The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller

by Stewart, A. J.

  The train took another forty-five minutes to reach Copenhagen’s central station. Flynn stood in the vestibule the whole way. When the train pulled into Copenhagen, he got off and stood on the platform and watched the other passengers head toward the main concourse. At the end of the platform, he saw one of the guys from the restaurant. He was on his phone, clearly trying to get in touch with the rest of his crew but having no luck at it.

  Flynn didn’t follow the crowd. He slipped down into the underpass, up onto the farthest platform, and then out the back of the station. Flynn liked the parts of towns that lay out the back of train stations. Cities and nations and the European Union spent money on the fronts of central train stations. They were majestic buildings that had often fallen on hard times throughout the years, but as many inner cities had undergone gentrification, so had their station facilities as well as the forecourts and plazas and gardens that fronted them.

  The rear sides of train stations were rarely so lucky. They were often a maze of closed-in roads and alleyways, cheap accommodations and cheap eats and the seedy side of life. They weren’t called the wrong side of the tracks for nothing. Flynn walked along the tracks, passing by places that didn’t fit his criteria. Too much branding, too nice, too busy a street. He walked around and doubled back and checked if he was being followed.

  He found what he wanted on a tight street that wasn’t on any tourist brochure. It was dark and dirty, a combination of nameless storefronts. The hotel was the kind of place that might host an hourly clientele. There was a sign above the torn awning, but it wasn’t lit, so it was hard to read the words Palace Hotel.

  It was no palace. There was no lobby, just a desk behind glass that was so grimy Flynn could barely see the attendant. The guy was lounging back in a chair with a glassy look, like he was stoned.

  “How much?”

  The guy looked at him and blinked slow. “Hour?” he said in English.

  “Night.”

  “Two hundred.”

  Flynn pulled a couple hundred Danish krone notes from his pocket and slipped them into the slot below the window.

  “ID,” said the guy.

  Flynn took out a ten-euro note and handed it over. It wasn’t necessary. Half the people who stayed in a place like this didn’t even have ID, let alone want to show it. The guy took the money and put an old key on a wooden keychain into the slot.

  “Second floor.”

  There was no elevator. Flynn walked up to the first floor, past the smell of urine and blood, to the second floor, which mercifully smelled of Chinese food. His room was along a tight corridor.

  In the room were bare floorboards and a naked bulb that didn’t work. He found a lamp on the solitary table and turned it on. The bed was bowed in the middle, but the sheets looked to have been laundered in the recent past yet probably not after the last customer. There was a sink and a worn chair. Flynn dropped his pack and took the chair and pushed it under the door handle. It wasn’t any kind of unbreakable security, but it would give him time to rise to action if need be.

  He removed his boots and socks and lay on top of the bed. It wasn’t the most comfortable but it beat the street by a fair margin. He was dry and warm and relatively secure. He stared at the ceiling for a while, not wanting to close his eyes, familiar with the demons that often visited when he did. When his eyelids finally dropped, he was so tired that he saw nothing but the deep void of sleep.

  * * *

  Hans Lund wasn’t asleep. He wasn’t even at home. He was lying back on a bed that had bad springs with a twenty-year-old writhing on top of him. His level of disinterest in the pretty young thing was alarming. There was too much on his mind, and he was suffering.

  “Don’t worry, baby,” she said. “We’ll make it work.”

  Lund practically threw her off when his phone rang. “It works fine,” he spat, and he snatched up his phone. “What?” he yelled.

  “The American is gone,” said the man on the other end.

  Lund felt his jaw tighten. “How?”

  “He got the train. Jorgensen and Rancic were on board. They’re not answering their phones.”

  “And the American?”

  “We met the train at Københaven H, but no one got off. Not the American, not Jorgensen, not Rancic.”

  Lund felt his blood pumping hard, right through the veins in his head, not where he needed it.

  “He’s probably headed back to the commune.”

  “You think, do you?” said Lund, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  The man said nothing in reply.

  “I’ve got eyes on the commune,” said Lund. “You stay in Copenhagen.”

  “Is there somewhere he might go?”

  Lund thought about that. Berg had almost let slip that there was something in the capital, but he had not been forthcoming as to who that might be or why. It was time for Lund to find out.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll let you know more in the morning.”

  Lund hung up and let out a deep breath that hurt in his chest. This American was going to be the end of him. The young woman crept back over and ran her hand along the inside of Lund’s thigh, but he was done. He was tired and most definitely not in the mood. He slapped her hand away.

  Lund got out of bed and pulled on his trousers. He buttoned his shirt over his bulbous frame and slipped the straps of his suspenders over his shoulders. The woman sat on the bed and watched with a look of disappointment that he knew wasn’t genuine.

  “We can just sleep,” she said.

  Lund shook his head but said nothing. If all he was going to do was sleep, he would do that in his own comfortable bed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Flynn ate breakfast in a small café a couple of blocks from his lodgings. A man with gray stubble served him thin pancakes and eggs with an espresso for less than a bus ticket around town. He lingered at the table for a while, waiting for the clock to tick over, and no one made any suggestion that he should move on.

