The Roma Plot

by Mario Bolduc

  Silence on the other end of the line, as if Burgess couldn’t believe him. “Does it have anything to do with drugs?”

  “I don’t think so. I doubt Sacha plays a role in the rest of Kalanyos’s dealings. What’s more, Kevin is still in Romania.”

  “I’ll take care of it. I’ll be in Bucharest tonight.”

  Max gave her Toma Boerescu’s address, mentioning the threats Kalanyos had made. Burgess promised to send someone to check up on the old man. It was too late probably. After the call, Max tried to reach Boerescu again, but his fixer still didn’t answer the phone.

  From Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, Max grabbed a cab to the Renaissance Hotel near Centraal Station. The hotel seemed the perfect place to lie low: it was filled with American tourists on holiday. Spacious rooms, thick duvets, efficient, anonymous employees, a bar busy with airline crews and travellers in transit, victims of jet lag — it would have been the perfect place to rest and recuperate if Max had had the time. Instead, he’d chosen the place for the discretion it provided him.

  Aspekt-Ziegler’s headquarters were spread across a series of eighteenth-century homes between Vijzelstraat and Leidsegracht in a posh neighbourhood in which the city’s favoured sons had once lived. Original facades had been preserved along a canal lined with centenary elm trees. The manufacturing plant was near Zaanstad in the northern suburbs of the city — a factory that now ran at half capacity. Since its expansion in Asia, Aspekt-Ziegler had subcontracted production of most of its orders to the Philippines.

  Over the phone, Max had introduced himself as a representative of JPMorgan Chase vacationing in the Netherlands. Someone had told him about the house Aspekt-Ziegler owned in Granada. His boss had asked him to check whether they might rent the house for a retreat the following summer. Frank Woensdag wasn’t in, so the operator transferred his call to Eva Kerkhoven, Woensdag’s assistant.

  Kerkhoven invited Max to her office on the top floor under the attic. From the waiting room, Max could see the crescent moon canals, roads filled with cyclists despite the cold weather. He imagined Raymond Dandurand coming to this magnificent city to plead for his company’s survival in 1998 after the contract with Nordopak had fallen apart.

  “Mr. Payne?”

  Tall, elegant, maybe sixty years old, Eva Kerkhoven wore a suit and had reading glasses around her neck. It was immediately clear that her greatest responsibility was to save her boss the inconvenience of people trying to meet him; this Payne character was just another man waiting to annoy Woensdag. She offered Max her hand, which he took as warmly as possible, offering his widest smile despite the woman’s rather stony glare. Kerkhoven explained that Frank Woensdag was vacationing in Indonesia and wouldn’t be back before February. His colleague, Bernard Rutgers, might be able to help. Unfortunately, Rutgers was at the Zaanstad factory for a meeting.

  “He won’t be back in today, I’m afraid.”

  Afraid, most of all, that Max would want to stay the whole day.

  Frank Woensdag and Bernard Rutgers were charged with managing Aspekt-Ziegler’s real estate. The company was looking to get rid of some of its properties over the medium term, which explained why the Granada house had been put on the market.

  “Are you looking to rent? We have an agency over there, which takes care of —”

  “I know. My boss asked me to get in touch with Frank directly.”

  Eva Kerkhoven repressed a tic of impatience. She might pretend to manage the company, but Max had no intention of giving her the satisfaction of pretending to believe her.

  “I can arrange a meeting with Mr. Rutgers if you would like.”

  Kerkhoven went into her boss’s office to look through his schedule. So very busy, unfortunately. Max glanced through the open door into the office and noticed curling trophies in a small display case. He smiled.

  “He won’t be able to see you before next week. Would Monday afternoon work for you?”

  At the tourism office in Centraal Station, Max’s question was answered without a raised eyebrow. Why wouldn’t a fanatic of curling want to have a game while waiting for his train to Paris? The Spaarnwoude Professional Curling Club had just expanded, demonstrating the affection the Dutch had for the Anglo-Saxon sport. Over the phone, Max pretended to be an American colleague of Bernard Rutgers and learned that the Aspekt-Ziegler employee was currently sweeping in room 8.

