The Last Compromise (30 page)

Majerus
asked, ‘Has Pascal made a decision yet about his job offer? His geology?’

‘Not
yet,’ Becker said. ‘He’ll tell me tomorrow. Should I ask you now, or will you
tell me yourself?’

Majerus
absent-mindedly touched his nose, then his ear.

His
espresso arrived, he thanked the waiter politely.

So
Becker asked. ‘Jacques. How is my European arrest warrant for Hans Tamberg
coming along?’

Majerus
took a sip of his espresso without sweetening it.

‘Please
don’t feel bad,’ he said. ‘I will tell you now the result of your
investigation, and then I’ll tell you what led to it. And then I’ll explain why
it all makes sense. Ready?’

Becker
took out his e-cigarette and inhaled. Clearly Majerus took that as a yes, and
started.

‘The
case is closed,’ he said. ‘But I guess you sensed that yourself. Now I’ll tell
you what happened.’

Becker
exhaled. Yes, he had sensed it.

Majerus
continued as promised. ‘The German ambassador spoke to our foreign minister. She
presented him a full copy of an investigation report of their foreign
intelligence service into this matter. At the same time the European Commission
handed over a full copy of their own investigation report to our minister of
the interior. Both their investigations are closed. Both conclude it was a suicide
by an exposed lone Russian spy.’

Becker
waited before answering. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes
Didier, I am. Your victim worked for Russian intelligence. He got installed in
the Commission five years ago. The Commission and the Germans confronted him
based on intelligence the Germans had obtained. That’s why they all were at the
hotel. Two Commission people plus one German agent, acting together in a joint
operation. Zayek panicked, ran to the toilet, and killed himself.’

Becker
slowly shook his head.

He
asked, ‘Who breached the security cameras?’

‘Some
unrelated hacker.’

Becker
sat still. He didn’t touch his coffee, and he was still holding his e-cigarette
in his hand. It was as if the café and the palace and the guard had all
disappeared. It was just Becker and Majerus, all alone.

Becker
kept asking. ‘Who is Lieutenant James F. Lawrence?’

‘An
American officer who happened to be at the hotel during the suicide.’

‘Hans
Tamberg had a brawl with Lawrence and one other man.’

‘They
bumped into each other, this happens. I bumped into someone earlier today, I
apologised, no problem.’

Becker
could hardly believe was he was being told, what he was expected to embrace as
the truth. ‘How can you say that there is no problem, Jacques? A man died on
our soil. And of course he was killed. Think about the cyber-attack on the
cameras. What are they, hiding a suicide?’ Becker kept his voice low, because
he didn’t want the women at the other table to look over. ‘It’s the opposite,
Jacques,’ he continued in a hiss. ‘It’s as if whoever did this wanted to make a
show of it. Not just a silent disappearance, but a spectacle, with a big
computer hack, and with blood all over the wall.’

Majerus
finished his espresso, and said calmly, ‘I say there is no problem because
there is no problem. I just talked to the prime-minister in there.’ He pointed
at the palace. A group of tourists had arrived to take pictures of the soldier,
the tour guide holding up an umbrella.

‘There
is no problem,’ Majerus repeated. ‘Next week our little country will continue
negotiating with the Commission about our corporate and banking tax exemptions.
It’s difficult as it is, our economy depends on it. We need all our political
capital for that. And the German ambassador will go to the philharmonic concert
hall with the prime-minister, and the Grand Duke is coming, too. The premiere
of some new symphony, they love that sort of thing. I’m going, too, by the way.
It’s what keeps the wheels greased between good neighbours.’

Becker
didn’t know what to say.

Majerus
raised his hands in the air, a cross between a shrug and an apology. ‘I told
you not to feel bad, Didier,’ he said. ‘You have a fine job, and you’re very
good at it. You have a bright son. You don’t have a wife, but I don’t blame
you. I don’t like my cousin either. And you have a big fat wristwatch. And on
Monday you’ll return to your job, helping keep the murder rate in our homeland down
to basically zero per year.’

He
called the waiter and paid for his espresso and Becker’s coffee. Then he added,
‘The computer hacker will never be identified, probably it was some lonely nerd
who has nothing else to do.’

There
was a silence. Becker had little to add. Nobody cared about his dead guy.

‘What
about Hans Tamberg?’, he nevertheless asked. He didn’t even know why he was
asking, since he knew the answer. It was perhaps a formality. A ceremonial
statement, like the soldier outside the palace. That man wasn’t going to defend
the building all by himself in an actual battle either. But something would be
missing if he wasn’t there, doing his duty.

