The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller

by Stewart, A. J.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Klaasen’s driver dropped him outside his townhome, not far from Christiansborg Palace. He could have walked to and from work, but he had a distinct look and there were plenty of people who disagreed with the government’s views on pretty much anything, so he was driven.

  He strode up the steps and inside, dropping his satchel on the desk in his office as he passed by, and then down the hallway into the kitchen, where he cracked open a mineral water. He had a long gulp and then took out his secure mobile phone and called Ager.

  It rang out. There was no voicemail. Theirs was not the kind of communication that was best recorded. He tried another of Ager’s crew and got the same result, so he took another drink of water and tried Ager once more. Nothing.

  It had been hours since Ager had reported the capture of the American, and Klaasen had been too busy to think about it since, but now, as his long day wound down, it was a loose thread in his mind. He didn’t need the issue fixed before he went to bed—most of the problems he dealt with were not so easily solved—but he did like to know that steps were being taken, that someone was on top of whatever was happening.

  He took his water upstairs and put his phone onto a charger, then he removed his jacket and tie and hung them up. It had become the custom of many who worked in and around the parliament to wear shirts open at the neck. Klaasen wasn’t one of them. He had worn a uniform of some variety since his military service, and even after his long and decorated career parlayed into political service, he still felt the draw of a uniform. He knew that he was the best-dressed person in the room every time, and that meant something. It spoke of a discipline he had that others failed to grasp.

  Even his boss, so powerful and vaunted, was not a match for Klaasen. Not in strategy, not in intellect. It had pained him for a long time that the result of his injuries on the battlefield was that he would never be the commander of his beloved Denmark. In a day and age where image ruled, he knew that his facial scarring made him look like a Disney villain. He had learned to wear it as a badge of honor, a physical mark that proved a commitment to his country that others could only talk about. Although it prevented him from winning public office, it had become a useful tool in his behind-the-scenes role, ensuring compliance and engendering fear and, at times, awe.

  Ager had been there when he was injured. He had held the compression on Klaasen’s face to prevent him from bleeding out. He knew the limits of Ager’s abilities but never questioned his loyalty or commitment. So when he found himself in the halls of power and occasionally in need of an off-the-books unit, he knew whom to call. He made sure that his men were very well paid, even though they technically continued to be employed by the state.

  It was the perfect cover. It allowed him to control events, to take down those who needed it, to confront those who wished harm to Denmark. If something had to be done discreetly, if someone needed to disappear from the public eye, he had the men to do it. And if it turned out such a play was beneficial to the powers that be, then he could flip the narrative so Ager and his men were nothing more than agents of peace, keeping Denmark safe.

  Klaasen put on a T-shirt and shorts and did twenty minutes of push-ups and sit-ups and squats, then he brushed his teeth and rinsed his mouth. He looked in the mirror for a moment, his hard face showing some age yet the scar making that age indeterminable.

  He checked the phone one last time. No call from Ager. No doubt he was interrogating. Sometimes that was easy, sometimes it was hard. Sometimes it took minutes to extract information, other times it was never retrieved at all. But Ager knew all the tricks, all the techniques to loosen lips and learn what must be learned.

  Klaasen slipped into bed and turned off the light. He would, no doubt, hear from Ager when he woke.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Flynn was somewhere near the city, if not in it. The journey in the van had not been long, and now that he was out he saw tightly packed buildings—four, five, or six floors—in the ubiquitous red brick. Not the port area. The former café or bar that he had been held below was on a secondary road, not a main thoroughfare. A local joint, gone bust perhaps because of an absence of foot traffic or maybe poor management. He knew he would hit a main road soon enough, and then he could navigate his way despite the lack of a map.

  He passed a petrol station that might have offered directions, but he preferred to not be on any CCTV in the neighborhood. A block beyond the lit forecourt of the station, he came upon a bigger road with a bus stop. A young guy with a bicycle stood waiting.

  Flynn asked him directions to the main train station, and the guy told him this was the right bus. When the bus came, the guy racked his bicycle on the front and got onboard, but Flynn let it go. He saw something better.

  On the other side of the street, a café was opening. He saw the warm lights and a solitary customer sitting in the window. He strode across the street and went inside. There was a bar at the back and a high counter along the window, with a row of booths along the far wall. Flynn ordered an espresso and took a seat in a booth. The owner dropped the coffee off and left him to it.

  Flynn rummaged through his pack and first took out the phones. They were like little tracking beacons, signaling to the world where he was. He wanted to check them out and get rid of them as soon as possible.

  There were seven: five flip phones and two smartphones. The smartphones belonged to the team leader—Ager—and the medical guy. Traceable and not secure. Everyday phones. But counterintuitively hard to get into. Passcode and biometric protection. He checked them both then powered them down and put them aside.

