The Serbian Dane

by Leif Davidsen

  She felt a little guilty now.

  ‘Yes, I do understand that. But we don’t even know for sure if she’s actually coming.’

  ‘I realize you have to be careful, but if…’

  ‘Well you’ll have to contact Danish PEN. It’s not really Politiken’s…’

  ‘I understand. But you’re their chair. So could you give me PEN’s address?’

  ‘It’s actually my own address.’

  ‘Okay, so what do I do?’

  ‘You write to me, and I’ll add your name to the list for accreditation. Security surrounding the visit will be pretty tight.’

  ‘When is she coming?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say, but write today rather than leave it till tomorrow. And I’ll put you on the list.’

  ‘Thanks. And thanks for being so helpful. It’s good to know that you guys in Copenhagen do actually spare a thought for us poor sods over here.’

  ‘It’s always nice to be able to help a fellow reporter,’ Lise said and hung up. Might she have said too much? She had certainly more than implied that Sara would be coming, and soon. Well, what possible good did it do to go on being so vague? And he wasn’t the first reporter to call either. At some point they would have to call the Press Corps together, and how were they supposed to do that? Maybe Per had some ideas. He had called her here this morning and said he would pick her up around four. She felt giddy as a schoolgirl. Couldn’t wait to be with him. To make love in the safe house, because there was no way she could take him home, and he had not asked her back to his place.

  There was a knock on her door, and Tagesen breezed in with his usual air of bustling efficiency. She quickly pressed ‘F7’, then ‘YES’ and saved the list just as she heard the door swing open.

  ‘You might wait till I say: “come in”,’ she snapped.

  ‘I hope you’ve got it well protected,’ Tagesen said.

  ‘Of course I have. Password and everything. Sara is Simba. The apartment is a “safe house”, no address. And so on. It’s not like I’m just going to spell out exactly what it’s all about, is it? I’ll finish this at home. Then you can see it.’

  She told him that another journalist had called. And that they were going to have to come up with some means of calling a press conference in such a way that the reporters would show up without knowing what for. How were they going to do that?

  ‘Do you see the problem, Tagesen? They know she’s coming, but they don’t know when. I can hardly write: please be here at 1.00 pm for a press conference with Sara Santanda. All any terrorist would have to do then would be to check the Ritzau Bureau daily events list.’

  ‘No, but they’ll have to be lured into attending,’ Tagesen said, fiddling with a button. An idea suddenly occurred to Lise. Tagesen was famed for his wide network of contacts in the European arts world. She remembered a story on the international pages in that morning’s paper, about the German author, Herbert Scheer. Scheer had received death threats from German neo-Nazis who were demanding his head on a platter because he had spoken out in defence of Turks and other members of the immigrant population.

  ‘You’re a good friend of Herbert Scheer’s, aren’t you?’ she said.

  Tagesen nodded happily. He was proud of his network and made no secret of it.

  ‘What if you could persuade him to come? We could call a press conference for him.’

  Tagesen smiled and gave one of his little bounces.

  ‘The very thing! Scheer’s a Nobel Prize-winner, his work’s known in Denmark. But…’

  ‘But normally no one but the odd culture vulture would be bothered to show up for a press conference with him. And the TV boys certainly wouldn’t be interested,’ Lise said, relishing the fact that for once she was one step ahead of Tagesen.

  ‘So what’s the point?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, come on, Tagesen, you’re usually a lot quicker on the uptake,’ she said, then explained what she had in mind. Scheer had a holiday cottage in Denmark and often spent his summer holidays there. They would let it slip that there had also been threats on his life in Denmark. That would draw the TV stations and the tabloids. The immigrant debate was always lying simmering just under the surface. Stories about racism and neo-Nazism invariably made good copy. Tagesen thought it was an excellent idea.

  ‘Run it by your friend from PET,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ she said.

  Tagesen stood where he was for a moment, then his restlessness got the better of him again:

  ‘I’d better be getting on. But nice work, Lise. I’ve been doing my bit too, you know. I spoke to the minister for culture. She’d like to meet Santanda. So she says.’