  “No need to bother him,” Max told the club’s receptionist. “I’m on my way.”

  Max reached the curling club just as Rutgers was coming out of the changing room. An employee pointed him out to Max. Tanned and thin, and a lot younger than Eva Kerkhoven. An ambitious young man on a path to the highest spheres of the company. Max walked toward Rutgers and told him the same story he’d given his assistant. “Your guard dog did her job, but the decor in your office betrayed you.”

  Rutgers smiled and guided Max to the bar. The place was decorated with wood panelling and smelled of old cigar smoke. It felt like the sort of private club you’d find in London when Great Britain ruled the world. Rutgers was a regular — that much was clear. A young woman brought him a box of Montecristos without being asked. Rutgers offered one to Max, who refused. But he did accept the beer the executive ordered. After the server left, Rutgers got straight to the point. “The house isn’t for rent. It’s for sale. Someone gave you the wrong information.”

  What was more, as soon as Frank Woensdag took his retirement, all of Aspekt-Ziegler’s real estate would be liquidated. A few months away, not much more than that, he claimed.

  “Originally, the property in Granada belonged to Aspekt-Ziegler’s founder,” Rutgers added.

  “A bit off the beaten path, isn’t it?”

  “A gift from his friend, Francisco Franco.”

  “General Franco?”

  “The one and only. During the civil war, Landermann fought alongside the Caudillo. In the 1960s, as a show of friendship, Franco gifted him the house. From a grateful nation and all that.”

  Old Landermann went there several times a year, organizing receptions where everyone who was anyone in the government came to pay their respects. At the time, of course, Aspekt-Ziegler tried not to put too much emphasis on its founder’s particular friendships, even though the presence of General Franco in Spain was tolerated, much in the same way as António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal or Georgios Papadopoulos in Greece. European companies went on with their trade and their partnerships, never feeling too bad about it. Still, at the time, Landermann caused headaches for the Dutch company’s public-relations department.

  “When Landermann died in 1994, it was a relief, really.”

  He was a vestige of another era, last witness to the dark years when three-quarters of Europe lived under the domination of totalitarianism.

  “Which didn’t stop Landermann from setting himself up in a mausoleum as big as a cathedral. It’s worth the trip — and it isn’t very far from here. At Nieuwe Ooster Begraafplaats …”

  Which explained why Aspekt-Ziegler wanted to get rid of the Granada house.

  Max went for it. “I was told you rented the house recently for a reception of some kind. A Kris romani? Strange, no? Landermann was a bit nostalgic for his fascist past, right? How does that square with a Romani meeting?”

  Rutgers looked at Max, trying to evaluate the man before him. Max’s questions had obviously raised doubts in his mind.

  Seeing the man’s hesitation, Max decided to double down. He pulled out Sacha’s picture from his coat pocket and showed it to Rutgers. “Who is this?”

  “Taken in the garden of the Granada house during the reception.” He looked up at Max. “What are you looking for, exactly?”

  “I need to find this child. The man behind him is called Peter Kalanyos. He’s a criminal. He’s linked to the murder of Ioan Costinar, a Romani leader. He’s holding the child’s father hostage.”
/>   “Who are you exactly? You’re no banker.”

  “Let’s just say I’m a friend of the family.”

  Rutgers’s face closed up. He pulled his cellphone out.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know what you’re after. I’m going to call New York to find out.”

  Max got up and left before Rutgers finished tapping out JPMorgan Chase’s number.

  Before returning to his hotel, after another unsuccessful attempt at reaching Toma Boerescu in Bucharest, Max followed Bernard Rutgers’s suggestion. He made a quick stop at the cemetery the man had mentioned. The cab driver dropped him off at the southern gate, asking whether he should wait for Max, who told him no. As the cab drove off, Max passed through the gate into the deserted cemetery. The only sign of life was the lit-up windows of a small house on his left. Soon night would fall; Max had thirty minutes or so of daylight left. He found a map of the cemetery and located the section with Werner Landermann’s mausoleum. He began walking north among the tombstones.

