“Variations on it. Usually the power goes out all on its own.”
They cut power to another house and moved on.
“You and Peder have known John a long time.”
“We have.”
“Peder would do anything for him.”
“As would I. We’d do anything for one another.”
“But you never asked about his past?”
“Like we said, at first it was sort of taboo, an unspoken rule. Guys had their own reasons for joining the Legion. Later, when our unit was formed, we more or less knew all we needed to know. We already had shared history, so the stuff before that wasn’t so important. Like when you get married. You know that your husband had other girlfriends or lived in this place or that, or did this job. But you don’t know the specifics, aside from a few good stories that might get told. You just accept that you weren’t in that life, the way he wasn’t in yours, until he was. It was something like that.”
Begitte walked silently for a while. Then: “Why is John afraid of fire?”
Gorski looked at her. “What makes you say that?”
“He recoiled from the flame on the cooktop, more than once. When Peder cooked on the barbecue, you went out with him, but John did not. Usually guys all go out and observe the cooking, like it’s some kind of ritual. John didn’t do that.”
“His family died in a bomb blast, before he joined the Legion.”
“There was fire?”
“There usually is when a building explodes.”
“Is that why he doesn’t drink? Is he an alcoholic?”
“I don’t know,” said Gorski, hitting another breaker box. “I don’t know what the definition is. He doesn’t drink, you’re right. There was a thing that happened.”
“What thing?”
“I’m not sure it’s my story to tell.”
“I’m about to put my life in his hands.”
Gorski shrugged. “He was hiking during some R&R time after what you might call basic training. He was staying at a farm with a family he had met in a village in the Alps. I think he did a little work for them, and they offered him a bed. It wasn’t so long after his parents died, and I guess he was still working through that. Anyway, he drank to chase away the demons. There were plenty of demons among the Legionnaires. The story I heard was that he got drunk and passed out in a barn at the farm, but during the night there was a fire.”
“He got out?”
“It wasn’t in the barn. It was in the house. They said it was electrical. The entire house burned. The family died, all of them.”
“And John?”
“Was woken up by the sound of the firefighters putting it out. He was passed out through the whole thing. He was the only one who could have raised the alarm earlier or even gotten the people out before it took hold. At least, I think that’s what he tells himself.”
“You don’t think it’s so?”
“We’ll never know. If he had been inside the house, maybe he would have died as well. Maybe they’d all be alive. He’ll never know.”
“Is that why he knows so much about how my parents’ house burned?”
“It’s the flip side of the coin. He read everything about fire, about arson. He followed investigators looking for clues in terrorist bombings. It’s like his nemesis or something.”
“But he stopped drinking?”
“Cold turkey. Never touched a drop again. I worried a few times after that, even lately, that he had fallen off the wagon. I saw him buy liquor and take it back to his room. Always bourbon. But in the morning he would be fine, no effects. One night I snuck into his room to make sure he was okay, and the bottle was on the floor. It was full.”
“Full?”
“Yes. Numerous times after that I saw him pouring a full bottle down the drain the next day.”
“Why buy it and not drink it?”
“For me, it makes no sense at all. I’d drink it. But for him? I think it’s a test, perhaps of his resolve. I think maybe it reminds him of what happened when he allowed himself to be weak, so when he feels the weakness coming on, I think maybe he tests himself, to confirm he is in fact strong.”
“You didn’t talk to him about it?”
“No. It never became an issue, and we all have our demons. We learned to give him the space to face his as he saw fit, as he did the same for us.”
Begitte didn’t say anything more.
They completed the shutdown. The walk back to the house was in total darkness. Modern life rarely allowed it to be that way. Begitte put her hand up and could barely see it. The only light came from her house. The home fires were burning, so to speak.
