The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  ‘One of the better street acts, wouldn’t you say, Chief Inspector?’ a light voice behind him said. Toftlund turned round. Pavel Samson in no way lived up to his surname. He was a short, tubby middle-aged man clad in a hideously patterned jacket and a green shirt which bulged paunchily over his grey flannels. His face was almost perfectly round and pocked with acne scars; small grey eyes looked out from under a low forehead. A few thin strands of hair looked as though they had been planted across his pallid scalp by an attentive gardener. His face was a ruddy brown. Not the skin tone which, this early in the year, Czechs and Slovaks could acquire in one of the new tanning salons, but that deriving from a close acquaintance with the excellent Czech beer, vodka and spicy, cinnamon flavoured Becherovka.

  ‘Mr Samson,’ Toftlund said and gave him his hand. Samson’s grip was limp and rather clammy, but there was a keen light in the alert grey eyes.

  ‘Do you mind if we speak German?’ Samson asked.

  ‘Fine by me.’

  ‘Good, then let’s take a little stroll,’ he said in almost flawless German.

  They walked for a while in silence, Toftlund allowing Samson to lead the way. They crossed the bridge to the Castle side. Once over, Samson turned right and they strolled along the riverbank. A barge slid past and the sightseeing boat from before was turning in the stream again.

  ‘I noticed you took your precautions,’ Samson said. His voice was light and soft, almost feminine. ‘They were excellent, and you were not followed.’

  ‘Who could be following me – exactly?’ Toftlund asked.

  Samson laughed. A high-pitched little laugh:

  ‘Everybody and anybody. Prague, Bratislava, Budapest. This part of the world is a real hotbed of spies. Like something out of a novel by Eric Ambler. There’s a real feel of the thirties about Central Europe today. What with the war, they’re falling over one another: spies, traitors, lost souls, those who missed the boat first time round. They’re all here: the British, the Germans, the Russians, our own people, the Yugoslavians, not to mention the Croats. This is the inflamed flashpoint of Europe, where loyalties and information are bought and sold. Everybody is out to make a killing, but a lot of them want to get out of the game before it’s too late. Ten years after the Wall came down we still have people with one foot in the old camp and the other in NATO and the EU. We have old agents and torturers who are worried that the files will spit out the truth. We’ve got it all here. Cut-price capitalism and anarchic liberty mingled with a burgeoning authoritarianism. Post-communism they call it. The legacy of Lenin’s failed experiment is not that easily expunged.’

  Quite a little speech, Toftlund thought to himself. Interesting, though. It held the promise of more to come. The wind caught at Samson’s wispy hair and sent the neatly arranged strands flying up from his white pate. He looked like a badly-paid office worker, but behind the unprepossing exterior Toflund sensed a shrewd and formidable personality.

  ‘Now then. Our friend in Poland believed you had something to tell me? Your counterparts in Bratislava were not particularly helpful.’

  The little man blew down his nose in something approaching a snort:

  ‘No. They want nothing to do with anything. They’re scared. As you may know, Slovakia is without a president at the moment. They are hoping that Meciar will win the forthcoming election. In which case they’ll be safe for a while yet. If one of the other candidates wins, who knows what will happen. It could be that a new president and the new government might actually mean what they say. That intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies are actually there to serve the people and not working against the people.’

  ‘That’s what you believe?’

  ‘Perhaps. There’s not much I believe in. But I have two daughters in their early teens, Chief Inspector. When you have children you can no longer allow yourself to be misanthropic. You have to believe in the future. Believe that there are honest people in the world. Do you have children, Mr Toftlund?’

  ‘I have a daughter on the way. Due in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Congratulations. And you already know it’s a girl. How advanced.’

  ‘Well, that’s modern technology for you.’

  ‘Ah, but it should not rob us of our surprises.’

