The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller

by Stewart, A. J.

  He rode around the building at a distance and then down the footpath to the back of the restaurant. It was cordoned off by a bank of trees, but there was no rear service area, no line of trash cans. There was room for kitchen staff to smoke but not much else. Clearly everything was trucked in and out promptly. He tucked the bicycle against a bank behind the trees and continued on foot.

  Flynn walked away to the north and found the marina restaurant, where he sat and waited and ate. He watched the yachts at their moorings, a few coming in from a day’s sailing. After the sun fell and his lamb was done and the espresso was kicking in, he made one phone call and then turned his phone off and pulled out the battery, placing them in separate pockets. Then he wandered out into the night air.

  He came back at Kød og Kartoffel from the north, and about a hundred meters short he cut into the trees that ran along the shoreline. It was slow-going, but he had time, and he moved carefully. He approached from the rear of the restaurant and waited in the shadows near the back door. It took about an hour for someone to appear, but someone inevitably did.

  A kitchen hand stepped out and lit a cigarette, and Flynn saw the person’s face in the match light. It was a young man, which was good. A woman was more likely to feel afraid of a man appearing from the shadows and retreat inside. Most young men had too much testosterone to make such good judgment calls.

  Flynn slowly ambled out, making his presence known so as to not spook the guy.

  “Hej?”

  “Hi, how are you?” Flynn said. “Nice night, huh?”

  “What are you doing out here, man?”

  “I’m looking for someone.” Flynn held up a one-thousand-krone note and moved closer so the guy could see. Once he understood what he was looking at, he glanced at Flynn.

  “Opening night tonight?” asked Flynn.

  “Ja,” said the guy, suspiciously.

  “You got a reporter here from the Politiken?”

  “Politiken? Ja.”

  Flynn handed the note to the guy. “You get me inside and point him out, there’s another of those for you.”

  The guy pocketed the money, then refocused his attention on Flynn.

  “You going to cause problems?”

  “No. I just need to talk to the guy. It’s important, and I don’t know what he looks like.”

  He eyed Flynn and then nodded. He crushed out his cigarette, then led the way inside. They walked along the side of the kitchen, a sea of stainless steel with a wide window that looked out into the dining room. The kitchen hand passed the bathrooms and then stopped as he reached the dining room.

  It was a large space that would probably be described in reviews as modern rustic. The ceilings were high and white with dark wood beams that looked as if they had been freshly chopped from a nearby forest. The matching wood tables were long and broad, and the seating was plush cream. The room smelled of woodsmoke and garlic.

  The kitchen hand looked around, found the guy he wanted, and pointed him out. Flynn slipped him another one-thousand-krone note before he disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Flynn strode into the dining room, keeping to the periphery, watching the patrons eat and the waitstaff glide in between. There was a casual buzz about the room, one familiar to Flynn. The long tables—family-style was a term Flynn had heard—meant that strangers sat together, shoulder to shoulder. Some folks liked it, some didn’t. Some people preferred booths in a diner. But at a long table, people chatted, got to know a little about one another. When it worked, it was convivial. Flynn had eaten a lot of communal meals in the Legion, and he could hear from the buzz that it was working here.

  He slid between two tables and stopped behind the reporter. He leaned down and spoke quietly. “Mr. Olsen?”

  The guy snapped around as if he were an incognito spy who had been made. He was a young guy, maybe twenty-five, blond hair receding at the temples. He wore thick black-framed glasses that reminded Flynn of Woody Allen.

  “Ja?” he said with a frown.

  “I have a message for you,” said Flynn, and he walked away. He didn’t care to get into a discussion about the nature of the message or why he wouldn’t pass it on at the table. If the guy was any kind of reporter, there was no way he wouldn’t follow. He’d have to know what the message was. Reporters were like that. The only thing they loved more than questions was answers.

  The guy dropped his napkin on the table, slid his chair back, and smiled his apologies at his dinner mates. He followed Flynn back toward the kitchen door, and they stood behind a large potted tree that hid a serving station from view.

  “What is it?” asked Olsen.

  “You’re Nils Olsen, from Politiken?”

  “Yes. Who are you?”

  “I’m a source for a story.”

  “You’re the guy that they messaged me about?”

  “I am.”

  “What story?”

  “Did you recently get some notes from a colleague?”

  “Notes from a colleague? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a colleague who might have passed something to you that they were working on.”

  Olsen shook his head and then stopped abruptly. “You mean Poulsen?”

  “I do.”

  “She gave me her notebook, but there was no story there. She said it was just background and doodles.”

  “Why did she give it to you?”

  “Like you said, I’m a colleague.”

  “She’s a political reporter, and you’re a restaurant critic.”

  “I’m not a critic. This is just what I do now. I want to do serious stories, not food.”

  “So what do you know about Victor Berg?”

  “Berg? The politician?”

  Flynn nodded.

  “He’s a politician. He’s getting popular, talking a lot about immigration and Danishness and such things.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What else is there?”

  “Poulsen was doing background on the guy. She passed her notes to you, a food writer. That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “I told you, I want to do serious writing. She knew that. Maybe she was just helping me.”

