The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller

by Stewart, A. J.

  “So what if there was more film?”

  “Now you’re grasping, Jacques. A court is going to have a hard time believing this story from a girl who has displayed aggravated behavior toward the accused. They’ll say Luna’s making the whole thing up.”

  “Luna didn’t tell me about the camera. The other victim did. Luna can’t tell me anything. She’s dead.”

  Now Margret felt her stomach drawing in tight, like it was caught in a vise.

  “How?”

  “She allegedly committed suicide.”

  “But you don’t agree.”

  “She was unstable, that much is true. But there’s an anomaly. You need to check the police report.”

  “What for?”

  “The car. She drove out to Møns Klint and jumped from the cliffs into the sea, so they say.”

  “Why didn’t it happen that way?”

  “Like our friend Nils here, Luna didn’t drive. She didn’t have a license. She didn’t have a car. The working narrative is that she stole one.”

  “Cars get stolen.”

  “They do, but not by regular people, and not without a scratch. Most people wouldn’t have a clue how to break into a vehicle, let alone start one without the keys. It’s not that easy on modern-day cars. And the police officer on Møn told me the car was undamaged. No broken windows.”

  “There are too many holes in your story,” said Margret. “I’m not saying there’s nothing there, but there are holes.”

  “Which we’ll fill.”

  “We will. If you come in with me. We can work it through.”

  “You said it yourself, this is a Danish matter. And they’re covering up their tracks. I come in, we won’t be working this together. I’ll never be heard from again.”

  “You don’t trust me, Jacques?”

  “I trust you,” he said. “I just don’t trust the system. The system isn’t interested in the truth. The system is interested in the status quo.”

  Margret’s focus moved to the front of the boat again as they glided under Bryggebroen, a pedestrian and bicycle bridge across the inner harbor. Her focus was ripped back toward the rear by Fontaine moving.

  He stretched across the seats, grabbed the outer frame of the window and, in one fluid movement, hauled himself out the window. Margret jumped forward and saw no deck around the sides of the boat. Fontaine’s feet disappeared above the window, and she realized he had coiled up onto the roof of the cabin.

  Later she would think about the core strength required to do that, but now she turned and dashed up the steps and out onto the rear deck. She looked back toward the front in shadow, the bridge overhead.

  Fontaine was crouched on the roof. He looked at her.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said, and he stepped deftly off the roof and onto a steel barrier that surrounded the supports for the bridge.

  Margret saw him standing on the barrier as the boat floated away. He didn’t move. She knew why. They had a helicopter watching from above, and he would know that. He was waiting for the helicopter to move away, which it would, as it followed the boat down the inner harbor.

  The sunlight hit the bow of the water taxi as it poked out from under the bridge, and Margret stepped back inside so the helicopter wouldn’t see her on the deck. Olsen was still sitting and the captain was still driving, so she strode to the bow. The cabin filled with light as they continued along.

  She asked the captain to slow down. At the flash of her Interpol ID, he pulled back on the throttle, and the boat drifted forward. As the water taxi got halfway between the last bridge and the next, Margret stepped out onto the deck and called it in.

  The suspect had gotten away.

  Chapter Forty

  Flynn waited for the sound of the chopper to move along with the boat. The boat didn’t stop—not immediately, but with other traffic in the harbor, that would have been a dangerous maneuver. He flipped up onto the bridge and then over the pedestrian barrier. The barrier itself was covered in locks, apparently some romantic ritual that had come to pass since the bridge’s opening a few years before.

  He moved fast but didn’t run. Running would draw the eye. He saw the water taxi slowing down, the wake at the stern washing forward to hit the rear of the boat. He saw a chopper high above the boat.

  There was no more to see. He jogged onto the shore. To his left he saw the ferry dock where the harbor bus had dropped him after leaving the Royal Library the previous day. As he moved down the street, away from the water, he glanced back to see the chopper bank away from its position above the water taxi back toward the bridge.

  He strode down the same street as the previous day and into Amager Common as he had before, taking the same route into the bushes and hiding in roughly the same spot.

  He sat against a tree and caught his breath. They would be looking for him. From the air, from cars, on foot. But Margret had given him a chance. The delay in the chopper following him told him she hadn’t called in his escape for a few vital seconds. He figured she could sell those events to her higher-ups and to herself, but he knew he had work to do, because she wouldn’t be so generous again.

  Flynn rustled through his day pack and pulled out a phone. He was collecting them like trophies. This one was not his own burner. He had used that to call Margret, so Interpol was certainly tracking it now. He took out the phone belonging to the new DSIS agent who had arrived at the cellar. His phone wouldn’t be tracked. There was no reason. He wasn’t yet missing, not technically, not to anyone who wasn’t also locked in a cellar. Later on they would be able to see the calls made and received, revealing who talked to whom. But that was later, and later was too late.

  He called Thorsen.

  “Is it just you?” Flynn asked.

  “Gorski is here. You’re on speaker.”

  “And Begitte?”

  “Outside. Do you need her?”