Majerus
smiled faintly as he got up. ‘You know the answer, Didier. There will be no
Luxembourgish arrest warrant, there will be no European arrest warrant. We
leave Tamberg alone, because he’s not a suspect, not even a witness. The case
is closed.’

Majerus
made a point of extending his hand. Becker took it. They said goodbye, and
Majerus left in the direction he’d come from. Probably his car was waiting in
the yard behind the palace.

The
tourists had left, the soldier was still there. Becker finished his coffee. He
knew what would come next. He was old enough to know it well by now, to
anticipate its balm, the satisfaction, the peace of mind it always promised and
always delivered. It was the psychological cleansing process called
rationalisation. It was what a healthy mind did. It acknowledged a mistake, or
an injustice. Its own participation in a disgrace, in the upholding of a lie. Or
in some other event that was morally wrong but that had already happened. And the
mind started to construct reasons, justifications or excuses around it all, to
reconcile the ugly truth with its own values. To find a way to accept the sheer
necessity of the event, and to make itself even look good in it. It was all vital
for staying sane. A mind that wasn’t capable of rationalisation would sooner or
later implode. Or explode; what a tasteless metaphor in relation to this case.
But it was Zayek’s own fault, too. He was a Russian spy, after all. He knew
what he was getting into, and he ended up dead. That’s what you get, it’s part
of their game.

Becker
checked his grotesquely big watch. He might as well call it a day, he thought.
It was Saturday. Tomorrow he’d know which direction his son’s career would
take, cash or honours or both. Ideally both. For now there was nothing Becker
could do. He looked over to the other guests sitting outside the café. One of
the women at the other table smiled back at him.

Becker
ordered another coffee. The soldier marched off to stretch his legs one more
time. What a beautiful day this was, after all.

Professor Mäkinen
was still smiling.

Hans
hadn’t moved for a second from his readiness position behind the table. He
added some tension to his lower leg muscles. His hands lay palms down on the
table in front of him, not too far apart.

He
said, ‘The container from A&C contains uranium. For medical use you need
the isotopes you get from it, not the uranium itself. And to get them you need
a reactor.’

‘Absolutely.
We convert it here in Finland, we have a small research reactor. It’s not as
big as Petten, but it gets the job done.’

There
was a silence.

‘The
Russian freighter Bogatyr,’ Hans said. ‘It pretends to pick up the uranium
which actually goes to you. Even though the container could just as well go
from Rotterdam to Helsinki directly, without any stopover.’

‘The
Bogatyr is a ghost ship,’ Mäkinen smiled. ‘It just goes back and forth between
Saint Petersburg and Tallinn. I understand other organisations also use it for
similar purposes, to pretend containers that don’t exist are actually being
shipped. And the Karelia has to stop somewhere, so it stops in Tallinn, which
is closer to Russia and less tightly controlled than Rotterdam. It changes
crews, fuels up, and pretends to take Russian uranium on board, so if anyone
checks we can all say it’s from Moscow and not from A&C.’

Hans
preferred not to shake his head in disbelief at the extent of this operation.
His head didn’t move. He summarised, ‘The uranium delivery intended for Petten is
officially cancelled, and then, in a first layer of lies, it disappears into
Russia, but actually it disappears into Finland, straight to you.’

‘This
is not my problem, to be honest,’ Mäkinen replied. ‘It’s the donor’s problem.
Maybe he needs to tell his shareholders that the material goes into the acidic
swamp that is the Russian government administration, and that’s why he uses
that ghost ship. Maybe the shareholders prefer even murky business like that to
spending their precious money on a project like ours. But I have nothing to do
with the Bogatyr and how exactly the donor gets his material to us. What is
important to me is that it arrives in Helsinki in the end. The donor also takes
care of the delivery of the finished medical isotopes to the countries where
they are needed.’

Hans
had been wrong. The uranium was not being intercepted on its way to Russia by
an outsider. It had been intended for Mäkinen’s research reactor all along.

Mäkinen’s
research.

Publish
or perish.

‘You
don’t just get medical isotopes from it, do you,’ Hans said. ‘You write
academic papers about the additional experiments which you can afford to run
with your free uranium.’

Krohn
moved around uncomfortably at the door. Mäkinen sat completely still.

‘Our
research helps even more people in the long run than the isotopes do in the
short run,’ Mäkinen replied softly.

‘What
about the patients here in Europe? You supply medium-rich cancer patients in
medium-rich countries with medical isotopes that had been intended for European
hospitals. It’s cancer treatment that’s missing here.’

