The Serbian Dane (11 page)

They were approaching the border. The train stopped at Padborg on the German side, then moved off again. A Danish passport controller passed through the train. He merely glanced at most of the green and red German passports, Vuk noted, watching him work his way through the carriage. But occasionally he opened a passport and took a closer look at it. Then it was Vuk’s turn.

‘
Pas, bitte
,’ the passport controller said.

‘Hi. Doing a bit of a check today, then, are you?’ Vuk said. His Danish was totally without accent. He handed the passport controller his beetroot-red passport in the name of Carsten Petersen. The controller opened it, then promptly closed it again and handed it back to him.

‘Yes. We do a spot check every now and again,’ the man said. He spoke with a Jutland accent. Then, as he moved on: ‘Enjoy the rest of your day.’

‘Thanks,’ Vuk said, somewhat puzzled by the man’s choice of words. Enjoy the rest of your day:
Kan du fortsat ha’ en god dag
– they never used to say that.
It must be something they had borrowed from English. The Danish language snapped up foreign words and phrases and made them its own like no other language Vuk knew.

They trundled into Denmark and headed north through Jutland. The place hadn’t changed a bit. It looked so neat and trim, so innocent; lying there bathed in sunlight under a clear blue sky, smiling at Vuk, who settled back in his seat. The cars were newer, the houses bigger and the farms better kept than he remembered. But that might be because his own country consisted of nothing but ruins and streams of refugees. The contrast was so great simply because he did not feel there were any contrasts in the Danish countryside, only countless subtle nuances which, to a Dane, seemed like enormous differences but which, to a foreigner were like a piece of music, constantly repeating variations on the same theme. The train stopped at almost every station and he recited their names in the voice inside his head: Vojens, Røde Kro, Fredericia, Kolding, Vejle. The Danes didn’t look any different either. Dressed in jeans, which they called ‘cowboy trousers’, and sensible jackets. The few children he saw were well dressed and well fed. The land was bursting with health and plenty. All the way to Århus he feasted his eyes and ears on the landscape and the steady lilt of the Danish voices around him in the train. He felt as if he had divested himself of his Balkan cloak in order, instead, to garb himself in his Danish identity. He didn’t find it difficult. On the contrary, it came so naturally to him that for a moment he wasn’t sure who he really was and why he had come back here.

When he arrived in Århus at 17.28 pm he was just another face in the crowd.

M
ore than once Lise Carlsen had to check herself, but it was no use: she couldn’t take her eyes off Per, he was so hard to ignore, blast him: perched there so nonchalantly on the edge of a desk. He didn’t say much, left most of the talking to his boss. He had, however, run through the schedule as it now stood. Explained simply and matter-of-factly where they were thinking of holding the press conference and that they were still trying to find secure overnight accommodation. He seemed so self-assured, in a way that was new to Lise, used as she was to a world where a gift of the gab was the mark of a person’s worth; while Per, with his sparing use of words, showed that he knew he was good at his job and that they would listen to him. Had he nothing to prove? Was he simply perfectly content with his own capabilities? Was that his secret? Per had told them the word on the street was that a contract on the subject had been signed and sealed. This came as a surprise to Lise: he had never said anything to her about it, even though they spent hours of each day in each other’s company.

Lise had also taken a back seat, letting Tagesen speak for their newspaper, and for the press in general. As chair of Danish PEN, she had every right to speak up and say what she thought. She might be young and relatively new to the post, which she had only held for a year, but she was a well-respected arts journalist and social commentator. And she had done her stint on various committees working for persecuted writers and imprisoned intellectuals around the world. She had been a member of PEN for almost ten years. She had travelled abroad for the organization and had been elected chair because she was good at what she did and because the large majority of members had felt that an injection of younger blood would be no bad thing. But she had
to confess that she was feeling slightly unsure of herself. It wasn’t like her, but she was rather thrown by the fact that her marriage was in trouble. She had never been in such a situation before. And she had never had responsibility for such an important matter as this before either. One which could be a matter of life and death. Besides, it was Tagesen who had requested and been granted this meeting. And the powers that be did not want to get on the wrong side of the press: a media storm could rise up as suddenly as a dust storm in Texas, and if everybody was playing the same tune, it could sweep the country and clear a foodstuff off the market in a day, ruin the career of a bureaucrat or a politician in a week. Once the whole orchestra struck up, the facts were of little consequence. From then on, emotions governed events. Ole said folk must be scared to death of the life they were leading, to be so easily influenced. People no longer had any sort of an anchor, no firm belief in anything whatsoever, so it was the easiest thing in the world for the mass media to sway them and scare them. It wasn’t a thought Lise relished, but he was probably right.

