The Copenhagen Affair

by Amulya Malladi

“But you know what was even funnier? Harry. That’s my husband. I called him, and he didn’t pick up the phone, which was normal. I sent him a text message while I cried nonstop. It took him an hour to come to the office. He looks at me crying and then he starts to ask people if I’m hurt,” Sanya told him. “Instead of asking me, he’s asking Miguel what happened, and Miguel was just shaking his head and saying Harry needed to take me to the doctor because I wasn’t feeling well. Harry then suddenly goes cockeyed and asks Miguel if I was raped.”

  “What?” Asgar asked.

  “I know. I don’t know where he got that idea. Miguel almost died, and even while I’m unable to stop crying I’m thinking this is ridiculous, but I can’t stop crying and tell Harry anything, so I keep crying. Miguel says he’s offended, blah, blah, and that I had lost it at a partners’ meeting and he wasn’t going to say anything until he spoke to the firm’s lawyers,” Sanya said. “Christ, it was a mess. After I felt better I called Miguel and apologized; he said it was okay and then said that he hoped I understood that I was officially on medical leave without pay.”

  “So they wouldn’t make you partner anymore?”

  Sanya started to laugh again. He joined her.

  When they stopped laughing, Asgar asked, “Why did you call it an implosion?”

  “Do you know what entropy is?” she asked, and he nodded. Of course high-IQ boy knew. “Well, when a closed system is in such complete disorder that it can’t sustain itself, it implodes and a new closed system comes in its place.”

  “I’m not sure that’s exactly what happens,” Asgar said.

  “Just go with me on this. It’s my theory of entropy,” Sanya said. “So I had an implosion, and now there’s a new closed system, which is my marriage. And in this new closed system, I’m not the same Sanya I used to be. I’m the Sanya who goes off to a bar with a strange man and dances until . . . my god, what’s the time? The skies are lighting up.”

  “Aren’t summers grand in Denmark? The sun is up until nearly midnight and then rises again early,” Asgar said. “It’s four in the morning, Sanya. Do you need to get home?”

  “Probably,” Sanya said, looking at her bag and knowing that her mute phone was probably bleeding voice mails and text messages and missed calls.

  “Do you think your husband called the police?”

  “What would the police say?”

  “That they can’t do anything until forty-eight hours have passed; and you’re a grown woman, not a child,” Asgar said. “Where do you live? I’ll get you a taxi.”

  Sanya told him her address and he punched it into his phone.

  “Let’s get up; taxi is here in five minutes,” he said, holding his hand out to Sanya, and she put her hand in his. They walked up the stairs to the street, hand in hand.

  The taxi was there before she was ready to leave. But she knew she had to, so she let go of Asgar’s hand.

  “I had a lovely time,” he said as Sanya put a foot into the taxi. She suddenly stopped and turned, leaving the taxi, and stepped closer to Asgar. She put both her hands around his face and lifted hers up to him.

  The kiss blew Sanya’s mind. She had never tasted another man like this, leisurely, luxuriously, in the morning with a taxi waiting. It was lazy, this slow exploration of a tongue in the mouth—the taste, alien—a mystery that she would not explore, just dip her toe into and resist.

  She got into the taxi afterward and said, “I had a blast.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, and closed the taxi door.

  The hell with a midlife crisis, Sanya thought. She had kissed a twenty-three-year-old hottie, and she felt great.

  Chapter 31

  The Lightness of Being

  “Maybe you should’ve checked your phone,” Sara suggested.

  “But I was having such a good time,” Sanya said. She touched the screen of her MacBook and sighed. “I miss you.”

  “You know what, so do I,” Sara said. “When are you coming stateside?”

  “I thought you’d come visit us here,” Sanya said. “They have a great jazz festival in July, starting in two weeks.”

  “So now you’re an expert on all things jazz because you went to a jazz club and hung out with a bass player?” Sara asked, but she was smiling.

  “It was a blues bar, very different from jazz. Harry didn’t enjoy it when I explained the difference to him,” Sanya said.

  “He even called me,” Sara said.

