The Last Compromise (12 page)

As
the consultants slowly started moving towards the exit, Hans hurried towards Tienhoven,
past the column in the middle of the room, and knelt beside his boss’s body. The
man was grimacing in pain, his face was sweaty, he was clenching the shirt on
his chest, breathing heavily. The heart. The heart medication.

‘Call
an ambulance!’, Hans shouted into the room while still looking at Tienhoven’s
bleak, distorted face. Then he turned around, still kneeling, and added, ‘Heart
attack!’

He
saw the receptionist wave to him from the reception counter, the receiver held
against his ear. He was already saying something into the phone. Good, Hans
thought. He himself had just recovered his mobile phone, but he would have been
unable to explain what had happened, and where exactly, in this foreign city in
a foreign country. He still felt weak and nauseous and disoriented. He
understood very clearly that while he saw what was happening around him, he
could only think of one thing at a time. Now it was Tienhoven and his heart. Now
it was the women and the three consultants, who had stood to stare at Tienhoven
lying on the floor for a few moments, and who were now leaving at the repeated
insistence of the receptionist. Then it was the view of the far end of the
lobby again. The only guest who hadn’t left was the uniformed American, who was
now approaching Hans, carrying his black suitcase in his hand. He had pushed
the telescopic handle back inside. He knelt next to Hans and checked
Tienhoven’s sweaty neck for the pulse. Tienhoven had regained some face colour,
but not much.

‘Look
buddy,’ the soldier said to Hans in his deep, determined voice which absorbed
all of Hans’s attention. ‘This man has a pulse and it’s not fibrillating, which
is good. The medics will take care of him. If the pulse stops use a
defibrillator, there’s one in a green box on the wall back in the hallway. I
have to catch my plane now. The police will come about the dead man in there.
My name’s in the computer if they need me.’

Without
waiting for any reaction, the American got up, took his suitcase and left
through the sliding doors. There was a black taxi waiting for him outside. He
got in, closed the door, and the taxi drove off.

Hans
looked down at Tienhoven.

‘I
think,’ Tienhoven whispered. ‘I think. I can get up now. And sit in the chair.
Help me up Hans.’

Hans
wanted to object, but Tienhoven was already exerting himself to get up. Hans
allowed his boss to lean on his shoulder. Without getting into a fully upright
position, Tienhoven fell into the armchair he’d been sitting in. Hans got up as
well and sat in the armchair next to him, the one Zayek had sat in. Hans was
facing the lobby and the reception counter again. He saw the receptionist come
closer. The man stopped in front of them and said, ‘An ambulance is coming,
police are coming. Can I get you anything? A glass of water?’

Hans
and Tienhoven both nodded mutely.

***

Hans
was sitting in his armchair. Tienhoven was sitting next to him, staring, saying
nothing. He was just breathing, which was a good sign. It meant he was alive.

Slowly
Hans started sobering up. The receptionist had just brought him a glass of
water and gone into some backroom somewhere. The glass was empty now and stood
on the small table in front of him. Tienhoven had already drunk his, too. The
receptionist had carried away the coffee cups from before.

Hans
asked Tienhoven, ‘Was it your heart?’

His
boss answered, ‘I feel much better now.’ Although that wasn’t really an answer,
and he didn’t sound like feeling much better at all.

Hans
knew that in fact several much bigger questions were waiting for an answer, but
there was no particular order in which he could arrange them. Not now. He held
his breath, worried, then relaxed. No, he didn’t need to throw up again.

Perhaps
the simple question first.

No,
perhaps sitting around a little first, then the questions.

Hans
sat there for a few more moments, doing nothing but breathing, just like his
boss next to him. We must look like two pale, I don’t know, whatever, pale
people who just sit there, he thought. Pale, pale. Sitting there. I want to
build a house on the old plot up the river. After such a century, the banks did
it, why not me?

Hans
closed his eyes, then opened them again. The sudden dizziness had subsided. He
cleared his throat, grabbed the glass again and remembered it was empty. He put
it back down.

He
looked around. There was Tienhoven sitting next to him, and that was it. Everybody
else had left, even the receptionist. The lobby was completely empty. As empty
as the glass, oh my God, there’s only bullshit inside my head.

Hans
took a breath, and made a fresh attempt at formulating what seemed like the
simple question. How about a little focus, Mister Tamberg? Yes, how about it.