  Max wondered whether Landermann had negotiated the service contract with Raymond Dandurand. The deal that had made Raymond’s company in the early days. Probably not. In the early 1970s, Landermann was already an old man who’d let go the reins of his company, according to Rutgers’s insinuations. Max wondered with whom Raymond had negotiated at the time.

  The mausoleum was impossible to miss. Bernard Rutgers had been right. An enormous, garish monument halfway between a bank and a jail. Celestial angels playing trumpets, wearing bay leaf crowns, riding Roman chariots. All of it in grey stone with Landermann’s name in golden letters. Pretentious in life, pretentious in death. But only Javier, the barman in Granada, to miss him. No mention of his wife on the mausoleum; however, she was probably buried not too far away.

  Max soon found her tombstone. It was more modest than her husband’s, naturally. And outside the mausoleum, as if he’d been afraid that she would steal his thunder.

  Christina Landermann had died in 1997 at the age of seventy-eight.

  Max walked near it. On and near the tombstone, large buttons, like you’d have on a dress shirt or a coat. Strange. Max realized there were quite a few of them around the mausoleum. Twenty or so at least that the wind had scattered all over the place.

  “The Roma. They come sometimes and pay their respects here.”

  Max turned around. The cemetery guard was there, leaning against a rake, observing the mausoleum. The small house at the entrance was probably his.

  “A way to show their grief, I guess. They tear the buttons off their clothes and throw them on the tomb. To calm the mulo, you understand?”

  “The mulo?”

  “The spirit of the dead. A ghost.” The caretaker smiled. “If you stay, you’ll see him. The mulo only comes out at night and at noon. Only when there’s no shadow.”

  Max was intrigued. “And why do the Roma care about this woman?”

  The guard shrugged. He had no idea. “I asked Paola whether it bothered her. She told me it was fine.”

  “Paola?”

  “Landermann’s daughter.”

  36

  The connection between Aspekt-Ziegler and the Roma had been Christina Landermann. Mourners had come to pay their respects: Roma tearing the buttons off their coats before her grave. Had she been behind the agreement that made Raymond Dandurand’s fortune? That question stemmed from the realization that Max had just had. And what had been Christina Landermann’s role within Aspekt-Ziegler itself? He wouldn’t be getting any more answers from Bernard Rutgers; the man would be too suspicious of Max now. Paola, however might know a thing or two.

  Paola Landermann — Christina’s daughter — finished work at six. She had a gig in accounting at the Academisch Medisch Centrum, one of Amsterdam’s most important hospitals. Max left her a message, pretending to be a representative for an American insurance company wanting to hand her a reclamation cheque. Paola called him back almost immediately, and they agreed to meet.

  Max met her in the hospital lobby at six.

  “I hope it’s one of those novelty cheques!” Paola was perhaps fifty or so and smiled as she walked toward Max, briefcase in hand.

  He led her to a café off the lobby, immediately disappointing her. “There’s no cheque. I only needed to get in touch with you.”

  “But …”

  Paola was confused. And slightly worried. Max quickly told her of his visit to the Amsterdam cemetery, giving her the details of the relationship between Raymond Dandurand and Aspekt-Ziegler. He revealed what he knew of Kevin’s presence at the garden party in Granada, where he’d finally gotten proof that Kevin’s son had survived the rivière Saqawigan accident.

  As he spoke, Paola became increasingly intrigued. Max described where his investigation was taking him, closing in on a Romani connection, something intimately linked to the Roma.

  And the most recent link was Christina Landermann.