  The flip phones were something else. Not secure in the sense that they could be opened and used by anyone, but, like his own phone, they were disposable and easily replaced. He borrowed a pen from the café owner and wrote down the numbers in the call logs. Most of the calls were between each of the phones. They were essentially being used like walkie-talkies. But one of the phones showed more calls than the others and was called more frequently. He figured this was Ager’s second phone. Flynn checked all the previous calls. The log only went back a day. Ager either cleared it frequently or he had just changed phones. Good protocol. But he had been preoccupied for the past twenty-four hours.

  Flynn jotted down two numbers that didn’t belong to any of the phones on his table. One had been called three times, all outgoing. The other had called in to Ager multiple times.

  Flynn then turned all the phones off and moved to the wallets. Each had a small amount of cash but no credit cards. He took the cash and moved to the IDs. Five DSIS IDs and matching driver’s licenses, each telling him the name of the officer but not exactly what he did. The medical guy had no such ID, nor did he have a driver’s license on him. Flynn matched each of the five photos on the IDs to the men in the cellar. He put four of the IDs to the side. The fifth was the closest in looks to him, so he slipped the DSIS ID and the driver’s license into his pocket.

  Once he was done, he set his mind to what he had seen. That the men were security services was confirmed. He knew that the DSIS—or PET in Danish—worked as a counterterrorism and intelligence unit focused on homeland security, a rough equivalent of the counterterrorism role of the FBI. He had met many intelligence officers from a variety of countries, and he had found them to generally be pretty buttoned-up people. They were realistic about the job they were tasked with and how the line between good and evil might be blurred in pursuit of a safer world.

  But they typically stopped short of murdering innocent people, especially when those people were their own countrymen. Killing your own was pretty much a no-no, which suggested that Ager and his team were way outside their official role. They were being controlled by someone who was comfortable pulling those strings, and Flynn knew he wasn’t going to fight the faceless puppeteer alone. Ager had called the person Klaasen. Such people were usually well protected, hiding in the shadows. He needed someone to take them on, someone official. Assuming t
his Klaasen was in a position of power in the DSIS, Flynn would have to stay away from that chain of command. So he couldn’t call the cops. They would come after him in any event but especially if they were directed by someone crooked.

  His mind flew back through the years to someone he knew in his past life. Someone he had learned to trust and who he hoped had learned to trust him. He knew where this person was—he had followed the careers of many of his old contacts. In hindsight, perhaps even when he was telling himself that a new life could be his, he knew that it would never be; his old life would return someday. It hadn’t, though, not exactly. He had landed somewhere between old and new, a half-life of a sort. Now instead of marching forward, he would have to reach back. But before he did, he needed a way to call.

  Flynn paid for his coffee with the cash he had collected, and then he set off. He walked one street away, then followed parallel in the direction the bus had gone. As he walked he broke down the phones and tossed them one piece at a time into drains. When the phones were gone, he did the same with three of the weapons, keeping the gun in the plastic bag as evidence and another gun and all the magazines in the pack.

  When he was rid of all that he wanted to discard, he cut back to the main road and kept walking. He came upon an intersection with a larger bus terminal and a metro train station. He strode over to the station and found a pay phone. Where there might once have been a bank of phones there was now only one.

  He put in some change and dialed a number long imprinted in his memory.

  “Interpol,” said the voice.

  Flynn dropped into French as if it were his native tongue.

  “Contre le terrorisme,” he said. He waited for the call to be connected. He knew the counterterrorism desk was staffed 24/7. When a woman came on the other end of the line, he continued in French.

  “I have a message for Margret Zazou.”

  “The office is not open until nine a.m., monsieur.”

  “I know. Margret Zazou, counterterrorism. Trace this call, and tell her it’s priority Jasper. She will want this. Do it now. I’m holding.”

  “Sir, I can take a message—”

  “Priority Jasper, do you understand? Get her now!”

  The call went quiet as he was put on hold. He knew the call would be traced. He also knew the desk officer would have access to a list of priority codes. Interpol received thousands of calls about terrorist activity every week, and some had more credibility than others. The desk officer wasn’t going to rouse a senior officer in the wee small hours without good cause, and a known code word was a good cause, even if the code was old.

  Flynn fed the last of his coins into the phone. He figured they would trace the number quick enough and call back, but he wanted to save them the trouble. It took a couple of minutes before a voice came on the line sounding more awake than the hour might have suggested.

  “Hallo? Who is this?”

  “Margret?” asked Flynn. “It’s Jacques Fontaine.”

  “Fontaine?”

  “Oui. Comment allez vous?”

  “I am fine.”

  “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “No, I am in the gym.”

  “Early workout.”

  “We are not all we once were. It’s been a long time.”

  “A lifetime. I have a problem.”

  “You have a problem, or you are a problem?”

  “A little of both, as usual.”

  Flynn outlined the basics of his first meeting with Olsen and the events following the second.

  “You’re saying that Danish intelligence has killed a Danish national. Are they going to say you did it?”

  “Possibly, but I think I have the weapon used, and it’s not my fingerprints that are on it.”

  “I’m not sure that will stand up.”

  “So you’ll have to work harder, Margret, but you can do that. I know you can. Just start with the reporter. Go get his body.”

