The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller

by Stewart, A. J.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “What do you mean there’s nothing out there?”

  “I mean I have a man out between the helipad and the port entrance right now, and he says there’s nothing in the turnaround, and the only thing on the road is a line of semi-trailer trucks waiting to be loaded.”

  “What about the local police?”

  “They’ve had no call-outs to the port and no reports of a murder anywhere in Denmark in the last forty-eight hours.”

  “They cleaned it up,” said Flynn.

  “Who?”

  “The DSIS.”

  “If these people even exist, how can you know they are DSIS?”

  Flynn thought about how much to tell her. “One of them had ID,” which was technically true.

  “Did you get a name?”

  “Ager. George Ager. I think he was the team leader.”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  “And what about the reporter, Nils Olsen?”

  “We’re still checking him out. I can’t see him in the driver’s license records, so I’m checking the civil—wait.”

  Flynn waited. He heard voices in the background but couldn’t make out the words. Then Margret came back on the line.

  “We may have something. I assume I can get you on this new number?”

  “For now.”

  She ended the call, and Flynn slipped the phone into his pocket. He kept walking toward the city center. Twenty minutes later, he was back at the mom-and-pop convenience store. He nodded to the same guy behind the counter, the face beneath the turban not offering any hint of recognition. He wandered to the back of the store, bent down, and collected his hidden bundle. He picked up a sandwich in a triangular container and a bottle of water and paid at the counter.

  He sat on a bench in a tiny park and ate while he waited. People were out jogging in the cool morning air, others were dressed for success and striding toward it. A man with a bichon frise stood impatiently while the dog sniffed at the grass and then eventually walked around in a tight circle and took a dump. When it was done, the dog kicked its feces across the grass, and the man tugged the leash and led the dog away.

  Flynn was midway through his second sandwich half when his phone rang.

  “We got Olsen’s home address,” said Margret. “He lives downtown, about two blocks from the town square.”

  “So walking distance to work.”

  “I guess so. We tried rousing him but got no response.”

  “You don’t get much response from a dead man.”

  “You said he worked late, filed his stories, and then slept in. He might be sleeping—he might use sleeping tablets. We called his phone but got no answer.”

  “How did you get his phone number?”

  “From his civil record. Every Danish citizen has one. It’s the database into the public health care system.”

  Talk of a phone number jogged Flynn’s memory. He had a number or two that he needed to check into. The question was, did he trust Margret to share the details? She wouldn’t lie—he was confident of that—but she might withhold information if it was sensitive. He figured he would learn something either way.

  “I have two phone numbers that were used by the guys who killed Olsen. Can you look them up?”

  “Give them to me.”

  He recited the two numbers he had transcribed from Ager’s phone that didn’t belong to the other members of the unit.

  “I’ll check into it,” she said. “But I don’t understand something. There’s no record of Olsen having a driver’s license and no registration of a vehicle at his address. So why meet at the port? Not easy to get to.”

  “Tell me about it. But we weren’t supposed to meet there. We were supposed to meet at the Royal Library. He said he worked there a lot. It’s walking distance from the town square, so that makes it close to his home. I was there when I got a text saying he couldn’t make it and we should meet at the port. I think it’s safe to assume that the text wasn’t written by Olsen. It’s possible that was the time of death, when they got his phone.”

  Flynn stopped for a moment. Something nagged at him about the port, about the car, about Olsen’s body. He’d need to think on it.

  “How do you disappear a car and a body?”

  Margret said, “For the car, they could simply change the registration plate, or they could break it apart and sell the parts or put them on other vehicles. They could dump it and light it on fire to destroy any evidence if they didn’t care about it being found. Or they could dump it somewhere public so it could be found, especially if they planned on blaming you. That’s assuming you didn’t do it.”

  “Do you think I would do that?”

  “The Jacques Fontaine I knew had a strong sense of morality, I remember that. But I also remember that your remit was often to operate outside international law, so what you are actually capable of, I do not know.”

  “Fair enough. Work on the assumption that I didn’t do it, because that one will get you to the truth. But it’s clear they don’t want to blame me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there was no reason to move the car at all. They could have left it, reported it. They could have handed me over to the regular police. But they didn’t. They used it to get me there, to try affect my thinking enough to not see the trap.”

  “That I don’t comprehend,” said Margret. “The meet gets moved to an isolated place and you’re not suspicious?”

  “I was very suspicious. I expected a trap.”

  “So why walk into it?”

  “It was the only way forward. I got Olsen involved by going to the restaurant the previous night. It was the only way I could make sure he was okay.”

  “But he’s not okay.”

  “No. That was always the risk of going to the meet. But I couldn’t assume he was dead. So I went, and if they wanted to blame me, they could have put my fingerprints on everything, but they didn’t.”

  “Why is that, do you think?”

  “Because they’re not operating inside the law. They’re black ops. There’s lots of wiggle room in anti-terror legislation now. Habeas corpus is an artifact of history. But there are still some things they cannot do. Like torture and kill. If they’re going to do that, they need to make sure it isn’t within Denmark. The public doesn’t care what happens in far-flung deserts, but don’t try it on the local streets.”

