The Last Compromise (8 page)

Maastricht

The
students at the neighbouring table cheered at a young woman who was cycling
past, between the café tables and the square. She waved them hello, too.

Hans
forced himself to remember that he certainly was in the middle of a mind game. Hoffmann
hadn’t mentioned the fact that Hans couldn’t be a very senior interlocutor, but
maybe they were of more or less equal rank, both reporting to a boss who was
waiting somewhere in the background. Maybe not. Either way, Hans was hardly
prepared for the course their conversation had taken, yet he knew he’d have to
ask a few questions because this was the reason he’d been sent here. He was a
scout. But he didn’t want to feel pressured while thinking of questions to ask.
So he decided to actually make this his reply.

He
said, ‘This concerns a Commission employee, and I’ll have to ask you a couple
of things before we continue. Can I think for a few moments?’

Hoffmann
nodded and looked at the two cathedrals without making a point of waiting.

‘Why
expose him?’, Hans asked the first of his questions. ‘Wouldn’t you want to
monitor him, if he’s an agent?’

‘Absolutely,
except at some point the Russians will find out that there’s been a defector.
They will monitor us monitor Zayek. They’ll feed him misinformation from now on.
Or pull him out right away, which is why we don’t have much time.’

Hans
nodded, content to have contributed something. His thought had been commented
upon, not contradicted. Or at least Hoffmann had chosen to present it this way.

The
waitress arrived. Hans was curious what Hoffmann would order.

He
ordered apple juice.

Not
water, Hans thought, because apparently he wanted to come across somewhat jovial,
not earnestly sober. And no beer either, that would have been an exaggerated
display of self-assuredness. It wasn’t even dark yet. Depending on the rest of his
character and behaviour it would then have signalled either lack of seriousness
or, quite to the contrary, patronising dominance, especially if Hans wouldn’t have
followed suit. Hoffmann seemed to prefer avoiding both. Apple juice seemed
relaxed yet safely within the boundaries of professionalism.

Hans
ordered nothing, he still had some of his water left.

Time
to think about the next question to ask. Are you sure the defector’s telling
the truth? No you’re not. Hans could answer this himself. Why do Russians
defect these days? Money problems, political problems. Now Hans knew his next
question, and decided to ask another one first.

‘Are
there sometimes defections in the opposite direction? Our people going to them?’
Hans realised he’d said ‘our people’.

‘Not
many,’ Hoffmann promptly replied. ‘Famous whistle-blowers about American
cyber-snooping, of course, but that’s mostly because Russia’s a place other
than America. Selling of secrets is going on. But hiding in each other’s embassies
is basically Cold War stuff.’

‘So
why did your customer come to your consulate then?’

Hoffmann
smiled. His apple juice arrived, and he waited as the waitress poured half of
it from a little bottle into a glass. Since the bottle’s volume was the same as
the glass’s, she could have just brought an already filled glass. But that was
not what you paid the café prices for.

As
soon as the waitress had left, Hoffmann said to Hans, ‘Now do ask me the
question you actually wanted to ask me.’ He took a big sip of juice and waited.
The focus of his gaze didn’t leave Hans’s eyes.

Hans
took a sip of water himself, and obliged. ‘If you want to expose him, what do
you need the Commission for?’

Hoffmann
nodded, and said, ‘I have asked myself all those questions as well, Hans. I
don’t know why the defector came to us. So far he hasn’t said anything useful
except that Zayek is a Russian agent. Which, like I said, could well be true.
Zayek’s face matches the picture of a German citizen whose old army file we
have, and who left his last job precisely when, according to the defector, Zayek
got hired in Luxembourg. Why don’t we blow his cover alone? Alone would mean to
directly ask the Luxembourgish police to arrest and extradite him to Germany on
espionage charges.’

‘Why,
is he spying on Germany?’

‘He’s
harming the European Union, of which we are a member. By definition he harms
German interests. And maybe that’s the reason my instructions are what they
are.’

Hans
waited. Hoffmann smiled.

‘My
instructions are to confront and expose Zayek,’ he said quietly. His smile was
gone. ‘The normal arrest and extradition comes afterwards, we’ll call 112 and,
if necessary, prevent his escape until the arrival of the Luxembourgish police.
But first comes the confrontation. And that we have to do quickly, and
together. The exposure has to be a joint operation with the European Commission
itself. Now my question is: are you interested?’

