‘I don’t like this,’ Teddy muttered.
‘You don’t have to. Just stay close to me and you’ll be fine.’
‘Why didn’t you get your old army pal to help you? I’m not much bloody good as a bodyguard.’
‘They’ve got their problems. We’ve got ours.’
‘You’ve got yours, you mean. I’m only along for the ride. Just remember that.’
‘Look upon it as an experience,’ Toflund said, more nonchalantly than he felt. He could sense the adrenalin pumping through his veins, which was good, as long as it didn’t get out of hand. His awareness was heightened and he had the impression that he could hear, see and smell more clearly: the roar of a car in the distance, the incessant barking, yapping mutts up in the town, a pair of heels tapping briskly over the crooked paving stones, the whiff of rotting seaweed and oil from the sea, which lay calm as a millpond in the darkness that had fallen so suddenly, enfolding them in a soft cloak, the air balmy still, though Per knew the temperature would drop fast now.
Toftlund opened the door. Teddy was right behind him. At first they could not see anyone inside, neither staff nor diners. The place was in semi-darkness, lit only by table lamps. They stood for a moment, then Toftlund caught sight of a man sitting at a table at the very back of the restaurant. It looked as though he had just eaten. In front of him was a plate with the last of some fettucine on it. Next to it a bowl of parmesan and a glass half full of red wine. They recognised the pockmarked face and the long, grey ponytail hanging down the back of the leather jacket with the hippie fringing. It was the man from the airport. At a table in the corner sat two blank-faced young men in blue jeans and black leather jackets, each with his cup of espresso.
‘Chief Inspector Toftlund, please sit down with your friend and have some wine,’ said the man from the airport. His English was clear and fluent with the hint of an American drawl.
They sat down, Toftlund making sure that he had Teddy on his right, between him and the two bodyguards. This could win him a vital few seconds should there be trouble. He hoped there would not be, his heart pounded at the thought of it, but he was banking on the fact that this was business and would be dealt with as such. No more and no less.
The man in the weird Red Indian jacket raised his hand, and for a brief moment all the rings on his fingers glittered in the light. From the gloom of the bar stepped a middle-aged woman in a white shirt and black skirt. Without meeting anyone’s eye she placed two glasses and a fresh bottle of red wine on the table and removed the plate. A beringed hand filled their glasses, then their companion lifted his own and nodded. Per and Teddy returned the nod and drank. Teddy sighed blissfully and with a ‘Do you mind?’ turned the bottle around to read the label.
‘Ah, Barolo! Allow me to thank you for this excellent wine,’ Teddy said in English. ‘Over the past few days I’ve been forced to betray one of my fundamental principles. So, thank you.’
‘What principle has Albania led you to betray?’ came the reponse in that mid-Atlantic drawl.
‘That life’s too short to drink bad wine. That life’s too short to drop down a cru.’
The almost black eyes in the flat face stared at them. The phrase ‘time stood still’ flashed across Toftlund’s mind. Bullshit, of course, but that was how it felt. Time froze hard as a Siberian river, then all at once the mouth beneath those black eyes opened and uttered a hollow, almost feminine, cackle before their host turned to the two bodyguards as well, perhaps, as the waitress hovering somewhere in the dim regions of the bar, apparently to translate and explain Teddy’s remark in Albanian. The bodyguards laughed obligingly, though without much enthusiasm; the mouth in the pockmarked face closed, opened again and said:
‘Very good. I must remember that. I beg your pardon, I’m a terrible host. Would you like something to eat?’
‘No, thank you,’ Toftlund replied. ‘That’s very kind of you, but we’re rather pushed for time.’
‘Ah, yes, the curse of modern man, but I sympathise, Inspector Toftlund. I know what it’s like, believe me. Being a businessman in these times of war is, how shall I put it – something of a challenge. So let us drink instead to concluding our own little piece of business speedily and to everyone’s satisfaction.’
The Albanian raised his glass, Teddy and Per did the same, but Toftlund paused, with the glass to his lips, looked straight into those black eyes and said:
‘You know my name. May I have the honour of knowing yours?’
