by Reevik, Carl
After the army he had studied at the university closest to his home town. Law at first, but he had found it tedious and the lecture halls had been crowded. Then he’d switched to business administration. It hadn’t been a very good subject either. The lecture halls were just as crowded, it had turned out. The things they’d had to learn didn’t seem very scientific, and he had found the math difficult to follow. He’d been almost thirty by the time he graduated. He had found a job at the municipal administration of a nearby town, halfway between his home town and his university town, and that was where he’d lived, and that was where he’d worked. The computer back in the army had been new, the one at the municipality old. Then suddenly things had happened very quickly.
And, by God, it had been extremely invigorating. Not just the trust and the responsibility that he had been suddenly, finally accorded. It had also been quite simply a baffling career leap. All his colleagues, all the Annelis and Pedros and Ilonas around him at the Commission had needed to revise for months to pass the entrance exams. They had all needed to sweat and stress out about the assessment centre, where they’d been given a big task and not enough time, just to see them prioritise and work under pressure. All that sweat and exertion just to end up on a list of names, not even in an actual job but merely on a reserve list from which they still had needed to apply for posts inside the Commission. They had needed to do all that, but not him. Not Boris Zayek from Germany with his dubious foreign passport. The sad-looking gentleman from Russian intelligence, who had never told him his fake name let alone his real name, had explained it all to him. This is your new name, you are already on the reserve list, now go and apply for a job. You understand the responsibility that you now have, the trust we put in you, the debt you owe us, and the means we have to protect your secret. Our secret. Oh, yes, he’d understood all that very well. Astonishing, thrilling. Invigorating. There’d been no better word for it.
Brussels
‘I think I found it. It’s their languages.’
The personnel records had arrived during lunchtime. Now Hans was sitting opposite Tienhoven, at a small table in the corner of his boss’s office. There was a small stack of papers lying on the table between them. Both doors were closed, the one leading out to the corridor and the one between Tienhoven’s and his secretary’s office.
Tienhoven was listening, the usual serious look on his face. He had been a pretty senior police investigator in the Netherlands, in the city of Utrecht, before joining the Commission. There had been a job competition specifically for senior posts within anti-fraud. Big or small, young or old, they all had to pass the competition. Even senior policemen from Utrecht, which was not the country’s quietest town. Hans had been to Utrecht once. The city map had showed traces of medieval urban design, with canals that used to be moats. But there’d been nothing picturesque about the city. It had been a disturbing monstrosity made of concrete and teeming with people who’d either been hurrying somewhere, or who’d been loitering about, nothing between those extremes. Or maybe that was just the area around the train station.
‘For each staff member the records show the languages they speak,’ Hans said. ‘As you know, to be recruited at the Commission you have to speak at least two European languages, and to be promoted you have to speak at least three.’ Hans took a set of sheets and handed them to Tienhoven.
‘Here. Pedro Maluenda. He speaks Spanish, French and English.’ Tienhoven turned over the first page as Hans continued talking. ‘Stavros Theodorakis, their head of unit. He speaks Greek, French and English.’ Next page. ‘Ilona Velikova. Czech, Slovak, English.’ Next. ‘Anneli Villefranche. Finnish, Swedish, French, English.’ And then the last one. ‘Boris Zayek. English, German.’
Hans paused, and added, ‘It’s about this Zayek. He does not speak Bulgarian.’
Tienhoven kept reading. ‘His nationality is Bulgarian, born in Sofia,’ he said, still looking at Zayek’s sheet. ‘He could have grown up somewhere else. If he grew up in Britain or Ireland he could have learned German at school, or he had a German girlfriend. Or boyfriend. If he grew up in Germany he would have had English at school like everybody else.’
‘Yes, the thing is, he passed the job competition with Bulgarian as his first language,’ Hans said, trying to keep his excitement down. He handed Tienhoven another set of sheets stapled together. They were copies from Zayek’s recruitment office file. ‘The math questions, the logic questions, the interviews, the case study under time pressure, the presentation exercise, the simulated group discussion, everything. The assessment during the recruitment process required excellent knowledge of Bulgarian, a language which, according to his employment file, Zayek doesn’t speak.’
‘And this did not raise any alarms,’ Tienhoven said, half as a statement, half as a question.
‘The recruitment office is in charge of putting qualified candidates on the reserve list,’ Hans said. ‘My guess is that once you’re on the list, the recruitment office doesn’t care about you anymore. Because from then on Commission departments, if they have a specific vacancy to fill, will do the actual hiring. They contact people who had made it onto the reserve list. And they’re interested in your CV, your experience, your personality. Not in how you made it to the list.’
‘We do cross-reference these things,’ Tienhoven said, finally raising his head and looking at Hans.
‘Yes, but we are anti-fraud, we check much more than that,’ Hans said, quietly. He didn’t want to sound self-important about where he worked. ‘Zayek had applied for, I am sorry to say, a low-key support unit, with what seems to be a dull job routine, in the middle of nowhere. The wrong end of the wrong town, as Viktor from statistics told me. The boss there cannot fill his unit, two out of six posts are vacant. Maybe he was worried that if he couldn’t hire enough people the Commission will scrap his vacancies altogether. He was probably begging Zayek on his knees to accept the job and to stay. And it’s not like his job actually requires any knowledge of Bulgarian.’