‘This
is a compromise, Mister Tamberg,’ Mäkinen said, his voice regaining volume
again. ‘Like every other redistribution of resources. Like everything else in
life. Here in Europe the material is used to make images of heart arteries in
patients who should eat less and move more. Or to zap a tumour in a well-fed,
happy sixty-year-old who has lived a life in peace and wealth. Our charity
supplies people who need it more.’

‘Not
all cancer patients are sixty years old.’

‘And
they should get priority over people who are. If resources are limited. Which
they always are.’

Hans
swallowed.

‘What?’,
Mäkinen laughed. ‘What did you expect? That we help the poor in a noble cause,
at exactly zero cost to ourselves?’ He slowly shook his head. ‘Like I said, it’s
a compromise. Research is a compromise between our curiosity and our own
vanity. An easy compromise in fact, because it benefits both. Charity is a
compromise between our compassion for one person and our compassion for
another. One side loses. The most difficult compromises are those involving
things that we prefer not to trade in at all.’ He slightly tilted his head and
looked into Hans’s eyes. ‘You came all the way here, Mister Tamberg. To find the
truth, I presume. And you don’t look too good, not to mention my colleague Krohn.
Tell me, during that voyage, did you never have to reach a compromise with your
values, your ethics? Not a single time? Have you never reached a compromise
with the law, Mister Tamberg?’

Hans
said nothing. He didn’t frown, he didn’t take a breath.

Krohn
broke the silence. From his position at the door he addressed Mäkinen in a low
but firm voice. ‘This cannot be done by just one man, even if it’s the owner.’

It
was in fact a question, a demand for Mäkinen to explain himself. Krohn had been
hearing everything for the first time, too.

Mäkinen
didn’t look at Krohn; he continued talking to Hans as if it was he who had
asked. ‘It’s not just one man, obviously. The donor helps by turning a blind
eye and leading attention away from the charity. The actual operation is run by
a dozen company people, regional supervisors, ship captains, middle management.’

Hans
smirked for the first time. That was dangerous, though, it meant he lost focus.
He concentrated again. All those middle managers hardly helped along out of
sheer compassion. This was a professional black-market operation, a mafia with
a cynical or deluded friendly uncle as its spokesman. The more Mäkinen was
telling him, the more dangerous it was getting for Hans to stay in this
isolated house.

It
was time to return to the relatively narrow issue that was of direct interest
to him, and then to get out. He said, ‘Your operation includes the
falsification of reports of the European Commission. That’s the only reason I’m
here. That’s how I tracked you down.’

Mäkinen
breathed out.

‘Yes,
I suspected as much. The responsibility is entirely mine.’

‘No
it’s not,’ Hans said.

Let’s
see.

‘You
can write that I pressured her.’

Her?

‘Who
will believe that? Pressured her how?’

‘I
don’t know. That I threatened to disinherit her.’

‘What,
you’re millionaire?’, Hans asked, looking around, ostentatiously mustering the
wooden furniture.

Mäkinen
said, ‘I asked Anneli for help, and she agreed. A favour to her father, a
widower helping a charity, how could she refuse?’

Hans
shook his head. ‘Why was it even necessary? A container doesn’t arrive, a test
is cancelled, the insurance pays. It happens. Why falsify reports about it?’

‘I
thought it was necessary,’ Mäkinen said. ‘Each disappearance concerned not a
half-empty container, but a container that had been wholly filled and that went
missing completely. The statistics had to hide it. They did. You found out
nonetheless.’

‘You’d
have to report your additional uranium to the Commission, though.’

‘We
do. And then Anneli makes it go away again. Otherwise all the missing uranium from
the rest of Europe would show up here in Finland, that would be absurd.’

Hans
had seen the personnel records back in Brussels, but he needed to be sure now. ‘Why
is her last name not Mäkinen?’

‘What
do you think? Now I’m a bit disappointed, Mister Tamberg. She married a
Frenchman named Villefranche. So it’s Anneli Villefranche.’

‘How
did you pressure the other one, Zayek?’

Mäkinen
frowned, then slowly shook his head to say that he had no idea what he was
talking about. ‘I talked to Anneli on Thursday, it’s the man who died, isn’t it?’

He
had no reason to lie about that if the rest was true.

‘Professor
Mäkinen,’ Hans said, slightly leaning forward. ‘Before his death, has your
daughter ever mentioned that Bulgarian or German colleague named Boris Zayek?’