  “But you say they did kill him.”

  “I know, which means it’s unlawful. All countries do it, and in most it’s illegal, which tells me they were moving fast and were caught unawares.”

  “Caught unawares by what?”

  “Me. They had shut something down, and I opened it up again. The first reporter, she was on to something but didn’t know it, and they knew that, so they shipped her off to Washington, DC, onto bigger and better things, career-wise. But she left notes, and she gave them to Olsen, a nobody in the newsroom, the restaurant guy. I followed up the notes, and they had to scramble. They couldn’t send another reporter away, especially the restaurant guy—it wouldn’t look kosher. So they made a call, a risky one. They killed him. So he can’t be found. Not ever.”

  “So how do they do that? Bury him in the woods?”

  “He could be found. Some hunter with a dog, too risky. He has to be truly gone.”

  “There’s always evidence.”

  “Not always.”

  Flynn knew it. In hunting terrorists, occasionally one had to use their own tactics against them. Put fear into them. Sometimes a high-ranking member was captured and interrogated. Afterward, it worked better for the fear factor if any trace of him was gone, as if he had vanished from the face of the earth. Buried bodies could be dug up, hidden bodies discovered. But a body burned to ash could be given to the wind. It could be breathed in and never discovered.

  “They could burn him,” Flynn said.

  “Burn him? What do you mean?”

  “I mean incinerate until he’s
nothing more than ash.”

  “How?”

  “In the desert they could simply build a big bonfire, but in the city, not so much. There are easier ways.”

  “What easier ways?”

  “Cremation. I read once that ninety percent of people in Copenhagen would prefer cremation over burial. So I’m sure there’s no shortage of places to do it. You need to hit the phones. Call up every funeral home, starting in Copenhagen and working your way out.”

  “And ask them if they’re a party to murder?”

  “No. If they moved the body last night and spent the rest of the time with me, there’s a chance they haven’t fully disposed of it properly yet. Ask the funeral homes to do a roll call, or an inventory, or whatever they call it. Check their cadavers, make sure they only have the souls they’re supposed to have. Someone’s numbers are not going to add up. Someone has one too many.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Flynn left Margret to call the funeral homes and made a call of his own. He returned the call from Keel Rasmussen. A colleague answered and told him that Keel regularly worked that day from home. Flynn didn’t call him at home.

  He got a train instead. The station was busy, but most of the traffic was coming in, not going out. He stayed on the train until Gentofte, and then he walked around as if he were lost, making a large loop and then a second tighter one, intersected with backtracks and random turns. He wasn’t being followed but knew that wasn’t how he had been found the last time. They had simply been watching the house.

  They were doing it again. The blue Corsa was parked half a block down from the Rasmussen house. Flynn came from behind and walked right past the vehicle. He waved to the guys as he went by. They didn’t get out. Perhaps they were confused.

  He stopped at the small gate, walked up the little path lined with flowers, and knocked on the door.

  Freja Rasmussen answered the door. She looked tired, and she stood with an open hand under her pregnant belly as if the extra weight were causing her pain.

  “Mr. Flynn,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Flynn thought about the call from her husband but decided not to drop him in it. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I feel like there is more to say.”

  Freja frowned at him. Perhaps the pregnancy was keeping her awake, or perhaps she had things on her mind.

  “Come in,” she said.

  She didn’t stand aside the way her husband had. There was no room for that. She turned and walked toward the back of the house. Flynn closed the front door and followed. The house smelled like toast. She led him into the kitchen, where he sat at the table.

  When the kettle boiled, she made tea without a word. No pleasantries, no small talk. Flynn knew when a person was thinking, when they were doing cartwheels in their own mind, trying to place the words in the right order. He continued to wait.

  He heard the creak of stairs and then the floorboards in the hallway. Keel Rasmussen appeared at the kitchen door. He looked at his wife making tea, her back to him, and then he glanced at Flynn and nodded. “John.”

  “Keel.”

  Freja turned and placed Flynn’s mug of tea before him. “Mr. Flynn’s here,” said Freja.

  “I see,” said Keel.

  “He thinks there are things to say.”

  “Okay,” said Keel. “I will leave you alone.”

  He made to turn away from the door, but Freja put her hand out. “No,” she said. She stood for a moment with her hand reaching toward her husband, as if frozen in place.

  “I want you here. It’s time.”

  Keel took his wife’s hand and squeezed it, then he let it go and sat at the table. She placed one mug before him, then took a seat behind the other.

  Steam rose from the tea, scenting the air, but no one moved to drink. Freja stared at the table. Flynn spoke to Keel.

  “Your son is not here?”

  “He’s at kindergarten.”

  Flynn nodded.

  They sat in silence for a time, the birds chirping outside, a clock in the hallway ticking loudly. Flynn watched Freja. She didn’t take her eyes off the table, but a couple of times she opened her mouth as if to speak, only to close it again without a word. Flynn decided to offer an option.

  “Freja, talk or don’t talk—it’s okay with me either way. But it will make a difference to you, I can assure you of that. Nothing you say here has to leave this room.”