  “No,” said Flynn. “But you need to know that I am certain that Luna didn’t kill herself. I can’t prove who or how yet, but I will. It’s probably best Begitte doesn’t know just yet. She needs to focus. We all do.”

  “Agreed,” said Thorsen.

  “What can you tell me?”

  “Margret was telling the truth. The landline belongs to the office of the prime minister. That means it goes into the building where his office is, but that’s actually a hundred individual offices going through a central switch.”

  “Okay.”

  “The mobile phone is a whole other beast. It’s a secure phone, meaning it can be encrypted end to end with another secure mobile phone, but it also functions as a regular mobile. I hacked the phone company. It wasn’t easy to find.”

  “It never is, but you always do. What did you learn?”

  “The phone belongs to the prime minister’s chief of staff.”

  “That’s not good. So the prime minister is involved.”

  Gorski cut in. “Not necessarily, mon adjudant. See, this chief of staff, his name is Aksel Klaasen. He’s former Danish military.”

  “The DSIS guy told me that name.”

  “Well, Thorsen accessed his service record. It’s long and distinguished, and full of holes.”

  “Holes?”

  “Periods of time not accounted for, promotions not apparently earned.”

  “Special ops,” said Flynn.

  “Of some variety. But he was wounded in battle. Taliban, Helmand province. There’s a picture on the internet. He’s a good-looking guy, if you’re into that sort of thing. Except for the long scar on the right side of his face. It’s shaped like a sickle. He looks like the damned Soviet flag.”

  “So is he the front man for the prime minister’s misadventures, or is he playing for somebody else, or himself?”

  “Unknown,” said Thorsen. “I’m still looking. But I can tell you this: he commanded a tight unit, and after his injury, they all left the armed forces.”

  “To do what?”

  “What you need to know is, Danish
security forces are essentially divided into two forces, in-country and out-of-country. Inward-looking, outward-looking. It’s not an exact comparison, but think police and army.”

  “Okay.”

  “When Klaasen was discharged, he moved into politics. His team left the army and joined the police.”

  “They became policemen?”

  “Not flatfoots walking the beat. They joined a very specific anti-terrorism unit. The DSIS.”

  “Them I’ve heard of,” said Flynn.

  “And Klaasen had a right-hand man in his special ops unit. He now leads the DSIS unit.”

  “Who?”

  “George Ager.”

  “Him I know.”

  “Right.” Flynn heard Thorsen speak away from the phone. “Begitte, we’re talking to John.”

  “Hello, John.”

  “Hi, Begitte.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Winning so far. But guys, this thing is moving. There are going to be winners and losers, that’s for damned sure. You need to prepare. Winter is coming.”

  Begitte said, “What does that mean, ‘winter is coming’?”

  Flynn didn’t answer. He heard Thorsen and Gorski answer for him in unison.

  “War.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Flynn walked south and east under the cover of trees where possible. At the eastern side of the common was a new community, a suburb built to cater to a growing Copenhagen, designed to be a master-planned new town where people lived, worked, and studied. The newest of architecture and urban design, a utopian vision of what the future would look like.

  It was a barren, soulless place of cookie-cutter buildings and walkways that were more like wind tunnels. It had attracted less than half the people they planned for and covered a large chunk of the little remaining natural wilderness in the capital.

  Flynn walked down the wide pedestrian avenues without seeing another pedestrian. It felt like the set from a futuristic movie, what Earth might look like after the apocalypse, when all the humans were gone but nature hadn’t yet taken over.

  He found what he was looking for. A large shopping complex, white and bright and cavernous, filled with stores he knew from Paris and London and Denver. He wandered past window displays until he found the look he was after, then he went inside and selected new trousers, a matching jacket, and a fresh shirt. He selected a pair of shoes with a shine that would have made his Marine father proud. When he stepped out of the fitting room, he looked like he could work in a bank or an insurance firm or even the clothing store he was standing in. It was neat and tidy and anonymous.

  It felt like a waste, but Flynn left his old clothes behind. He was especially sad to say goodbye to his boots. Good boots took time to break in, and although he would replace the impractical business shoes he now wore as soon as he could, he knew that marching would not be as comfortable for some time.

  He approached the cashier. The only other customer in the store was ahead of him, a woman who was screaming at the cashier. He understood it all because she was yelling in English. Not a local. She was unhappy about everything—the clothes, the service, the stain that she had put on a blouse that had failed to come out. The cashier looked like a deer in the headlights. The customer waved her hands around, holding an expensive-looking phone like a bludgeon.

  When the cashier asked her to show her the problem stain, she put the phone on the counter and bent over it so her anger could be better appreciated.

  Flynn stepped forward, slipped the phone off the counter and into his hand, then stepped back.

  The cashier next asked for a receipt to process a refund. The woman appeared to have no such receipt, and her yelling intensified.

  Flynn blocked it out. He looked at the woman’s phone. It was open; apparently some kind of biometric like a fingerprint or face recognition was the key. He flicked through the settings to turn on a numerical pass code, and, after entering the number again, he turned off the biometric option. Now it just worked with a number. A number only he knew. He put the phone into his pocket.