  “Is that it? Really?”

  Olsen exhaled loudly. “Look, I do want to do proper stories. But the thing with the notebook? She had to leave, like within the hour. She got an offer from Reuters, and she had a plane to catch. I was there in the office, so she handed me her notes. She said there was nothing special there but that I should read them and learn a thing or two, and if the editor asked questions about any of it, maybe I would have an answer. So what’s your link to all this? What do you know about Berg?”

  “I don’t know what I know. But I’d like to see the notes.”

  Olsen shook his head. “Not happening. You could be from another paper, for all I know.”

  “I’m not from another paper. Look, there’s something going on at a place where Berg used to live. A house was burned down, and a girl died.”

  “You think Berg did it?”

  “No, I don’t think Berg did it. But his name keeps coming up. I’d just like to see the notes. If there’s a story there, it’s yours, okay? I’ll help turn you into Bob Woodward.”

  Olsen frowned and said nothing.

  “Look,” said Flynn, “right now you’ve got nothing but some scribbles on a notepad, and none of it means anything to you. I might see something that breaks the story.”

  “Or you might not.”

  “True. There might be nothing there, and you end up right back here, where you were, writing about meat and potatoes. We can meet somewhere, wherever you like, and I’ll take a look. I don’t want to keep them. I just want to see. Like you say, it might be nothing.”

  “Why do you want to look so bad?”

  “Because a girl died and I’m trying to get some closure for her family, and because I’ve struck out everywhere else, and this is my last shot.”

  “What gi
rl?”

  “Her name was Luna.”

  Olsen watched Flynn but said nothing.

  “And just between you and me, something about this stinks to high heaven.”

  “You think there’s a story there, don’t you.”

  “I think Poulsen was doing her job and ended up sniffing around the edges, and then suddenly she had one hour to leave for the US. How urgent can Reuters be?”

  “They have deadlines.”

  “And they have journalists. There’s nothing going on in DC right now except for the usual, and that’s so repetitive and boring I’m surprised anybody bothers reading about it. But there’s no war, no election, nothing that urgent. So why the rush?”

  Olsen kept looking at Flynn, who could see he was a thinker, one of those people who considered everything he did. He probably agonized over the menu at a Chinese restaurant and then went with what he always had.

  “Okay,” said Olsen. “I’ll meet you. Tomorrow evening.”

  “What about the morning?”

  “I’m sleeping.”

  “Sleeping?”

  “Yes. I report on restaurants, which happens at night, and then I write my story as soon as I get home so we’re up online first. So I sleep late. And I want time to look at the notebook.”

  “Okay, where?”

  “Det Kongelige Bibliotek.”

  Flynn gave himself a second. His Danish was poor to nonexistent, but he was picking it up slowly. “The Royal Library?”

  Olsen nodded. “You know it?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “Søren Kierkegaards Plads, the waterfront-side entrance. Be there at seven fifty-five. It closes at eight p.m., but they let me stay late because I’m a journalist.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there. Let me give you my number just in case.”

  Olsen took out his smartphone and typed in the number Flynn gave him.

  “I must get back to my seat.”

  Flynn glanced around at the diners taking pictures of their food, making sure the world knew of their latest culinary discovery. He enjoyed food but didn’t understand the point of photographing it. He turned and walked out through the rear of the restaurant.

  * * *

  One of the diners wasn’t taking a photograph of their meal. He was looking at his screen and the images that were already on it. The pictures of the man who had appeared from the kitchen and the reporter whom he was now talking with. Once he confirmed the images matched the faces in the room, he stood, walked to the side of the restaurant, and made a call.

  “Alpha, he’s here.”

  “He’s there?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “We didn’t see him come in.”

  “He came from the back.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Talking to the reporter.” The diner heard a loud sigh from the other end of the phone. “Wait, he’s leaving.”

  “Which one?”

  “The American. The reporter is sitting down.”

  “Where is he going?”

  “Out the back.”

  * * *

  The leader of Alpha team hung up and spoke into his radio earpiece. “All eyes, target is onsite. Repeat, onsite. Leaving via rear entrance. Three, do you have visual?”

  “Nej.”

  “He came in past you.”

  “Maybe in the trees by the water. I’m moving there now.”

  “Two, four,” said the leader, “be alert. This is not just some random guy.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Wait, one. There’s movement behind the restaurant. Someone’s coming out.”

  “Is it him?”

  “I don’t know. It’s someone on a bicycle.”

  “Where did the bicycle come from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s him. Take him down.”

  * * *

  Flynn was glad for the bike within seconds of pulling it out from the trees and setting off. He saw the first guy as soon as he came out from behind the restaurant. The guy was striding toward the trees at the waterline, but when he saw Flynn, he changed direction immediately. Flynn pushed down hard on the pedals and the bike sped up, leaving the guy behind. He had given up any pretense and started sprinting after Flynn.

  A bike was going to outsprint a man, even a slow tourist bike built for comfort. But it wasn’t going to outpace a car, a dark sedan that Flynn saw peel away from the far side of the park. It looked like some kind of undercover cop car, but there were no lights or sirens. The car moved fast, aiming to cut Flynn off on Kongebrovej.

