The Last Good Man

by A. J. Kazinsky

  “Your son?”

  “I am taking care of the house.”

  “Okay.” Kathrine was hoping the woman would invite her inside, but that didn’t happen. “I’ve come here to find out if . . . My name is Kathrine. I’m not from South Africa,” she added. She’d noticed that usually had a positive effect on the locals. Europeans were popular, or at least more popular than other whites.

  Only now did the woman’s face betray any sort of reaction. A nervous tic started up under one eye. She raised her voice. “Amnesty?” Before Kathrine could say no, the old woman stuck her head out the door as if to look around. “How many of you are there?”

  “My colleague is sitting in the car,” Kathrine told her. “There are three bodyguards with us.”

  “It’s about time you got here.”

  The old woman turned around and vanished inside the house. If she hadn’t been blind, she would have seen the big sign painted on the side of the Land Rover: DBB ARCHITECTS. From inside the house, the old woman called: “Come in, Amnesty!”

  A couple of rickety wooden chairs, a table, and a rough-hewn bed. Above the bed hung a poster showing the South African soccer team. Bafana, Bafana. God is on our side, had been written on the wall above the poster.

  The old woman offered Kathrine tea, pouring her a cup without waiting for her to say yes. “Rooibos tea. It’s good for you,” she said. “It clears your mind.” Kathrine looked at the muddy liquid in her cup.

  “What are you planning to do to get him out?” asked the old woman. “He didn’t kill her. Do you understand? What are you going to do?”

  Kathrine swallowed hard. I need to tell her that I’m not from Amnesty International, she thought. Instead, she said, “Maybe it would be best if you tell me a little about what happened.”

  “He didn’t kill her. The woman at the factory. He’s innocent, just like Mathijsen said.”

  “Who?”

  “Mathijsen,” the old woman repeated. A faint smile crossed her lips, and the furrows on her brow seemed to relax at the thought of this Mathijsen. “He was a good man. He helped us.”

  The woman spoke quickly, and Kathrine had a hard time understanding what she was saying. “Mat—”

  “Mathijsen. My son’s lawyer. Joris Mathijsen.”

  “What about him?” asked Kathrine. “Is he the one your son is accused of killing?”

  “No! No!” The old woman shook her head. “Mathijsen died here, in this house. He wanted to help us.”

  “I don’t understand. The lawyer died here? When?”

  Before the woman told her the story, Kathrine went to get Marc from the car.

  “The old woman thinks that we’re from Amnesty International,” she whispered to him. “I don’t think we should take that hope away from her.”

  Inside the house, Marc nodded politely to the woman and said hello when he discovered that she couldn’t see. Even though the woman had clearly told the story many times, there was a warmth in her voice as she spoke.

  Her son, Benny, had been working at a shoe factory in Durbanville. But then he was fired, and in the subsequent tumult, the owner’s daughter was stabbed to death. That was how the old woman described the events. Benny was accused of murder. Someone whose name Kathrine didn’t catch said later that Benny was standing several yards away and couldn’t have done the killing. It was a hopeless situation for Benny. He had no money to hire a proper attorney.

  “But then came Joris Mathijsen.”

  Marc was familiar with the name. Mathijsen was known as one of the brains behind the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which worked from 1995 until 2000 to expose the violations that had taken place under apartheid. The commission was strikingly different from other tribunals because it wasn’t interested in punishing people. It offered amnesty to those criminals willing to present a full accounting of what they had done. If they told the truth, they could go free. How Mathijsen—who had long been out of the public spotlight—had found his way to Benny was a bit of a mystery. The old woman couldn’t explain it. All she knew was that Benny and Mathijsen had met several times at the prison, and Benny had been given renewed hope by meeting with the experienced defense lawyer. On July 24 Mathijsen had come to Khayelitsha to pay a visit to Benny’s childhood home. He drank tea with the old woman and promised her that he would get Benny out of prison.

  “He promised. Do you understand?”

  Just as the lawyer was about to leave for home, he saw a shadow pass through the yard behind the house. At first he was going to ignore it, but then he decided to investigate. The old woman stayed inside. Several minutes passed. She didn’t dare go outdoors. Finally, she gathered her courage to venture out and found Joris Mathijsen lying on his back with his arms spread out on either side. He was dead. Benny was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison for manslaughter, with no possibility of parole.

  Kathrine was on the verge of tears when she saw the hopelessness on the old woman’s face: By the time he gets out of prison, I’ll be long dead. Kathrine promised to help; for a few seconds she even imagined that she was employed by Amnesty International. At any rate, she would contact the group when she got home. She made that promise to herself.

  The old woman sat in silence for a moment. Then she got to her feet with an effort and walked the few yards across the room to a door on the far wall. Kathrine hadn’t noticed it before. Giving the door a little push, the woman opened it, and they all stepped outside to an enclosed space. They walked over to a spot covered with flowers that had long ago withered under the blazing sun. A small picture of the lawyer hung there. Born April 26, 1962. Died July 24, 2009.

