The Last Good Man

by A. J. Kazinsky

  The baby behind him was still crying. The eternal problem of the innocent. If I went up to the cockpit right now and forced the plane down into the sea or into a building, everyone would be talking about the killing of the innocent, Abdul Hadi thought. But the argument doesn’t hold. It’s your taxes, your money, financing the oppression of my brothers. Is a person innocent simply because he does nothing but give money to the oppressors? You hide behind your children. As long as you use them as a shield, you’re the ones who have put them in the line of fire.

  He drank the little glass of juice in one gulp and thought about his sister. She would be about the same age as that beautiful blond stewardess, if she had lived. For many years he hadn’t thought about how she was killed, but lately, the memory had returned. As if it were trying to come to his defense. Help him to understand the innermost mechanism and ultimate justice of revenge. Abdul Hadi closed his eyes and played through his most crucial memory: He was sitting in the backseat along with his two brothers, with his parents and sister in front, when the car struck the boy. He hadn’t seen or heard a thing. The road in the desert was so rough that there was a constant bumping sound as the underside of the vehicle struck rocks or the exhaust pipe scraped against the ground. But his father had jumped out, and his mother had screamed. They were far away from the city, out in the Wadi Dawan desert where, many years later, the Belgian women would also die.

  “What’s happening? What’s happening?” Abdul Hadi’s brother had shouted when their father jumped out of the car.

  Abdul’s father had run over a boy by accident, and he died on the spot. His awful scream had drawn the rest of the village, and soon the car was surrounded. Abdul’s father tried to explain. “I didn’t see him, he ran out in front of the car. It was so dry and dusty, almost like driving in a fog.”

  The wailing started up, and the other mothers joined in. It was a horrible sound. A chorus of grief that rose up to the sky. Abdul Hadi couldn’t remember whether the village elders and the father of the dead boy had been there the whole time. He remembered only how the adult men flung open the car door and hauled him out. He was sitting closest; that was why he ended up being the one they grabbed. His father tried to fight back but was restrained. Someone had to die. Revenge. Justice. He looked at his siblings still sitting inside the car.

  “I didn’t see him.” His father wept.

  Some men pulled his father’s papers out of his pockets. They read his name aloud to each other. “Hadi. Hadi,” they said over and over, as if his father’s surname held the key to why everything had gone so wrong. His father shouted at them, “Let my son go. He has nothing to do with this.” The women screamed their distress. The dead boy was lifted up while Abdul’s father tried to make his pleas heard. When that didn’t work, he tried threatening them. He shouted the names of police officers he knew in the capital. But people in the city meant nothing out there in the desert. They forced him to his knees. He was still shouting, but someone squatted down and stuffed sand into his mouth. Vomit and screams and death. They lay the dead boy down on the ground again, in the center of one the circles formed by the villagers.

  “Your son for my son,” cried the man with his hands around Abdul Hadi’s neck, and he began squeezing tighter. With sand and blood pouring out of his mouth, his father watched in resignation as the horror unfolded in front of him.

  Abdul Hadi remembered how the dead boy’s father had let go of his neck. Instead, the man grabbed him by the arm; with the other hand, he grabbed Abdul’s sister.

  “You will be allowed to choose,” shouted the dead boy’s father to Abdul’s father. “The boy or the girl?”

  Only now did Abdul recall how his mother started to scream. Had she also wept and shouted when he was the only one standing at death’s door? Maybe. I just couldn’t hear it, Abdul told himself again and again. There were so many people screaming.

  “The boy or the girl?”

  “It was an accident . . . I beg you.”

  “Your son or your daughter?”

  A knife appeared. There was dried blood on the blade. To provoke a decision, the tip was placed right under his father’s larynx.

  “Which do you choose?”

  Abdul’s father looked only at his son when he replied. “The girl. Take the girl.”

