“What does your friend Babko say?”
“He doesn’t know either. He has given me a lot of material that I am trying to understand. Among other things I have a sense there is a pattern to the articles Doroshenko published, but I can’t quite make the pieces fit together. I would like to speak with Babko again. But first I want to solve the problem I have sitting in my kitchen.”
A pause. He could hear the refrigerator door open and the sound of something being poured into a glass. Tomato juice, if he knew Torben. Once in a while the juice was accompanied by Tabasco, ice and vodka, but not now, not when there was work to be done.
“Are you really convinced that the girl is in danger, and it’s not just her mother who has tried to get hold of her?” his boss asked.
“If that was your daughter, would you have used gas? A grown man almost died from it. Would you risk it with your daughter—when that daughter suffers from severe asthma attacks?”
There was a swallowing sound as Torben took a sip of his juice. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t. I would go as far as to say that it certainly doesn’t sound like the mother has had complete control over the person or persons responsible for the attack.”
“Then you agree that the girl is in danger.”
A sigh. “Yes. That would follow. But listen. You know exactly how Heide and her people will react if we just waltz in there and take things over.”
Søren was well aware of the tensions between the PET and the other divisions of the police. It was not the PET’s primary job to make sure that those who committed criminal acts were taken to court and sentenced, and there were times when a prosecution would directly interfere with the security concerns of the PET. Once, in 1988, that schism had even cost the life of a young policeman, and the wounds still ached.
He could understand Heide’s resistance and her fear that the PET’s involvement might make it more difficult to construct a case.
“I’ll call Heide,” said Torben. “But only to make your collaboration easier. You’re going to have to work it out between you. We have to make her feel safe. Make her understand that we want to help, not obstruct.”
“And can personal protection of Katerina Doroshenko be a part of that help?”
“What level were you thinking of?”
“First, that the girl doesn’t have to go back to the Coal-House Camp or any other place where she is easy to find.”
“Okay. I think I can sell that—on the condition that they have access to both Borg and the girl when they are needed for questioning. But are you imagining an actual safe house?”
“If that’s possible. Wouldn’t that also make Heide feel safer, knowing Natasha Doroshenko would have a very hard time getting hold of the girl? She’s unlikely to try to leave the country as long as the girl is here.”
Torben snorted. “I can try. Okay. You stay where you are for the time being. I’ll call when I have something for you. And keep a close eye on that paranoid nurse of yours, okay? We don’t want her to give us the slip.”
THE PARANOID NURSE sat at the little table in the kitchen with her head against the wall. Her eyes were closed, and Søren guessed she was close to nodding off if she wasn’t asleep already, despite the hardness of the chair. She was still wearing her coat, and a little pool of water was spreading around her boots as the snow stuck in the treads melted.
The girl, on the other hand, was wide awake. She didn’t look at him directly, but there was a guarded glitter from behind her lowered eyelashes.
He squatted down in front of her. “Are you hungry?” he asked her in Russian.
He saw Nina jolt and open her eyes. The child just shook her head. “Sleepy?”
A single nod.
“Proshoo,” she whispered then. “De tut tualet?”
“It’s right out here in the hall,” he said, still in Russian. “Do you want me to show you?”
She got up, still holding the backpack tightly. He didn’t try to get her to put it down. Nina sat completely still and observed them with a carefully neutral expression. She didn’t interfere with his attempts to make contact.
He showed the slight girl to the bathroom and turned on the light for her. Built-in halogen spots threw shiny reflections back from shiny black granite tiles and lacquered white cabinets. There were no calming bath toys and happy frogs on the shower curtain or anything else that might make a child feel at home, but at least it had just been cleaned, so hopefully it smelled more of Vim than of urine.
“Thank you,” Rina said politely. She was clearly waiting for him to leave.
He closed the door but remained outside for a moment, listening. She didn’t lock it, he was happy to note. He had no desire to deal with a child who had barricaded herself in his bathroom, either on purpose or accidentally—his six-year-old nephew had once gone into a panic when he couldn’t unlock the door.
She stayed in there for a while. He let her be and went back to the kitchen to offer Nina a cup of coffee.
“That’s unusual,” she said.
“That I offer coffee?”
“No, that Rina speaks to someone she doesn’t know.”
“Maybe it was because I spoke Russian.”
“Yes. Maybe. What did your boss say?”
“He’s going to call me back. But we’re trying to get you a safe house. Do you know what that entails?”
“Kind of … well, not really.”
“Milk?”
“No, thank you.”
“It can be more or less institutional, with more or less in the way of surveillance and guards, depending on how we evaluate the level of threat. The most important thing for Rina’s safety right now, in my opinion, is that we make her hard to find. That’s the best protection we can give her.”
Nina put both her hands around the mug of instant coffee that he handed her. She sniffed the scent as if it were perfume. “So she’s not going back to the camp?”
“No. Not if we can help it.”
“I knew you weren’t an idiot,” she said and flashed him something that was more of a relieved grimace than a real smile.