The thin, tight lips permitted themselves the ghost of a smile, before they said:
‘Preferico usare un nome italiano. Chiamami Don Alberto.’
Toftlund did not understand, but Teddy surprised him again by saying in English: ‘The gentleman would prefer to use an Italian name. He says to call him Don Alberto.’
‘I didn’t know you spoke Italian,’ Toftlund said in Danish, but Teddy continued in English:
‘I don’t speak much Italian, Don Alberto, but as a young man I did have an Italian girlfriend. A beautiful and talented Neapolitan.’
With a jingle of bracelets Don Alberto raised his slender, heavily ringed hands, smiled again and said:
‘You are a connoisseur of Italian wines. You are a connoisseur of Italian women, from whom you have learned the language in the only place where a language is worth learning, in bed, in love-making and in those joyous moments after the embrace, when two people are as close as they can ever be. Before the boredom sets in. May I have the honour of knowing your name?’
‘Chiamami Teddy.’
‘Teddy?’ Don Alberto repeated, rolling this strange name around his tongue. ‘It is an honour. To wine and love!’
They drank and Toftlund assumed that, with the ritual dance now over, he might safely open the negotiations, but again it was Teddy who took the lead, astonishing him with his perspicacity. Maybe he was simply worried that Toftlund would let the testosterone get the better of him and charge straight at it like a bull at a gate, rather than employ the acumen which Pedersen obviously felt that he possessed and Toftlund lacked.
‘I want to thank you, Don Alberto, for your hospitality and, more importantly, for agreeing to help me find my sister.’
‘Your sister! Now that is a surprise. I thought it was merely a matter of assisting our brave allies against that son of a whore Milosevic, may his sons remain impotent for generations and his daughters barren. My pleasure would be as great as Allah himself if I could help reunite a brother and sister.’
‘Do you think you can?’
Don Alberto took another swig of the velvety wine. It seemed to Toftlund that the atmosphere had improved. He could not have said why, there had been no physical change, but the tacit air of hostility in the room had abated.
‘Your sister …’
‘Half-sister actually.’
‘The same blood runs in your veins. That is all that counts. Your sister is a popular lady, there are many who are keen to woo her. The Serbian secret service, may the seed of those ungodly barbarians be forever dead, would like a word with her, but the dogs are too busy fighting our gallant allies, may Allah in his greatness watch over them, and Albania’s proud sons in the UCK. May Allah protect them and make them strong and lead them to a martyr’s death. Your sister is also hiding from godless Albanians who do not understand this heroic struggle in which we must all make sacrifices, and who are collaborating with infidels from Moscow.’
‘What do the Serbs want with her?’ Toftlund asked, hastily adding, ‘Don Alberto.’
‘Traitors must die. That is the law of life. She took some papers from a courier and meant to pass them to the enemy. Russian papers which reveal that they are manning the radar station at Pristina and that, as usual, the Russians speak with forked tongues. She was going to sell their agent inside NATO, may Allah defend and strengthen our gallant allies, for vile Mammon. To save her own skin.’
‘But she’s more Croat then anything else, isn’t she?’ Teddy put in.
&nb
sp; ‘She was a Yugoslavian, back when that word meant something, and in her heart she is still a Titoist, but that has nothing to do with this. We know Mira Majola. We did not know that she had a brother, or any family, in Denmark, but we were astonished to be presented with her name and her story by our Danish supporters in our great struggle. Allah in his wisdom moves in mysterious ways, but it must have been he who sees all who brought us together. We have done some little bits of business with her, but things have changed. Men of no honour are trying to gain control of our world. Men with no knowledge of our history, no understanding of the bonds of loyalty between families and clans; men with no appreciation of good wine, beautiful women and gentlemen’s agreements. Not men of honour as we know them from across the sea.
