by Reevik, Carl
‘What’s Estonia saying?’, Hans asked.
‘Estonia is a small country. They only open their mouth when it really matters to them. Border security, yes. Customs duties on external trade, yes. Energy independence from Russia, yes. They’re all in favour of more renewable energy sources. Even nuclear power is better than Russian gas. But on railroads they’re fine either way. Happy to play along.’ Siim took a big swig, and breathed out. ‘Happy to be inside to begin with. After such a century.’
Hans didn’t say anything, he didn’t even nod. That wasn’t necessary. He knew Siim’s family history, Siim had told him. When Stalin invaded Estonia, the Soviets first deported some of their family members to Siberia, where half of them died. Then they drafted Siim’s grandfather into the Red Army. A year later Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, marching through Estonia along the way. More deportations followed. The neighbours got rounded up because they were Jews, and they never came back.
Hans took another swig, and held his breath. He knew his own family history, too. Hans’s grandfather got grabbed by the Germans, not by the Red Army. They drafted him into their very own Estonian legion to help them fight the Soviets. So both grandfathers, Siim’s and Hans’s, without knowing each other, found themselves fighting on opposing sides. Shooting at each other, presumably. Very likely even, because when the fighting reached Estonia again, both sides put their respective Estonians in the front line, telling them to go liberate their beloved land from the vicious invaders.
Hans breathed out slowly through his nose. At the end of the war Hans’s grandfather became a prisoner of war, since he was found wearing a German uniform. The Soviets put him on a cattle train and shipped him to their deadly labour camps. They also grabbed Siim’s grandfather, a Soviet lieutenant by then, and put him on a cattle train to Siberia, too. He was taken there along with many other victorious Soviet soldiers. These soldiers had been to Western Europe, after all, in the course of their push for Berlin. They had seen the living standards of workers in even the poorest capitalist countries, which even in wartime could not possibly have corresponded to what they’d been told by the Soviet government all their lives. And Estonians like Siim’s grandfather were deemed unreliable Soviet citizens anyway. So they went into the Gulag. Both grandfathers survived the camps, and both returned to Estonia, which was again under firm Soviet control. A freshly liberated constituent part of the Soviet Union. Estonian partisan groups called the forest brothers held out in the woods for a few years, but theirs had been a lost cause from the start. Estonia would remain Soviet for another forty years.
Siim and Hans both knew most of their respective stories from aunts or uncles, or from neighbours. Hans’s grandfather had died before he was born anyway. But even if he hadn’t, the grandfathers had kept their mouths firmly shut. Old Estonians were not the most talkative bunch on the best of days, but when it came to the war, many of them fell even more silent than they already were.
‘We got into the European Union at a fortunate moment,’ Hans said quietly. ‘And into NATO as well, which is maybe even more important. When Russia was behaving like a more or less normal country.’
‘Maybe that wasn’t normal. Maybe the nineties were abnormal, and now they’re back to normal again.’ Siim put his glass down. ‘Some normal, though. Do they never wonder why no normal country wants to be friends with them voluntarily? It’s all Irans and Syrias and North Koreas.’
In fact Hans had seen it with several Russians he knew personally. Neighbours, Russian classmates at school and their parents. His own maternal grandmother, too. She had married his other grandfather in the fifties and then lived all her life in Estonia, but she was originally from Russia, making Hans a quarter Russian. The logic of their reasoning was always more or less the same. The Russian national spirit seemed to harbour an ambivalent but real desire to be a bit like America. There was a conviction that securing national borders and creating a safe geostrategic space was a normal and legitimate thing for a country to do, just like America did. America bullied everybody, meddled in other countries, toppled governments, sold weapons to its clients, cited human rights only when it suited its interests, pushed around its impotent so-called allies in Europe, and it lied to them and it spied and it hacked into their servers and it read their e-mails. And in Russia there was a deep frustration about how the Americans managed to do it and get away with it, even be genuinely liked. While Russia, when it was doing exactly the same thing, was inevitably pictured as a violent alcoholic who broke the rules of the civilised world. Maybe Russia did it too clumsily, too directly. Not smartly enough in an age of mass media. But the game surely was the same for all countries, large or small. Russia just happened to be bigger than others. So it behaved like big countries were entitled to behave, and like other big countries in fact did behave.