Chapter Forty-Five
Flynn walked back to the central station. He retrieved his pack and the day pack, used a bathroom stall to consolidate his load, and got on a train for Veksø. He called Gorski from the train using the phone taken from the obnoxious customer in the clothing store. It was working just fine. He guessed she wouldn’t contact the phone company until tomorrow. They would ascertain that it had been used out of the city and therefore was stolen, and they would cut it off. He told Gorski he was incoming, and Gorski told him there was still one watcher on the road, the same guy as before, tired and alone. He told Flynn they were ready.
From Veksø, Flynn marched the rest of the way in darkness with the aid of a flashlight, out of the village and on through the smaller village of Østvand.
He saw the shape of the Land Rover, parked on the shoulder of the dirt road leading up to the cohousing community about a kilometer out. It was a long, straight shot past the community, and the landscape was nothing but spring barley, which presented itself at night as a flat horizon, punctuated by an out-of-place square shape above the line of the crop. The Land Rover had a definitive body shape, like a shoebox on wheels. Had it been the tiny blue Corsa, he might have walked right into the back of it.
Flynn turned off his flashlight and walked up the middle of the road until he got about a hundred meters short of the vehicle. Then he dropped his pack onto the road and took out a large pair of hiking socks. Not completely necessary in the summer but great for winter conditions. He would be sorry to see them go, but they could be replaced.
Flynn collected a handful of rocks from the side of the road and then crept forward. It was dark, and although the watcher’s eyes would be acclimatized to the lack of light, he would be fatigued and inattentive. Flynn had done a lot of watching in his time. The key was rotation. Rotation of what was being watched—near, middle distance, far—and rotation of personnel so their eyes had time to rest. But this guy had no one to rotate with and no difference in distance to focus on. Night was night. Plus his circadian rhythm would be telling him to rest. He might be asleep in the vehicle, waiting for a noise to rouse him.
But Flynn worked on the assumption he was awake and alert. He came in right behind the car, low and slow. It was movement that the eye picked up in such situations, not shapes. He got to the back bumper without raising any alarm, then he slowly stuffed his balled-up hiking socks—thick and woolen, excellent insulators—into the tailpipe. Once he had them wedged in, he carefully started pushing in the rocks he had collected. They were more likely to make noise than the socks, as their rough edges scratched and stuck, like a bung in a wine barrel.
Once all the rocks were in, he waited a minute.
There was no reaction from the watcher, so Flynn dropped back into the darkness and crept to his pack. He hoisted it onto his back and marched forward, right up the middle of the road where the line of grass grew inside the wheel ruts.
Flynn glanced at the watcher as he strode past. There was movement of the head from inside the vehicle, as if the guy was awake but until that moment not fully alert. Flynn didn’t stop and within ten strides would be almost out of sight. The guy could have lit him up with his headlights, but he didn’t.
Flynn marched on.
* * *
The watcher dozed. He never fully fell asleep—he was pretty confiden
t of that—but watching fields of barley do nothing but waft in the breeze all day had fatigued his eyes, and now the flatness of night gave him nothing to see or do. He fought his eyelids as they closed. He turned the radio on to stay awake, but in the silence of the field, it felt like it was transmitting all the way back to Copenhagen. Not that they didn’t know he was there. He wasn’t hiding, but it just felt wrong somehow, so he turned it off and sat in silence.
His head had nodded forward, chin resting on his chest, but something in his ancient animal brain caused him to snap awake, and he saw movement in the corner of his eye. He wasn’t sure at first. Perhaps it was his imagination, seeing things where there was nothing to see. But then he looked again and saw the man walk past like a ghost. He seemed to pay no attention to the car or the driver but just walk on as if he expected a vehicle to be parked on a road to nowhere.
The guy wore a big backpack. That was the last thing the driver saw. Then the man and the backpack were gone, enveloped by the night. The driver put his hand to the headlight switch, tempted to light the backpack up. He hesitated a moment and then dropped his hand. He didn’t need to light him up. He knew who it was. He had a description. The guy had left with a backpack and roamed around Copenhagen causing all manner of trouble. Now he returned with a backpack.
