“He’d just be happy,” Feliszia said with a defiant note to her voice which revealed that she wasn’t entirely sure that was true.
“Why does Tamás think he can earn so much money in Denmark?” Sándor asked.
Valeria took the last quilt, unfolded it, shook it, and spread it out on the low built-in shelf, bench in the daytime and sleeping space at night, which ran around three of the room’s four walls.
“You shouldn’t talk about money right before bedtime,” she said in a firm voice. “And it’s bedtime now. Sándor, get out of here. Let the girls wash.”
Sándor got up. It hadn’t occurred to him that he would have to go out so his sisters could get undressed. God knows how long they had been waiting for him to leave of his own accord.
Outside it was so dark he was having trouble finding the path to the outhouse. There was a smell of wood smoke and a pig manure, as Valeria had bought a suckling pig that was being fattened up for the winter. He could hear it breathing, snuffling, and panting—presumably it was sleeping under its half roof of boards and plastic a few meters from the house.
Finally, there was the path. He made his way to the outhouse wondering how he would know when it was okay to go back in again. He felt like a bumbling idiot. When had this happened? Was it because Vanda and Feliszia were married now? Did Tamás go outside, too, to give them some privacy? Or were the rules different if you grew up together? Nothing was simple or straightforward. Maybe it would be easier for all of them if he slept in the other half of the house, even if part of the gable and some of the roof had caved in. It was summer after all. But if the wind picked up, some of the loose tiles up there could come down on his head while he slept.
The instant he opened the outhouse door, he was assaulted by yet another razor-sharp childhood memory. The darkness, the smell, the worn board with the hole in it that had been far too big for his little bottom. He had been terrified of falling in. So terrified that sometimes he would just squat down behind the chicken coop and hope no one noticed him. One time his stepfather had caught him in the act, with his pants down around his ankles. That had cost him a couple of sharp smacks.
“You’re not a goddamned animal, you filthy little brat. Only animals shit in the street!”
“Yes, but this isn’t the street.…”
The story immediately became a favorite with the whole family, told and retold with laughter and giggles, especially among the grandparents: There was the boy, squatting there with his butt hanging out, still as cocky as ever.…
Cocky. That was when you talked back to the grownups, when you were impertinent, and it was usually promptly punished. And yet there was always something ambiguous about the punishment. They didn’t spare the rod, but nevertheless there was an acceptance behind it, bordering on approval. Boys were supposed to be cocky. Calling a little boy a “pet” was an insult, on a par with calling him a “sissy” or a “Mama’s boy,” and even though disobedience could earn you a beating, too much obedience just brought you scorn.
He sat in the stinking darkness of the outhouse, no longer afraid of falling in the hole. But other than that he was by no means cocky. He had had that knocked out of him, effectively and a long time ago, and fear had eaten its way into his life. There was no defiance left in him now, no rebellion. It had been a long time since he had dared to be disobedient.
He hadn’t told Gábor and the NBH about Tamás. That was sort of rebellious, wasn’t it? Or was that just obedience to an older law? One that had been beaten, yelled, drilled, and loved into him the first eight years of his life: You stick up for your own.
He was glad he hadn’t ratted on Tamás to them. He was still furious at his brother, who had obviously acted like an asshole and a moron to boot, and the thought of the mess Tamás had landed them both in filled Sándor with a fear that was totally and utterly different in scope and extent than the everyday fear of messing up, failing, breaking written or unwritten rules, or being caught with your pants down. But in some small, overlooked, stubborn corner of his soul, he was still glad that he hadn’t told them about Tamás.
He finished and stepped out into the somewhat fresher air outside. His eyes had adjusted to the May darkness now. Here and there it was punctuated by light from the village houses’ small peephole windows combined with the bluish, white flicker of TVs. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad living here, he thought, without heat or running water or indoor toilets, if only you didn’t see how other people lived whenever you turned on the TV. But there were TVs here, in almost every house. The antennas jostled on the decrepit roofs, their bristly metal branches jutting out in all directions to catch the best possible signal.