“A few ground rules,” he said. “If you haven’t done so already, you need to turn off your cell phone. You can’t use it. In fact, I’d prefer if you gave it to me.” Søren didn’t know what resources his adversary could draw on—if the adversary was Colonel Savchuk, with his rank and standing in the GPU, it was probably a considerable amount. Tracking a cell phone was not, these days, a PET monopoly, more was the pity.
“Okay.” She must have figured out why, because she didn’t ask any questions. She just fished her phone out of her pocket and handed it to him, meek as a lamb. Would wonders never cease?
“Does Rina have a telephone?”
“No.”
“Good. Where is your car?”
“I parked it a few streets away. It’s pretty recognizable.”
“Good thinking. Do you have any sense of whether you were seen when you left the camp?”
“It’s hard to say. Everything was still pretty chaotic. But if the deputy chief and her troops had seen me, I guess they would have stopped me.”
She cleared perceived the police as the enemy. Again, Søren experienced that odd, don’t-let-her-fly-away sensation mixed with a dose of wonder that she was sitting here. That she trusted him at least that far.
“Until we have the opportunity to move you to a more secure location, this is your safe house,” he said. “That means that neither you nor Rina may leave the house—not even to go outside to smoke or anything like that.”
“I don’t smoke.”
He considered the situation. The house was neither more nor less secure against break-ins than any other suburban house—or secure against escape, for that matter. It was easy for Torben to tell him not to let Nina wander off, but in reality there wasn’t a whole lot he could do if she really wanted to leave. Not without restraining her physically—and wouldn’t that be a fine thing for the fragile trust he hoped they
were establishing?
“Would Rina understand if we tell her she has to stay here? That it’s dangerous to go out?”
Nina hesitated. “Rina has lived in the Coal-House Camp for a long time now,” she said. “She understands about rules. But …”
“But?”
“She really just wants to be with her mother. So if Natasha finds us, Rina is gone. You can bet on that.”
“Do you think that Natasha would recognize your car?”
“It’s not the same one that I had when she was in the camp. No, I don’t think so.”
At least Nina had been smart enough not to park it in the driveway, but his own professional paranoia would have preferred it to be even farther away.
He got up and went into the hall. Listened at the bathroom door.
The girl was talking to someone.
He stopped breathing for a moment to listen better.
“Are you coming soon, Tatko?” Søren could just barely make out the soft, quiet child’s voice through the door. “We miss you. And Mom is … Mom is in the kitchen making poppy seed cakes. Guests are coming. Anna is coming. And Great-Grandmother. Oh, it would be so nice if you could come too. You are coming? Oh, that’s good. Three o’clock. Kiss, kiss. I love you!”
Tatko. He was fairly sure it meant “father,” even though it wasn’t something a Russian child would say.
He quietly opened the door. Rina was sitting on the toilet, but on the lid, holding a cell phone up to her ear.
“Who are you talking to?” he asked.
She stiffened. “No one,” she whispered almost inaudibly.
“May I see your phone?”
She held it tightly against her chest for a few seconds. “It’s mine.”
“Yes. I just need to have a look at it.”
Rina handed it over reluctantly. Her breathing abruptly became even worse, wheeze in, wheeze out, a labored and uneven rhythm.
The cell phone was turned off. Dead. It was an old model, at least five or six years old. The display had a thin black crack across the upper left-hand corner; the back cover was cracked too, and absolutely nothing happened when he tried to turn it on. Presumably it hadn’t worked for a long time.
He handed it to the girl. “Thank you for letting me see it.”
She quickly put it away in her backpack.
Dear God, he thought.
“Who gave it to you?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. Just stared at him, blankly and fearfully, gnawing at her lower lip as if she were trying to eat it.
“Your Tatko?”
She nodded. An almost invisible nod.
“I can see why you treasure it,” he said.
Nina scrutinized the young man who sat in Søren’s kitchen. He was tapping away with concentration on some kind of cell phone/computer hybrid. Not an iPad—she knew what they looked like, at least, because Ida wanted one. This was something more exotic. The man’s powerful jaw worked ceaselessly, giving a little irritating click with every chew, and a pack of nicotine gum peeked out of his breast pocket. Nina didn’t really think he looked like a PET-man. He certainly didn’t look like Søren. And he wasn’t Søren, a fact that irritated her even more than his constant cud chewing.
She had slept for a few hours in Søren’s guest room with Rina nestled against her. The sleep had been amazingly dream free. Even though she had been so tired her whole body buzzed with exhaustion, Nina hadn’t expected to fall asleep so quickly and so deeply. Søren had had to shake her shoulder lightly to wake her up.
“I didn’t want to just leave you,” he’d said. “This is Mikael Nielsen. He’ll be on watch for the next six or seven hours.”
Nina was taken aback. She hadn’t expected Søren would personally hold her hand twenty-four/seven; of course he would have other things to do too, and it was pretty generous of him just to provide his house. But the cud-chewing young man didn’t seem an especially committed or confidence-inspiring replacement, and all her defenses rose up anew. The few questions she had tried to ask him were answered monosyllabically without him raising his gaze from his electronic thing even once. It was hard to determine if he suffered from what the Coal-House psychologist called “communicative issues” or whether it was just professional distance. One thing was certain—Rina would not begin to chat cozily with him. Especially not after he had insisted on taking away her security blanket cell phone to be completely sure it didn’t work.