  ‘Will she, though?’

  ‘I doubt it. Bang will talk her out of it, and she’ll find some excuse.’

  ‘Money talks, eh?’ Lise said. She felt let down.

  ‘Yep. And no leader in the paper can change that,’ Tagesen said in a rare admission of the helplessness he sometimes felt but was very careful never to voice in public. But Lise was right. Money did speak louder than words. The Rushdie and Santanda affairs were proof of that. Although both actually bordered on the banal and had nothing at all to do with the laws governing freedom of speech, basically they were criminal cases. But you can’t arrest a whole country and its government, particularly not when that country’s actions can have a bearing on the trade balance.

  Lise sat for a while. She was thinking about Per. About their affair. He was not the sort of man she usually fell for. He wasn’t much of a talker, he wasn’t interested in art and culture, he kept his thoughts to himself. He looked good, had a fabulous body and was a great lover, but was that enough? She really didn’t know what it was she had fallen in love with. Maybe it was purely physical. Maybe he was simply the excuse to leave Ole she had been waiting for. Maybe this thing with him was not actually a new love affair but merely a comma between one that had worn thin and something new and unknown that was still waiting round the corner. Maybe she had just wanted to discover what it was like to be wanted again – and that she had. He wanted her body and did wonderful things to it. She was already looking forward to this evening and not the least bit ashamed to be so eager.

  But whatever the case, things could not go on as they were. At some point she would have to choose, but right now she needed to concentrate on her work instead of sitting there wondering what her secret lover, the secret agent, got up to when he wasn’t with her

  Chapter 13

  Per Toftlund parked his BMW at Vedbæk Harbour, to the north of Copenhagen. The scent of salt and seaweed was borne in on the wind off the white-capped Sound. The sun had come out again, though, and it wasn’t at all cold. Igor had had a fondness for meeting at the Hotel Marina in the old days too, whenever they wanted to have a chat. He was a big football fan, and he had once told Per, only half in jest, that he liked the thought of having lunch at the hotel where the Danish team stayed when they got together to train. It was a good place for a businesslike exchange of ideas about matters with which the diplomats and politicians could get no further.

  Igor Kammarasov was cultural attaché at the Russian Embassy in Copenhagen. He had occupied that same post when the legend on the embassy nameplate had read ‘Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’, but his real employee back then had been the KGB. These days his salary was paid by the ministry of security in Moscow. Toftlund had tailed him during his first posting to Denmark to find out which Danish agents he tried to recruit and had had meetings with him later in connection with the security arrangements surrounding visits to the country by high-ranking Russian politicians. Per knew his Igor in more ways than one. PET had been onto him from the very first minute he set foot on Danish soil. Times had changed, though, and the level of surveillance was, of course, lower, but Per held to the belief that it still made sense to keep the Bear on a leash and thus have a chance of learning what was really going on. Igor spoke fluent Danish with the characteristic accent
acquired by students taught at the old Institute for Nordic Philology at the University of Leningrad, now St Petersburg. Igor had called Per on his mobile and suggested that they meet at their old spot, and naturally Per had agreed, even though he did not know what it was all about. Strictly speaking, he had enough on his plate with the Santanda visit, but Igor was a contact and as such had to be cultivated.

  Per looked round about. Boats bobbed lightly at their moorings. Lines slapped gently against masts in the breeze, but the harbour was pretty much deserted. The thought of Lise flashed through his mind. It was a nice thought, but he was the sort of person who could compartmentalize his life, capable of concentrating on the matter in hand and tucking other thoughts and feelings away in their pigeonholes until he had the time to take them out and analyse them. Lise wasn’t that easily shelved, however. She was so damn lovely and so damn nice to be with. He could really fall for her. She wasn’t actually his type, but they got on so well together, talking and laughing. It was years since he had been as attracted to a woman as he was to her. The fact that she was married did not worry him. He had had affairs with married women before. It wasn’t his problem if they had a husband or were living with someone. If a woman was going out with him, then something clearly wasn’t right. It was a free country and it was the woman’s own decision, he thought to himself, letting his mind wander in spite of himself. It occurred to him that once the Simba visit was out of the way he could take some of the leave owing to him and go off to Spain with Lise. There weren’t many women with whom he would like to share Spain, but Lise was one of them, and he would be disappointed if she said no.