Valeria came out with a washbasin and tossed the soapy water out onto the stinging nettles behind the house. He took that as a signal that the coast was clear again.
“Do you want me to heat up a little water for you?” she asked.
“No,” he said, because that would mean she would have to light the wood stove, and it was most certainly warm enough inside already. “I’ll just rinse off down by the pump.”
“No, do it here,” she said, passing him the basin. “You don’t wash in the middle of the street.”
That was a subtle dig, he thought, noticing the hint of a smile in one corner of her mouth. Apparently there was more than one thing people didn’t do in the middle of the street in Galbeno. He took the pink plastic basin but didn’t move. Neither did Valeria, standing less than a meter away from him. The light from the open door etched deep shadows under her cheekbones and chin and made her look older and sharper. From inside the house, he heard a sleepy little boy’s voice whining, and Vanda mumbled something reassuring in response.
“Mama, what’s going on with Tamás?” he asked quietly. Maybe she would say more now that Vanda and Feliszia weren’t listening.
“Why would anything be going on with Tamás?”
“Because the NBH is very interested in what he’s up to. Mama, they arrested me because he had borrowed my computer and used it to visit some sites on the Internet.” He faltered a bit, having no idea how much or how little Valeria might know about the Internet. It wasn’t like Galbeno was crawling with laptops. Could you even get online out here? Apparently there was some mobile coverage, but the Internet?
Valeria raised her head, and the moonlight gleamed in her eyes.
“The police,” she scoffed, sounding harsh and hostile. “They’re always after us.”
“It wasn’t just police, Mama. It was the NBH, the security service!”
“They’re still police,” she said. “Stay away from them, Sándor.”
“Well, I didn’t exactly go and ask to be arrested,” he said, unable to hold back a spark of irritation. “Mama, what I’m trying to say is that I think Tamás is mixed up in something dangerous.”
She touched his cheek with a damp, soap-scented hand.
“Well then, Sándorka,” she said in that Mama voice that went right to his gut. “You’ll just have to get him out of it. Won’t you?”
T’S MERCURIAL BY nature,” Torben said.
Søren rested his paddle across the kayak in front of him and looked at his friend and boss with a certain impatience.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Islam. We’re never going to be able to get the idea, because there isn’t just one. There isn’t any one thing to understand. That’s why it’s so hopeless to work with.”
Torben ran both hands over his clean-shaven scalp. They had been paddling for almost two hours at a blistering pace, and there hadn’t been a sound between them other than the soft whistle of the paddles as they sank down into the water, leaving swirling, black holes in the smooth surface. After the last sprint, they were both breathing hard, Torben of course half a boat-length ahead of Søren. Lake Furesø spread out smooth and dark beneath their kayaks. It was evening, and utterly still. Søren’s fingers were reddened and chilled, but all the same, spring was in the air. The trees along the shor
e were displaying a light green mist of freshly budding leaves.
He didn’t really want to talk shop right now, but Torben was relentless as usual. Did they ever really talk about anything else? Søren suddenly had his doubts. They had been friends since they were both junior officers in the Danish police force. Torben had been just that much faster and that much smarter. He had been made deputy director of the PET’s counterterrorism branch at almost the same time that Søren had finally worked his way up to inspector. The ambiguous relationship usually worked out okay, but sometimes Søren wasn’t sure if he listened to Torben because he was his boss or because they were friends.
Torben either hadn’t noticed his lack of interest in the conversation or didn’t care. Torben whipped out his water bottle, took a couple of swigs, and proceeded undaunted.
