The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller

by Stewart, A. J.

  He waited for five minutes, leaning against a wall with his hands in his pockets. He got a couple of looks from women, but he offered a smile and kept his eyes on the cinema door. When it opened, he let the women form a line and make their way in before him. They were all obviously going to the same show, and they all clearly had bought their tickets online, because they headed for one of the cinemas while Flynn broke for the vacant ticket line.

  He looked at the options and found a Mission Impossible movie starting shortly. He liked those movies. There was nothing even remotely realistic about them, and they didn’t pretend otherwise. Flynn knew that when a missile exploded nearby, it didn’t throw a person ten meters only for them to shake their head and keep running. Generally explosions resulted in nearby people getting pummeled by shrapnel, and as often as not they never got up again.

  Flynn bought some popcorn and a Pepsi and walked into the dark theater. It was an early show, so not many patrons. He sat at the back with the full theater visible, hidden from the world, munching on popcorn and wondering if this was as normal as his life would ever be.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Flynn ate dinner at a brewpub. It was like breaking the surface after a long deep-sea dive. The theater had been dark and hidden, and the brewpub was loud and well lit and pulsed with the energy of humans enjoying other humans. Flynn, sitting at a two-top, ate a burger and drank Jolly Cola. He watched the people at a large table nearby as they did tasting flights of beer, comparing notes as if they were discussing French philosophy.

  An hour before he was due to meet Olsen, Flynn began walking. He wanted to take time to peruse the area, to the extent he could. The Royal Library was on the islet of Slotsholmen, along with Christiansborg Palace, which housed the Danish parliament. It was a well-trodden tourist area. Lots of people moved about in the late evening, the twilight that seemed to go on forever.

  The evening became brisk as a breeze blew in off the water. Flynn flicked his collar up and saw other people doing the same. A few draped light scarves around their necks. He wandered in a wide ring around the islet, looking for people who didn’t belong.

  Lund’s men fit that description. They were hard-scrabble guys, with their muscles and square jaws and chip-on-the-shoulder attitudes. They didn’t fit here. These people were polished and sophisticated. This was the seat of power, so the attitudes were completely different, as if they owned the world.

  Flynn saw nothing of note. He walked through the bibliotekshaven—the library garden—and into the original red-brick building. The inside smelled like a library, the scent of a million books, musty and aged. It was a smell that Flynn enjoyed. Because their apartment had been small, his mother had often taken him and his brother to the library, and whether it was the local municipal one or the grand Royal Library of Belgium, the aroma was the same. It was the scent of knowledge.

  He ambled through the old library and into the new. The modern addition was spacious and grand in a whole other way. Flynn walked up across the bridge over Christians Brygge and into the new space known as the Black Diamond. He figured entering from inside the library would allow him the chance to observe any watchers outside. He came into the atrium that offered a view out across the harbor to the island on the far side.

  The library was closing as Olsen had said it would. People finished their reading or borrowing and moved away into the evening. Flynn watched them step out onto the waterfront concourse called Søren Kierkegaards Plads. There were people walking along the waterfront in both directions, but none seemed to be moving unusually slow or stopping to watch the exit of the library. He saw no watchers and no sign of Olsen.

  A librarian told him the library was closing, so he moved slowly toward the exit. He scanned the atrium but didn’t see Olsen inside. A security guy directed the last of the patrons out the door and locked it behind Flynn, who strode across to the water’s edge and looked back at the library. It was a modern facility, as much sculpture as building, the black glass on either side of the atrium reflecting the oncoming night, as if the library were swallowing the day.

  Flynn looked around. As the library patrons moved away, the crowd thinned to a few people enjoying an evening stroll. There was no Olsen. He waited for five minutes, checking the windows and doors to see if the reporter was inside but saw nothing.

  At 8:10 he pulled out his phone and battery, put them together, and powered it up. He was greeted by the familiar beep of a text message. It was from Olsen.