She tried to concentrate, but her thoughts kept returning to Per and from there to Ole: she felt she never saw him anymore. He was asleep when she left in the mornings and never at home when she got back. He would roll in late at night, reeking of booze, and crawl into bed beside her without a word, while she lay with her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. Things seemed to have been going on like this for years, but it must only be a few months since their relationship began to fall apart. She did not know whether it had already fallen over the edge of a precipice or whether it could still be salvaged. And whether she or he was prepared to rock the boat. They were going to have to have a talk. But now she had to concentrate on the matter in hand.

She brought her thoughts back to the meeting. The man from the prime minister’s office, who had introduced himself as Stig something-or-other, had a grating, high-pitched voice. He was one of those real high-flying, little political-science graduates, the same age as herself: already a department head and a man who loved playing the part of armchair politician and string-puller. Like her he was a child of the seventies, but he had distanced himself totally from that mixed-up era. Everything about him was perfectly tailored: both suit and opinions.

The meeting was being held in an anonymous office at Police Headquarters, and it was such an important one that Jytte Vuldom, Per’s boss, had even made the journey from Bellahøj for it. She, unlike Stig whatsisname, Lise found impressive. She had a good powerful voice, and she did not have to raise it to get men to listen. Lise could tell by the glance Per sent his boss when he spoke of the possible contract that this announcement had been cleared with her beforehand. It struck her that there was talk here of scare tactics. She saw where it was leading.

‘I would like to emphasize that the prime minister also considers it deplorable that this matter should have been made public. The information did not, of course, come from our office. Just for the record,’ said Stig Thor Kasper Nielsen, to give him his full name. He had assured them again and again that he had not leaked the story, but this had only had the opposite effect. Everyone now believed Stig Nielsen to be the source. But it was evidently important to him to scotch this rumour, so much so that he was protesting too much; or perhaps the fact of the matter was that he didn’t really have anything to say, or didn’t dare come to the point.

‘There’s no need to go on about it,’ said Tagesen. ‘I’m sure our excellent police force will arrange for the necessary protection.’

‘Naturally,’ said Vuldom, lighting another cigarette. ‘But, like everyone else, we have to get our priorities right. We have a big state visit in the offing, as well as a summit meeting, and both of these are going to stretch our resources to the limit.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Tagesen asked.

‘Exactly what I say,’ said Vuldom. ‘No more and no less.’

Lise could tell that Per was about to say something, but she also noticed how one look from Vuldom and he bit it back.

‘Well, let me just say this,’ Tagesen said, and Lise could tell that he was starting to lose his temper. He started fiddling with the buttons on his jacket. He tugged at his moustache. ‘You’re saying that you can’t commit all your resources to protecting Sara, because there are other things which are more important.’

‘I don’t think that’s what the chief superintendent is saying,’ said Stig Thor Kasper Nielsen. ‘I think the chief superintendent is saying that the timing is not of the best, coinciding as it does with a couple of state occasions.’

Lise knew exactly what he was getting at, and so did Tagesen:

‘No way,’ Tagesen said.

‘No way what?’ said Stig Nielsen.

‘We are not cancelling or postponing this visit. Because that’s what you’re telling us to do. That’s the message you’re saying the prime minister has asked you to pass on, isn’t it? Well we won’t hear of it, and neither will Sara Santanda. I spoke to her only yesterday.’

‘Well, if that’s how you wish to interpret it,’ said the man from the prime minister’s office, but Lise could tell that Tagesen had hit the nail on the head.

Per was about to butt in again, and again he received a warning look from his boss.

‘But I’m right, aren’t I?’ Tagesen said.

‘We wouldn’t dream of interfering with a private visit,’ said Stig Thor Kasper Nielsen, deliberately stressing the word ‘private’. ‘
Politiken
has every right to do whatever
Politiken
likes.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Tagesen. ‘We get the picture. So what about the invitation to Bang?’

The man from the ministry stood up, straightened his back and looked pointedly at his watch.

‘Look, it all comes down to the same thing, Tagesen. We’ve got a very tight schedule over the next couple of months, what with the state visit, the prime minister’s tour of the Jutland constituencies and, as you know, some very delicate budget talks. There simply is not a free slot in his diary. However much the government would like to show that we will not let ourselves be browbeaten.’

‘But that’s exactly what you’re
doing
. You know as well as I do how vital it is, for Sara and for us, that she should meet a member of the government. That we show that Denmark will not, in fact, be browbeaten by a gang of criminals.’

‘It is the government’s policy to pursue a critical dialogue with Iran. We believe that at the end of the day this will give the best outcome. We didn’t set the date. Our diary is completely full for the next year. It is not a question of politics but of practicalities.’