He put his hands in the air again, as if to emphasise what an unreasonable and immoral place the world had become. Per shot a glance at Teddy. He was definitely not stupid, he knew what the Albanian who called himself Don Alberto was saying. The Russian mafia was also making inroads into this corner of the world, as it was all over Eastern and Central Europe. The old Italian Cosa Nostra was being squeezed by these new, brutal, moneyed counterparts from the disintegrated empire. Mira had sold the famly silver and used her contacts to scrape together enough to be able to leave the sinking ship before it was too late, taking with her the man who was hiding somewhere in the vast bureaucratic maze of NATO or the EU. Either in order to take him down with her or to start a new life with him in some country far from Europe.
Don Alberto poured more wine and lit a cigarette, having first held out the red-and-white pack to the two Danes. Toftlund shook his head, but Teddy’s face lit up, of course; he accepted the proffered cigarette, leaned into the lighter flame and added his contribution to the polluted atmosphere. Toftlund also noticed, however, that the two bodyguards had lit their own cancer sticks, which meant that their hands were now occupied. This eased the tension still further.
Don Alberto leaned across the table and began to speak softly. All the theatricality had gone from his speech and with his slightly affected American accent he sounded like any other businessman.
‘For the past five years your sister has been living mainly in Budapest. From there she has organised one of the biggest deals every conceived in this post-communist world. It is known in Hungary as the big oil fraud. Many of us have done well out of it. That is another reason, Signor Teddy, why I am willing to help you. To everything there is a season and that particular deal has run its course, but hey, what the hell – even these days four hundred million dollars profit is a tidy sum, wouldn’t you say? And that profit has gone into good investments in new technology, into establishing a working relationship between so-called legal concerns and the more entrepreneurial, if I can put it like that.’
‘So it all comes down to money?’ Teddy asked.
‘Most things in this world do, Signor Teddy,’ Don Alberto replied.
Almost as if to himself Teddy murmured:
‘Maybe, but Irma has never cared about money. So she would never have been driven by that.’
‘Who is Irma, Signor Teddy?’
‘My other sister.’
‘If she is as you say then she is too good for this world,’ Don Alberto declared.
‘So that is why some of your competitors, shall we say, are looking for Mira?’ Toftlund interjected.
‘Yes, Signor Toftlund. They are searching for her because they think that if they find her she will be able to point to a spot on the map and tell them that that is where the treasure is buried. All the lovely money which she took with her when things began to get too hot for her and the only thing to do was to secure some sort of life insurance.’
‘So how come they haven’t been able to find her, if you say that you have, Don Alberto?’
The Albanian smiled, donning his theatrical mask again:
‘This is my territory. I am like an old tomcat, I do not allow other tomcats to go pissing all over the ground where I take my evening strolls.’
His face turned cold and his lips narrowed again:
‘Mira Majola is in a refugee camp in a disused tobacco factory in Shkodra. She is under my protection, but has agreed to speak to you gentlemen. To speak to her brother and the man from Danish intelligence. But, dear friends – may I call you that, now that we have poured out our hearts to one another? My dear friends, this good sister is under my protection, so in conclusion let us drink to her continued good health.’
The audience was at an end. Per and Teddy groped their way home in the light of the few street lamps still burning. There was hardly a soul around by this time, only on the main street did they see a couple of policemen on the beat and a handful of other pedestrians. The main street was more brightly lit too. They had walked in silence until they stepped into the glow of its street lamps, where Toftlund felt safer than on the dark promenade.
‘It makes sense,’ he said.
‘What does?’
‘The mafia, or whatever the hell we’re supposed to call them, thought that your sister had given you information concerning the whereabouts of the fortune she stole. They thought it was in those documents that went missing with your suitcase.’
‘But there was no money in that envelope. Far less a fortune.’
‘That’s not how money is hidden these days. It’s salted away in secret bank accounts in the Cayman Islands or some such place. You have to have a number and a code word. Once you have those you can move the money elsewhere. That’s what she gave you. As security. Concealed among the documents concerning your father. Old, inconsequential documents from the war. As her tools she has had a computer and the Internet. The money is deposited in several different accounts, most likely in different banks. Among the papers she gave you she has concealed numbers, codes and the aliases under which the accounts were opened. Trust me.’
