger wandering in, and walked toward his seat.

  He stopped as the passageway opened up to the carriage. He didn’t look at the second guy sitting there. He knew the guy was facing him, and he knew he would be watching to see his buddy come back. Flynn stood for a moment and then turned back into the passageway.

  Flynn’s mother had taught him many universal truths during his childhood, and one such truth was that curiosity killed the cat. It took a lot of discipline to not go and look. Flynn didn’t think these guys had that kind of discipline. He strode into the vestibule and pulled down the window on the external door. The space was filled with rushing air and noise, and the bathroom door banged ajar and then closed, again and again.

  Flynn hit the button to the carriage door and heard it suck before it moved, and then it slid open. He stepped into the gangway connection between the cars and pressed himself against the flexible diaphragm. With both doors to the cars closed, the noise was deafening. Flynn could only clench his jaw and wait.

  He was good at waiting. Not the best ever, but up there. He had waited for months on end to hunt down terrorists with nothing more to do to pass the time than stare through a scope in ramshackle buildings in Algiers or Pakistan. He could outwait these guys, that was for damned certain.

  There would be a lot for the guy to look at and think about. The open window, the noise and the wind, the slamming door, his partner lying on the bathroom floor, the gangway to the next carriage. It would be confusing, but it wouldn’t take a Rhodes scholar to figure out that Flynn wasn’t there, and if they hadn’t passed each other in the passageway, then there was only one place he had gone.

  It took longer than it should have. Perhaps the guy was just plain stupid, or perhaps he was cautious. But eventually the door to the carriage opened. What the guy would have seen initially was nothing but the door to the next car. What he then saw was Flynn’s body swing out from the side of the gangway, fist raised.

  The layout of the doors meant he had to hide to the right, which meant swinging a right hook rather than his preferred left. It was only a matter of a few pounds per square inch, but sometimes that was all the difference.

  The second guy was a little shorter, so Flynn’s fist hit him between the eyes, just above his nose. Harder on Flynn’s hand than the guy’s head. He recoiled and shook his head but recovered fast. Flynn stepped out of the gangway and went for the right jab, but the guy blocked it and thrust his right elbow out, connecting with the side of Flynn’s head.

  The guy got his balance, put his fists up, and faced Flynn like a boxer. Perhaps these guys trained together in a gym somewhere, all hot and sweaty and following the Marquess of Queensberry rules. Flynn pulled back and made to throw a left-handed haymaker but instead thrust his foot into the guy’s right knee. It wasn’t a solid kick, just enough to destabilize him, and before he could gather himself again, Flynn threw the haymaker he had held back. The guy’s nose exploded in
all kinds of fluids, mostly red but not all, and then as the train ebbed and the bathroom door swung open, Flynn kicked the guy in the stomach and drove him back into the small room.

  The guy’s eye was drawn to his partner, still on the floor for now and maybe for the long haul, and he wasn’t going to suffer the same fate. He moved away from the toilet and threw a half-hearted punch that hit Flynn’s shoulder and pivoted him. Flynn went with the turning motion and grabbed the guy’s hair as he stumbled forward and drove the guy’s head down and into the steel sink that was every bit as hard as the toilet.

  But the guy’s head was harder than his partner’s because although he came up dazed, he came up. Flynn twisted right and kicked the back of the guy’s knee, and as he dropped, Flynn thrust his face once more at the sink. The side of the guy’s head hit the edge of the sink hard, and he was done. The guy slumped to the floor. He was down but not out, although he wasn’t going to be running laps anytime soon.

  Flynn felt the pulse of the guy by the toilet and found a beat. That guy was going to take a lot more waking up, but Flynn wasn’t planning on being around to do it. He took the phones from each guy, made sure all limbs were inside the bathroom, and he stepped out.

  He was just closing the door when the door to the next car opened and a small woman stepped out of the gangway. She made for the bathroom, but Flynn shook his head at her.

  “Bræk,” he said with a frown, hoping his pronunciation of vomit was remotely accurate.

  The woman gave a grunt, rolled her eyes, and turned back to the car she had come from. As soon as she was gone, Flynn took out his Swiss Army knife and used it’s screwdriver to close the latch on the toilet door to the red occupied sign.

  Then he threw the phones out the window, went back to his seat, grabbed his pack, and waited five more minutes until the train pulled into the station. He got off and walked with the other passengers across the platform, where another train waited for them. Flynn got on the Copenhagen train and stood in the vestibule. He watched across the platform at the other train. No one went near the locked bathroom. Perhaps a conductor would try the door in due course; perhaps the guys would wake up in the rail yard a few hours from now feeling very poorly indeed. Either way, he figured they wouldn’t be talking to the police. Bad guys rarely did.