  10

  Carlsberg silo—Copenhagen

  Wednesday, December 16

  Niels Bentzon woke up late, feeling anything but rested. He should actually call in sick. He was entitled to a day off anyway, after such a night. Yet fifteen minutes later, he was sitting in his car with wet hair, a cup of coffee in one hand, and a tie around his neck that a teenager could have done a better job knotting.

  Police headquarters—Copenhagen

  Niels could hardly see headquarters behind the wall of green buses being used for members of the police force. Officers from all over Denmark had been called in for the climate conference. In a few days Air Force One would land on Danish soil. Niels’s uncle had already called to ask whether Niels would get to meet him. Protect him. But Niels had to disappoint his old uncle. “Obama is bringing his own army of bodyguards,” he explained. “And his own limousine and his own food, a hairdresser, and a little briefcase that contains the codes to America’s nuclear arsenal.” Afterward Niels wasn’t sure whether he believed the part about the nuclear weapons. He had a feeling that he would have disappointed him even more if he’d told him the honest truth: that the only people he was going to meet were the angry demonstrators in front of the Bella Center.

  Niels elbowed his way through the crowd of provincial officers who had come to the big city. They looked as if they were on a school outing. Laughing. Clearly looking forward to this change in their daily routine. Today they wouldn’t be issuing speeding tickets on small country roads in northern Jutland or stopping fishermen from getting into a brawl in the village hall in Thyborøn. Soon they would be standing face-to-face with the Attack Movement, various environmental and climate organizations, and an ugly conglomeration of highly talented left-wing activists and neglected children who called themselves anarchists and were filled with anger.

  “Good morning, Bentzon!”

  Before Niels could turn around, he received a resounding masculine slap on the back.

  “Leon. Sleep well?”

  “Like a rock.” He scrutinized Bentzon. “You, on the other hand, look slightly frazzled.”

  “It takes a few hours to come down.”

  “Not for me.” Leon smiled.

  A thought settled in Niels’s mind and refused to leave: I don’t like you. That was simply how it was. Niels didn’t like Leon. It was fucking disgusting that the man could go home and sleep like a baby after spending a night in the company of a dead body and a pair of emotionally shattered children.

  Luckily, Anni interrupted them. “Sommersted is asking for you.”

  “Sommersted?” Niels repeated, looking at Anni.

  His secretary nodded. Maybe there was a hint of sympathy in her eyes.

  A private meeting with Chief of Police W. H. Sommersted was something that very few officers experienced. According to popular legend at police headquarters, no one had ever had more than three private meetings in Sommersted’s office over the course of a career: when you received the first warning, when you received the second warning, and when you had twenty minutes to pack up your things and get out. Niels had been there twice. Two warnings.

  “As soon as possible,” added Anni, giving Leon a pleasant smile.

  Niels pulled her over toward the coffee machine. “Am I the only one he wants to see?”

  “It was his secretary who called. She asked me to send you up when you came in. Why? Is something wrong?”

  It said W. H. SOMMERSTED in black letters on the glass pane of the door leading to the outer office. No one knew what the “H” stood for. Maybe it was just for appearances.

  Sommersted was on the phone. His wide jaw didn’t move when he talked. Niels thought
he would make the perfect ventriloquist.

  “Fax it immediately.” Sommersted got up and went over to the window to look out as he continued to talk. On the way he gave Niels a glance that revealed not even a hint of recognition. Niels tried to relax, but it was difficult. Fuck him if he fires me, thought Niels. He tried to imagine what he would do with his time. His mind drew a blank. He could only picture himself stretched out on the sofa in his bathrobe. He would let the depression wash over him. Wallow in it. Dive all the way down to the bottom.

  “Bentzon!” Sommersted had finished his phone call and jovially stuck out his hand. “Sit down. How’s it going?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “It’s pure hell here.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Air Force One will be landing soon. Copenhagen is bursting with international VIPs. And the intelligence team sees terrorists everywhere. Personally, I think we’ve got the hostess jitters. Everything will go fine.” Sommersted snorted. He took a deep breath and suddenly seemed to remember why Niels was sitting in front of him. “I’m glad you’re back, Bentzon.” He took off his glasses and put them on the desk. “I hear you had to strip. They’re getting smarter and smarter.”