Saint
Petersburg

Werner
Ott gently knocked on the door and slowly opened it. The room was completely
dark and empty. Deserted.

A
woman from the visa division walked past, carrying two heavy files downstairs.

‘Excuse
me, where did he go?’, he asked her in a soft voice.

‘He
left, I think half an hour ago. I understood he was allowed to leave.’

‘Oh,
yes he was,’ Ott said and slightly raised the corners of his mouth. ‘Please,
allow me to carry one of the files for you.’

He
silently closed the door, and took over half the woman’s burden. She was happy
to have been offered help in precisely the right measure.

He
followed her downstairs.

Brussels

Hans
was back home at his Brussels apartment when his phone rang.

He
had delivered the borrowed service car to the underground garage at work and
signed off. And he had reported to Tienhoven about the meeting with Hoffmann. Tienhoven
had still been in the office. What did you tell him, he had asked. That it
could be that we’re also interested in that person, or at least in that unit,
but for other reasons. Did he want to know more? No, he was happy. Tienhoven
had nodded approvingly, and had called Clarke right away. The director-general
had still been in the office, too, three floors above theirs. Tomorrow there
would be a meeting to decide about the cooperation with the Germans on this
matter.

But
right now Hans was at home. He had taken the bus. He’d briefly considered but
then rejected the idea of having a beer in the little café across the street.
He knew he still had some beer in the fridge. Anyway, there was nothing he
could do for the moment, and it was time to relax a little. He picked up the
phone before it could ring for a second time.

‘Tere
Hans, do you have a few minutes to chat?’

‘Hello
dad,’ Hans said, and made himself comfortable on the sofa.

Hans
liked his parents. To be precise, he liked his father. His Danish acquaintance,
through whom Siim had met his almost fiancée Clarissa, had once told Hans and
Siim that you could like or dislike your father, whereas your mother was just
your mother. Hans had found it a bit simple when he’d heard her theory. Theories
like that were one of the reasons the young woman had stayed just an acquaintance,
another reason being that Hans had been with Julia. It was possible that Siim
hadn’t been very convinced either, he had chosen the flatmate over her after
all.

But
maybe there was something to the theory, at least in Hans’s case. Or maybe Hans
was simply very lucky to have a loving mother who was loved back and who was
just there, and a father he actually liked.

And
he knew that his father liked him, too. Perhaps the man could relate well to
his youngest son because he himself hadn’t been an oldest brother either. He’d
been the second of four siblings. Hans’s grandfather had had children late in
life, after he’d come back from the war and the camps, but the family tree had
nevertheless kept gaining in breadth. Hence the current size of Hans’s clan.

‘Are
you coming to Tartu for the Easter holidays?’, his father asked. ‘Just to get
that question out of the way.’

Hans
also liked his two brothers, to be sure, but there it was less self-evident. In
fact, he mainly liked Lennart, who was two years older. Margus, the oldest, had
too much of an age distance to him. To Hans he was almost like a parent, or an
uncle. His character didn’t help either. He was big, and he had a family of his
own, and a beard, and he was deputy director of the Tartu water utility, and he
made Hans feel juvenile.

‘I’m
not sure yet,’ Hans replied. ‘I know I should have booked tickets by now. Is
Lennart coming?’

With
Lennart it was different. Of course he, too, had a family. He was living with
his girlfriend and two daughters in a village near Tallinn, even though he’d
kept a registered address in Tartu. He, too, had sort of a beard sometimes. But
the character was completely different. In engineering school Lennart had
figured out a more efficient way to insulate electricity and phone cables on
wooden lamp posts during the winter. The system could be fitted to existing
lamp posts if maintenance was due anyway, otherwise it made no economic sense,
but it nonetheless prolonged the cables’ lifespan somewhat and reduced the
failure rate in winter considerably, as far as Hans had understood. Lennart had
teamed up with a friend from business school, and had founded a company.
Patents, certificates, everything. A Finnish municipality had recently awarded
them a contract to fit half the lamp posts along their rural roads, and they
had submitted a bid for similar government contracts in Estonia itself and in
Sweden.

‘No,
he won’t. He’ll be travelling for his business.’

Pity.
Lennart was an entirely different story, compared to Margus with his beard.