  52

  Niels Bohr Institute—Copenhagen

  A Niels Bohr night. Everyone who worked at the institute was familiar with that term. Endless nights when the only sound was the faint hum of one of the many machines running experiments in the basement, or the rustling of paper as the research results came in. It was as if the ideas never left the building and the scientists had to be present in order to work with them. Hannah could feel how much she had missed this place as she ransacked the kitchen, looking for some food. Sausage and cheap salami—maybe a bit over the hill. That was par for the course. Physicists weren’t exactly gourmets. That was just the way it was. Paper and pencils were always to be found on every table in the cafeteria—that was a house rule. Because what if somebody suddenly had a good idea while he was eating lunch?

  Hannah hadn’t heard the phone ring. A message. She listened to her voice mail. It was Niels. “Hannah, I just heard from Kathrine. You were right about Khayelitsha. I don’t know how you knew. But you were right about both the place and the date. Joris Mathijsen. A well-known defense attorney. Everything fits. I’m really tired. It’s been a busy afternoon. Let’s talk tomorrow. You’re a smart woman.”

  That was all. Hannah smiled. Of course she was right. And yes, she was a smart woman.

  53

  Carlsberg silo—Copenhagen

  Of all the bad ideas that Niels had come up with over the years, this one took the cake. How could he have sent Kathrine into one of the world’s worst slum areas in the middle of the Christmas holidays, which they should have been spending together? He’d talked to her three times; she was very upset, couldn’t shake off the experience. At one point in their last conversation, he’d had an urge to shout at her. Goddammit, what did she expect? The world was filled with poverty and death and misery. Kathrine hadn’t been aware of it because she spent her days inside buildings with designer furniture and air-conditioning. Hers was a superficial universe. Nothing but surfaces. Marble, steel, copper, aluminum—a gleaming world that ignored the fact that everything all around was in a state of decay. He didn’t say that to her. Instead, he said, “I’m sorry. That must have been awful. Get some sleep.”

  The imaginary argument was raging inside Niels’s exhausted mind when he entered his apartment and sensed that somebody had been there.

  He looked around the living ro
om. Nothing out of the ordinary caught his eye. The big west-facing room looked exactly as he’d left it. Exactly as it had looked when Kathrine left their shared daily life an eternity ago. Niels had an odd feeling in his body, a feeling that their relationship was over. Maybe he was just sensing Kathrine’s shadow, which was always present in the apartment. He was tired and feeling overwhelmed. Also because Hannah had apparently cracked the system and figured out the whole thing. He considered phoning her again but decided to go to bed.

  The door to the back stairs stood open.

  He never forgot to close and lock the door to the back stairs. He used it so seldom. Carefully, he examined the door. There was no sign that it had been forced. The door, the door frame, the lock, the hinges all looked untouched. He didn’t find that reassuring, because it just stirred up another fear. Had someone gotten hold of his key and made a copy? He thought about who might have access to the apartment. He and Kathrine were the only ones. Along with their neighbor, who lived on the floor below. What about the building superintendent? Was there a master key? Niels wasn’t sure, but he was inclined to believe there wasn’t. If there was any basis to his fear, someone must have borrowed his key or Kathrine’s and had a copy made.

  The only place where Niels ever left his keys out was at work. The idea was absurd, but could someone at the station have borrowed his apartment key, copied it, and then put it back? But who? And for what reason?

  Niels stepped out onto the landing and switched on the light. He heard footsteps on the stairs below.

  “Who’s there?”

  No answer.

  “Hello?”

  Light footsteps, barely audible, moving away. A door slammed. Niels dashed over to the little window and looked out. Was that a dark figure hurrying away from the building? Something floating? Maybe it was just the light from Carlsberg, which cast long shadows.

  The light on the back stairs went out.

  54

  Kastrup Airport—Copenhagen

  It was an icy-cold morning. The windchill factor made the temperature a biting five below zero. Air Force One landed at precisely nine o’clock. A few seconds later, the door next to the presidential seal opened and President Obama emerged from the plane and walked down the stairs. There was a trace of concern in his otherwise determined expression. A hint of doubt. The most powerful man in the world was not received with any sort of pomp and circumstance. After a quick handshake with the American ambassador, Laurie S. Fulton, he got into a comfortable limousine and headed for the Bella Center. He was a busy man. A man on a very specific mission: He was going to save the world.

  Friday, December 18

  Niels woke up feeling that his body was filled with an extreme amount of energy. A familiar feeling—and highly preferable to the opposite, which was emptiness. Not depression, as Kathrine claimed. He had either a lot of energy or very little.

  Nørrebro district—Copenhagen

  Even though Hannah was just sitting there staring into space, there was something different about her.

  Niels noticed it at once as he entered the café and caught sight of Hannah sitting at a table in the back, sipping her coffee. It wasn’t because she’d made an effort with her appearance—mascara, a trace of lipstick, her hair neatly combed—it was mostly because of the look in her eyes. The way they were surveying the room and the other people in the café. A sense of curiosity had been awakened. A fundamental interest in what was going on around her. She saw him and waved. A childish gesture that made Niels smile. Next to her on the floor stood the cardboard box containing all the case materials.

  “Let’s celebrate the system.” Hannah nodded toward the tray on the table. Pastries, eggs, croissants, slices of melon. “I ordered for both of us.”