Tienhoven waited for a second, then he said, ‘An outside observer would now say that you have found some errors in some reports that no-one reads, and a staff member with some mix-up in his documents. And you are connecting the two, and you are suggesting something on that basis.’
Hans said nothing. Just stared at his boss. He should have presented it more cautiously, with caveats. There seem to be reasons to believe. There are indications. Clues. Hints. It would have been the mature thing to do. Apparently. His older brother Margus would have brought it on more slowly, and he would’ve gotten farther. Now Hans could still hastily add that this had all been experimental, mere research, just like Tienhoven had ordered. A test to see whether statistical analysis could reveal something. Even if it was something harmless, explicable, unconnected.
The phone on Tienhoven’s desk rang. The boss glanced over to see which name would appear on the display, to decide whether he would take the call or not. He took it. He got right up, walked over to his desk, lifted the receiver to his ear and said his name. Hans kept looking at him. Tienhoven was standing behind his desk, listening to the voice in the receiver. In a second he would make a mute gesture in Hans’s direction, telling him to either stay and wait or to leave and come back later. But he didn’t make any gestures, he just kept listening. So Hans stayed right where he was.
He looked around his boss’s office. The weather outside was still depressing, but at least it had stopped raining. Hans gave the walls a closer look. There was no art, just a calendar and an organisation chart. A picture of what had to be Tienhoven’s daughter was standing on the desk. She was Hans’s age on the picture, she had fair hair, freckles and a sweet laugh. He didn’t see the picture now, because it was turned towards the occupant of the desk, not to the visitors. But he’d seen it often enough in here, and he remembered the image, the face. She would have been cute growing up, but now she was an attractive young woman. Hans frowned and focused back on his boss, who was just ending the pho
ne call.
‘Yes,’ Tienhoven said into the receiver. ‘Yes, please do.’
He hung up and looked over to Hans.
‘That was Clarke. Looks like somebody else is interested in your project.’
Hans paused for a moment. Geoffrey Clarke was the director-general, Tienhoven’s boss. ‘Clarke is interested in Zayek?’
‘No, not Clarke. He just called to tell me. His boss is interested.’
Hans raised his eyebrows. Above Clarke there was only the top level of the Commission. These people were not bureaucrats, not even senior advisors. These were politicians. Maria Schuster-Zoll, the German member of the European Commission.
‘And she’s not interested in your guy or anybody in particular,’ Tienhoven said, sitting back down at the little table he’d just left. ‘She probably doesn’t want to know any details, let alone names. But she lets us know that she wants us to liaise with the German foreign intelligence authorities to help them check out someone specific in the atomic energy department. Someone in Luxembourg.’
6
The lunch break was nearly over, they couldn’t stay forever.
But they lay there in such a tight and warm and comforting embrace. This was precisely what she wanted to do. Stay forever. Of course this was silly, a stupid thing to even think. And she would stop thinking it in a few moments. There were certain realities in life which they both knew very well. They weren’t teenagers. Not even newlyweds. Almost the opposite.
‘Sorry, wait a second,’ he whispered to her.
He freed himself from her embrace and went to the bathroom to take the condom off. Anneli watched him disappear from view. Of course she would wait a second. This was part of it as well, in the end. This was not the anticipation, not the excitement. Not the mutual pleasure, not the selfish pleasure. Not the skin, not the open mouths, not the gliding touches, the breathing. But it was just as much real. In the movies people had unprotected sex all the time, even with complete strangers. But she had a husband. And children.
She looked up. He came back and lay down next to her, still naked, his face turned to hers, his arm resting on her body. He didn’t say anything. He was just looking at her. She was now looking at the ceiling. The curtains were drawn, the pale grey sunlight shone weakly around the edges.
‘We have to get back,’ she said, quietly. But she didn’t move.
He didn’t reply. And he didn’t move either.
They just lay there for a long while in the warmth of the hotel bed. They had warmed it up themselves with the heat of their bodies.
Finally she sighed. She took his arm off her body and forced herself to get up. She started looking for her clothes.
Viktor turned around and tried to remember where he had put his glasses.
Brussels
‘You meet with the German secret spy guy,’ Tienhoven said.
‘Me?’ Hans was still sitting at his boss’s little table. He was not entirely comfortable with this idea, although he immediately felt the thrill. A certain heat pressing from the inside against his chest. He knew it well. But this was going very fast. Just a moment ago he’d felt like he was getting ahead of himself with that Bulgarian theory of his, and now it was already turning into a joint clandestine operation with the intelligence service of the largest European Union member country.
‘This is not an official investigation, remember?’, Tienhoven explained. ‘This is just experimental research, with a little probe. We haven’t questioned anybody, we haven’t seized any files or computer drives, we haven’t suspended anyone or anything.’
‘And this means?’