Stig Thor Kasper Nielsen ran his eye round the room. And as he did so, Lise realized how it felt when, as the saying goes, someone walks over your grave. That phoney word ‘practicalities’ hung in the air. A phoney word but so
wonderfully sweeping, so useful. One of the main objects of the whole exercise was for a western government to publicly meet and embrace an intellectual who had been sentenced to death by a state that flouted all the international conventions. Such a demonstration would be reported on by newspapers all over the world. And the Danish government had said no. They would call it
realpolitik,
but Lise knew it had more to do with export figures and the government’s narrow majority in the house. A government which, her colleagues on the political desk said, was plagued by internal unrest and seemed to have run out of steam.

She couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

‘What a copout!’ she said, her voice almost breaking. The others stared at her in astonishment. Even Tagesen looked as though he thought this outburst was a bit much. She stopped before she could say any more. She was afraid she might burst into tears of rage, and that would, of course, be regarded by the others as typical feminine frailty. But she felt disgust and fury writhing like a viper in her bosom.

‘It’ll be okay, Lise,’ Tagesen said. ‘I’m assuming that we’ll get all the help we need from the police at any rate.’

‘Of course you will,’ Vuldom said. ‘Per Toftlund is one of my most experienced officers. We will do all we can with the means at our disposal, if the visit cannot be postponed.’

She let these last words hang in the air, but Tagesen was not about to help her out. Instead he said his goodbyes, shaking hands with Vuldom and Toftlund and vouchsafing merely a nod to the man from the prime minister’s office. Toftlund also got to his feet, but Vuldom asked him to stay behind for a moment.

‘Would you mind waiting outside, Lise?’ he said.

Vuldom waited until everyone had gone, then closed the door.

‘Well, that didn’t work, did it?’ she said.

‘Nope, I didn’t think it would.’

‘But…both we and the foreign ministry have been asking around, and those buggers in Teheran won’t get upset as long as it isn’t treated as an official state visit. All this talk of a fatwa is mainly for internal use. I don’t think we need to worry. And anyway…the Swedes and the Norwegians are in much
the same situation. So: quick in and quick out, and there’s little chance of anything going wrong, is there?’

‘Some world we’re living in,’ Per said.

‘I’ve received a subtle hint to the effect that certain people would prefer it if the visit were cancelled completely. But if there’s no way round it, then I’m expecting you to make sure we’re not left to carry the can.’

Per couldn’t help smiling. It sounded so funny coming from Vuldom, this expression common throughout the central administration for the way in which, whenever anything went wrong, the politicians would make sure that the responsibility was offloaded onto some civil servant, high-ranking or low.

‘I’m going to need more people,’ he said.

‘The bit about our resources is true enough. We’re still coping with people taking time off in lieu after the social summit meeting. But we’ll let you have as many people as we can spare from surveillance duties – on the day itself. Otherwise you’ll have to make do with what you’ve got. And who’s to say that a definite contract has been taken out on the subject?’

‘I’ve got a gut feeling about it.’

‘Is there anything you want?’

‘Yes.’

‘Within reason.’

‘The safe house on Nygårdsvej.’

‘You’ve got it, Per.’

Stig Thor Kasper Nielsen caught Prime Minister Carl Bang between two meetings and put him in the picture. He could see that Bang was not happy with the outcome of the Santanda meeting, but he would have to go along with it: Stig had the impression that the prime minister felt he had handled the situation as well as was possible under the prevailing circumstances. And that was, after all, the main thing. That same afternoon, Bang sought out Johannes Jørgensen in the long gallery of the Parliament building. The Defence Committee was in session, and the Foreign Policy Committee was scheduled to meet the following day, so there was some activity at Christiansborg, and it was only natural for the pair to exchange a few words. They walked along side-by-side, smoking and speaking – as custom
dictated – in hushed voices. They chatted briefly about the Budget, turned on their heels and slowly retraced their steps. As so often before, Bang brought the conversation round to what was really on his mind by first going through the ritual of saying that what he was about to say was in strictest confidence, and Jørgensen played his part in the ritual by saying that, of course, he quite understood, but he knew right away that what he was about to hear would be good news, so there would be no need to tell anyone else.

‘No one from the government will be meeting…her,’ Bang said. ‘It will be a completely private visit. Arranged by a daily newspaper. I was wondering if you could see to it that no – how should I put it? – prominent member of the opposition will be able to spare the time…to see her.’

Jørgensen regarded the prime minister with open admiration. Bang was known for being an excellent tactician. In Danish politics you had to be, if you wanted to survive for any length of time as a minority government. It was a neat piece of work. The decision would not be his alone; instead he would get the big guns of the opposition roped into the affair. Thus spreading the responsibility. Jørgensen’s party had been in power last time round, and its members still had a big say in things. Bang knew that Jørgensen kept up with all his old contacts. In Danish politics you can easily be in government one year and in opposition the next. It was not a matter of politics but of practical necessity.