  ‘Well, we wanted to know that everything was alright,’ Toftlund said, against his will really. He was not a person given to discussing his private life with strangers. And suddenly he lost his focus and found himself thinking about Lise instead of the job in hand. Thrown slightly by this he did not catch what Samson said next. The little Slovak smiled, as if he could see right through Toftlund and had found his weak spot.

  ‘There’s no shame in showing that one misses one’s loved ones,’ he said.

  Toftlund felt annoyance and anger well up inside him.

  ‘That’s not what we’re here to talk about, though, is it,’ he said, but Samson continued to pursue his own train of thought:

  ‘Take me, for instance. Why should I help a Pole and a Dane? Some time ago I was transferred to the vice squad. A department in which even the most stalwart officer can be corrupted. Sex, drugs, money. It’s a potent cocktail, one which can break the strongest will.’

  ‘I see. Why?’

  ‘My wife, my daughters. To get a little revenge on those who had me removed from the service. To be able to look myself in the eye in the mornings. Because I’m a fool.’ Samson had misunderstood his question, but Toftlund pursued the thread, saying instead:

  ‘Now that I don’t believe.’

  They came to another bridge, Samson walked on to it and they began to stroll back to the other side. This bridge was open to traffic and Toftlund noted the mixture of old Eastern European cars and shiny new Mercedes, Audis and BMWs on the road. The contrasts leapt out at you everywhere here. In the buildings, the cars, the people, the air, the light, the city and the times.

  They walked on again in silence, side by side. Samson took short, brisk strides and Toftlund frequently had to do a little skip to keep up with him. Samson’s German was rapid, precise and grammatically correct, rather like that spoken in the old GDR, and yet not quite.

  ‘Your German is excellent,’ Toftlund said.

  ‘I did part of my training with our beloved allies in the former GDR, may they rot in hell.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘That is a typical Western question. As if I had a choice.’

  ‘Everyone has a choice.’

  ‘That’s easy to say for someone who has been brought up to take freedom for granted. The choice was harder to make than you think. I also have a son from a previous marriage. My courage did not extend to becoming a non-person and seeing him and my then wife treated as outcasts. Communism was as good at ostracising people as those fundamentalist Christian sects in the United States. I tried to do my little bit in other ways.’

  Suddenly Toftlund understood. He stopped, put a hand on Samson’s arm. The latter turned and looked up into his face.

  ‘You were a double agent,’ Toftlund said. ‘You worked for the Americans.’

  ‘Well, the British actually, but yes, you’re right.’

  ‘But you ought to be a hero now. And have been paid compensation.’

  Samson laughed his high, shrill laugh:

  ‘Life isn’t that simple. No one likes a traitor, not even the winning side. And certainly not the losers. If you’ve betrayed your country once you could do it again. You see before you, Chief Inspector, one of the cold war’s countless punch-drunk sluggers.’

  ‘That’s not how I see you,’ Toftlund said, and meant it. A double agent’s life was a hell on earth. Constantly saying one thing and thinking something else. Never knowing whether your cover might be blown by the other side’s willing helpers or a renegade in the long corridors of the spy chief ’s office. Knowing that you are not the only one who can betray secrets. That you are a piece of merchandise which can be swapped or traded. That you always have a corner deep inside you to
which not even those closest to you can gain access. That your name is secreted in a file somewhere. And that name and the reference number attached to it are like a tumour, only waiting to grow and spread. Per’s respect for the little Slovak grew. Behind the bland clerkish façade was a tough little character.

  Samson halted outside a café.

  ‘There’s no one on our tail. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?’

  ‘That would be great, thanks.’

  The café was small and dim with a short wooden bar and a score of tables and chairs. Three young men sat at a table with large glasses of beer in front of them. Samson and Toftlund seated themselves at a table by the window. They were tucked well into the corner and the curtain hanging over the café window hid their faces from anyone who might have felt like peering through the window.