  “How did he think you could help?”

  “I don’t know—something about if you were dying then you would’ve at least tried to reach me,” Sara said. “He went apeshit, Mama. I mean, I’ve never seen him this worried. You know, most of the time he never knows where you are and doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. But this was different. He was afraid that something had happened to you.”

  “What would happen to me?”

  “That’s what I said,” Sara said. “You know what, there’s something different about you. Are you coming out of it then? Are you both coming out of it?”

  “Harry didn’t have a mental meltdown, my love,” Sanya said.

  Sara shook her head. “I think whatever journey you’re on, he’s on it, too. Maybe you’re not on the same boat or train together, but something’s going on with him as well. Look, I know Daddy isn’t one of those attentive husbands or fathers. But he’s attentive enough. I have no complaints, mostly because you were always there. I think we all got used to you always being there. And I suspect that he’s starting to worry that now you’re not always there.”

  “And how do you feel about that?” Sanya asked.

  “About time,” Sara said. “Sometimes I wanted to shake you. Even in the most difficult situations, you’d hold on to that never-failing optimism of yours. You’d let Mira Auntie and your mom walk all over you because you wanted to be nice to everyone. It didn’t seem . . . don’t take this the wrong way, but it didn’t seem genuine, like you were a plastic doll playing a role. The only time I saw you being different was with Alec.”

  Sanya smiled. “I left the doll behind.”

  “Good,” Sara said. “Really good. You’re a fantastic person, Mama. You’re smart, good, and lovely, and I love you.”

  Something had happened to her, Sanya thought. She felt lightness around her, as if a heavy fog had lifted.

  Sanya talked to Arthur about her evening with the blues, and he thought she had made a breakthrough by finally talking to someone about what had happened that day in the meeting room. She had purged it from inside her—finally she was on the right track, and the lightness she felt came from having freed herself of that day.

  Of course, she had to figure out why being asked to become partner made her respond like this—but she thought that maybe she already knew.

  Finally, when everything she had worked for was within reach, Sanya realized that she didn’t want it. Her rejecting the partnership and her anger at not being appreciated for so long was really her rejecting her marriage and being angry at Harry for not appreciating her for the entirety of their marriage to chase down his corporate dream.

  “Thank you, my love,” Sanya said to Sara. “So, you’re coming to visit, yes?”

  “Mama, don’t get angry, but my friends and I are thinking of going to Peru and doing the Mayan trail this summer,” she said. “There won’t be any time for Europe, and I already did Europe last year.”

  Disappointment stabbed through Sanya but so did excitement. The Mayan trail? She had wanted that. She had wanted that and other things that she had not pursued. But Sara had the freedom, the time, the energy, and her daddy’s money, so why the hell not?

  “I’d never be angry about something like this. It sounds like fun. Tell me about it,” Sanya said.

  She watched and listened to Sara as she excitedly told Sanya about the five-day hike to Machu Picchu and the other places in Peru she intended to visit.

  This was victory, Sanya thought.

  Unlike Sanya, who had bee
n burdened by her parents and her husband’s success, Sara was unfettered, happy to explore her life and universe the way she wanted. I’m not a complete failure, Sanya thought. She had raised a self-confident, self-assured woman, one who would never have her mother’s emotional issues because she carried no baggage that made her feel small, ungainly, and irrelevant.

  After she talked to Sara, her phone beeped with a message. She picked it up and smiled. Straight from daughter to illicit lover. Sanya was definitely not a plastic doll anymore.

  I want to see you.

  Why? Sanya typed.

  For all the wrong reasons.

  I kissed a boy.

  Was it a good kiss?

  Unbearably good.

  I can do better.

  She laughed and typed, Prove it. And then deleted it.

  He didn’t wait for her answer and wrote: I’ll show you. Come to Café Victor. Tomorrow. 4 p.m.

  Sanya didn’t respond and turned her phone off to avoid further temptation.

  Chapter 32

  Harry Goes Right

  Chief Inspector Hans Møller nodded from time to time as Harry explained the fraud that IT Foundry and Mark Barrett had perpetrated.