“Now take that Imam who’s coming over for the opening of that cultural center in Emdrup. A highly educated man with honorary doctorates from several European universities. Of course we’ve had the analysts take a look at him, and apparently he’s supposed to be an advocate of Euro-Islam. In other words, a way of practicing Islam that doesn’t conflict with European values. That causes certain groups to accuse him of being too moderate or even a lapsed Muslim.…”
Søren could feel the evening chill, even in his long-sleeved hoodie. He was ready to come ashore now and was thinking, with a certain amount of longing, about warm, dry clothes and maybe even a quiet, friendly beer. But Torben hadn’t finished yet.
“But when Muslims who take an interest in Islam on a more intellectual level read his texts, the result is all over the place. They can be interpreted pretty much any way you want. Some people say he’s an advocate of the hijab, total gender separation, sharia, the lot. Other people insist the opposite is true. And do you know what I say?”
Resigned, Søren shook his head.
“I say that no matter how hard these people look, they’ll never understand what that man says or find the definitive truth about Islam. Because there isn’t one. It’s a rubberband. You can stretch it into any shape you like.”
Torben grabbed his paddle again and started slowly paddling back toward the jetty.
Søren knew Torben was more than normally frustrated. To be fair, the politicians, particularly the parties on the right, had allocated plenty of resources to fighting terrorism since 9/11, but the demands placed on the PET were also sky high, and the upcoming Summit had gobbled up most of the annual budget. The government’s decision to invest so heavily in the Copenhagen Summit certainly hadn’t made the pool of potential terrorists any smaller.
“Do they have the Emdrup business under control?” Søren asked, thinking without envy of the five-man team that had been assigned to babysit the cultural center until the opening.
“Um,” Torben grunted with a shrug. “We’ve had to cover ourselves on multiple fronts—the Muslims who think he’s too moderate, Danish right-wing extremists, plus anyone else who might want to celebrate his arrival in an undesirable fashion. And now the minister has decided he wants to attend the opening ceremony. It’s a bit of a nuthouse. But what about you? How are your own nutters coming along?”
Torben looked at him inquisitively, and again Søren had the uncomfortable sense he was meeting with his boss rather than out kayaking with a friend.
“We’re having some trouble getting things through tech. That’s the bottleneck for us at the moment. And then there’s this little Hungarian affair.…” Søren let the kayak nudge the jetty gently and held himself still for a moment, regaining his balance. Then he swung himself up onto the rough, wet boards. “The NBH picked up this student who has been searching in places he shouldn’t and has also been in touch with someone here. They think it might be some kind of arms trade, but they didn’t get anything definite out of him.”
Torben was already carrying his kayak toward the cars, but Søren could tell from his back that he was still listening. Torben was in charge of the eighty people who worked in the counterterrorism center and investigation details that literally multiplied by the hour, but he could still remember every individual case and was able to pick out the main points whenever necessary. That was what had made him such an incredibly talented intelligence officer.
Brilliant career, loving wife, three strapping sons … wasn’t that what Søren had once imagined his own life would contain, once he reached fifty? And Torben was actually a year or two younger than he was. He picked up his own kayak, feeling a heaviness weighing on his whole body as he followed Torben, barefoot on the rough wood of the jetty.
“What do we have on the Danish end?” Torben asked.
“A guy named Khalid. He wasn’t all that cooperative, so I had a chat with him, and we’ve been keeping an eye on him and anyone he talks to.”
“Aha?” A glint of interest in the deputy director’s eye. “And?”
“And not much. He chats with a classmate from secondary school who’s a sort of half-assed militant now, but not one of the ones on our black list. He has a broad assortment of acquaintances, including both Danes and immigrants, but mostly the latter. And an uncle who’s well respected in the moderate Muslim community, one of the supporters behind the Emdrup project, as it happens. We confiscated his computer and are still waiting for the IT team to find the time to take a look at it. They’re totally overworked. And so far there’s nothing about this that would justify giving it top priority.…”
“But?”
“There isn’t one.” They worked together to lift first one and then the second kayak up onto the roof rack of Torben’s Audi. Since he lived significantly closer to Lake Furesø than Søren, they usually stored the kayaks at his place.