‘Maybe they realise this themselves,’ Hans said. ‘And it frustrates them even more. History hasn’t been exactly easy on them, either.’
‘I know that,’ Siim nodded. ‘Our country landed in a rough neighbourhood.’
Hans got a passing waiter’s attention and ordered one more for each of them, so that the beer would arrive when they’d finish the glasses they had now.
‘But we’re inside,’ Hans said. ‘And right now the problem is not just getting into the club where you want to be. Now the club doesn’t want you in to begin with. Just look at the next candidate in the queue. They also used to be in the Soviet sphere. You think Europe will even open negotiations with them, for membership in the future?’
‘It has to, at least it has to open talks.’ Siim put both hands on the table. ‘Europe made a promise. If you are a European country, and if you are able and willing to follow the rules, you can apply for membership. We cannot go back on that just because Russia is bullying its neighbours. It would mean to prove them right.’
The beer arrived. They emptied their old glasses, gave them back to the waiter, and started working on the new ones. They both took a swig, and then another one. Breathed out.
‘How’s Clarissa?’, Hans asked.
‘Good. Very good. Two more months of research in Holland. I hope all the radiation in her lab up there won’t make her infertile. We’re thinking about getting married, and so on. How’s your own sex life?’
‘Long-distance. It’s very safe sex.’
‘Is Julia back in Estonia yet?’
‘No, she’s still doing her fellowship at that hospital. But it doesn’t really matter if she’s a thousand kilometres away in Estonia, or another thousand away in some other direction.’
‘You should meet someone here,’ Siim said. ‘See how it works out. If it doesn’t work out with the girl in Brussels you can still go back to Julia, while she’s so far away anyway. You can even try out several girls here.’
Hans took another swig. No need to act all offended. It’s not like the thought had never crossed his own mind.
‘I need a favour, Siim,’ he said.
‘What’s the favour about?’
‘I need to make a few phone calls from your office to ask around about something.’
Siim put on an evil smirk. ‘Will I get into trouble?’
‘No. It’s just preliminary. If it’s nothing, then nothing will happen. It there’s something, then there’ll be an investigation and we’ll get everything anyway. But I can’t call from my own office, and I can’t use the phone of anyone else in my building, we all have creepy numbers. It has to be innocuous.’
‘I don’t know Hans.’
‘Relax, it’s for the greater good,’ Hans smiled. ‘For our mutual fatherland.’
‘Am I allowed to know what it’s about?’
‘I’ll tell you when I know if it’s something or nothing, I promise.’
Siim shook his head, smiling. It meant he agreed. They both took another swig. Hans had to burp, and this time he only half suppressed it. ‘I should be going after this one. Lots of work tomorrow. And you have your railroad stuff
to do.’
‘Ah, it will get approved with some changes, by compromise as usual,’ Siim sighed. ‘The national governments want it themselves, they asked for it in the first place. And the moment they approve it they will turn around and tell their voters that Brussels is forcing absurd regulations on them. And the voters will love hearing it. And then they’ll wonder why the anti-Europe parties are on the rise.’
Nothing to say to that. Hans listened to the music and the chatter for a few moments. He didn’t want to close his eyes for fear of getting vertigo, but the atmosphere was enjoyable whether his eyes were closed or open. Oh yes, Murphy’s was a fine place, a very fine place to be.
5
A new morning, the sun in the clear sky was already blinding the crowd hurrying along the street. Pavel looked out the window, the right side, the side that wasn’t obscured by the flag. His morning tea was no longer hot. If we wanted he could just hold the glass with his hands now, without using the metal handle.