‘Smart. If you steal from a thief, to whom is the thief supposed to report the theft?’ Teddy said.
They walked on in silence for a while. They could still smell the sea and, as usual, out on the horizon the thunder began to roll. Soon the heavy raindrops would be pelting down. Those crazy dogs were barking in the distance, but near at hand they also heard a growl and a couple of yellow eyes flashed in the dark before disappearing again when Toftlund stamped his foot on the cracked cement.
‘What a dump,’ Per groaned, shuddering.
‘Interesting man,’ Teddy said, quite unperturbed. He seemed very relaxed, as if all his fears had vanished after their recent interview. As if he had come to the conclusion that he had landed in a surreal world in which every new piece of information seemed to cancel out or contradict the last, and if you had no choice but to be a participant in an absurd modern tragedy then you might as well accept your fate and not let it get you down. Perhaps he perceived something which Toftlund could not see? Perhaps he was just relieved to have got that meeting out of the way. Or perhaps it was simply that for the first time in days he had had a couple of glasses of excellent red wine.
‘Well, obviously he was interesting,’ Toftlund retorted irritably. ‘But were you thinking of anything in particular?’
‘The whole scenario, his choice of words, even his name. None of it was accidental.’
‘How do you mean – his name?’
‘Don Alberto, not Signor Alberto. The Italians don’t use the word Don. Only Signor, but the Sicilians say Don. Don’t you see? He was telling you who his friends are. Talk to my sister by all means, Toftlund, but if I were you I wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head.’
Teddy began to chuckle, as if he could not keep it in any longer, although as far as Per could see they did not have much to laugh about.
‘So you think this is funny, do you?’ he snapped, and felt the lassitude that always followed an adrenalin rush starting to wash over him.
Teddy grinned and lit a cigarette before saying:
‘You bet I do. It’s such a typical post-communist three-ring circus, with no heroes or v
illains, only crooks and swindlers. It just goes to show that all that talk about a new world order was nothing but pie-in-the-sky. I’d say that’s pretty damn funny. And d’you know what, Toftlund?’
‘No, Teddy, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘Toftlund, old man – what you have here is a picture of the whole bloody set-up. You could call it Teddy in Deep Shit in Albania, but what the hell.’
‘Sometimes I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘And – d’you know what else?’
‘No, what else.’
‘I absolutely love Albania,’ Teddy exclaimed and stepped up the pace, shaking his head and chuckling so hard that Per was afraid he was cracking up.
26
THE CONVOY LEFT DÜRRES at first light. It had rained and thundered all night and the puddles lay brimful and brown with silt in the soft morning light. The morning was dull, with low, heavy cloud and a gentle breeze blowing off the rolling Adriatic. There were six trucks and one four-wheel drive in the convoy. One of the articulated lorries had a trailer in tow and it, like all the other vehicles, was painted the UN’s signature white. Besides the UNHCR logo three of the trucks also bore the Danish flag; the other three were from the UK, as were their drivers. Toftlund and Teddy had been in luck. The chances of finding transport in Albania were almost as slim as the prospect of peace, but Torsten Poulsen happened to have a convoy travelling to Shkodra with blankets, tents and sanitary pads, and if they did not mind roughing it with the aid agency drivers and possibly having to spend the night in the back of a truck they were welcome to go with it. Most unusually for an officer at his level Poulsen himself would be leading the convoy, quite simply because he had been unable to find anyone else to do it when the UN officials suddenly gave him the word to load up and drive across the mountains to Shkodra, which lay just over a hundred kilometres north of Tirana. Various guidebooks had for years been warning tourists not to visit Shkodra – assuming, that is, that anyone would ever have felt the notion to seek out this bandit’s paradise. Now, though, like other povertystricken, run-down Albanian towns it was home to thousands of refugees. With road conditions as they were, Poulsen hoped to reach Shkodra within four to five hours, allow a couple of hours for unloading and be back in Dürres before nightfall. This was why he had opted to go himself and leave his Albanian assistant to man the phones. It might be against the rules, but to Poulsen the refugees always came first.
The Woman from Bratislava Page 39