  He caught sight of Kammarasov standing at the edge of the jetty. He was a tall, slim man with thick, dark hair brushed back from a narrow face. Igor was clad in the diplomat’s uniform of dark suit and navy coat, worn open on such a mild day. As usual, Per was dressed in clean, neatly pressed jeans, a button-down shirt with a tie and a light-coloured windbreaker.

  Per waved to Kammarasov, who raised a hand in greeting. Per walked over to him, they shook hands and exchanged a few remarks about this and that. Per asked after Igor’s wife and two teenage children: he was delighted to hear that they were all fit and well. Igor’s wife was in Moscow at the moment, but the children were attending a Danish high school.

  ‘They’ll soon be more Danish than Russian, Per,’ Igor said in his excellent Danish, with that faint accent which put Per in mind of the wiretap recordings of not so very long ago. They had, in many ways, been good times. The fronts had been more clearly defined, the rules easier to follow, and Per had loved the games of cat and mouse, even though sometimes it was the mouse who was playing with the cat and not the other way round. Nowadays they were neither friends nor enemies, but partners of a sort in the big, bewildering schizoid world of the post-Cold War era, and spoke to one another almost as old cronies would do. But still, caution and subterfuge were in their blood. The simple fact that Igor had called him on his eminently tappable mobile phone, instead of ringing him at home or at the office, told Per that he was about to repay an old favour, either that or issue a new promissory note, to be redeemed at some later date. Which was fine. Those were still the rules of the game.

  ‘I’m glad the boys are doing well, Igor,’ Per said. ‘Shall we walk?’

  They strolled out onto the jetty. It was a fine day. The line of the Swedish coast stood out in sharp relief on the other side of the narrow strait. It was like a scene from a picture postcard, with a coaster chugging down the Sound and sails, bright-hued and pristine white, catching the fresh breeze. Out there too, Per noted, was one of those flat-bottomed Russian river barges that plied the Danish coastal waters. They undercut the standard freight rates, and Per was sure it was only a matter of time before one of them went down. They were built for the broad quiet rivers of Russia, not for the open sea. In the old days he would have suspected the KGB of using them as a blind for espionage activities, but he knew that these boats carried only hard-up seamen looking to make some ready money – as well as a fair number of smugglers. They belonged to two different types: the Volga-Balt, which carried general cargo, fodder and fertilizer, and Volga-Nefti, transporting oil. The sea was an iridescent band of blues and greens; it smelled good, clean. It was the sort of day that made you want to take off in an old cutter and fish for cod with the lads, Per thought. Then come back to a hearty meal of lobscouse or fried eel and boiled potatoes washed down by beer and aquavit.

  Igor took a cigarette and offered the pack to Per out of politeness, although he knew very well that he did not smoke.

  ‘What’ve you got for me, Igor?’

  ‘A friendly warning.’

  Per did a quick mental recap. To the best of his knowledge, Denmark was not currently running any undercover operations in Russia. PET might have something doing in the Baltic States, but they weren’t anything near as active as the Swedes in that area. So what had they got wind of, what was it that Igor wanted to warn him about and have quashed before it became common knowledge?

  Per could see that Igor was following his train of thought. They had known one another too long it seemed.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ the Russian said. ‘It’s about Sara Santanda.’

  Per halted, turned to Igor.

  ‘What’s that got to do with Russia?’

  ‘The Russian Mafia has pledged to carry out the contract for the Iranian government. We’re sure of it. They’ve subcontracted a pro to do the job.’

  ‘Who, Igor?’ Per said. He didn’t need to ask how Igor knew that he was working on the case. Keeping tabs on things, being well informed – it worked both ways.