‘I’m
not sure, dad. A big new case just arrived, it’s hard to tell how long it will
take. Can I maybe just come after Easter, like on a normal weekend?’

‘What
kind of a question is that? You come whenever you like.’

Hans
smiled. He put his feet on the coffee table.

‘So
dad, how many new nephews and cousins do I have?’

‘It’s
a little slow right now. But I’ll tell you something else.’

‘What
is it?’

‘But
don’t laugh. I want to build a house.’

‘Another
one?’

‘I
mean building it myself. On the old plot up the river. Something small and
simple, from scratch. So you’ll have something to do every time you come to
visit.’

Hans
couldn’t help smiling. The idea was absurd, obviously. His father didn’t need a
house. But the mere idea of them all drinking beer together on a makeshift
construction site lit a spark of enthusiasm. Dad, Lennart, him. Some random
cousins maybe. Margus could bring in some utility employees to do the water
connection. And Lennart could insulate the electricity cables. What’s not to
like?

After
he had finished talking to his father, Hans got himself a cold beer from the
fridge and returned to his sofa. The day was over, he felt good. Tomorrow would
be an interesting day, too. He definitely didn’t feel like listening to Julia on
the phone right now.

‘This question
concerns not only the appropriateness of such cooperation with the German BND,’
said Nathalie Bresson. She had a light accent, but she tried to speak in the
style that she would also use in her native French, the style in which she would
have spoken back at the ministry of justice in Paris. ‘It is also a question of
legal competences.’

The
meeting had been scheduled as the first thing in the morning, except that
director-general Geoffrey Clarke had been in even more urgent meetings all
morning, so it was already past noon. Tienhoven, Hans and Clarke were all
looking at Bresson, hearing her out. At the Commission people almost never
interrupted each other, Hans had noticed that a long while ago. The four of
them were sitting around the same table at which Viktor and he had first
presented their preliminary findings from the statistics project to Tienhoven.
This time there were four people to nine chairs. Everybody had one empty chair
between himself and his neighbour. Only Hans and Clarke had two between each
other. The door to the corridor was closed. Outside the windows the sun shone
as it had in Maastricht the day before.

‘This
is about the principle of conferred powers,’ Bresson continued, sitting
completely still in her chair. ‘If member countries want to start a
counter-intelligence operation, they can do that themselves, using their own
national authorities. If such action requires cross-border cooperation, these
national authorities can cooperate with each other, without involving the
Commission.’

They
were still listening to her.

‘The
European institutions only have those powers that the member countries have
given them. They did not give the Commission the authority to act as a
counter-intelligence agency.’

She
looked over to Clarke, who was sitting next to her, only one empty chair
between them.

Clarke
said, ‘I don’t know. You could argue that if the Commission has powers to
conduct anti-fraud operations, it means that it also has powers to respond to
foreign intelligence activities. If one is connected to the other. You know,
the principle of
implied
powers.’

‘Yes,
that is a line of reasoning that could be defended as well,’ Bresson replied,
weighing every word she said. She recovered quickly. ‘It is a complex legal
question, one that merits thorough consideration. We might order a research
study, an expertise. For example, two renowned universities could be asked to write
a report on the extent of the Commission’s powers in this arguably sensitive
field.’

Clarke
looked over to Tienhoven with a barely concealed grin. ‘Willem, what do you
think about doing a research study?’

Tienhoven
duly obliged. ‘One university will write that we have the powers, the other
will write that we don’t. Probably they will both say both things, and let us
draw our own conclusions. And then they’ll have a conference and spend the rest
of their research money on wine. But we need a solution now, don’t we.’

Hans
grinned. His boss really must have had a lot of experience with various legal
professionals, including academics.

‘Exactly,’
Clarke said. ‘Research studies is what you do if you don’t really want to do
anything.’

Hans
cleared his throat. ‘Mister Clarke, if I may.’ Hans had never believed that he
was being paid to just sit there and keep his mouth shut. It had never really
hurt him or his career to speak up. Sometimes it had in the short run, then
he’d felt bad all day about having said something stupid, but never in the long
run. ‘The reason why anti-fraud is involved to begin with is because there could
be a possible cover-up of irregularities inside the Commission. Possibly a
deliberate falsification of European reports, by a man who possibly committed
fraud while going through the job competition.’