And
so, let’s see. First, why had the attacker grabbed his wrist? Either he had wanted
to confront him for some reason, but it seemed a strange way of doing that. Or
he had tried to steal his phone, but that wasn’t entirely plausible either. Who
grabs and steals a phone like that? Although maybe that was exactly how phones
got stolen.

The
receptionist returned from wherever he had been in the meantime.

‘Can
I please have another glass of water?’, Hans asked him. He had just started
feeling a little better, and the extra water would maybe help even more.

The
only thought filling his mind during the wait for the water was that his phone
hadn’t been a very valuable model. It had been relatively pricey when he’d
bought it, but there were already newer and better models available by now.
Then he felt a little guilty about asking the receptionist for water even
though he, too, had seen what had happened. And about having ordered none for
Tienhoven.

When
the receptionist came to bring the water, Hans said, ‘Thank you very much.’

He
offered the glass to Tienhoven, but the man just faintly shook his head.

So
Hans took a sip himself. Maybe not the phone, but what was
inside
the
phone. Yes, much better. Okay, he would definitely hold on to the phone now.
And he would definitely keep the box, wherever it had come from.

He
heard sirens outside. He craned his neck to see. A white police car stopped
right outside the glass entrance to the lobby. Thin red and blue stripes along
the length of the car’s body, a shield with a red lion on the door.

Hans
realised he quickly needed to make some choices about what he would do now, and
he’d need to increase the speed of his thinking considerably, because the
current performance was no good at all. He needed to check with Tienhoven what
he would and wouldn’t say. Shit, he should have thought about this earlier,
instead of just sitting around like a zombie.

‘Willem,’
he whispered. ‘What are we going to tell them? About what we were doing here I
mean. And the BND.’

Tienhoven
shrugged absent-mindedly and said, ‘Clarke. He will know.’

Hans
almost rolled his eyes. Yes, the director-general will surely know, but he
wasn’t here now, was he? For the moment Tienhoven was even more useless than
Hans was.

God,
why hadn’t he just left? Like the American soldier had. Clearly he hadn’t
wanted to hang around, talking to local cops as a member of the US Army in a
foreign country. Hadn’t wanted to miss his flight, just so that he could find himself
in the middle of a row about international jurisdiction between his heavily
armed employer and a European grand duchy the size of Little Turd, Oklahoma. So
he’d gotten the hell out. But Hans couldn’t have just left, not with Tienhoven
falling off his damn chair.

A
policeman in a blue uniform emerged from the white car with the red lion and
entered the lobby. He looked around with his hand resting on the pistol on his
belt. When he concluded that this was neither an ongoing act of violence nor a
hostage situation he relaxed a little.

Hans
was just Commission staff. He had no diplomatic immunity, this was not the
United Nations. A crime had occurred on Luxembourgish territory, and the police
would come and investigate. Hans wasn’t in a good shape at all, he could still
vaguely taste the vomit at the back of his throat, and his elbow still hurt a
little from the fall in front of the reception counter. But he was the only
person from their group who had neither died nor disappeared nor completely
passed out. He was the number one witness from the victim’s party. Something
terrible had happened, so the default answer to the police would have been the
truth. But they also had been in the middle of an investigation, one with
implications from the top political level of the European Commission down into
the exciting but shady world of foreign intelligence. Hans knew he was too
junior an employee to speak on behalf of the Commission in this situation.

The
receptionist was back again, coming to meet the policeman. The two of them met
right next to Hans’s and Tienhoven’s armchairs. They talked briefly in their
own language. Then the policeman looked at Tienhoven, said something to him in
that same language but got no response. The receptionist explained something to
the policeman and he nodded. Then he said something to Hans, and was met with a
blank stare, a shrug and a shake of the head. At least Hans was more responsive
than his boss. The policeman repeated the same thing in French. The gist was
that Hans should stay exactly where he was. More police cars with wailing
sirens were already coming to a stop outside the glass door. Then an ambulance,
sounding alternating siren horns, then more wailing police cars.