The driver took out his phone. The screen lit up the interior like the lights of Tivoli Gardens, but he didn’t care. The man with the backpack knew he was there. He made his call.
“The American is back,” he said.
“Are you sure?” asked Hans Lund.
“He just walked past me.”
“Walked?”
“Yes, with his backpack on.”
“Did he see you?”
“Of course.”
“Did he stop?”
“No.”
The driver waited on Lund. Lund didn’t speak until he was ready.
“Are the others there?”
“The sister and the brother-in-law—they are there. The American’s partner is there. He went out on a motorcycle earlier but just to fuel it up. He came back. There are fewer cars than before, but I didn’t see anyone leave. Perhaps someone went out while I was following the motorcycle. But the whole place is dark.”
There was a pause again. “That might work to our advantage. The American, his partner, the sister, and her husband—they are the head of the snake. We take them out, the others will comply.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Come in. Søndergaard and Dahl have just arrived. They’re in a tiny city car. We need your Land Rover. It’s time to finish these games.”
Lund ended the call, and the watcher dropped the phone in the console and started up the car. It was throaty and deep, a serious engine for a serious vehicle. He left the headlights off until he had made a U-turn and started heading away from the commune. Then he flicked them on and lit up the dirt road like a tunnel of light.
He got about a kilometer. He was still short of the next village when the accelerator stopped responding and the vehicle lurched like a smoker coughing up a lung. He pumped at the pedal, but it only seemed to make things worse. There was no final splutter. The engine just stopped dead. The power steering went with it, then the Land Rover followed the camber of the road and headed for the barley. The brakes still worked, so he tapped them and managed to stop. He pulled the handbrake and tried the ignition. The engine wheezed but failed to fire. He tried again with the same result.
The watcher slapped the steering wheel. It was perfect timing. There was no way he could pop the hood and figure it out in the dark with nothing more than his phone for light. A tow wouldn’t come until morning, not out here. He failed to come up with any other option. He ran through it again, desperately, but still found no alternatives.
He grabbed his phone, got out, and locked the car, then he started walking. He took a deep breath and called Lund. Told him the vehicle had broken down, and no, he didn’t know why. Lund cursed him and English cars and then told him to keep going through Østvand and then cut up the north road toward Lund’s estate.
Lund told him to run.
Chapter Forty-Six
The cohousing community was dark and quiet. Not just nighttime dark but blackout dark, like London during the Blitz. Flynn expected it to be. He marched up the nine o’clock side of his imaginary clockface, past the communal building.
“Dressed like that, you’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”
Flynn stopped as Gorski stepped from the darkness. “You been on a date?”
“I did meet a woman,” Flynn said.
“Interesting.”
“She hit me with her car.”
“My kind of girl.”
They walked on toward the Thorsen house.
“Are we clear?” Flynn asked.
“Yes. They weren’t happy about it. They think leaving this place open to Lund is surrender. But they got with the program. Everyone is gone except you, me, Thorsen, and Begitte.”
“Begitte? She should be gone too.”
“I’m sure you think so, but she’s pretty insistent when she wants to be.”
“I got that impression.”
“And handy. I wouldn’t be here right now if not for her.”
“That so?”
“It is.”
Gorski knocked and then walked right inside. He didn’t take his boots off. He just led Flynn straight into the living room. Thorsen was on his computer. Begitte was standing in the kitchen.
“You must need some coffee,” she said.
“Thanks,” said Flynn. He dumped his pack and took a load off. Thorsen didn’t ask him how he was. He was working.
Begitte made coffee and set it in the living area. The four of them sat for a moment in silence, the cozy room suddenly feeling tight. Begitte didn’t take her eyes off Flynn.
“Why did you want everyone to leave?” she asked.
“Things are going to come to a head,” replied Flynn.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“As soon as we’re ready.”
“Who?”