They
were all looking at him, and their look was relatively benevolent. Only Madame
Bresson looked a bit wary. Hans continued, ‘If individual national authorities
can give us clues, for whatever reason, then normally they are welcome. This
has happened before, in fact it happens regularly.’

Clarke
nodded. ‘And the legal service has never objected to this, and I think the
legal service is right.’ He nodded to Bresson, then turned to Tienhoven. ‘Willem,
what do you think?’

Tienhoven
agreed. ‘We’re not going to hunt any spies. We are fighting fraud. If we find anything
serious in any other direction, I suggest we will stop immediately and report to
you before taking any measures.’

Clarke
heard him out with a content expression in his face, then looked over at
Bresson. She didn’t say anything. Clarke got up, everyone else got up as well. ‘All
right,’ he said, to no-one in particular. ‘The investigation is opened on these
terms, and in close cooperation with the BND.’

He
nodded to Tienhoven, then to Hans, and left the room. Bresson quietly said
goodbye and followed him outside. Tienhoven closed the door from the inside and
sat back down again. Hans sat down as well.

Hans
asked, ‘Was it okay that I said that?’

Tienhoven
shrugged. ‘What you said was right, that’s why I supported you.’

‘Well
it’s just going very fast now, all of a sudden. The Bulgarian language thing
could be nothing, and the analysis of the nuclear reports is not ready yet
either.’

‘What,
you’re getting cold feet now?’ Tienhoven shook his head. ‘Don’t worry. Clarke
had already made up his mind anyway, you saw it yourself. Now the investigation
into Zayek is open. We’ll get the standard notification by e-mail as soon as he
signs it and his secretary pushes the button, and then it’s official. So the
question is: what do you propose we do now?’

Hans
took a breath, and then answered. ‘I guess we have no choice but to confront Zayek
in Luxembourg. The Germans want to do it right now, for their own reasons, and we’ll
have to do it at some point, too. Plus, we have just been instructed to do it
together with the Germans, which the Commissioner had wanted as well.’

‘I
think so, too,’ Tienhoven replied. ‘For us it will be a normal questioning,
first about his Bulgarian language skills, then about the nuclear statistics.
And then the Germans can ask their own questions.’

‘This
sounds like it’s very neat. But is it?’

Tienhoven
lowered his voice, too. He put both his hands on the table, palms down. ‘The
thing is that we cannot prevent national authorities from talking to our staff.
We’re not that special. We are just citizens of countries, residents of
countries. The Germans want to have one of our staff arrested, they can do
that, if he’s a crime suspect. They want to talk to him before calling the
local police, they can do that, too. In that case it would be even better if we
were present, this Zayek is still a Commission employee, he has rights. Either
way, once Zayek is arrested and indicted somewhere, we’ll be out of the game
completely. We’ll never know what it’s about.’

That
was the longest speech Hans had heard his boss pronounce in a long time.

Hans
asked, ‘What if he runs away?’

‘The
evidence will still be there. His records, the statistics.’

Hans
nodded.

Tienhoven
looked at his watch. Hans checked his phone. ‘I don’t know where this Hoffmann
is now,’ Tienhoven continued. ‘But we could take the car and meet with him in
Luxembourg, or at a petrol station along the way. I’ll ask Gabriela to cancel
the afternoon meetings.’

Hans
wanted to be sure he understood correctly. ‘We do it right this afternoon?’

‘We
leave right now, as soon as Hoffmann confirms the meeting. What did you think?’

Hans
thought for a moment. ‘Do we tell him about the uranium?’

‘We’ll
tell him the truth,’ his boss replied. ‘And the truth is that we don’t have
definitive proof, but that we do have indications. Maybe they have indications
of their own, or more. This is a joint operation, after all. Don’t forget that
Germany is not an enemy. It’s not even a foreign country. It’s a member of the
European Union.’

Hans
nodded again. Just yesterday Tienhoven had warned him about manipulations and
oil and beer. But he did have a point now. Commission staff often developed a
certain wariness of certain European countries, or of certain groups of
countries, or of all countries collectively. Like Siim had with his railroad
legislation. But the truth was that the European Union existed precisely
because of, and to the benefit of these countries. The Union
consisted
of these countries. They weren’t protesters outside the door. They were the
shareholders.