  He figured there would be someone staffing the phones after eight, so when the clock struck, he looked at the morning newspaper sitting on his table and punched in the number.

  “Politiken,” said the bright voice at the other end.

  Flynn had found asking if people spoke English to be a pointless exercise, so he just went at it. “Can I speak with Helle Poulsen, please?”

  “Division?”

  “Pardon?”

  “What division? Where does she work?”

  “She’s a reporter.”

  There was an electronic thunk and then silence, the white noise of an empty phone line, and then another thunk as the call was picked up.

  “Nyheder,” said a man who sounded like he had been smoking since he was born.

  “I’m looking for Helle Poulsen.”

  “You missed her.”

  “I missed her? Does she work nights?”

  “No, she’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Do you have a story?”

  “I’m just looking for Helle Poulsen.”

  “I told you, she’s moved on.”

  “To where?”

  “America.”

  “America? Where in America?”

  “Washington, DC.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “A few days ago. Listen, do you have a story or not?”

  “Is she still with Politiken?”

  “No, I told you, she’s moved on. Reuters, I think.”

  “Reuters, the news agency?”

  “Of course. Listen, call back when you have a story, okay?”

  Flynn heard the line go dead. Newsrooms were busy places, and reporters only had time for the kind of guff that might actually get printed. Flynn had met a good few reporters over the years, and most of them had been oddly antisocial, but he figured most people in war zones became that way.

  It was just after 2 a.m. in DC, so there was no point trying to track the reporter down now. But Flynn had so
mething else to do and somewhere else to go. He paid his check, grabbed his pack, and wandered back to the rear side of the train station. He walked past the rows of bicycles on the street and went in the Istedgade Street entrance. He found the luggage lockers and deposited his pack. He kept his Swiss Army knife in his pocket and walked out to find a bus.

  The journey took an hour via three different buses, and Flynn couldn’t help but think it would have been faster to march the eleven kilometers to Gentofte, but he wanted to avoid the train system for now. He walked from the bus stop near the Gentofte metro station into the northern suburbs of Copenhagen.

  Row after row, street after street of neat red-brick semidetached homes with small attached garages, surrounded by lush trees that were enjoying every bit of the spring sunshine.

  He found the house he wanted. There was a small Renault parked on the street and a tidy lawn with a burst of colorful annuals planted along the short path to the front door.

  Flynn knocked on the door and waited. He heard the sounds of movement from within, the creak of floorboards as someone approached the door. The man who opened up looked like a model from a menswear catalog. He was tall and lean, with blond hair and an immaculately trimmed beard. He wore a turtleneck sweater that fit him so well Flynn wondered if it had been knitted just for him. His eyes were the same blue as Schmidt, the police officer.

  “Kan jeg hjælpe?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for Freja Jensen,” Flynn said.

  The man looked at him but gave no expression, no hint of whether Flynn was in the right place. “What is it concerning?” he asked in accented but perfect English.

  “It’s concerning Luna Fisker.”

  The man nodded. “Please, come in.”

  He stepped aside to allow Flynn to enter and then closed the door. Flynn followed him down a short hallway. The floors were pale wood and the walls white, and he could feel a breeze floating in from an unseen window. They passed a small living room with a sofa, a television, and a large bookcase.

  The man stopped in the kitchen. It was modern and clean, navy cabinets and butcher-block countertops, with a six-seater dining table and a view of the small backyard, where Flynn could see a child’s soccer goal set up against the fence.

  “My name is Keel Rasmussen,” said the man.

  “John Flynn.”

  They shook hands, then Keel pointed to the dining table. “Please have a seat. I will get Freja.”

  Keel walked out. Flynn moved around the table so he was facing the door and sat down. He waited a few minutes. He wondered if Keel was having to convince Freja to come out. He wondered if she wanted to talk about her old friend at all, or if she had left that childhood far behind.

  When Freja came into the kitchen, Flynn saw her mother’s eyes. She also had the same rust-colored hair, tied back in a ponytail. She was thin in the cheeks but round in the belly. Flynn guessed maybe seven or eight months’ pregnant.

  He stood and introduced himself.

  She offered her hand, fingers like those of a piano player. “Freja Rasmussen,” she said as she sat. “What is it that you want, Mr. Flynn?”

  “It’s John, and I honestly don’t know what I want,” he said. “You know what happened, I assume.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m a friend of Begitte’s husband. I guess a friend of hers too, now. She’s looking for some closure, some answers.”

  “And you find answers?”

  “I do.”

  She sighed. “I don’t think I have any answers to give.”

  “And that’s okay,” he said.

  Freja sighed again, and Keel walked into the room.

  “Would you like tea?” he asked Freja.

  She nodded softly, and Keel turned to Flynn.

  “Mr. Flynn? Tea?”

  “It’s John. Tea’s great.”