The consular staff’s hospitality was running out. He could sense it. But he didn’t need to try it for much longer. Even though he had just managed to relax his mouth, he now pressed his lips tightly together again.
Brussels
Now we’re making progress, Hans thought. Bright new morning, bright new progress. In fact the morning wasn’t bright at all, outside it was still as grey and cold as it had been the day before, plus now it was also getting wet. And he felt just a little numb from last night’s beers.
But the progress was nice nevertheless. Atomic energy department, sub-department for reporting, administrative support unit. Based in Luxembourg. Six posts, plus one head of unit. That was where the incoming national reports were processed and converted into the first draft of Commission reports. Hans had made the calls from Siim’s office. If anyone had wondered why he was asking, he had said that it was for a study on the railroad policy implications of the transport of nuclear waste. But that it was very tentative at this stage. He had selected numbers within atomic energy that looked like they could be relevant. Within the list he had chosen the people he would call. No heads of unit, only assistants and administrators, the workhorses in the middle of the hierarchy. Three conversations later he had obtained what he needed.
Now Hans was sipping his machine coffee from a plastic cup as he went through the list he’d just printed out. He had a printer in his own office, a little perk everyone on his floor enjoyed, more or less justified by the need to print out confidential documents sometimes.
His computer made a sound, telling him an e-mail had arrived. But it was only one of the usual security warnings. Brussels police were informing Commission staff that protests by farmers had been authorised for Friday. The farmers were probably protesting about their milk prices having gone down, or about trade with countries outside the European Union being opened up, which in the end might have the same result. A square and two adjacent streets were going to be blocked by tractors and closed for traffic for most of Friday afternoon. Commission staff were advised to behave prudently.
Hans returned to his work at hand. He read the names on the sheet. The head of unit was a man called Stavros Theodorakis. The six posts were, in alphabetical order, Pedro Maluenda, one vacancy, another vacancy, Ilona Velikova, Anneli Villefranche, Boris Zayek. Four people manning six desks. Poor Mister Theodorakis, running a unit like that. Two of his six posts were vacant. At the next round of budget cuts he would be kissing these posts goodbye forever. They would take them away from him, since apparently the unit was functioning just fine at two-thirds capacity. They would give the posts to another unit somewhere else. Except this administrative support unit was not functioning just fine, as Hans seemed to have found out. As he seemed to have indication to further explore.
Not enough staff. Hans looked at the ceiling. Perhaps the irregularity in the reporting was due to the fact that the unit was understaffed and overworked? That the omissions in the lists were simply mistakes? Typos, basically, something copy-pasted into the wrong line by a tired worker late in the evening? Hans realised he had never seriously considered this option. His boss Tienhoven had not said anything, just kept it experimental, and let him go right ahead. Let the young man make some mistakes, it’s part of life. He’s talented, but this will make him more mature. Viktor hadn’t said anything either. It was just him. Your stupid games. You child.
Hans took a breath and looked back down on the list in his hand. Either way is fine, he thought. If it’s all just a mistake they would find out. After all anti-fraud, or audit, or criminal investigation was not about uncovering as many crimes as possible, or putting as many people as possible in jail. A low incidence of crimes could just mean a low crime rate, which was good. Prosecutors should be happy about it. Hans looked out the window. The sky over Brussels was dark and heavy. Tiny raindrops were holding on to the glass. Anti-fraud people should be happy about the absence of fraud, but clearly they were not.
His computer made another sound. An e-mail had arrived, and it was from Viktor. There was some explanatory text in the body of the message, and two attached Excel sheets.
Luxembourg
Boris Zayek was going through the same routine on the second country he was handling, which was Latvia. Opening, checking, verifying, inserting. He had gone straight to work after arriving at the office, no hot chocolate this time. Anneli had already been there when he’d come in. That was usually the case on Wednesdays. Something about her husband and her children. She brings them to school, he goes to work early and picks them up, or the other way around, except on Fridays, some deal like that. That was not Zayek’s main concern right now. Later today his boss Theodorakis would announce the rotation, and that was the concern. Zayek would lose the North and be given another European region to handle. But it was never known in advance who would get what, which made planning ahead difficult.