Three
uniformed policemen entered the lobby and were immediately met by the one who
had been the first to arrive. The four of them hurried off in the direction of
the hallway. Then two paramedics in bright orange jackets came in, carrying
grey plastic suitcases with a red cross label on them. The receptionist pointed
at Tienhoven, and the two, one man and one woman, knelt beside his chair and
set about their highly efficient work. The woman loudly asked him his name, in
French, German and English, while checking his pupils with a little flashlight.
Meanwhile the man swiftly pulled Tienhoven’s arm out of his jacket sleeve,
unbuttoned his cuffs, moved up his shirtsleeves and wrapped a blood pressure
gauge around his arm.

‘Willem
Tienhoven,’ Hans’s boss said. ‘Thank you for coming.’ His voice sounded weak
but clear, even though the content didn’t make much sense.

A
third medic arrived, pushing a stretcher on wheels as more policemen entered
the lobby.

‘We’ll
help you up,’ the woman said to Tienhoven, sticking with English. ‘You probably
had a myocardial infarction. We take you to the hospital now. Un, deux, trois.’

The
man and the woman lifted Tienhoven up and sat him down on the stretcher. The
man grabbed his legs and lifted them onto the stretcher, the woman pressed down
his upper body while the third medic, who had just wheeled in the stretcher,
fixed a belt around Tienhoven’s waist.

Hans
got up, getting ready to come with them. He needed to stay close to his boss,
not just to see that he was all right but to do what he had needed to do
minutes ago. Get their stories straight. Just as he was about to follow the
stretcher, he felt a strong hand on his shoulder that pushed him back down into
his armchair. It was the policeman, the first one.

‘Veuillez rester ici pour l’instant, s’il vous plaît,’ he
said to Hans.

But
there was no way he would stay here for a while. Hans showed the man his
Commission badge, the normal one, and said, ‘I work with that man, we need to
stay together.’

‘Stay
here,’ the policeman repeated in English.

Damn.
The cop was right. Of course Hans had to stay. Some criminal investigators were
no doubt on their way to question witnesses. The medics swiftly carted
Tienhoven away, just as two men in white overalls hurried in the opposite
direction, from the entrance towards the bathrooms. And so now Hans Tamberg, European
Commission, anti-fraud department, was all alone in the increasingly crowded
hotel lobby, with no boss, no script, no plan, and only a vague idea of what
had actually happened.

Inspector Didier
Becker sighed as he turned off the engine. The hotel was right there, so he
would have to get out of the car now. The seat was far too low for him. He didn’t
look fat, mainly because he had a short and massive build. But the truth was
that his body was mostly soft dough. Getting out of cars, or climbing stairs,
or waddling down a long corridor made him sweat. His thick neck was shaven, his
dark hair kept short on the sides, too, so that he wouldn’t have to walk around
with sweaty hair all day. He needed a car with higher seats. Or a van. But he
was a criminal investigator, not an anti-riot policeman driving around in a van.
He didn’t even have to wear a uniform. The car was a service vehicle, and in
principle he could more or less choose one from the little car fleet they had.
But the big fat SUVs were always taken, so he had to be happy driving the lean
limousine with the low seats.

He
took another breath. His intervention wasn’t very urgent. Uniformed police had
already arrived at the hotel, that much was clear. One ambulance was leaving,
another one had just arrived. But if a real crime had been committed, the first
hours were important, so he could hardly afford to be seen sitting around in
his car right outside the crime scene.

He
checked the time on his wristwatch. It was a heavy thing, he hadn’t got used to
it yet. It was a gift he’d bought for himself the week before, in anticipation
of his own birthday. He made sure his electronic cigarette was in his breast
pocket, and got out.

When
he passed the policemen guarding the entrance and entered the lobby, he saw
plenty of blue uniforms, and a crime scene technician in white overalls who was
slowly carrying a heavy plastic suitcase towards the hallway to the left of the
far wall. That was where the scene had to be, that was the man he needed to
follow. As he crossed the lobby, Becker observed the room and the non-uniformed
people around him. The chairs to his left were empty. To the right, a pale
young man was sitting in an armchair. An elderly gentleman was waiting at the
reception counter which was unoccupied. Becker turned left at the counter and
followed the white overalls into the hallway, a corridor to the right, two
toilet doors to the left, both cordoned off with a plastic tape across the
hallway.

The
door opened as the white overalls went inside, and Becker saw the brownish red
mess on the walls. He made a physical effort to bend his knees and dive under
the tape, stood upright and leaned into the men’s room.