  Can’t make it, working. Meet at heliport near docks. 11pm. I’m in the red Volkswagen.

  Flynn looked around again. No one appeared to be paying any attention to him, but there was no way to be sure. He hit the button to call Olsen and waited for the call to connect, and he watched. There might have been a guy in brown trousers and a wool sweater watching him, or he might have been waiting for someone. The call connected, and Flynn was about to talk when he heard Olsen speaking in Danish and then the beep to leave a voicemail. He didn’t leave a message.

  Flynn turned and started walking south along the waterfront. As he moved he pulled the battery out of his phone again. He strode into the wide plaza beside the Black Diamond, and then he stopped and turned. There were plenty of people behind him, but none stopped suddenly or turned away. He wasn’t being followed by a solitary person, and if he was being followed by a team, there was going to be no telling. Not if they were any good.

  He resumed walking south. He saw a harbor bus ferry tie up at the dock at the far end of the plaza, so he slowed his cadence and watched the boat pull in. The front of the cabin opened like an insect’s mouth, and its passengers appeared and stepped off the boat. A small group nearby waited until it was clear and then boarded. Just as the last passenger stepped onto the deck, Flynn broke into a sprint. He dashed toward the gangway and down onto the waiting platform. A crew member who was closing the door had seen him and waited the few seconds it took for him to run down and jump onto the deck.

  There was no time for anyone to follow him, and if they had, he would surely have known who they were. As the harbor bus pulled away, Flynn surveyed the dock and the plaza above. He saw no one running down the gangway, no one watching from the concourse above. He dropped down into a seat and waited for the harbor bus to get to the next stop, and he thought about Nils Olsen.

  * * *

  The team leader stood by the Black Diamond and spoke into his radio. “Did the American get on?”

  “Ja,” said another man, sitting in the back row of the harbor bus. His eyes were on the back of Flynn’s head.

  “Okay. Are we in position at the next stop?”

  “Roger, four is at Bryggebroen.”

  “This is three, we are approaching the final stop at Teglholmen. Will be in position in three minutes.”

  “Good. Keep on him. If he runs, close in.”

  “Roger that.”

  * * *

  Flynn took the harbor bus one stop to Bryggebroen. It was the only stop on the large island of Amager, Denmark’s most densely populated island. It was, for the most part, one large suburb of Copenhagen, over two hundred thousand souls. But Amager was much more. On its eastern side was Copenhagen Airport, and on its west about one-third of the island was given over to nature reserves that had largely been reclaimed from the harbor.

  The top end of the nature reserve was now a large common known as Amager Fælled. Flynn studied the area on his map book and got off when the boat docked. He walked up the gangway and toward the park.

  He noted only two other passengers got off—the common was not a nighttime attraction. He strode past a string of parked vehicles and headed into the common. The north end was more wooded, like the North Woods in New York City’s Central Park. The paths were tight—designed for pedestrians and cyclists to share but not vehicles—and the close-in trees and failing sun gave the park an eerie feel.

  As he rounded a curve in the path, he looked back and saw a man entering the park behind him. He wasn
’t certain, but it was possible the man had been on the ferry, sitting in the far back. Flynn wanted some alone time, so as soon as he was sufficiently around the bend, he broke hard into the trees and ran.

  It wasn’t easy going. The ground was uneven, and under the canopy it might as well have been midnight for all he could see. He ran a hard sprint for eight seconds and then abruptly dropped to the earth.

  He couldn’t see the path. He couldn’t see anything but darkness and tree litter and trunks. He lay on the ground for ten minutes, letting his breathing slow, listening for any sounds of a pursuer through the scrub.

  Hearing nothing but squirrels and birds and possibly foxes moving around, Flynn eventually sat up against a tree. He thought about Olsen and why he would move the meet. He checked the new location in his map book—it was at the north end of the harbor, near the port facility. Ports were generally desolate places during the day, let alone at night. Perhaps there was a restaurant opening up there. It seemed like a terrible place to open an eatery, but Flynn had read that 50 percent of restaurants went out of business in the first year, so there were clearly a lot of poor decisions being made.