‘If I get involved already now, at my level, our mutual boss Geoffrey Clarke will want to cover himself. He will bring in Nathalie Bresson from the legal service. If you know what I mean.’
Hans knew what he meant. In her previous life Bresson had worked at the ministry of justice in Paris. She was brainy but cautious, as you presumably had to be in her position. But Hans knew that his boss held a more explicit opinion. Tienhoven had never been to law school himself, but he had dealt with a lot of members of various legal professions. And he was convinced that French universities didn’t teach people to find solutions. They taught them to be afraid of the professor. Which meant the graduates were worthless when it came to solving problems.
‘So you go meet the German,’ Tienhoven said. ‘And you just chat, informally, see what he wants from us. If it is related to this nuclear business, maybe he can add something to help you. If it’s something else, you can explain a little how we work, in general. If you start feeling uncomfortable, say you have to check with your superiors. If it’s harmless, you solve it right there.’
You dog, Hans thought. How can it be harmless if Commissioner Schuster-Zoll makes a call from up high? From the gigantic metallic-looking building that one could see from the conference room window, and that was basically the Mount Olympus of the Commission? Tienhoven just didn’t want to find himself in the first line of defence, that had to be it. He wanted to be the reserve line, the backup, he wanted to be prepared for what was coming his way.
‘Relax,’ Tienhoven said, as if sensing that Hans needed more assurance. ‘This has to be low-profile, no big story. They somehow persuaded her to help the process along, but she couldn’t start anything really official just because she’s German.’
Hans thought about it. Commissioners were not meant to represent their home country, that was true. Instead they had portfolios on subject-matters, like cabinet ministers. Schuster-Zoll was Commissioner for internal affairs and good administration, overseeing anti-fraud among other things. The fact that she was also German was more or less coincidental. She could not authorise, let alone order, any action on that basis alone.
Maybe Tienhoven just wanted to give Hans some freedom. After all, if some whistle-blower inside the Commission turned to anti-fraud, it was not unusual for them to first meet informally and chat. Without any senior staff present. Hans had already done such meetings before, in bars or cafés.
‘You don’t speak German, right?’, Tienhoven asked.
‘No, I’m trying to improve my French.’
‘No problem, so you’ll speak English. And don’t let them come here,’ Tienhoven added. ‘These people are trained in manipulating other people. It’s all mind games. If they need us, they can’t expect us to invite them right over, like we have nothing else to do. Clarke said the guy’s in Cologne right now. You don’t have a car, right? Borrow one of ours then, and meet with him halfway.’
‘What, like in Aachen?’
‘No, not Aachen, that’s in Germany. Take Liège or Maastricht. But don’t drink any beer. They’re trained in that as well. They swallow a cup of oil before, and then they get you drunk. Gabriela?’
His secretary opened the door and peered inside. Tienhoven said to her, ‘I’ll now forward you an e-mail from Clarke, please call the number that’s mentioned there and agree on a meeting between Hans and this Frank Hoffmann. In Maastricht, this afternoon.’
Luxembourg
‘Have you thought about Easter?’, Viktor asked. ‘It’s at the end of next week already.’
He had just finished buttoning his shirt. Anneli knew he always put on the shirt first, the trousers second, so they would cover the shirt’s bottom edge neatly. Otherwise he’d have to stuff the shirt into the already fixed trousers.
‘I’m sorry Viktor,’ she said, buttoning up her blouse. ‘I really need to go. Stavros is doing his holy rotation ceremony again. He loves it, it’s the highlight of our calendar.’
‘Nothing big, not a whole weekend, just something like we did in February,’ Viktor said. ‘And not during Easter, obviously. After that.’
Of course not during Easter. Those were the school holidays.
‘I know,’ Anneli said. ‘And I’m not against it. I just didn’t have the time to think of something. And maybe we shouldn’t overdo it, either. But right now I have to run.’
She finish
ed the blouse and gave him a kiss on the lips.
‘I liked that,’ Viktor said.
‘Me too.’ Anneli made a point of smiling, and hurried to the door. ‘Your turn to pay!’, she sang as she disappeared into the dark corridor that led to the staircase down to the hotel lobby.
Maastricht, the Netherlands
Hans was sitting at the agreed time outside a street café with a view on Vrijthof, a large square open only to pedestrians. It was late afternoon, traffic between Brussels and Maastricht had been forgiving. Hans didn’t own a car now, but back in Tallinn he’d had one, mainly to go to Lake Peipus or visit his parents in Tartu, and his driving was still fine.
It was relatively cold outside, Hans was wearing his winter jacket, the dark grey one with the zippers on the pockets. But at least the sun had come through, and it was shining in his face. There was a small half-empty bottle of still water on the table. It was still so that Hans wouldn’t have to suppress any carbon gases during the conversation, or exhale them through the nose. The place was one in a whole row of cafés all facing the square. On the far side of the square there were two cathedrals, the one on the left built from red stone, the one on the right built from brown stone. Maybe it was one Protestant, one Catholic, Hans wondered. Maybe the red one wasn’t a cathedral at all, just a bell tower for the massive brown thing. He was trying to distract himself from the fact that he was actually a little nervous.