  The meeting was taking place in the offices of HS, the law firm hired by Harry’s company for the merger, close to Amalienborg, the royal palace.

  Harry hadn’t wanted to have this meeting, but their lawyer, Alice Risbjørn, insisted that they had to do this to protect themselves from a lawsuit that IT Foundry could bring against them for breach of contract. ComIT had officially decided to back away from acquiring IT Foundry based on revenue figures in the past year that didn’t match up with revenues from selling consultancy services.

  The chief inspector was just as Harry had thought a Danish cop would look. He was about six feet five inches tall, had a shaved head and blue eyes, and wore a pair of Levi’s with a white dress shirt. Unlike an American television cop, he did not carry a gun. He didn’t even have a fancy holster. He didn’t wear a badge on his Marlboro-branded leather belt. He was fit, like he worked out every day and enjoyed it.

  “You say that someone at the Dansk Sjællands Bank is involved?” the chief inspector asked when Harry came to that part.

  “Yes,” Alice said, looking at her papers. “Ole Mejby. He is listed as an executive vice president and is on the board of directors.”

  The chief inspector made a sound, which was mostly a snort, meant to indicate disbelief. “Big accusations, you understand, and you’re all Americans.”

  He said Americans like they were immoral thieves.

  “I’m not American,” Alice said with a smile. She didn’t sound defensive, just stating a fact.

  The chief inspector raised both his hands. “You do understand that this is going to raise all kinds of hell. The National Bank. IT Foundry. These are reputable Danish organizations.”

  “Well, it’s all here,” Alice said, handing over an IT Foundry–branded black USB drive to the chief inspector. “You’re welcome to have one of your financial people go over it.”

  “I will, but those nerds get too technical on me,” the chief inspector said. “Can you explain this to me in English?”

  Harry explained what they had found out. They had proof for certain aspects of the fraud, and they were speculating about others.

  Mark Barrett had done some creative accounting to put together leases for properties in Sweden that didn’t exist. He leased these properties to a shell corporation called Lala, and that corporation then rented the nonexistent properties to another shell corporation, this one owned by IT Foundry, called Cirque Fernando. Mark then paid no taxes on the income he received from these leases, which triggered his tax audit.

  IT Foundry went to the Dansk Sjællands Bank and got loans based on these nonexistent leased properties. This wasn’t common practice, but someone in the board of directors at the bank signed off on the loans, which added up to nearly five hundred million Danish kroner. This money was funneled back into IT Foundry as revenue to inflate the numbers and keep the share price high in the stock market.

  “But why would he do this?” the chief inspector asked, shaking his head.

  “Because he wanted to sell his crappy company to us,” Harry said. “He hid it all very well, and if our experts weren’t as good as they are, we would’ve been saddled with this mess.”

  “But eventually it would have come out,” the chief inspector said.

  “We think Ravn was planning to use the money from the sale to pay off the loan,” Alice said. “That way he could clear the books and no one would be the wiser.”

  “What proof do you have?” the chief inspector asked.

  “Only the loan papers from the Dansk Sjællands Bank,” Harry said. “And they don’t specify the Swedish properties clearly, so it’s all a bit vague. It is poor banking practice, and maybe Ole Mejby will get into trouble but not Ravn. He can say he knew nothing.”

  “So you have no actual proof,” the chief inspector said.

  “The shell corporations are connected because . . . do you know a Degas painting . . . ,” Harry began, but Alice interrupted him. She had warned him that his Degas connection would make him look like a fruitcake.

  “We do have proof that earnings from last year do not match the sales, as the loan has been put into the revenue column. Again, this is noncompliant, and IT Foundry will be expected to pay a fine and fix processes. But we’re coming here in good faith and telling you that we have found discrepancies and that you should investigate,” Alice said.

  “And you have proof that these properties in Sweden do not exist?” the chief inspector asked.

  “That needs to be investigated by you; we have done our investigation and have not found these properties,” Alice said.