  Paola only had answers when it came to her own mother. For years — even when her father was still alive — Paola’s mother had made generous donations to the Romani community, funding literacy programs in the Netherlands and abroad, clinics, pharmacies, all of it with money out of Aspekt-Ziegler’s philanthropy accounts. In addition to this front-line work, she’d also funded political initiatives like the World Romani Congress in the early 1970s.

  “After my father died, our house in Granada was often lent to Roma from across the world, who used it as a meeting place.”

  “Do you know why?” Max asked.

  “My mother was the daughter of an early Nazi supporter. She grew up in the inner circle, completely obsessed by the strength and persuasion of Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and the rest of them. She spent a few years in Auschwitz. On the right side of the barbed wire — at least that’s the way she saw it at the time.”

  Paola lowered her eyes, uncomfortable. “My mother sought redemption, forgiveness, I guess you could say, for everything the Nazis had done. Especially toward the Roma.”

  “Forgiveness for your father’s deeds?”

  She hesitated, then said, “Him and the others. Werner was her second husband. He changed his name in 1946. During the war, he was called Matthias Kluge. Her first husband was also posted at Auschwitz — Oskar Müller.”

  “Did Matthias Kluge, did your father approve of your mother’s philanthropy?”

  “He never knew anything about it, or perhaps he pretended he didn’t.” Paola smiled. “My mother didn’t reveal my father’s past to the media and let him pal around with his old fascist friends in Granada, and in exchange, he let her give money to her lepers, as my father would say.” Paola hesitated, then added, “A marriage of convenience.”

  Max showed her a picture of Sacha with Peter Kalanyos. Paola shook her head. She’d never seen the child, or the Hungarian Rom. She didn’t know Kevin from Adam, either. Paola had never set foot in the Granada house and had never heard of Raymond Dandurand. She also doubted her father would have let Christina negotiate an agreement with a North American contractor.

  According to Paola, neither Landermann nor the top brass at the company would ever let Christina make any important business decisions.

  “My father didn’t take her very seriously. To his eyes, Christina only became interested in the Romani cause because she was bored. She was a housewife. For some it’s museums, for others the philharmonic, but her own interest fell squarely on the Roma.”

  “Clearly, you didn’t agree with him.”

  “No. But I’m still not sure I understand what truly animated her. Christina was secretive, didn’t confide much. It took years for me to know … and still …” She paused. “My mother lived in her own secret world. She let no one in. Not even her only daughter.”

  Paola sighed, visibly troubled. “I regret it today. Not having known her. Not having made more of an effort t
o get to know her.”

  At least that explained the relationship between Christina Landermann and the Roma. Still, there remained a missing link: the one that tied Raymond Dandurand — and by extension Kevin and Sacha — to the Roma. If Raymond had had a relationship with Ioan Costinar, he would have likely been familiar with Christina, as well. But how had these meetings taken place? And in what context?

  According to Paola, her mother had had no influence on Aspekt-Ziegler’s activities, but she must have had an ally, an accomplice within the company. Someone high up who would have been able to make business decisions, someone Landermann trusted. A friend of her husband, perhaps, who she’d manipulated into helping her carry out her plan. She would have had to take money out of the company and redirect it to the Roma. Had Raymond taken advantage of the same largesse, unbeknownst to Landermann?

  Max tried to think back to the context that had led to Aspekt-Ziegler’s decision to partner up with Nordopak in order to penetrate the American market. The work Raymond and Gérard Lefebvre had done to make sure Nordopak stayed afloat. Max had to find a way to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  He called Caroline in Montreal and asked her to go through Kevin’s papers in his Old Montreal apartment. Max remembered having seen a file on Nordopak.

  Two hours later Caroline called back with details on the file: mostly business plans, memoranda, press releases, all dated from after Kevin’s return from New York. She added that for anything older Max should get in touch with a man called Guido Bergamini at Cambiano’s headquarters in Turin. All of Nordopak’s archives had been transferred there after it had been bought out.

  It took a day for Max to finally reach Bergamini, the man in charge of putting order to Nordopak’s archives. Some of the material had been organized already, some not. It would be a lifetime of work.