As he placed the bowls on the table, Sonja heard a dark, menacing growl coming from somewhere in the house. Sonja felt her belly tighten into a frightened knot. The sound was like nothing else – neither a hiss nor a bark, but instead the cruel pain from the mouth of a hungry, caged animal.
The tiger was still here.
‘Things have not gone well in Iceland,’ Mr José said, noisily spooning up his soup, but still not loudly enough to drown out another growl from the tiger. ‘First you disappeared, and then customs caught someone. That’s apart from all the trouble with the lawyer, Thorgeir.’
Sonja could feel the sweat break out down her back. Now she was sure to be punished for running away. Unbidden, a thought came to her – would she prefer to lose a hand or a foot to the tiger; the choice that had been put before a disobedient fool called Amadou during the last time she had sat over dinner here? She wondered whether she should apologise, or try to explain, to find an excuse in words that would somehow reach this man’s heart.
‘I ran away to escape from Adam,’ she said. That she had gone straight for the truth took her by surprise. ‘He’s treated me very badly. We have a little boy, as you know, and he refuses to let me see him. So I took the boy and ran. The same as any mother would do.’
‘As any mother would do,’ Nati repeated, nodding emphatically and glancing at her husband with a serious look in her eyes.
‘Hmm.’ Mr José lifted his soup bowl and drank what was left in it. Then he took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, took out a cigarette and rolled it between his fingers to loosen the tobacco. He fished a little packet from his shirt pocket, and poured carefully from it into the paper tube of the cigarette, stuffed some of the tobacco back in the end and lit up. The cigarette burned away in a few puffs, and once he had regained his breath, he seemed much better disposed.
‘I’ll talk to Adam,’ he said. ‘It’s not right when a man refuses to let a mother see her child.’
‘Not right for a man,’ Nati agreed.
‘I would be very grateful,’ Sonja said.
‘You want to have your boy a lot of the time?’ Mr José asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Sonja said without hesitation. ‘I would like to have him with me all the time. He could go to his father when I am travelling.’
‘Not a problem,’ Mr José said, stretching a hand out to one side, at a right angle to his body.
Sonja looked at him without understanding, until Nati coughed, and motioned with her head, puckering her lips, so that Sonja understood that she was expected to kiss his hand in gratitude.
She stood up quickly, knelt before Mr José and kissed his outstretched hand. She was genuinely grateful. If this was all she needed to do to get her son back, then she would be happy to spend all day on her knees in front of him, covering his sweaty hand with a thousand kisses.
‘In return you have to do something for me,’ he said as he withdrew his hand. That practically went without saying. Kissing someone’s hand was likely to be too small a payment in this business for the return of one’s child; and probably not enough to escape the tiger’s jaws.
‘Anything,’ Sonja said. ‘Anything at all.’
52
When Agla arrived at the Grill Bar, Ingimar had already ordered the eight-course menu for all of them, and was at the bar with another man, both of them with drinks in their hands.
‘Agla, I’d like to introduce Jón. Jón, this is Agla.’
They shook hands and Agla was surprised at how small a grown man’s hands could be. He was delicately built, although he looked to be Ingimar’s height. He put her in mind of a bird.
‘Jón is the chief financial officer of the aluminium company, as I told you before,’ Ingimar continued. ‘And I thought it important that you two meet. It’s vital to build up personal connections, to establish trust.’
Jón nodded, and Agla smiled politely. Then she caught the waiter’s eye and ordered a glass of white wine. It would be as well to keep to the grape this evening, and steer clear of beer and the hard stuff so she wouldn’t get drunk.
‘Agla is absolutely in a class of her own,’ Ingimar said, nudging Jón with an elbow and giving her a roguish wink. ‘There are money men I’ve worked with who are constantly bolstering their own egos, who can’t withstand the temptation to live it large. But after the financial crash, pampering yourself like that just leads to trouble. And Agla is the competitive type. Competitive people don’t need to feed their own egos. They just need to win.’
‘That’s the kind of people you can trust,’ Jón said, raising his glass in his delicate hand.
Agla raised her own glass and sipped her wine. They lapsed into silence as the waiter fetched something from the corner bar behind them.
‘When Ingimar suggested this strategy, I have to admit that I was doubtful,’ Jón continued when there was no longer any risk of them being overheard. ‘But when the paperwork arrived I could see that it had been done so skilfully that it’s watertight. It’s pure genius to run this through an international hedge fund. How on earth did you persuade a big fund like Creek to handle this?’ he asked with delight in his eyes.
‘It wasn’t cheap,’ Agla said. ‘Far from it.’
‘I can well believe it,’ Ingimar said, and Jón nodded understandingly.
‘That’s why substantial costs are built into it. Every fund that handles this kind of debt takes a fee.’
She decided not to enlighten him with the fact that most of the companies and funds that the debt was filtered through were hers.
‘Of course, of course,’ Ingimar muttered in a low voice.
Then he cleared his throat and Agla understood that now he was going to move the conversation on to important matters. That was what this meeting was all about: the big debt.