The
last man in overalls was already bent over the suitcase he’d just brought in;
two more technicians in white were kneeling next to the body. One of those two
looked up, recognised Becker, got up and handed him a clean white plastic badge
with a blue European flag, the picture of an unremarkable man and the
cardholder’s name printed on it. Becker took out his notebook and copied over
the name:
Boris Zayek
.

The
crime scene man put the badge in a transparent plastic pocket, knelt down and
returned to his work without saying a word. Becker knew better than to disturb
them at this stage. He closed the door, puffed while ducking under the tape
again, and returned to the lobby.

The
gentleman was still waiting at the empty counter. One of the uniformed
policemen came over to meet Becker.

He
pointed at the pale young man over in the armchair and said, ‘Moïen Inspektor
Becker. De témoin ass mataarbechter vun de Kommissioun.’

Becker
sighed. If this witness really was from the European Commission, just like the
victim was, this meant he would probably have to switch to English now. It
wasn’t Becker’s strongest language. As far as languages were concerned, he
considered himself a typical Luxembourger. His native language was
Luxembourgish, a distinct Germanic language with lots of French loan words. The
language of the heart, as they called it. His second, and preferred foreign
language, was German. Like Luxembourgish, it was an official language in the
country. Children spoke it at primary school. His third language was French,
the third official language. The language used at secondary schools. But civil
servants of the European institutions, unless they worked in a French-speaking
department, or happened to be fluent in French or German, would normally prefer
English. And Becker had to adapt to them, because he needed them to provide him
with information. Young people and bankers were much more fluent in English
than he was, he knew that. But he had a job to do all the same. At least
Commission staff were mostly civilised people, even in situations such as this
one. Not that such situations happened very often in Luxembourg, though.

‘Where
did the ambulance go?’, Becker asked the uniformed policeman.

‘Kirchberg
hospital. A man just had a heart attack in here. He and that witness over there
work together.’

Becker
nodded and approached the witness.

‘Inspector
Becker, criminal investigation, grand ducal police,’ he introduced himself. It
was the long version. It couldn’t hurt to remind these Euro-people that they
didn’t live in the clouds of European integration, but on the soil of a
sovereign country. A small country, an open and multicultural country, but
nonetheless a sovereign country.

‘Hans
Tamberg, European Commission.’

They
shook hands, and Becker sat down heavily in the armchair next to his witness.

He
asked, ‘You prefer English?’

‘Yes
please.’

‘Are
you injured?’

‘No,
I’m fine. Thanks.’

‘You
understand that I need to ask you a couple of questions.’

‘Of
course.’

‘Why
did you come to this hotel?’

***

Anneli
picked up the phone on her desk. It was Viktor’s office number. He never called
her on her mobile phone, and she never called him on his. Not that she’d called
him much lately to begin with.

‘Yes?’

‘Anneli, it’s me.
How are you?’

For
a moment she didn’t even know what to say. The truth was that she was slightly
annoyed. Annoyed by his calling to ask how she was, even though they had only been
together yesterday. But she put on a smile.

‘I’m
fine,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re not calling about Easter.’

‘No,’
Viktor replied. ‘Although that would be interesting, too. No, I call because I
heard something happened at your place.’

Anneli
had heard the police sirens outside, but they were already mute now. Pedro from
her unit had gone to have a look and returned with the news that police and an
ambulance had converged on the hotel down the street. She and Ilona had just
shrugged. They’d thought they’d read about it on a local news website later.

‘You
mean the police?’

‘I
think so,’ Viktor said. ‘I heard a colleague speak to someone from your
building, there’s been some incident apparently.’

It
seemed he wanted to hear some gossip about something spectacular happening in
Luxembourg for once, although that wasn’t much like him.

She
said, ‘Look Viktor, there are some police cars down the street, maybe they
arrested someone, I don’t know. Why are you calling about this?’

‘I
was worried. About you.’

It
dawned on her. She wasn’t annoyed by Viktor’s calling to ask her how she was. She
realised that in fact she was annoyed by Viktor’s calling her to begin with.

She
had first gotten to know him as a fellow parent at school. He had been
clear-headed and honest, and he had been interested in sharing love outside his
usual daily life. He hadn’t wanted or needed to drain her of her energy.

But
this seemed to have changed. She had enough things to take care of herself,
other people’s problems mostly. She didn’t need Viktor’s worrying on top of it
all. That’s not what he was for, to the extent that she really needed him at
all. If this was turning into a proper relationship, then she much preferred
her actual husband.