  But it didn’t feel right. He had learned long ago to pay attention to his gut. It wasn’t always right, but he was still alive. He considered whether he needed to see the notebook after all. He had spoken to Olsen and now knew a bit about what was in it. He thought about walking away. He thought about not showing up and trying again tomorrow, setting up a new meet in a more public place.

  The tugging at his gut didn’t stop, and he knew why. He didn’t know if he was being followed or not, but he had gotten awfully jumpy in a real hurry. His senses were on edge, and it wasn’t because some faceless guys were trying to track him. It was Olsen. Flynn had gotten Olsen involved, and he knew the kid was out of his depth. He wasn’t a seasoned investigative reporter. Not yet. Right now he wrote about smashed avocado and pickled herring. If Lund or Berg or someone else was involved, then Olsen might be in danger. Flynn had fled the restaurant opening after meeting the reporter the previous night. Olsen had not. He had probably left some time later, expecting to just get in his little car and drive home to write his story. Maybe he hadn’t made it.

  But he had made it. Flynn realized that he had spoken to Olsen earlier that morning, about 2 a.m., so he had made it home just fine. But that didn’t mean he was still fine, not if the guys in the sedan had waited after Flynn ran from them and they had followed the reporter home. Flynn didn’t know who they were, but he did know that Lund’s man had tried to kill Gorski. Something had changed, and Flynn knew what it was. It was him. Him and Gorski. They had pushed back where no pushback had occurred before. Now they were playing for keeps, and Flynn had put another innocent in the crosshairs.

  He waited another thirty minutes, and then he made his way to the south end of the common. He stayed in the shadows by a darkened BMX track until he saw a city bus approach, and then he stepped out and hailed the driver. He sat as the bus crossed the Zealand Bridge and headed back toward downtown Copenhagen.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Flynn got off the bus just short of the central station and walked a wide berth around the downtown area. His preference would have been to go straight to the meet point at the port, but he decided getting there early was pointless. If Olsen had actually changed the time and place, then it would matter little if he arrived at the appointed time. And if Olsen had not changed the time, if someone else had changed it, then chances were they were in place already and any advantage he might garner was gone.

  It felt like a trap. That was the worst-case scenario, but it was also rapidly feeling like the most likely one. Yet Flynn didn’t see another option. Besides, he had walked into traps before, and he was still around. Sometimes to find the worst terrorist he and his men had to enter the darkest caves.

  He would have liked a weapon, but this wasn’t Iraq or the United States. Finding one with such short notice would be hard and, he thought, perhaps counterproductive. Having no weapon made him less of a threat, in theory at least.

  Flynn stopped by a small independent convenience store. It would be described as a mom-and-pop store back in the States, and that suited his purpose better than some international chain. The interior looked like any other convenience store: tight aisles, sickly lighting, small quantities of a great variety of items. He nodded to the guy in a turban who stood behind the counter and received a nod in return. Then he ambled up and down the aisles. He was looking for something specific, even if he didn’t know what it was yet.

  Some of the items were completely wrong: chips, candy, gum. Even in a low-traffic store, those items turned over fast. In an inner-city store like this one, the same went for bread and cereal and batteries. Flynn wandered toward the back, where the less popular items lived, the ones that weren’t impulse purchases or staples. The kinds of things that could go on a run depending on seasonality but the rest of the time were only an occasional requirement for the average apartment dweller.

  Flynn stopped before a steel shelf that held paraffin wax and matches and toilet plungers and large six-volt lantern batteries built like shoeboxes. On the bottom shelf, he found an open box of fire starters. Only one packet had been removed. Flynn got down low and found a second box behind the first, this one with a film of dust covering it.