  “I’m not sure this is an Interpol matter.”

  “I’m not either, but if Danish police officers are involved, I don’t know who to tell. I can’t trust anyone. All I’m saying is take a look. Hand it over if and when you see fit.”

  “Give me the location.”

  Flynn told her where to find the car and the dead body. “Will you call local police?” he asked.

  “Not at this point. I have people in Copenhagen. The locals will have to get involved once we establish a crime . . . and you might need to come in.”

  “Let’s take it one step at a time.”

  “Stay where you are. I’ll call back shortly.”

  Flynn dropped the handset back into the cradle and looked around. It was still early, but there were more people passing by, heading for workplaces across the city. He didn’t plan on waiting around for the local cops, Interpol, or anyone else to pick him up, so he set off again with an idea in mind.

  As he walked he thought about Margret Zazou. She was a Belgian national who was based at Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France, although when he had known her, she was an agent who spent most of her time in the field. Like him, she had landed in some of the worst places on planet Earth, often training local police forces how to enforce law in a war zone. She was brusque and officious and a stickler for procedure, but she was also thoughtful and philosophical and as honest as the day was long. He had enjoyed her company on the several occasions they had crossed paths.

  Now he was both banking on those traits and wary of them. If the DSIS was doing things well outside the law, she wouldn’t stop until they did. If the agents had in some way gone rogue, she would hunt them down. But he also knew that if the evidence pointed his way, she would be just as likely to lock him up. It wasn’t personal; it was the law. And Flynn didn’t have time for that. He needed to keep moving. He believed in momentum, that the physical nature of it also applied to the theoretical. Often in the pursuit of terrorists, he and his unit had sat waiting for weeks, even months, looking for the break that would open up their investigation. When they found it, when it happened, they had to be ready. Gorski had called it “zero to one hundred in the time it takes to put your boots on,” because once things started happening, they often happened fast, the momentum growing slowly but definitively, and then it reached a point where it took off, on the edge of losing control. Flynn felt like he was at that point. Things were breaking open, and he might lose a handle on them if he wasn’t careful.

  As the sun broke the horizon in the east, Flynn got closer to the inner city and found what he was looking for. Street markets were a common occurrence in the cities and towns and villages of Europe. In summer, when produce was plentiful and the weather was good, many people still preferred the open markets to the supermarkets they frequented in the winter.

  Canopies were being erected, trestle tables were being placed, and cartons of produce were being hefted from vans onto tables. Some early shoppers were out doing their rounds, but most would wait for full sun. Flynn wandered along the stalls, past potatoes and peppers and the first tomatoes of the season, and then past a bread display and a guy offering cheese cut from a giant wheel. There was a coffee stand and one selling knitwear and another offering knife-sharpening services.

  He stopped in front of one stall that was still setting up. There were cardboard boxes on the pavement, and a guy slipped out of a van with another carton. He dropped it on a table and glanced at Flynn.

  “God morgen,” he said.

  “Good morning,” Flynn replied in English. “I need a phone.”

  “I don’t have my register open yet.”

  “I can pay cash.”

  The guy shrugged. A sale was a sale. “What do you want?”

  “Basic phone, not a smartphone. Something cheap and prepaid.”

  The guy nodded and bent down to a box by his feet. He pulled out a plastic-wrapped product.

  “This one is Chinese,” said the guy. “Beijing is probably listening to everything you say, but it’s cheap,
” he said with a grin that suggested he might only be half joking.

  “How do I connect to the network?”

  “I can do it, but that’s why I said my register isn’t set up yet. Give me five minutes.”

  “I’ll get a coffee.”

  Flynn walked to the little van selling espresso out of the back. There was something about the thick crema and the instant injection of caffeine that started his heart every time. He stood by the van, sipping and taking in the aroma of roasted beans. When he was done with his coffee, he returned the cup and walked back to the phone guy.

  He still wasn’t set up completely, but he did have an iPad out on a little stand. He put the Chinese phone on the table and asked Flynn how many minutes he wanted. Then he took out a SIM card from another box and tapped the screen of the tablet.

  “You need ID,” said the guy.

  Flynn nodded and fished out the driver’s license belonging to one of the DSIS guys. Although he was the closest looking to Flynn, a keen eye would have spotted any number of differences. The guy selling phones in the early morning market didn’t have a keen eye. He took the ID and registered the SIM and then connected it to the phone, and within a few minutes Flynn had a new burner in the name of a Danish intelligence officer.

  Flynn thanked the guy and handed him the cash and then walked away, happy to be connected and confident that without CCTV cameras around, if and when the DSIS got wind of the phone, there would be no living or electronic memory of John Flynn ever having been there.

  He walked as he dialed, got the same voice at Interpol, and asked for Margret once more. This time he got straight through.

  “I take it you are not at the train station anymore?” Margret asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, tell me this: why are you wasting my time?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “My man went to the port. There’s no car, no body. There’s nothing out there.”