Viktor
was her first extramarital affair, and he would also be her last.

***

Hans
had finished answering the first set of the investigator’s questions. It was
much quieter in the lobby now, although there were still quite a few uniformed
policemen present, and men in white overalls were walking back and forth
between the entrance and the bathroom. Hans hadn’t seen any stretcher yet on
which they would wheel the body out of the hotel at some point. Maybe they
would take the emergency exit in the back.

‘Okay,
Mister Tamberg,’ Becker said. They were still sitting in their armchairs. Becker
leaned back in his and turned on his e-cigarette. He inhaled, exhaled a clear
odourless mist, and apparently got ready to summarise once again the content of
their conversation so far.

For
Hans that conversation had been a delicate balancing act between truthfulness
and discretion. He had decided that right at the beginning. Confirm the
undeniable, but first coordinate with the boss or, if necessary, the boss’s
boss, before entering into any details about disappearing uranium, Russian
defectors, and the Commission’s cooperation with the German BND. Zayek was dead
anyway, whatever had happened, and Hans didn’t want to make a blunder that might
have grave political consequences for the institution he worked for. Or for his
career, for that matter. The simpler Hans’s story would be now, the easier it
would be to elaborate later.

Becker
took his e-cigarette out of his mouth and started. ‘You work for the Commission’s
anti-fraud department in Brussels. You came here on a mission with your
superior and one other person in order to talk to another Commission employee.’

If
there is footage from security cameras, they will show Hans and three other men
sitting around a coffee table.

‘Yes.’

‘Your
superior, Willem Tienhoven, was taken to the hospital with what was maybe a
heart attack.’

The
call, the ambulance, the medics.

‘Yes.’

‘You
have brought the Commission employee here because?’

People
at the office building must have seen Zayek leave with Tienhoven and him.
Probably even heard what they’d said through the office doors. The guard at the
entrance would remember them.

‘Because
we wanted to interview him. For an ongoing investigation. I am bound by confidentiality
rules regarding the content.’

Becker
didn’t comment on this last remark. ‘And you couldn’t have done it somewhere
else?’

‘We
didn’t want to confront him in front of his colleagues.’

Inhalation,
exhalation. Clear mist.

‘And
during your conversation the Commission employee became sick?’

The
consultants. Camera footage. The body in the men’s room.

‘Yes.’

‘The
name of the Commission employee?’

People
saw them leave.

‘Boris
Zayek.’

‘That
was the man who died?’

Truth.

‘Yes.’

‘You
are sure it’s him?’

A
pause.

‘I
saw him getting sick and going in the direction of the men’s room. And the body
I saw there was wearing the same clothes. And I didn’t see it, but I guess he
still has his Commission badge somewhere in his pocket.’

Becker
took another draw and put his e-cigarette back into his breast pocket. Then he took
out his crumpled notepad from a different pocket and looked at it again. He nodded.

‘So
Boris Zayek leaves, in the middle of an interview about confidential things for
an anti-fraud investigation. An interview for which you came all the way from
Brussels, and for which you brought your boss and one outside person whose name
you cannot tell me. Boris Zayek leaves, and you all stay behind? You keep
sitting here in your chairs?’

Zayek
leaving. Hoffmann following. Hans following. Tienhoven staying. The man with
the tight lips attacking Hans. The American intervening, then tackling them
both. The man running away. Hans pocketing two objects.

And
now there was no American in the lobby, and no attacker either. And no Hoffmann.
And no Tienhoven.

‘Yes,’
Hans said. ‘And I didn’t see any problem, Inspector. You see, this was not the
questioning of a murder suspect. There was nothing urgent or dangerous here. My
department does not deal with that type of crime. We are not a police force
like you are. It’s a bureaucracy. People don’t kill themselves because of us,
and we don’t kill anyone either.’

Becker
didn’t react. He didn’t frown, nor did he raise his eyebrows.

Maybe
there was camera footage, maybe there wasn’t. If there was, Hans could remember
the details later. How could he reach Tienhoven? He didn’t have his mobile
phone number, he’d never called him. Was his boss even ready to take decisions,
even if he could be reached?

‘I’m
sorry, I need to go to the bathroom,’ Hans said. After a moment he pointed to
the ceiling, upstairs. The men’s room next to the lobby was certainly still
inaccessible.