  ‘You’re Slovakian …’

  ‘Czechoslovakian, actually,’ Samson said with a smile and lit a long filter cigarette. ‘The term doesn’t exist any more, I know, but I really do feel Czechoslovakian. My mother was a Czech, and a Sudeten German – just to make things even more complicated. My father was a Slovak. My wife is the daughter of a Czech father and a Slovakian mother. Today we – and hence our children too – are Slovakian citizens. Things tend to get a bit mixed up in this part of the world. Our history is in itself a pretty complex affair. Are you familiar with it at all?

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘No, why should you be?’ he said, and continued: ‘But during the Second World War Slovakia was a Nazi vassal state, although officially independent. The Czech part of the republic was occupied. After the war the Czechs either deported or imprisoned the surviving Sudeten Germans. That was a very dark chapter. In ’48 came the communist coup. By some miracle my father and mother lived through it all and by the sixties when I was about to start at university, that part of our history had been forgiven. Normally, forgiveness is hard to come by. But there was a need for new cadres. And with the communists, opportunism and cynicism often outweighed their desire to punish generation after generation of the same family. Which was lucky for me.’

  The plump waitress came over with their coffee and placed it on the table in front of them. It was good and strong.

  Pavel Samson leaned across the table and said:

  ‘You’re interested in the woman from Bratislava.’

  ‘Yes, the Serbian spy.’

  ‘Spy, yes. But not Serbian. She worked for Tito for many years. Since 1990 she has been a Croatian spy, all unknown to Belgrade. They thought she was working for Milosevic. When they found out, her life was not worth a handful of devalued Serbian dinars. And what does an agent do when things get too hot for her? She sells what she has. Either to the highest bidder, or to whoever she thinks is likely to come out on top. Which is to say: NATO. How? With Serbian agents breathing down her neck. Tailing her, most likely. Who can she trust? What if she’s turned away at the door? How to find a way in? She turns her history to her advantage, Chief Inspector. Her knowledge that she has a Danish father and Danish half-siblings. She knows that one of her half-brothers is in the area, because, like the fox, a canny agent always makes a point of having at least one exit unknown to any of her employers.’

  ‘And the half-sister?’ Toftlund asked.

  ‘May have been in the files. Or may have been discovered in the files.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I don’t need to tell you that intelligence work is an equal mix of hard work and luck. Maybe someone got lucky when on the hunt for some potential form of insurance.’

  ‘Any proof?’

  ‘Of course not,’ the little man retorted irritably.

  Toftlund thought for a moment, then he said:

  ‘The woman from Bratislava – why do you have so much on her?’

  ‘We’ve had our eye on her for years.’

  ‘You and everyone else apparently.’

  ‘Yes, because who actually owned her soul? The price of loyalty fell drastically when the communists gave up trying to hang on to power.’

  Samson sipped his coffee and lit another cigarette.

  ‘Have you any idea what she has to sell?’

  ‘No, but I know it was big enough for the Serbs or the Croats to try and get their hands on it in Budapest. With fatal consequences for an innocent man. But then, there are casualties in every war, or so they would say, if they had any moral scruples at all.’

  ‘So it has to be something to do with the war?’ Toftlund said.

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Something valuable?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Do you know what it is?’

  ‘No. It was in your countryman’s suitcase, which went missing at Bratislava Airport.’

  ‘But that went missing in transit, it happens all the time.’

  ‘No, it was lifted at the airport. Another suitcase was sent off on an endless world tour.’

  ‘You’re sure about this?’

  ‘Positive. I know the man who lifted it. He owed me a favour.’

  ‘And the woman?’

  Samson shrugged and drank the last of his coffee:

  ‘Gone to ground. Word is the Serbs have a contract out on her. I don’t know how much they are offering, but it’s in Deutschmarks, and in today’s Yugoslavia they go a long way, so there are bound to be plenty of bidders. She has approached the British and the Americans. They don’t trust her. They showed her the door. So now she has her heart set on the Danes. You’re a small nation. A bit sentimental. And, she hopes, might feel a little flattered. And you have nothing to lose. And then there are the old ties. She has her hopes pinned on those.’