  “So we have at least that against Barrett,” the chief inspector said, and then, as if coming to a decision, he stood up and put the USB drive Alice had given him in his front jeans pocket. “I’m going to take this, and we’re going to investigate and fast. No one talks about this to anyone. You continue as if it’s business as usual. We don’t want Ravn, Barrett, or anyone else to find out that we’re investigating. Got it?”

  They all nodded.

  “Looks like you walked into a solid cluster fuck,” the chief inspector added, looking at Harry.

  “Like you wouldn’t believe,” Harry said, and stood up. He shook hands with the chief inspector, and Alice’s assistant, who was in the meeting with them taking notes, walked him out.

  Once the inspector left, Lucky, Harry, and Alice collapsed into their chairs in the HS main conference room, which overlooked the impressive Amalienborg.

  Lucky, who hadn’t said a word the whole time during the meeting, asked the inevitable question, “What happens next?”

  “I am meeting Penny Barrett at Café Victor at one, in about fifteen minutes,” Harry said.

  “What?” Lucky asked shocked.

  “I’m going to give her a heads-up,” Harry said, and before anyone could speak, he held his right hand up to silence them. “She isn’t involved, and we all know this.”

  “But she might tell Ravn,” Lucky protested, and looked at the lawyer in the room.

  “Legally, as long as you don’t talk details, you’re okay. You can tell her that she should maybe get divorced or that she needs to distance herself from her husband but nothing about Ravn. Don’t go there,” Alice said.

  “That woman shouldn’t get caught up in the mess her cousin and husband have made,” Harry said.

  Alice shook her head. “In any case, we don’t have much on Ravn. He could easily skate and let Barrett and Mejby take the hit. It’s important he doesn’t know. We’ll let the police figure it all out.”

  “Penny doesn’t seem the type who would try to save her cousin’s neck over hers,” Harry said.

  Lucky followed Harry as he left the room and pulled him into an empty office.

  “You don’t owe Penny anything,” Lucky said.
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  “It’s the right thing to do, Lucky,” Harry said. “And you know it.”

  “What’s up with you?” Lucky asked, frustrated.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When did you start giving a shit about what the right thing to do is?” he demanded.

  Harry’s eyebrows furrowed. Was this the kind of man he was, the kind that wasn’t supposed to give a shit about the right thing? Where had he veered so off track that he had become such a man, that his closest friend thought him to be such a man?

  Lucky breathed deeply. “I’m booking our tickets for California for the end of next week,” he said.

  Harry shook his head. “You go ahead and book your ticket; I’m not sure about Sanya and me,” he said, and knew this would surprise Lucky.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sanya likes it here. I like it here,” Harry said. “Maybe we’ll stay. Go on vacation. Will you give J Yu and Tara a report about this meeting?”

  “Vacation? You?”

  “Yeah, Lucky, I’m thinking that I need to start living my life,” Harry said.

  Lucky looked even more perplexed, but Harry didn’t know how to explain what was happening to him. Harry was starting to see things clearly. For the first time the fog had lifted, and all it had taken was losing Sanya. Oh, she hadn’t left him or anything as dramatic, but emotionally she had checked out of their marriage, and he couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t checked into their marriage, and they’d been married for over two decades, so he didn’t have any moral ground to stand on and question her burgeoning attraction to Ravn.

  Of course he knew.

  She was changing right in front of his eyes. She was altering her personality. She was always the tough one. The strong one. The one who smiled through adversity. She could juggle Sara and work and him. Sanya was a superwoman.

  She had raised a kickass daughter, and he was man enough to admit that Sanya had done the raising; he had written the checks. Sanya always said that her child’s accomplishments were not hers, but her child’s failures would be Sanya’s. He didn’t believe in that bullshit, because his successes were his and his failures were his and had nothing to do with his parents. Sanya had been the model wife. He had never had any complaints. No nagging. No “where are you?” No “you work all the time.” None of the bullshit that his friends faced with their wives. He hadn’t had to change his lifestyle at all after he got married or after they had Sara. And what had Sanya gotten in return?