Hans
and Tienhoven left the meeting room together and walked back up the corridor.
Tienhoven continued to his own office, while Hans made a stop at his in order to
check his e-mail. First, he wanted to have one last look at his inbox before
leaving. His work e-mail couldn’t be accessed from outside the anti-fraud
building, not even with a one-time code sent to a registered mobile phone, like
it was possible in all other Commission departments that weren’t investigating
each other’s fraud. Second, he wanted to print out Viktor’s follow-up analysis,
the two Excel sheets. He wanted to have them available in case the discussion
with Zayek required pointing out specific occasions of disappearing uranium. He
only had Holland as well as Poland as the second country so far, but maybe that
would be enough. He clicked on the icon and his printer started making the
usual noises.

While
it was still working, Hans took a breath and left his office to go see his boss
again. Tienhoven was already sitting behind his desk and looked up. ‘Yes?’

Hans
entered and closed the door behind him. The door to the secretary’s office was
closed already.

Hans
said, ‘I’m sorry, but don’t you still think that this is all going a bit fast?’

Normally
Hans preferred fast to sclerotic, and his boss knew that, but this here was
different, in nature not just degree.

Tienhoven
got up from his chair, walked over to the small round table in the corner, sat
down and invited Hans to have a seat, too. Hans gladly obliged.

‘For
example,’ Hans said. ‘Why does the Commissioner ask the anti-fraud department
to deal with spies? And we just say yes and go there. On a case that isn’t
entirely ripe yet, together with the BND, which is an intelligence outfit and
not a police force, and which has a defector and a plan that we know nothing
about?’

Tienhoven
heard him out, then he waited for a few moments before answering. ‘I understand
what you mean,’ he said. ‘But these things sometimes happen.’

‘Us
exposing Russian spies?’

‘Not
that, of course, but things happening very quickly, very suddenly,’ Tienhoven
clarified. ‘Your first question is easy. Normally the Commissioner wouldn’t
have given it to anti-fraud but to anti-spy. Except there is no such thing as
anti-spy in the Commission. We come fairly close with our sorta-kinda-police
job, and we already work for her.’

‘Okay,
so second: why do
you
think the Germans want to share this with us? Why
do they want to expose him together?’

‘Political
considerations, undoubtedly,’ Tienhoven shrugged. ‘To stress the spirit of European
collegiality, to not come across unilateralist, what do I know. But it doesn’t
even matter. We should be happy, because otherwise this Zayek would already be
in a German prison awaiting a hearing, and all we’d do here is make photocopies
for the German prosecutor.’

Hans
tried a smile. Tienhoven had always been a pragmatic manager, it was just that
in Hans’s time there had never been a situation like that. Usually there was
plenty of time to consider plenty of information. Now they had neither one nor
the other, but they had to decide all the same. And it was absolutely true. The
worst thing would be to sit around, do nothing, let the spy get arrested, and
then end up making photocopies for others. Oh sure, Tienhoven had said they
weren’t going to hunt any spies. But Hans understood very well that this was more
or less exactly what they’d be doing. Hunting corrupt mayors who stole
road-building money was of course also very exciting, but now he felt they were
entering a whole new league. Now Hans was smiling for real.

Saint
Petersburg

Werner
Ott finished talking, and waited for a reply. He pressed the receiver to his
ear. The encryption technology that the consulate used diminished the audio
quality a little.

‘Did
he change his mind?’, the serious voice at the other end of the line asked.

‘He
didn’t say anything to me,’ Ott said. ‘He just left. When I went to check his
room last night it was empty.’

‘Nothing
else?’

‘Nothing
else.’

The
voice paused. ‘All right, thank you.’

‘Goodbye,’
Ott replied and hung up.

It
was all for the better. Ott hadn’t asked what this meant for the validity of
the information that the visitor had provided. Berlin wouldn’t have told him,
and he didn’t need to know. Anyway, this type of situation was rather something
for the embassy in Moscow, not for a regional consulate like theirs, he thought.
Besides, it wasn’t entirely unproblematic even there. When he’d been posted to
Warsaw as a young man, back in the eighties, they’d received a defector, too,
and it had turned out very ugly for the poor man. And for his wife, too. Thank
God they hadn’t touched the child; they had sent it to grow up with the
grandparents. The times had been different then, of course. But regardless of
the times, none of this was ever a game.