  Toftlund sat for a moment. Then he looked into the Slovak’s cool, steady grey eyes:

  ‘Might she perhaps know a name that has some special significance for Denmark?’

  Samson said nothing, but he held Toftlund’s gaze.

  ‘A Danish spy, whose code name we may have from Stasi, but not their real name. A Danish spy, a person so highly-placed that someone would be prepared to kill to protect them. What do you say to that, Mr Samson?’

  Samson beckoned to the waitress and said:

  ‘In our world anything is possible. All the signs are, at any rate, that the trail points to Denmark. That it may have its beginnings in this part of the world, but that it points to Denmark. If you would care to buy me lunch around the corner I will fill you in on the background. Like everything else in this country it is bound up with the past and is quite fascinating.’

  ‘You’re on,’ Toftlund said, feeling pretty damn good.

  14

  IT WAS AN ODD PLACE Pavel Samson had chosen for them to have lunch, Toftlund thought. They might just as well have been in Copenhagen or Hamburg, or even Beijing. It was a thoroughly American concept: from the young man in the white shirt, tie with a single knot, sharp creases and badge saying ‘Shift Manager’ and the nippy little waitresses, not all of whom had the legs for their short skirts, to the menu with its endless variations on the hamburgers, steak and fries theme. The restaurant was big, with a long bar at which what appeared to be three expat Brits were idly discussing golf handicaps. The tablecloths were the red-and-white check of the pizzeria. For caps the waitresses had stupid-looking bunny ears; they were ordered about by the short-tempered shift manager. At one table a party of suits was gabbling animatedly in Czech about complicated business matters. At any rate Toftlund caught the words ‘stock market’ every now and again. So brokers maybe – four burly men whose suits might have been tailor-made, but somehow still did not sit quite right on them. As if they would have been more at home in tight jeans and leather jackets. With them was a young blonde with her breasts amply exposed. She sat with a drink in her hand and the food in front of her untouched, taking bored puffs of her cigarette. The men paid her no heed. The place smelled faintly of cleaning fluids and deep-fat frying. Mainly the latter. But the big, red beef steaks and the hamburgers with mounds of potato chips actually looked
very tempting. The prices quoted on the menu were high even by Copenhagen standards, but the restaurant was almost full.

  Samson and Toftlund were shown to a table not far from the bar. Or rather: a booth. It was all very American. Samson slid onto the bench, Toftlund took a seat across from him. The menu arrived straight away, along with glasses of iced water and a ‘How are you all today’ delivered with a Czech accent. It was all so artificial that Toftlund could not help remarking:

  ‘Very Czech, Mr Samson.’

  Pavel gave his high-pitched laugh:

  ‘Bloody expensive. Exotic for me. That’s why.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘But this place is also a part of our recent history. A marker on our route from communism to the golden promise of capitalism. On this spot there used to be a good old traditional Czech restaurant serving pork chops, red cabbage, potato dumplings, bread dumplings … Decent food at decent prices, even under the communists. Big glasses of draught beer. Then it was privatised. But during that process there arose, how shall I put it, certain differences of opinion between business partners, a disagreement which was settled by simply bombing the restaurant.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Toftlund said and waited for him to go on.

  But instead: ‘I think I’m going to go for a gin and tonic and some potato soup, followed by steak and mushrooms,’ Samson said, and glanced up at Toftlund.

  ‘The same for me.’

  ‘And a good bottle of wine. For me that would be a whole month’s wages gone. Anyway – for months this building was nothing but a shell. No one wanted to touch it after the mafia had displayed such a clear interest in it, but then a man came riding into town from the great US of A. Third generation Czechoslovak with papers stating that his family had owned the building until it was nationalised by the communists in 1948. So it was given back to him free of charge, and here you see the result.’