  He pulled out his personal items. A phone, a phone battery, a small utility knife, a wallet with ten thousand Danish kroner in it, and a map book wrapped around the outside, all bound together with an elastic band. He kept only enough cash for a bottle of water and some matches. He slipped his bundle in behind the second of the fire starter boxes and then pushed the boxes snug against the back of the shelving unit.

  Flynn stood and picked up a box of matches, and then he ambled along to the wall, where he opened a refrigerator and took a bottle of water. He then made his way to the checkout. The cashier was watching him with muted interest. Every customer was a potential shoplifter at worst, and at best, something to look at to break the monotony.

  As the cashier rang up the two items, Flynn looked up behind the man at the conspicuously placed video camera. He stared at it for a moment, then nodded to the cashier as he slid the items back to Flynn. He handed over his remaining cash and offered a hand that suggested the cashier keep the change.

  Flynn didn’t want anything on his person. Not ID, not money, not even his Swiss Army knife. He had no idea what he was walking into, but he didn’t want to make it easy for anyone to know who he was. Below the radar was always his preferred modus operandi—until it wasn’t.

  He walked all the way. Not really a march—too slow for that—but he understood his cadence and knew how much time he had. The closer he got, the more the landscape opened up, offices and palatial government buildings and apartment blocks separated and got lower and then disappeared altogether, leaving a wide-open expanse of land. It was asphalt and concrete broken up by patches of grass that looked half-dead.

  There were shapes in the distance that looked like flattened mountains, but Flynn knew better, and as he got closer they resolved to be piles of shipping containers. Blue and green and orange containers, all different manufacturers and shipping companies but consistent in their length, width, and height, designed to maximize loads on ships and trains and trucks.

  The containers brought back memories for Flynn. He had seen many of them. Armies moved a lot of stuff, and much of it moved in intermodal shipping containers. One in particular stuck in his mind: a tan-colored container holding cargo that Flynn would never know, cargo that had to disappear and, in doing so, would end Flynn’s Legion career.

  He brushed the thoughts away. That was a long time ago, and now he needed to focus. The containers gave the area a false topography, a sense of being closed in when it was anything but. There were piles of containers in seemingly random patches around the docks, some lit by security lighting and others barely visible in the darkness, as if discarded.

  He
skirted around a large warehouse and away from the lighting. He headed for the darkness, where he found what he believed to be the helipad where he was to meet Olsen. It looked like a grass field, vacant and unwanted, and was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence. To the north was a building that led into another section of the port. There was a gate and a guardhouse, but both were locked up tight for the night. Perhaps there was a night patrol that passed by every few hours. The entrance was lit by spotlights, and Flynn could see beyond in the compound a line of heavy trucks parked for the night on the edge of the glow.

  Flynn turned his gaze east. The road appeared to come to a dead end. Wooden boards with red reflectors shone like cat eyes in the gleam of the spotlight across from the gated area a hundred meters away. He looked at the soft reflection and the wide area of asphalt, where a loaded truck could easily get around without having to back up. The spotlight barely made it that far, the wide turnaround falling from shadow to darkness.

  And there, somewhere in the middle, the red reflectors disappeared, as if swallowed by the night. Something was in front of them. Flynn walked toward the dark hole in the air, and gradually a shape formed. A vehicle. A very small vehicle. So low it barely got above the boards with the reflectors.

  It was a car. A tiny two-door car. Perhaps red but more gray in the dim light. It was parked in the middle of the turnaround area, facing away from the nearby gate, so the driver was on the opposite side from where Flynn approached.

  The car wasn’t running, and there were no lights on. If Olsen wanted Flynn to meet him, he was making it hard. But that didn’t feel like what was happening. Flynn tensed as he walked around the rear of the car and saw the Volkswagen badge. He stepped around toward the driver’s window. It wasn’t a long way—he did it in two steps, then stuck out two knuckles to tap on the window.