“Come on,” Torben urged him. “What does your gut tell you?”
“Khalid is up to something. I just don’t know what it is.”
“So find out.”
“Yes. Okay.”
“Pressure him. Stress him. I mean, he already knows we’re keeping an eye on him, so there’s not much point in keeping a low profile, right?”
Søren couldn’t tell if there might be a hint of reproach in that last part.
“You think it was a mistake to confront him so early?” Søren asked as he peeled off his Dri-Fit tights. Torben used to be an advocate of the so-called “pre-emptive interviews” that were supposed to stop young people from becoming radicalized before they got in too deep. But maybe there was a new political wind blowing. After all, pre-emptive interviews didn’t lead to trials, convictions, and deportations.
“Well, it’s moot now, isn’t it?” Torben said. “You did what you thought was right. We have to take it from there. And even if it is an arms trade, that doesn’t necessarily make it grand-scale terrorism. Or terrorism at all, for that matter.”
Torben had already changed into a pair of loose jeans and a red T-shirt with a cheesy design on the front. “Sugar Daddy.” Probably from his wife, Annelise. Søren had always found Torben’s wife to be slightly vulgar.
“True. But if all he wants is a can of pepper spray, he chose a pretty suspicious place to buy it,” Søren said with a shrug. “Well, I’d better.…” He carefully avoided finishing the sentence completely. He turned his back to Torben and sat down in the car, giving a half-hearted wave out the window.
He had been on the verge of suggesting that quiet, Saturday beer. The evening skies were still full of light, and his house in Hvidovre would be just as he had left it that morning at seven o’clock, complete with dirty coffee cup, cereal bowl, toast crusts, and the utensils he had not bothered to load into the dishwasher. But Torben would probably just turn the beer into coffee at his and Annelise’s place, and Søren wasn’t in the mood for Torben’s idyllic coupledom or his three blond and almost ridiculously muscular teenage boys. Although, come to think of it, the oldest had moved out and was hardly a teenager anymore—he had just started medical school. But even so.
Torben grunted at him amicably. He was still resting his hands on the roof of his
Audi, doing his stretches, as Søren pulled out of the parking lot and headed for Hvidovre.
Ah, well. There was more than one way to approach the big Five-Oh. Søren suppressed something that wasn’t quite envy and called the night shift at HQ to have them step up the surveillance on Khalid Hosseini.
HE SHINY, POLISHED, black BMW was parked outside Galbeno’s small church when Sándor and Valeria emerged from mass Sunday morning. It had already drawn a crowd of Galbeno residents, who had gathered around it, but kept a respectful distance.
Two men climbed out of the car. They were both Roma, but it was immediately evident that there was a world of difference between them and the Galbeno men. It wasn’t just the expensive car or the black suits that Sándor instinctively thought of as “old-fashioned,” even though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why.
“Who’s that?” he asked Valeria.
“Alexisz Bolgár,” she said, her eyes trained on the older and more heavy-set of the two men.
“He isn’t from Galbeno, is he?”
“No.” Valeria’s lips grew narrower. “He comes here a couple times a month. He wants to be rom baro.”
Those two words from his childhood were not in Sándor’s active vocabulary, but now that he heard them, he remembered what they meant: the big man, the leader. He contemplated Bolgár with a certain nervous interest and was surprised when his curiosity was instantly returned.
“Mrs. Rézmüves. I hear your eldest has come home. Sándor, isn’t it?”
Bolgár spoke with a formal politeness that seemed a natural extension of his less-than-modern suit. Sándor nodded guardedly.
“How do you do?”
They shook hands, again very formally. Bolgár’s hand felt damp and fleshy, a rather unpleasant sensation. You couldn’t call him fat, but there was a fullness to him, as if there were an excess of everything—strong hands, bulky shoulders, wide jaw, big ears. Shiny black eyebrows, sideburns, and mustache, and a hairline that teetered somewhere between receding and balding.
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