Mäkinen
thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. No, she hasn’t, it was the first time
I’d heard the name, two days ago. When she talks about her work she usually
speaks about her colleague Ilona, I believe they are close. And she speaks
about a man named Viktor. He also works for the Commission, also in Luxembourg but
not in her department. Him she mentions quite a lot, in fact.’

The
mother of one of the kids in our daughter’s class works over there. She hates
it. It tires her out.

Yes,
I know the hotel.

Wait
right there, don’t move. I’ll come and pick you up, and I’ll drive you to
Brussels. We can talk in the car.

So
you think the man who might have been a Russian spy was the one who falsified
the nuclear reports.

That’s
why the Russian on the ferry didn’t mind Hans sniffing around in Helsinki. He
just wanted his empty box back. The Russians weren’t involved at the Luxembourg
end of this operation. Zayek wasn’t involved. Anneli was. Viktor was.

‘All
right,’ Hans said. ‘It seems the involvement of Anneli Villefranche is
relatively minor. I can talk to her to make sure it goes away quickly and
without much trouble.’

Hans
got up from his chair.

Mäkinen
cleared his throat, and said, ‘I cannot let you leave, I’m afraid.’

Hans
gave him an incredulous look. ‘You are threatening me? With your kitchen knife?
With your grandfather’s hunting rifle? I’m half your age, Mäkinen, I’ll beat
you to death.’

‘That?
Oh, that’s not a hunting rifle,’ Mäkinen said as he got up and walked over to
the wall. ‘That’s a military rifle. An M91, a Finnish modification of an old
Russian model. It belonged to my father.’

He
took it from the wall and, in a sequence of swift moves, pulled back the action
by the metal knob on the side, inserted a steel cartridge that had come out of
nowhere, pushed the action forward, locked it and swung the rifle around to aim
from the hip across the room directly at Hans’s stomach. Hans was still standing
behind the table. Krohn instinctively blocked the door to the hallway.

‘My
father used this rifle in the winter war, when Stalin tried to swallow us like
he then swallowed you Estonians. We resisted. So he only got a slice, not the
whole country. This rifle killed many Russian men, Mister Tamberg. Men who were
a lot younger than you, mostly. So please sit down now.’

There
was a frosty silence. The incredulous look on Hans’s face was gone. There was
no clock ticking, no birds singing outside. Not even the generic background
hiss of wind and faraway traffic. There was nothing, only breathing.

At
the gestured insistence of Mäkinen, Hans did sit back down.

***

Again
it was Krohn who broke the silence. His blocking the door had been a token of
loyalty to his professor, even though he clearly should have been siding with
Hans. Although of course Hans had beaten him in the face and given him a bloody
nose, he had even spat on him. No, Krohn should have been leaving altogether.

But
he didn’t leave. Instead, he said to Mäkinen, ‘We don’t give all our isotopes
away. I see where they go, they stay right here in Finland.’

Another
demand for explanation, a reproach even. But Krohn was a fool. This was no time
to pressure his boss.

Mäkinen
kept aiming at Hans and, like before, answered him and not Krohn. ‘Like I said,
our research benefits everyone. We can’t give all the isotopes away. We keep
ten percent of them here.’

‘Look
at me when I talk to you,’ Krohn said to his boss. ‘And tell me where the money
comes from.’

Mäkinen
glanced at Krohn, still pointing his rifle at Hans. He grinned slightly and a
little helplessly.

Krohn
continued, ‘The isotopes have to travel by plane if they go far from here.
Planes need fuel. The reactor doesn’t run for free either. Who pays for it?’

Hans
disliked the idea of the friendly uncle pointing a rifle at him while being
distracted. He preferred for everybody to be focused. The table was too heavy
to throw, the door was too far away to make a dash, especially with Krohn
standing in the doorway and having decided that he was an investigator now. And
Hans didn’t want to jump Mäkinen. The rifle’s relatively long barrel made it
almost useless in close quarters, that’s why they had developed bayonets first
and submachine guns later. But one shot would have been enough to kill, wound
or cripple Hans, even allowing for the fact that Mäkinen was aiming from the
hip, which wasn’t a very accurate way of using a weapon. Hans could still be
shot and lose half his face. Or be shot in the stomach or even his thigh and
bleed to death, that much he remembered from his army instructions. Or he could
be shot in the foot, drop on the floor and be bludgeoned to death with the
steel-plated butt end of that very same rifle. Or be executed by shooting. He’d
seen how quickly and expertly Mäkinen had loaded the rifle in the first place.