53
‘You don’t have any idea what these people are like,’ Adam had snapped, his voice almost a falsetto with agitation, restlessly pacing the meeting room. A dark-blue patch of sweat had spread across the back of his light-blue shirt like a waxing moon. This was six months before the financial crash and worry had deprived every one of them of a full night’s sleep for weeks on end, so the atmosphere in the bank’s top-floor meeting room was becoming increasingly tense.
‘It would have been worth knowing right at the beginning what you were getting us caught up in,’ Jóhann hissed, dropping a stomach tablet into a glass of water, where it fizzed into a little storm of bubbles.
‘You two were keen enough to take their money,’ Adam said, and both Agla and Jóhann knew he was right. They had welcomed the new customers to whom Adam had introduced them. Even though they didn’t know who the customers were, they could have worked out for themselves that the flow of cash hadn’t come from any legal source.
‘That’s right,’ Agla said. ‘We were all happy enough to get the money that we could use as we saw fit, and it’s nobody’s fault but ours if it’s a mess.’
‘An international recession isn’t exactly our fault,’ Jóhann mumbled, sipping the white liquid in his glass. ‘It’s tough dealing with lines of credit that close down.’
‘We all overestimated how much this cash could influence the bank’s share price. If our predictions had worked out, then it would have been a perfect solution for all concerned,’ Agla said. Sometimes she liked to think out loud, and when it was just the three of them together, they listened to her. ‘There were just too many factors working against it going up,’ she added. ‘On the other hand, if the strategy as a whole had been bigger then it would have worked out as it should have done, with us selling at a top rate, paying off the loan and taking a healthy slice ourselves.’
Jóhann put his glass aside and stared into the distance in front of him. ‘So you say,’ he said. ‘So you say.’
Adam continued to pace back and forth from one end of the meeting room to the other, while Agla’s attention was on Jóhann’s face. She could see from his expression that he had something in mind.
&nb
sp; ‘If we run the same strategy again, but ten times bigger, then we’re safe,’ he said and Agla’s heart skipped a beat in anticipation.
‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly understanding.
‘What?’ Adam asked, and without waiting for an answer continued with the same speech that he had kicked the meeting off with.
‘If you reckon you have a way out, then it had better be quick, because I don’t feel like being beaten to a pulp. You two don’t know who these guys are that we owe money to. But I do!’
‘If we fix a loan and send the money the same route – via Tortola, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland,’ Agla said, putting Jóhann’s thoughts into words so that Adam could take it all in, despite his agitation, ‘then it’ll work out. On the condition that the amount is that much larger that it’ll be enough to lift the bank’s share price when it comes back.’
‘I know someone with ten times the muscle who might be persuaded to do it,’ Jóhann said.
And with that Adam finally sat down, and there was a moment of silence in the room as they gradually realised the sheer scope of what they were about to do.
That was how Agla met Ingimar, and the big debt came into being.
54
Sonja waited in silence as Mr José prepared another cocaine cigarette. Nati was clearly used to dealing with his behaviour, so it was best to follow her example and wait patiently.
‘It’s not good when routes close,’ Mr José said after he’d puffed on his cigarette and recovered from the violent bout of coughing that followed. ‘It upsets the balance of everything and I don’t like that.’
‘You mean Greenland,’ she blurted out, realising immediately that fear had taken hold of her. She normally kept her cool under stress, but somehow, sitting at Mr José’s table had robbed her of her usual caution.
Sonja wanted to bite her tongue, but it was too late. Mr José’s eyes narrowed and he stared at her with an enigmatic look that was impossible to interpret.
‘Muy bien,’ Nati said. ‘You’re smart. She’s smart, mi amor.’
‘Maybe too smart,’ Mr José said, getting to his feet. ‘Maybe much, much too smart. How do you know about Greenland?’
‘I can go to Greenland,’ Sonja said quickly, making up for her mistake, and to give the impression that she was ready to work, hoping that they would not see her as any kind of threat.
Mr José took leisurely steps towards Sonja until he stood directly behind her. She sat as if unable to move, her heart pounding in her chest. She was about to explain her knowledge of Greenland when she suddenly felt Mr José’s hands around her throat, squeezing.
Darkness began to appear before her eyes and she felt a wave of nausea ripple through her body. She heard Nati muttering something and the tiger growling in the distance, and then nothing, just the silence that endured until he relaxed his grip and she could hear again.
‘You understand that Greenland is our goldmine,’ he said slowly, still standing behind her.
She was unable to say a word, as if her voice had entirely deserted her, so she simply nodded her head vigorously.
‘The problems getting stuff to America are just crazy, and the costs are astronomical. There are guys building submarines to move coke, for fuck’s sake! And even that isn’t enough, as every second boat gets caught.’ By now he was angry and paced the floor as he spoke. ‘So, Nati, God bless her, my beloved, mother of my children, had the idea of trying small regular shipments – via the usual Europe route, and then from north to south through Greenland.’ He stopped at Nati’s side and kissed the top of her head.
‘It’s a dog-leg halfway around the world,’ Nati laughed. ‘But it’s worth it – it really is.’