  “The murder in Cape Town. How did you—”

  “I figured out the system.” She spoke quickly, almost feverishly. “I used the myth and the number thirty-six as my starting point.”

  “Now wait a minute, Hannah. You’re not a religious person.”

  “Are you sure about that?” She smiled. “To be honest, I don’t know whether I am or not. But I do know that everybody is always touting the division between religion and science. Aren’t you going to sit down?”

  Niels hadn’t realized that he was still standing. He sat down.

  “That division is based on a false premise. It simply doesn’t exist. The first sciences developed from a desire to prove the existence of God. In that sense, science and religion have been hand in hand from the very beginning. Maybe more favorably inclined toward each other during some periods than others, but still.”

  “Why the number thirty-six?” Niels poured himself some coffee. “Does it have some special meaning?”

  “In relationship to the system, yes. And that’s exactly what we need. Listen to this: Right now there’s a commonly held view among scientists that we know about only four percent of all the matter in the universe. Four percent!”

  “So what about the other ninety-six percent?”

  “Exactly. What about it? We astrophysicists call it ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy.’ Maybe we should just call it ignorance. There’s so much that we don’t know, Niels. It’s shocking how little we know. And yet we behave like little gods who think we’re in control of everything. Like kids with delusions of grandeur. Isn’t that what we’ve made ourselves into? It’s as if we’re trying to make ourselves believe that four percent is all there is. That everything else, all that we don’t know, doesn’t exist. But it does. We know it’s there; we just don’t understand it.”

  “There have been reports of only . . . how many murders? Twenty-one? Not thirty-six.”

  “So far, yes. That’s because the others haven’t been discovered or reported.”

  Niels hesitated. He didn’t know whether he sounded curious or skeptical when he asked, “What about this murder in Cape Town? How did you know about it?”

  “Do you know who Ole Rømer was?”

  “Yes, the chief of police in 1700 something.”

  “And an astrophysicist,” she told him. “Like me. He was the first person to measure the speed of light—and he did it with great precision.”

  “How does he fit into the picture?”

  “The king once asked Rømer to find out how big an area Copenhagen covered. So it was just a matter of going out and making meticulous measurements, right? But Rømer figured it out in less than ten minutes. How did he do that?”

  A waitress walked past. Hannah caught her attention. “I know this is a strange request, but could I borrow some scissors and a melon?”

  The waitress studied Hannah. “Just a sec,” she said, and left.

  Hannah went on. “Rømer took a balance scale and a cadastral map of Copenhagen and . . . Oh, thanks.” The waitress handed her the requested scissors and a melon. “And then he began cutting.”

  Hannah started cutting up the paper tablecloth. Niels noticed a young couple surreptitiously staring at them. At Hannah.

  “Rømer simply cut away all the inhabited areas from the map and placed them in one of the pans of the scale. Then he placed the uninhabited areas in the other pan.”

  Niels smiled. “And what is it that you’ve cut out?”

  “Doesn’t this look like Africa?” She held up a piece of the paper.

  “If you say so.”

  “Okay. I admit that South Africa should probably be a little narrower, but I’ll bet you can recognize Australia and South and North America.” She held up a few more pieces.

  “You removed the continents?”

  “No, the water. The oceans. So only the continents were left. The rest I cut away.” She started putting together the pieces as if they were a puzzle.

  “Hannah?” Niels insisted on making eye contact with her. “I haven’t had any physics or math since I finished high school. You’re going to have to go slower. So: You cut the continents out of a map. That much I’ve understood. And you threw away the oceans?”
/>   “Right.”

  “But why? What would that prove?”

  “Didn’t I tell you in my phone message? We have to go back in time, Niels. To a very long time ago. To when the continents were first formed. Back when multi-celled organisms appeared.”

  Niels stared at her.

  “It has to do with plate tectonics. Continental plates, plates on the ocean floor, and the specific gravity of granite as opposed to basalt. There’s no need to go into all that right now. Let’s start at a different place.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Because of plate tectonics, the continents move around on the earth. They’re virtually always in motion. There’s a long and elaborate explanation for why this is true, but I’ll spare you the details.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What you need to understand is that the continents are made up of granite. Have you ever heard of Minik Rosing?”

  Niels shook his head.

  “A geologist from Greenland. He proposed a theory that the earth’s granite was formed by the oxidation of basalt, and that the oxygen for the oxidation process came from the first photosynthesized bacteria, which appeared approximately three point seven billion years ago.”

  Niels raised his hands in surrender.

  Hannah paused to think. “Okay. We’ll skip the explanation and go right to the conclusion. Or at least a partial conclusion. The continents resulted as a consequence of life on earth.”

  “That’s a conclusion?”

  “Let’s call it a starting point. Look at this.”

  Niels watched as she moved the continent pieces until they were all connected. The young couple at the next table had given up any attempt to hide their interest as they followed along.

  “Once upon a time, all the landmasses were connected, gathered around the South Pole. The continents looked something like this. No, I’ll draw you a picture.” She took a black marker out of her bag and began drawing the continents on the melon. “This is how they looked, gathered at the South Pole.”