  “Is she going to make it?”

  “The girl? Yes, she’ll live.” Sommersted nodded solemnly. His bushy eyebrows moved a tad closer together as he put on a concerned expression. Quite credible, but Niels wasn’t buying it. Sommersted was a skilled communicator. Five years ago he’d taken the media course that Niels had declined to attend. Today a police chief had to be a combination of talk-show host, politician, and personnel manager.

  “You’re good at talking to people, Niels.”

  “Really?” replied Niels uncertainly, knowing that Sommersted had just set a trap for him.

  “I mean it.”

  “Well, thanks, then.”

  The trap fell shut. “Maybe a little too good at it?” Sommersted’s gaze became more piercing.

  “Is that a question?”

  “Miroslav Stanic, our Serbian friend. Remember him?”

  Niels shifted position uneasily. He promptly regretted doing so, because he knew that Sommersted had noticed.

  “I hear you visited him in prison. Was that a one-time deal?”

  “Is that why you wanted to see me?”

  “The man is a psychopath.”

  Niels took a deep breath and looked out the window. He didn’t mind awkward silences. While Sommersted was clearly waiting for an answer, Niels ran over in his mind what he knew about Miroslav Stanic.

  It was seven or eight years ago. Suspected of being a war criminal in Bosnia, the Serb was supposed to be turned over to The Hague. Inexplicably, he’d ended up in Denmark and was granted asylum for humanitarian reasons. The error soon became all too apparent to the Danish authorities. Stanic was not some poor, persecuted Serb but a former guard at the infamous Omarska prison camp. He was now enjoying three healthy, balanced meals a day, free of charge, at Restaurant Denmark. But just as he was about to be handed over, he went berserk. He took two other refugees hostage at the Sandholm camp. When Niels arrived, Stanic demanded safe passage out of the country; otherwise, he was going to cut the throat of one of his hostages. He was obviously serious, because he had almost managed to kill one of them—a young Albanian woman. It was due only to the miraculous efforts of the doctors at the National Hospital that her life was saved. Afterward the air was thick with reproaches aimed at Niels. Leon in particular came down hard on him. Why the hell hadn’t Niels blown that psychopath’s head off? he asked. The incident had ended with Niels negotiating with the Serb for half the day. Miroslav Stanic showed absolutely no remorse for his war crimes. Sommersted was right. He was a genuine psychopath. And charming. Once he even got Niels to laugh. But Stanic was afraid of prison. The loneliness. He was fully aware of the fact that the jig was up and that he was looking at twenty years behind bars. Niels’s job was to get him to move from acknowledgment of the situation to surrender.

  Sommersted was still waiting.

  “It was a promise I made him, Sommersted. And since he ended up serving his sentence in Denmark, I had the chance to keep that promise.”

  “A promise? You promised to visit him in prison like some Red Cross representative?”

  “That was the price for letting the hostages go.”

  “Forget your promise, Bentzon. The hostages were released. Stanic was convicted. Do you realize what the others on the force are saying about you?”

  Niels hoped this was a rhetorical question.

  “Do you?” For a second W. H. Sommersted looked like a doctor who had to deliver the sad but irrevocable truth to a dying patient.

  “That I’m manic-depressive?” suggested Niels. “That I’ve got a screw loose?”

  “Especially the last part. They can’t figure you out, Niels. One moment you’re out on sick leave, and the next you’re running around visiting all the psychopaths.”

  Niels was about to protest, but Sommersted was too quick for him. “But you’ve got talent. No doubt about that.”

  “You mean I’m good at talking to people?”

  “You’re a good mediator. You almost always talk them out of a crisis. I just wish you weren’t so . . .”