For now he needed to finish Latvia. Not a large country, at least in terms of population size. By area it had the surface of Holland and Belgium combined. But it was the location that made it special. Why weren’t the Russians interested in Latvia? He had it here, it was right in front of him. And it was so obvious. Maybe too obvious.
Zayek remembered his first operational experience back in Germany. It had been in the army, just like he had planned. Not all of his military service had been enjoyable. During basic training there had been physical exercise, which had been tough, and being yelled at all day had not been pleasant either. Although mostly he had been just sitting around waiting like everybody else. His fellow soldiers were all morons. But then, after basic training, and for the remainder of his service, he had been assigned to do desk duty for the regimental administration. His job had been to type over written requests for leave and expense claims into a newly installed computer. So he had sat in his camouflage uniform at a desk all day, shuffling papers and typing. But his office had been near an archive and he knew where the keys were, and inside the files were lined up on open shelves. And so several times a month he would slip in and make photocopies of anything he could get a hold of. Instructions, manuals, names, phone numbers. Because he knew that real foreign intelligence was not about getting a blueprint of a new missile, or something similarly spectacular. It was about getting many little pieces of information which in themselves were insignificant. Railroad schedules, the maximum weight supported by a bridge, employment records. He had compiled three thick envelopes of paper sheets. The Russians would know what to do with it, they were better professionals than he was, he’d assumed. Now the hard part had been to make contact with the Russians, because still no-one had actually sought to recruit him.
Brussels
‘Viktor from statistics e-mailed me the first part of his analysis of the raw data,’ Hans said. He was standing in front of his boss’s desk. The door connecting Tienhoven’s office with the corridor was open. So was the secretary’s door.
‘A sample of two countries now,’ Hans continued. ‘It’s not finished yet
, but the pattern keeps getting more and more suspicious. Information from the national authorities disappears from Commission reports. We know which unit handles the raw data. While we wait for the rest of the analysis, I would like to request the personnel records for some cross-referencing. It’s only five people.’
‘You know this is not an investigation yet,’ Tienhoven said. ‘Only the director-general can open a formal investigation.’
‘I know, but you can authorise a little probe.’
Come on, come one, say it.
Tienhoven asked, ‘What are you hoping to find?’
Hans wasn’t sure what, he’d have to look first. ‘There could be irregularities in someone’s biography, or some link to an industry from a previous employment, or some link to the four countries where the uranium is disappearing. It’s a routine random probe, basically.’
‘Except it’s not random.’
Hans had nothing more to add. Please?
Tienhoven nodded. ‘Okay.’
Yes, we’re in business.
‘Thanks, Willem.’
Hans left Tienhoven’s office, briskly walked down the corridor past the row of closed doors and returned to his own office. He sat down and looked around. Not bad. When he’d first seen his office he had assumed he’d have to share it with somebody else. There were plenty of Commission departments where such a space would hold one administrator, one assistant and an intern. Siim for example had an office to himself over at transport, but it was the size of Hans’s filing cabinet. Not bad, not bad at all. Hans revived his screen to make the request to the personnel department.
Luxembourg
Evidently he couldn’t just walk into the Russian embassy with his photocopies. Zayek would have looked like a fool. So he’d sent the packages by post. Three heavy packages, addressed to the Russian embassy. He had put a slip of paper with his name and his army unit number into each envelope, so that they could find him and recruit him and take it from there. At least they would know where it had come from. But they hadn’t called. Not the next day, not in the weeks that followed, not during the remainder of his service. He had kept sitting behind his desk in his camouflage uniform, typing, waiting. But then again, it had all made sense. Obviously they couldn’t send him a letter saying thank you. That would have exposed them in case the letter got intercepted. Or in case they thought that the material was a trap, that the envelopes had been sent by the Americans, or the BND, to test them somehow.