  “Freja has chamomile, but I will do regular black too, if you prefer.”

  “Whatever’s easiest.”

  “I have black. Darjeeling.”

  “Perfect.”

  Flynn didn’t finesse when it came to tea. He wasn’t a fan of herbal, but black tea was black tea, and it was all palatable.

  “I spoke with your parents,” Flynn said.

  “I know,” Freja replied.

  “You do?”

  “Of course. They told me they had passed on my address.”

  “I didn’t realize you were close.”

  “They’re my parents, Mr. Flynn. We talk every week. You don’t talk to your parents?”

  “No,” he said.

  “That’s a shame.”

  “Well, they’re dead, so . . .”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault. I just thought since you didn’t go back there at all that maybe you weren’t close.”

  “I don’t go back because my life is here now. Nothing more. My mother and father visit often.” She looked at Keel. “Right?”

  He nodded and smiled and poured boiling water into mugs. When he was done he placed the mugs on coasters on the table and sat at the corner near Freja.

  “You’re due when?” asked Flynn. “Two months?”

  “Six weeks, they say. But our son held on for an extra week, so who knows.”

  “You have another child?”

  “A boy, Frans,” said Keel. “He’s five.”

  “He’s not at home?”

  “He’s playing next door.”

  Flynn nodded. He sipped his tea and scanned the room. It looked, felt, and smelled like a home. Cozy and light in summer, cozy and warm in winter. That wasn’t just about heat; it was about people. He had spent much of his own childhood in a similar house in a similar suburb in Brussels. He still remembered the feeling of warmth when he came in from playing soccer on the streets, his mother’s hot cocoa, an embrace that could never be replicated. The Danes had a word for it. Hygge. There was no English translation, no direct equivalent—the word encompassed a feeling of coziness but something more. Flynn considered it an indescribable feeling of home, even when you weren’t at home at all, a sense of a place or people surrounding a person like a force field. Like his mother had. It was a feeling he had replaced but not replicated in the Legion. It was a feeling he had not felt for a long time.

  He felt it now. Not for himself but for the family whose home he was in. For a moment he felt that he was betraying that sensation, perhaps bringing bad memories into this place of warmth and comfort. But then he thought of Begitte, and her warm home, and the loss that she was trying to understand.

  “You were friends with Luna,” he said, “back in the day.”

  “Yes. We were close. Like sisters, really. It was like that there. All separate families but one big family too. We did everything together.” She smiled wistfully.

  “Did you keep in touch much after you left?”

  Freja shook her head as she sipped her tea. “No, no we didn’t. Our paths diverged.”

  “So you didn’t know she was living in Copenhagen?”

  “I knew. We spoke a few times way back, but she was different. I guess I was too. But not lately, not in years.”

  Flynn drank his tea and watched her. He knew. It was there in the cast of her eyes. She was lying. Maybe just to him but possibly to herself as well.

  “So you wouldn’t know why she might have done what she did, taking her own life?”

  Freja shook her head, and the corners of her mouth dropped away. “No. She was depressed. I think that much was certain. But more than that, I don’t know.”

  “She went back to Østvand, to the community,” said Flynn.

  “Yes, my mother told me.”

  “You didn’t think to visit her?”

  “I told you, my life is here now.”

  “Do you have any thoughts on why she went downhill the way she did, back when you were kids?”

  Freja stared hard at her kitchen table as if she was trying to remember something, or trying hard not to remember it.
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br />   “I don’t recall,” she said. “We all have things happen, good and bad. Sometimes it’s just how people are, don’t you think?”

  “Sometimes,” said Flynn. He finished his tea and thanked Freja and Keel for their time. Freja stayed at the table, and Keel walked him out. They stood in the front garden, the colors of the flowers less vibrant now as a cloud wafted across the sun. Flynn felt the sensation of it in his guts. He took out a piece of paper and handed it to Keel.

  “My number, in case she wants to talk.”

  Keel took the paper but said nothing. He shook Flynn’s hand, and then Flynn walked out onto the sidewalk, purposefully not glancing at the blue Opel Corsa parked three houses down the street.

  Chapter Twenty

  The passenger in the Corsa was on the phone.

  “You’re right. He’s here.”

  “Good,” said Hans Lund. He had called Berg, who had unwillingly given him an address, a location where the American might appear. Lund hadn’t told Berg that his men on the train had gone down the previous night, calling in that morning from a hospital in Ringsted. Lund didn’t need Berg second-guessing him, doubting him. He had told Berg the guy had just disappeared in Copenhagen and he needed to know any places he might reappear. Eventually Berg had given him the address in Gentofte, telling him it was a former resident of the commune who knew nothing but may or may not get a visit.

  There was more to it than that, Lund knew that for sure. Berg’s reticence was one thing, but the address being the first place the American went—that was something else altogether.

  “Stay on him,” said Lund.

  “It won’t be easy.”

  “I don’t pay you for easy.” Lund killed the call and then hit another contact in his phone.