Nina was still amazed that Rina had spoken to Søren. Yes, he had an advantage because he could speak Russian with her. But that wasn’t all. There was something solid about him. Quiet but immovable. Apparently his Paul Newman–like aura also worked wonders on traumatized eight-year-old girls.
She went back to the living room, where Rina was now lying on the couch with a comforter around her, her face turned toward the television screen. Little Japanese figures, looking to Nina primitively drawn or at least very stylized, raced by in a melee of explosions. Rina’s eyes were almost shut. Nina debated whether she could get away with turning off the television but decided not to. It would be good if Rina fell asleep again—she needed it.
9:26.
Still an hour and thirty-four minutes to go until she would get to see Anton. The school carnival began at 11:00.
Rina was still clutching her backpack. The by now somewhat grubby mini Diddl mouse attached to the zipper appeared to be staring at Nina with supersized eyes. Nina wanted to hug the girl, silly stuffed mouse backpack and all, but she knew it was her own need and not the child’s.
9:28. Morten might already be helping Anton with his costume. This year Nina hadn’t been the one left with the choice between spending a fortune at the toy store or spending a weekend creating a costume. Anton usually had firm opinions about what he wanted to be. She remembered the year he insisted on being a traffic light—in terms of costume construction one of the easier options—it could basically be produced from a cardboard box, a couple of mini flashlights and some silk paper. But he had had a ball running around and yelling, “Stop! Red light!” to innocent passersby.
This year she had been left completely out of the loop. Morten hadn’t even told her when the carnival was; she had had to track down that information herself on the school’s intranet page.
She went back into the kitchen, where she had a better view of the street outside. Magnus would be here soon. He had promised to stand in for her so that there would still be someone familiar there for Rina. When she entered the room, the cud-chewing ceased for a moment or two before the PET guy lowered his gaze and continued tapping on his not-quite-an-iPad.
There was a faint noise from the living room. It was barely audible through the sound effects from the cartoon, but still reached Nina’s Rina radar. She listened to Rina’s whispering voice. For more than two years, she had seen and heard Rina use the broken cell phone. Not until yesterday had she seriously begun to worry whether it was something other than a game—perhaps a somewhat obsessive game, but still a game. Never in all that time had she guessed that what Rina was really doing was talking to her dead father.
Blind. Deaf. Dumb. How could Nina not have seen it? It made her wonder how well she actually understood the traumatized people who surrounded her. Maybe she wasn’t really any better at solving their problems than at handling her own.
The thought gave her a hollow feeling inside. Her entire adult life, she had seen herself as someone you could count on when the going got tough. Someone who “made a difference”—that worn phrase used about everything from people who sorted their garbage and once in a while took the bus to those who went on dangerous, potentially deadly peacekeeping missions. She knew that she had been party to saving lives, to improving them. The cost had been her own family.
Or not quite.
It wasn’t quite that black and white, she did realize that. Morten would probably have been able to live with the fact that she had a job that consumed her, that sometimes demanded so much of her that there was
too little left for him—and sometimes too little even for Ida and Anton. That wasn’t why he had ended it.
It was because she always had to go right up to the edge—and then take one more step. Because she, in his words, had transformed her life into a war zone. It wasn’t enough to take an extra shift at the Coal-House Camp and attempt to help the people shipwrecked there. She had promised not to go on missions abroad anymore, and she had kept that promise. Instead, she had committed herself to aiding people Danish society considered “illegals.” The ones who couldn’t go to the emergency room or see a doctor, the ones who couldn’t go to the police when they were the victims of crimes. People like Natasha who had to accept squalor or abuse, either because they had no choice or because almost anything was better than being sent back where they came from.
She was good at it. In a crisis situation she was calmly efficient, perfectly able to act, to think, to do something. She missed that capable version of herself when things became too humdrum. For Christmas this year Ida had given her a T-shirt she had managed to get hold of from some ad campaign extolling the virtues of public transportation; it was bright green and had the words WORLD SAVIOR printed in big letters across the chest.
Nina wasn’t stupid. She had done therapy, and she knew perfectly well where it came from, this compulsion to save the ones no one else wanted to bother with. She could say precisely, to the minute, when it had begun: the day she had run home from school during the lunch break and had found her father in the bathroom in the basement.
She forced herself to remember. Consciously, dispassionately. Don’t avoid it. Confront it. Water on the floor. Blood on the floor. Blood in the water. Her father lying in the water with all his clothes on, turning his head slightly to look at her with eyes that resembled those of a fish. That far she could go.
It was the hour following that she couldn’t account for. No matter how hard she tried, all she could remember was going next door to get help. Right away. I went over there right away. She had repeated it again and again to the police, to the therapists, to the doctors and all the other grown-ups, even though they all kept on telling her that it couldn’t be true. She remembered how frustrated she was that they wouldn’t believe her, that they tried to make her accept their correct, adult, superior understanding of time and place. And the ugly, world-swallowing vortex she found herself floundering in when she began to realize that they were right. Almost an hour had passed between the moment when she went down into the basement and the moment when she came up again. And during that hour, her father had died.
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