  “So what?”

  “So strange. With your travel phobia and manic behavior. And making friends with psychopaths.”

  “Only one psychopath. You make it sound like—”

  Sommersted interrupted him. “Can’t you just toe the line once in a while?”

  Niels stared at the floor. Toe the line? Before he could reply, the police chief went on. “I hear you’re about to take off on vacation.”

  “Just for a week.”

  “Okay. Now listen here. I’m pleased with your efforts yesterday. What do you say we try again? We’ll start off with something small.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve got an assignment for you. Nothing major. I want you to contact a few citizens. Have a talk with them.”

  “You say I’m good at that.” Niels couldn’t hide his sarcasm.

  Sommersted gave him an annoyed look.

  “So who am I supposed to talk to?”

  “Good people.”

  Sommersted began searching for something among the modest collection of papers on his desk as he shook his head and commented on the daily flood of red notices from Interpol.

  “Can you remember the sound of the telex machine in the old days?”

  Of course. Niels remembered all too well the telex machine that received updates and warnings from Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon. It had been replaced by a computer. Or rather, thousands of computers. In the past the telex machine ran nonstop. The monotonous sound of the mechanical printer reminded them that the world was steadily becoming a more and more fucked-up place. If anyone wanted a brief, concentrated look into the world’s misery, all he had to do was spend twenty minutes in front of the humming machine: serial killers, drug smuggling, women kidnapped for prostitution, cross-border traffic with stolen children, illegal immigrants, enriched uranium. In the less urgent department, traffic in endangered species: lions, leopards, rare parrots, dolphins. The list was endless. Art objects and rare historical artifacts. Stradivarius violins and jewels that once belonged to the Russian czar. Not even one thousandth of everything that Nazi Germany had stolen from the occupied countries had been recovered. Hidden in the nooks and cellars of small German homes, there were still diamonds and amber and gold jewelry from the Byzantine Empire; there were paintings by Degas and gold bars that had belonged to Jewish families. The search for these items was still going on. You could get a headache simply from standing in front of the fax machine. It made you want to scream and run away; to jump into the sea and wish that life had never crawled up out of the water, that the dinosaurs still dominated the earth.

  Now everything was on Interpol’s database, and all member countries were linked. It was called, in all simplicity, I-24/7. Just like
a 7-Eleven, it never closed. But along with the development of new technology, the threats had increased. Suicide bombers, bioterrorism, computer hacking, distribution of child pornography, credit card fraud, illegal trade in CO2 credits, tax fraud, money laundering. Not to mention the fight against corruption in the EU. Interpol may have acquired a new weapon to fight crime, but the criminals had gained just as much expertise with the new technology. Maybe the world really hasn’t made any headway. That was a thought that often occurred to Niels. Maybe it was better in the past when there was only a telex machine that was on round the clock, when the agitated sound of the print wheel cut through the air as a constant reminder of the world’s misery.

  “A red notice,” said Sommersted when he finally found what he was looking for among the papers. He handed it to Niels. “Apparently, the good people are being murdered.”

  “The good people are being murdered?”

  “That’s what it looks like. In different places around the world: China, India, Russia, the United States. Many of the victims worked for humanitarian causes. You know what I mean—aid workers, doctors, advisers.”

  Niels read the words: “Red notice.” The text was in English, composed in the laconic, staccato style that was so typical of Interpol: Possible sectarian killings. First reporting officer: Tommaso di Barbara. Niels wondered if that was the way they talked down there in Lyon. Robot language.

  “In the old days we wouldn’t have wasted time on something like this. But now, after the Muhammad cartoon controversy . . . Globalization, whatever that means.”

  “What’s the connection between the murders?” asked Niels.

  “Symbols on the backs of the victims, as I understand it. Some sort of mark. Maybe the murders have a sectarian motive. Pretty soon there’s going to be a lunatic with a saber and half a ton of dynamite strapped to his chest on every other street corner.”