‘And the bonus is that, if someone’s caught, it’s just a small amount that’s lost, not the five hundred kilos a submarine can carry – which is what’s happening to some of them.’
Mr José laughed out loud and Nati smiled alongside him.
Sonja nodded repeatedly, although she didn’t feel that the amounts she had been carrying were exactly small. But she wanted to make it plain that she understood and agreed with everything they said. Her mind was still clouded and for some reason an image had appeared before her eyes of a new-born Tómas, lying in his cot in the maternity unit.
Mr José patted her on the back so that she jumped and the tears started to flow. He appeared not to notice and left the room.
‘Ay, linda, que te pasa?’ Nati said gently and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘We need to let you take a shower, my darling. Come with me.’ She pulled Sonja’s hand. She tried to stand, but her legs refused to obey, and she was still weak with terror, so weak, in fact, that her mind hadn’t even got as far as comprehending the humiliation of having wet herself.
55
The point had arrived, during the eight-course meal at the Grill Bar, when, with help from Ingimar, they had to come to an agreement about how to write off at least a large portion of the big debt.
Jón pecked like a bird at his food, an indication of why his physique was not more robust. He took each course as it was placed before him, started by dividing it in two, and then ate just one half. The young trainee waiter who cleared the plates looked so worried that Agla felt compelled to compliment him on the food.
‘In the light of this substantial project that Agla is working on for us, it seems reasonable to ask what the outcome will be for her and her colleagues,’ Ingimar said, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin and letting it fall back into his lap.
He had finished his steak and wiped up the remaining sauce with what had been left of the bread, so his plate was practically clean. His eyes flickered towards Jón’s plate, where half a steak was untouched.
‘We’ll see in the next quarter what the overall effect is,’ Jón said. ‘There has been only one invoice so far and the next invoice on the loan will arrive in September…’
‘August,’ Agla corrected. ‘And it shouldn’t be a problem to work out an accurate forecast – what this arrangement should return. The amount of the loan payment is pure profit that can leave the country and go straight to the parent company, without having to worry about currency controls.’
‘And on top of that it’s such a substantial figure that it’s enough to give us a healthy tax break, so the benefit is significantly more than we could have predicted,’ Ingimar added.
‘So the smelter shouldn’t have to pay any tax for at least the next three years,’ Agla said. She had taken a look at the smelter’s quarterly figures and worked out an estimate in her head. Anyone could do that. Jón’s hesitation wasn’t because of any uncertainty. There was something else that was holding him back.
‘I imagine you and your people will be looking for a write-off,’ Jón said. He didn’t meet her eye, but instead looked down at the table, at his half-eaten meal.
Agla didn’t reply, as in her eyes this didn’t merit a response. Of course they were looking for a write-off. It wasn’t as if she had done all this work for nothing.
‘A loan can disappear just as easily as it can appear,’ Ingimar said. ‘There’s nothing complicated about it.’
‘Well, we are talking about tens of billions,’ Jón said, with the emphasis on billions, as if this word, symbolising all of those zeroes, needed to be treated with some kind of respect.
Agla sighed silently. She knew all about men like this, men who used money as a tool to wield power, the little middlemen who held on tight to every bit of power they could. But she wasn’t frightened of zeroes. As far as she was concerned, there could be three of them, or six, or six hundred. Neither was she frightened of men like this.
‘We all know that this cash never appeared in the company’s public figures, which is why we were able to borrow it,’ she said, catching Jón’s eye and smiling. It was as well to try pushing first. ‘So it should be no problem to write it off.’
‘Well, maybe over a few years—’ Jón began, before Agla cut him off.
‘No,’ she sa
id firmly. ‘It needs to be written off in one go. Now.’ It was time for a threat. ‘Otherwise I don’t see the point in making it possible for you to move tens of billions out of the country every year if I am still personally in debt.’
She placed the same emphasis on billions as he had, more for her own amusement than to snipe at him, and he looked awkward. Ingimar sat in silence, riding the tension, and his eyes flickered from him to her and back again, as if he were watching a tennis match.
‘Hmm,’ Jón picked up his fork, pushed his half-eaten steak around his plate, hummed again, put down the fork and waved for the waiter. ‘We would like a dessert.’
The waiter nodded, cleared their plates and disappeared.
‘It would be convenient,’ Jón said, leaning back in his chair, ‘if a little company I have in Switzerland could handle the write-off. For a fee, naturally.’
‘Naturally,’ Ingimar said, a satisfied smile on his face.
‘Of course,’ Agla said. She had won. She felt the rush that came with victory. Ingimar had been right when he had said that she was someone who needed to compete. This birdman, Jón, on the other hand, was simply greedy.
56
When Sonja came to, she found that Nati had put her under a shower and was now crouched at her side, washing her lower half in warm water.
‘Thank you, I’ll do it myself,’ she said, taking the shower head from her hand. There was no shower curtain for her to hide her nakedness behind, but there was a towel on a hook by the shower that she took and wrapped around herself with one hand as she turned off the water with the other. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said, and Nati waved a careless hand as if there was nothing unusual about guests wetting themselves in her dining room.
Trap Page 12