  Flynn hit the street and zoomed west, ahead of the car, and when he reached the naval base gate, he cut south across the bridge on Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé. The guy on foot was five hundred meters back and no threat, but the car roared forward. Flynn wasn’t confident that they wouldn’t just ram him off the bike, so he pedaled hard, and the bike groaned as the headlights from the vehicle swallowed him.

  Just as he reached the other side of the short bridge, Flynn saw the cutout in the barrier between the road and the sidewalk, so he jinked the handlebars and flew through it just as the bumper of the car shaved his rear tire. The car screamed by, and Flynn hit the brakes hard, and they bit more than he thought they would. The handlebars wobbled all over the place. He lost control, but the bike slowed enough for him to flip his leg through and jump off.

  He sprinted down the gangway to the dock of what locals called the harbor bus, a ferry that carried commuters across the water to the mainland. He wasn’t planning on waiting for it. The water taxi he had ordered sat patiently at the wharf. Flynn slowed as he reached the platform and strode over to the small boat.

  “Mr. Smith?” asked the captain.

  “Yes,” said Flynn.

  “You’re lucky I waited.”

  “No, you’re lucky.” He handed the captain a thousand-krone note. “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Then we’re away.”

  The captain tossed a rope onto the deck and hit the throttle, and they eased out from the islet. As the captain pulled out onto the main waterway, Flynn looked back and saw three men running down the gangway, the metallic thunk of their boots on the ramp betraying their haste. They stopped at the bottom and watched the taxi motor away, and then they turned and ran back up from whence they had come.

  “You want the ferry stop at Nordre Toldbod?” asked the captain.

  “Change of plan,” said Flynn. “The seaplane terminal at Langelinie.”

  Flynn handed the captain another thousand kroner and got a nod in return. The trip took only five minutes, and with no bridges across this part of the capital, Flynn’s followers weren’t likely to be waiting.

  The captain didn’t even tie up. He slowed alongside the dock, and Flynn stepped off and waved, and the captain hit the throttle and pulled away.

  Flynn strode up onto the footpath that ran along the waterfront. It was dark, but there were still a few people out strolling in the cool night. A small crowd had gathered around the statue of the Little Mermaid. Flynn walked behind them, then turned east along Ved Norgesporten, up across the overpass that spanned the train lines, and past the Irish embassy into the embassy district, where he walked in zigzags and circles until he was lost to the world.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  As day turned to night, Aleksy Gorski left the commune. He had borrowed a motorcycle his new friend Markus kept in a small shed in his back garden. It was Italian and sounded like a lawn mower, and the pannier cases on the back made handling difficult—it wasn’t going to win any grands prix—but it moved swiftly enough between points on a map.

  Gorski didn’t need a map. He knew the way. He left Thorsen and Begitte at their home, saying he just wanted to check on a few things, and both of them let him go without a word. He headed out through the fields of spring barley, back to the local hub of Stenløse.

  The sign on the Citroën dealership was lit like Christmas, and Gorski used it as his marker to leave
the main road and cut into the light industrial subdivision beyond. He slowed as he got in among the buildings, but there was no one to disturb. The area was quiet during the day and a ghost town at night. There were no streetlights, and few storefronts bothered with display lights. There was no passing traffic to display anything to.

  Gorski pulled in behind the building and rolled to a stop at the rear of the Land Rover he had left there hours before. He killed the engine and took out the keys, then pulled out the painter’s plastic drop cloths and the rope from the panniers and tossed them into the Land Rover. He got in and took off slowly, easing back down the deserted road without any lights, and then slipped into the parking lot where Thorsen had parked the van hours earlier. He backed in behind the store and stopped.

  The body lay where he’d left it, against the rear of the store. Begitte had struck the guy in Gorski’s defense, but he knew what killing another human could do to someone like her; he would never tell her he was dead. Sleepless nights were the best of it. Yet he wasn’t sure she was buying his charade. She had watched him when they had gotten home and she stitched him up, and he suspected that she knew the man was dead. He hadn’t come clean with Thorsen either, but he had no doubt that Thorsen understood what had happened. Thorsen knew how to read Gorski. Only Flynn knew how to do it better.

  Gorski spread the plastic sheets across the back of the Land Rover, and then he picked the body up and dumped it into the cargo area of the vehicle. There wasn’t a lot of blood. Most of the guy’s problems had occurred internally, and what had bled from his head had congealed by the time Gorski got back to clean up.

  He wrapped the body in the plastic and tied it up with the rope. Next he went back around to the front of the parking lot and took the smallest engine block he could find. Even with pistons and crank assembly and most of its other parts missing, it took some lifting, and he hefted it into the back of the Land Rover, which slumped appreciably.

  Then he drove. Through the town and then north. He’d checked a map back at the community and put together a rough plan. He drove for about half an hour until he reached the outskirts of Frederiksværk, a steel town with its own port, where ships came in with raw steel from a mine in Russia. It was then formed into heavy sheets for building ships and bridges and wind turbines.