  It took a minute more before the woman stopped screaming long enough to look down at the counter for her phone. She saw the empty space and then paused. Then she patted her pockets, of which she had none, and then she turned on the cashier again.

  “Where is my phone?”

  “Pardon?” asked the cashier.

  “Where is my phone? What have you done with it?”

  “I don’t know anything about your phone, madam.”

  “I just had it in my hand, you idiot. I put it down here.”

  “I’m sorry, I was looking at your items. I didn’t see a phone.”

  “Are you blind? It was in my hand.” She waved her arms around and pivoted behind her, seeming to only then realize Flynn was there.

  “You saw it,” she said. “You must have.”

  “I saw a purse,” Flynn said.

  “What?”

  “A purse. You had a purse in your hand. I noticed it only because I thought you were about to pay. But there was no phone.”

  A flicker of doubt swept across her face. “No, I had a phone.”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “If I had my purse, where is it now?”

  “You dropped it in your handbag when the lady asked if you had a receipt.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, but she opened her bag anyway and found her purse lying on top. She frowned.

  “I definitely had my phone,” she repeated, but she no longer sounded definite.

  Flynn knew she would doubt herself. Scientific studies had proven it. He had read them all. It was a variation on groupthink, but Flynn had found it could be applied in certain circumstances on an individual basis. As an apparently independent source, Flynn’s certainty that what actually happened had not happened could convince a person they were wrong or, at the very least, make them doubt themselves. And once doubt set in, it was a matter of time.

  “Have you been shopping long?” he asked.

  “What? I’ve been here awhile. What business is it of yours?”

  “I find all these stores start to look the same. Perhaps you left your phone at another store?”

  “I did not leave it at another store,” she said slowly as her eyes moved high and to the left. She was clearly retracing her steps to consider whether that could have happened. The mind was a wonderful tool, but the memory was faulty at best.

  “Would you like me to call it?” Flynn asked.

  “What?”

  “Call your number, in case it’s here somewhere.”

  “Are you serious? You think I’m going to give you my number? Does that line ever work?”

  Flynn couldn’t think of a human whose number he wanted less. “If it’s here, it will ring. We’ll hear it.”

  “Obviously it’s not here, genius.” She turned to the cashier, snatched back her clothing items, and stormed out.

  Flynn watched her go and then offered a grim smile to the cashier. “Sorry about that.”

  The cashier shrugged. “It happens.”

  “Not often, I hope.”

  “About once an hour.”

  “Once an hour? People act like that eight times a shift?”

  “Seven, on average. I get a lunch break.”

  “Sorry about that,” he repeated.

  She shrugged again. “I’m a cashier, not a human.”

  Flynn had nothing to say to that. “I’m wearing my stuff, by the way.” He passed her the tags.

  “You want to wear it away?”

  “I have a job interview. I needed new clothes.”

  She looked at him and nodded, then she processed the transaction. Flynn handed her cash from the bounty taken from the DSIS guys and then handed her a few extra kroner.

  “That’s for you,” he said. “For putting up with us.”

  “We don’t really get tips,” she said.

  “Consider it National Cashiers Day.”

  He
strode out and saw no sign of the yelling woman. She wouldn’t find her phone—he knew that much—but she wouldn’t report it missing either. Not immediately. They were expensive to replace. She would check every store she had entered, then wonder if it was in her car or if she had left it on the train, or on the side table at home, or down between the cushions of the sofa. By the time she reported it, Flynn would be done.

  He stopped off at a barber and got a cut and shave, not so much of a waste as a necessary evil. Then he left. The best thing about Ørestad was the transport connections. He could get anywhere. Buses, trains, minutes to the airport. He jumped on a train headed into Copenhagen’s central station. He would walk to Slotsholmen from there.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  It was late in the afternoon by the time Flynn walked onto the islet of Slotsholmen. The long twilight was halfway done. He had stopped at the central station and added the day pack to his backpack in the locker. Stolen guns and ID and money could not go where he was going.

  He walked around the islet, observing all the proud and ancient buildings that now housed museums and the Folketinget and the prime minister’s office. He found the spot he wanted on Prins Jørgens Gård, between the church and the palace.

  The interior of the islet was the seat of government, secure and pedestrian-friendly and relatively free of vehicles. Relatively. Those who were important enough to the running of the country got to drive right on in and park in a city where even street parking was like gold. The truly powerful had bigger, fancier cars or even drivers. The slightly less important drove themselves.

  Flynn saw the car he liked well before it got to the gate to pull onto Slotsplads. It was a regular car, a BMW, but several years old. Someone important enough to have parking access to the precinct but not so important as to have a newer model or a personal driver.

  The black BMW moved cautiously across the plaza beyond the gate and then stopped short of the sidewalk. It was driven by a woman, blond and maybe forty years old. She checked the sidewalk for pedestrians, looking both ways once and then again. She was a cautious driver, moving away slowly. The speed was good for Flynn. Less chance of things going wrong, of serious injury.