Flynn sipped his coffee. He longed for a hit of espresso but took what was on offer. He told them about Ager and his team, DSIS agents working as a personal hit squad for the man called Klaasen. He told them that although Klaasen worked in the office of the prime minister, it was not the prime minister he was protecting.
“Why is he protecting anyone?” asked Begitte.
Flynn took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure that now was the time. There were things to do, and focus was key. But he knew that if she didn’t get answers to her questions, they would surely blur her attention as much as the truth. The truth had a way of clarifying matters and focusing the mind.
“It’s about Luna,” he said.
“Of course,” she said. “Tell me.”
“Ager works for Klaasen. Klaasen is protecting someone. Someone I don’t know yet. But that someone was involved in something bad.”
“Tell me,” she said again.
“This man, he and another came to this community and raped two girls. Luna was one of them.”
“And who else?”
“Freja Jensen.”
Begitte nodded. “When?”
“Many years ago. They were fifteen.”
“You say you don’t know one of the men. But you know the other?”
“Victor Berg.”
Begitte nodded again. Flynn glanced at Thorsen. He was not working on his computer. He was watching his wife. She was stoic, strong. There were no tears. Perhaps they had happened already, or perhaps they would come later.
“This is why she went downhill,” she said. “With the drugs and alcohol.”
“It seems like a major factor,” said Flynn.
Begitte stared at the coffee table for a long time. Then she shook her head. “She should have told me.”
“You were twelve years old,” said Thorsen.
&
nbsp; “Our parents, then.” She frowned as she spoke, and then she looked at Flynn. “She did tell them, didn’t she? She told them, and they did nothing. But they knew. That’s what drove her away, and that’s what drove them away eventually, isn’t it?”
Flynn nodded.
“That’s why they can’t live here. They know what happened, and they know they did nothing.”
“It was a different time,” said Flynn.
“Are you making excuses for them?”
“No.”
“Good. Because there are no excuses. But it doesn’t answer the question, if this happened all these years ago, why did she go downhill now? Why is she dead now?”
Flynn explained how Freja had recalled that the two boys, who were really young men, had taken photographs of their conquest, and how the other one, not Berg, had destroyed the film before leaving, as if he suddenly realized the damage it could do him. When the reporter came to do a story on Berg’s political rise, it had triggered something in Luna, something dormant. The repressed memory of that night. She had told the reporter that Berg was a bad man, but she hadn’t detailed why. Then shortly after, she saw Berg at a rally.
“She confronted him about something,” said Thorsen. “We thought it was about the development deal with Lund.”
“No,” said Flynn. “I think she confronted him about that night. I think she told him she had proof of his guilt. He knew there were photos, and he knew they were destroyed. But I think he was concerned that maybe she had something after all. That’s why he had Klaasen get his men to burn down the house.”
“To kill her?”
“Maybe. But I think they were also trying to destroy the evidence. See, I think Luna told Berg that she had told the reporter she had some kind of proof. Because at the same time as the house fire, the reporter got an offer out of the blue for a job in Washington, DC. Someone with some serious influence pulled strings, and fast.”
“They didn’t try to kill the reporter?” asked Thorsen.
“That would raise a lot of questions,” said Flynn. “All they needed was for the reporter to be preoccupied by her great new job and not be thinking about Luna. Which she wasn’t. She had more or less written Luna’s comments off as the rambling of an unstable mind, and she didn’t even know about the fire. But she had done something Klaasen and Berg had not anticipated. She made notes and left them with a colleague. A junior colleague, since at that point it was really just a background story. I inadvertently linked the new reporter with the notes. I don’t know how they got onto me, but I did call the reporter and I did visit her newspaper in the city. Perhaps they were listening, perhaps someone heard something. That’s how Klaasen’s DSIS team got involved. Because I said there was a note about the evidence being where Luna lived. They knew that. That’s why they burned the house. Because the proof was there.”
The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller Page 28