  She looked up at Flynn. The frown was gone, but the uncertainty remained. “Nothing?”

  Flynn shook his head. “Nothing, unless you say so. Consider it a confessional, a privileged conversation. As much or as little as you need to say, to leave these walls only under your command.”

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Don’t begin with you. Just tell me about Luna.”

  Freja sighed without sound and resumed staring at the table. “Luna,” she said. “She was my best friend. No, she was my sister.”

  Flynn watched the muscles tighten in Freja’s jaw.

  “I let her down. She was my sister, and I wasn’t there when she needed me.”

  Flynn said nothing.

  Freja sighed again. “We were fifteen. There was a party at Luna’s house. Her parents and Begitte were visiting their grandmother in Jutland. Luna stayed with us, with my parents. But their house was empty, and, well, we were fifteen.”

  Freja wrapped her hand around her mug but made no effort to drink her tea.

  “We wanted to be older. We were young girls. We lived in cohousing in a rural community, and we wanted to be more worldly. And they were older.”

  “Who was older?” asked Flynn.

  “The boys. The two boys. They were studying at the university in Copenhagen, but one of them had lived in the community before. We knew him. Not the other. We met them in the village. They were making fun, talking about how boring it was, how could anyone live such a life.

  “They asked us if we wanted to party, and we were fifteen and we wanted to be older and more sophisticated. Luna said her parents were out of town. And the boys had alcohol, so . . .”

  Freja’s eyes glazed over as if thinking back on a memory long forgotten, searching for the specifics of the occasion that had long been buried.

  “We were drinking and smoking, although both made Luna and me feel ill, but we didn’t want to show it. We declined after a while, when it all became fuzzy, but they kept asking if it was a party or not, and we didn’t want to look like the unsophisticated kids that we really were.”

  She clasped her hands together hard. Flynn could see the whites of her knuckles.

  “They raped us. Both boys, both of us. Bit by bit at first, a piece of clothing here, another there. All the time more alcohol and cigarettes and peer pressure. Then one of them had Luna on her parents’ bed, and she got afraid and she said no. She said to stop. But he didn’t stop. He held her arms and he laughed and didn’t stop. And the other one took his lead and pushed me onto the bed and I said no, and he said if I really meant it he would tell everyone in Copenhagen that I was a tease, that I was no fun. And I looked at Luna and I didn’t care. I didn’t want what was happening to her to happen to me. So the boy said if I changed my mind now, he would have to teach me a lesson, he would have to cut me. He didn’t want to, he said. But I needed to not be a tease. So he did what he did, and I let him.”

  Flynn saw Keel’s back stiffen, anger welling in his face, but he didn’t speak.

  “Then after, they drank more, and they swapped and raped the other one of us. The one boy was taking photographs, laughing as his friend penetrated and we cried. Calling him a madman. Then they sat on the couch for an hour or two, smoking and drinking, and we stayed together, me and Luna, curled up on her parents’ bed.

  “The boys kissed us goodbye before they left, and then I remember the one running his hand gently across Luna’s cheek, and he said that he’d had a nice time, and that it was our little secret, and it would be sad if she to
ld anyone and he had to come back and cut her.”

  Freja’s body shook as if years of anguish had been expelled from her body. She picked up her mug and sipped at her tea, then she put the tea down and resumed staring at the table.

  Nothing was said for a long time. Keel put his hand on Freja’s, and she gripped it like a cliff face. Then Flynn spoke.

  “Did you go to the police?”

  Freja shook her head. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “So many reasons. For one, we were embarrassed. We thought maybe we had led the boys on, maybe it was something that had to happen.”

  “It’s not,” said Flynn.

  “I know that now. But under Danish law, technically it might not be considered rape because we didn’t fight back. The law doesn’t require consent. It’s implied if we didn’t fight them off.”

  “What about your parents?” Flynn asked.

  Freja put her hands to her face and covered her mouth. “That was the worst part.” She dropped her hands again and took Keel’s.

  “Luna did tell her parents. They didn’t believe her. They thought she was making an excuse for having a party while they were away. They thought it was just a young girl trying to get some attention.

  “Everyone says that Luna gradually descended into drugs and alcohol and so on, but that’s not true. It started right there. Not the rape so much, as bad as that was. It was her parents denying it happened, essentially calling her a liar. I was so scared that mine would react the same way, so I didn’t tell them. I just pushed it deep down. For a while I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe my parents would have believed me, supported me, but I knew. They were the same as the Fiskers. They are, in their hearts, conservative people. Stand-up guys didn’t do things like that, and if they did, there had to be a reason for it.

  “The rape was damaging enough, but the denial was worse. I think I only made it through because my parents’ denial was never fully realized. I never gave them the chance. But Luna was denied. Raped and denied.

  “I should have been there for her, but I was barely hanging on myself. It’s so selfish, I know. All I could think about was me. How I caused this to happen. I couldn’t wait to get away. From that place and from Luna. Every time I looked at her I remembered lying on that bed, curled up and crying. I had to leave, and I had to never return.”