  ‘That we don’t know. But we don’t think it’s one of their own. He’s not a Russian. Ex-Yugoslavian. Probably a Serb, but some Muslim fanatic will get the blame. They’ve found themselves a fall guy.’

  ‘It’s not much to go on,’ Per said, although he didn’t mean it.

  ‘Come, let us walk,’ Igor said, and they strolled on along the jetty, right to the very end.

  ‘It’s just a friendly warning,’ the Russian said again.

  ‘I think there’s something else you’re not telling me, Igor.’

  ‘I have no proof, Per.’

  Per laughed:

  ‘This isn’t a court of law, you know. When the hell did you and I ever need to have proof in our business?’

  It was Kammarasov’s turn to laugh. He tossed his cigarette butt into the water. The filter tip bobbed on the choppy waves.

  ‘As a favour to me,’ Per said. ‘I’ll owe you one.’

  Kammarasov removed a black-and-white photograph from his inside pocket. A six by eight shot of Kravtjov in Berlin. Toftlund studied the sharp clear image of Kravtjov’s features. He was talking to another man, but only the back of his companion’s head was visible, to the right in the foreground of the picture. It looked like a young head: fair hair, close-cropped. Per looked at Kammarasov, who said:

  ‘It’s the face of a man called Kravtjov. Ex-KGB. A rotten apple.’

  ‘Aha, so the Santanda thing was just by the by?’

  Igor nodded. Per knew there had to be more to it than that, but there was a fine line between supplying the necessary information and betraying one’s operational methods. They must have had Kravtjov under surveillance for some time – using cameras and microphones. Probably at long-range in the outdoor location where this shot had been captured.

  ‘Where was it taken?’

  Igor hesitated, then said:

  ‘Berlin.’

  ‘What’s your interest in him?’

  ‘We suspect him of working for the Mafia. Bagman. We’ve been tailing him for a while. Your problem came up as a spin-off from our investigation. Come, I have to be getting back to the office.’

  They started back along the jetty. Two friends having a chinwag.

  ‘Whose is the other head?’ Per asked.

  ‘Kravtjov has been seen with him a couple of times. We think that’s
your man. They had a meeting with an Iranian agent. One known to us. Rezi, one of their best men.’

  ‘But who’s that there, Igor? That head?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Haul Kravtjov back to Moscow. For a little chat.’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way anymore, Per. We think he has links with the Mafia, but he covers his tracks well. He’s resident in Germany quite legally. He went to a good school. We have no proof. Yet. Nowadays we can’t just lock him up. Russia is a democratic state.’

  Per gave a hoot of derision:

  ‘Yeah, and the moon is made of green cheese.’

  Igor stopped and gripped his arm lightly.

  ‘Now who’s the one who can’t forget the old enemy images?’

  Per pulled himself free.

  ‘Stop talking like a high-school student. You know damn well we two will never be out of a job.’

  Kammarasov stepped back a pace. Per looked him in the eye. Igor met his gaze unblinkingly. The atmosphere between them chilled slightly, but Igor was the first to look away, as he said:

  ‘We’re pretty certain he’s already here in Denmark. The hit man.’

  ‘So the contract will be carried out?’

  ‘As agreed. We’re quite sure of it.’

  ‘It isn’t much to go on,’ Per said again, although he still did not mean it. The warning was meant to be taken seriously, and there was no doubt that Igor knew more than he was telling, but he had said enough to enable Denmark to take the appropriate action.

  ‘That’s all we know,’ Igor said.

  ‘Okay,’ Per said.

  They walked on. Kammarasov had driven out to Vedbæk in a blue Ford Escort with diplomatic plates, so he evidently had nothing against his car being seen down by the harbour. This was not a clandestine rendezvous, but clearly a meeting about which the ambassador would be informed: should problems arise later, he would have it on record that Russia had given Denmark plenty of warning. You never could tell what the new, sensation-hungry Russian press might dig up.