Sacrifice

by Graham Masterton

  Partly because of his success, however, and partly because of his unorthodox methods, Jeppe was not a popular figure in the intelligence service: his superiors thought he was too idiosyncratic, and his subordinates thought he was too smart.

  Charles lit a cigarette, and blew smoke. ‘Who’s Christian Skovgaard when he’s at home?’

  Jeppe smiled. ‘He’s my deputy. A policeman, once. He used to be stationed at Store Kongensgade. He seems like a quiet chap, until you get to know him. Then – the stories he can tell you!’

  ‘All policemen have stories,’ said Charles. The waiter brought him his Special Brew, and set it down in front of him. ‘Agents, too.’

  ‘Well, that’s why you’re here,’ said Jeppe. ‘I want a story out of you.’

  Charles cleared his throat. ‘Do I owe you any favours? I mean, what’s the score? Or are we equal, and starting again from scratch?’

  Jeppe rearranged his stainless-steel cutlery, and said, in a low voice, ‘A man was killed the day before yesterday in a country church in Jutland. Sct. Jorgens church at Hvidsten, that’s just a few kilometres north of Randers.’

  ‘What do you know about him?’ asked Charles, swallowing the cold sweet beer, and grimacing.

  ‘Not much, except that his name was Nicholas Reed, and that he was an American. He was working for Klarlund & Christensen, they’re architects, they have an office opposite the station on Vesterbrogade. Something to do with a new retirement village they were designing, outside Roskilde. Apparently Reed had experience with retirement communities in the United States, and that’s why they brought him over.’

  Charles said, ‘What was he doing in Hvidsten?’

  ‘Well, it seems that he’d been living there since about the end of February, working at a small kro. He was last seen at Klarlund & Christensen on February 9. He came in to work as usual that day; everything seemed to be fine; but the next day he didn’t show up. That was the last they saw of him. They tried to contact his family and his business partners in the United States; no luck. They informed the police, and the Tilysnet med udlaendinge, but there wasn’t much else they could do.’

  Charles said nothing, but drank more beer, and waited for Jeppe to continue. At that moment, Arne Larssen came up, and said, ‘You’ve decided?’

  ‘The eel,’ said Charles.

  Jeppe thought for a while, and then said, ‘The sole will do for me, Arne. Plain grilled, maybe a little lemon.’

  Jeppe waited for a second or two, stroking his blond moustache with his fingertips. Then he said, ‘The police at Randers were obliged to send me a report about Reed’s murder. It’s part of normal procedure, whenever a foreign national comes to grief, especially a Russian or an American. There may be intelligence connotations, however innocent or accidental the death may seem, and Reed’s was a particularly nasty murder; particularly strange. But, on the whole, when I checked, he seemed legitimate. Nothing more than an ordinary American architect, working in Denmark on an ordinary commercial contract. No intelligence background as far as I could tell. No trace of “Nicholas Reed” on any of our computers. I was on the point of filing the information away and forgetting about it.’

  ‘But?’ asked Charles.

  ‘But,’ Jeppe echoed, ‘I received that morning a visit from a gentleman who had extremely high-powered credentials from the Defence Ministry. He gave me no explanations, but said simply that I was to proceed no further with my investigations into the Reed murder.’

  ‘That was all?’ said Charles.

  Jeppe nodded. ‘I asked him why. After all, I have the highest security clearance, I should be entitled to know. But he refused. He said the matter was over; and that I was to forget that I had ever heard the name Nicholas Reed.’

  The waiter brought them fresh rolls, wrapped in napkins. Charles broke one of them open with his thumbs, and tore it to pieces, which he ate without butter. In Denmark, eating bread without butter was a small heresy, which Charles enjoyed. Likewise, he refused to eat Hereford beefstouw. It was rather like refusing to eat rice in India, or spaghetti in Italy.

  ‘Tell me how Reed died,’ he said. ‘Were there any clues, any witnesses?’

  Jeppe said, ‘It appears that he was working in the kitchen at the Hvidsten Inn at lunchtime on Tuesday when three men turned up outside in a grey Mercedes-Benz. One of the girls who works at the inn said Reed seemed to be very agitated, and that he ran out of the building as quickly as possible. That was the last that anyone saw of him, until he turned up at Sct. Jorgens church, about a kilometre away. There was a christening taking place there; and so the police were able to interview several of the guests; and the pastor, too. From what they say, Reed came and sat in the church, as if he were seeking sanctuary. Then two men followed him in, and sat down either side of him. After a few minutes, they left; but it was only later that the pastor found out what they had done. They had cut Reed in half, can you believe that? – leaving his legs sitting where they were, and his torso lying sideways on the pew. Yes, my friend – somehow, in silence, in a church, they had managed to cut him in half, and leave without anybody realizing what it was that they had done.’

  Charles sat back, chewing bread. ‘Did you get a description?’

  ‘Not clear. Nobody really took much notice of them: they were all too busy with the christening.’

  ‘Was one of them very tall, with a badly-scarred face?’

  Jeppe looked up. ‘I hope you don’t know what this business is all about, my friend.’

  Charles said, ‘Our medical examination department at Langley had a name for it. Hemicorporectomy. That means, cutting somebody in half. It’s a trademark. Some killers are arrogant enough to have trademarks. Carlos, he was one. Wolper, he was another, always shot his targets in the ear; in one ear, out of the other. But cutting people in half, that’s something different. I mean, it may be a blind. It’s so distinctive, it could be a deliberate attempt to put you off the scent.’

  ‘But, you are right about the scarred man. Burned, one of the witnesses said, as if in a terrible fire.’

  ‘I think I’ll have another beer,’ said Charles.

  Jeppe beckoned to the waiter. ‘One more Special Brew, please. And bring me a schnapps.’ Then he turned back to Charles, and said, ‘You know this man, then? This killer?’

  ‘As I say, it may be a blind. All our information was that he was dead. Killed in Afghanistan, so we were led to believe, when he was trying to take out one of the rebel leaders at Qu’al-eh ya Saber. You should be able to pull a file on him yourself, if you talk to Monson nicely enough.’

  Jeppe said, ‘I’m not sure that I want to alert Monson yet.’

  ‘Hmh?’ asked Charles, sucking in smoke.

  ‘Well,’ said Jeppe, ‘after the visit I received from the gentleman from the Defence Ministry, I asked one of the girls I know at Christiansborg to do a little digging for me. She talked to one of Nyborg’s secretaries, and the indications seem to be that the Defence Ministry were instructed to put a lid on what happened to Reed by no less an authority than the State Department in Washington, highest level.’

  Charles looked at Jeppe for a long while without saying anything, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  Jeppe said, ‘I’ve had orders before to cancel investigations for what were obviously political reasons. But never before have I received a personal visit from a deputy minister, such as I did this week. And never before has it been apparent that the cancellation came not from the Danish government, but from abroad. It is very unusual, my friend. Very unsettling.’

  ‘And that’s why you don’t want to ask Monson?’

  ‘Well, of course. If my superiors were to discover that I was continuing to look into this affair – well, the least I would lose would be my job.’

  The waiter brought their drinks, and then Arne Larssen personally brought their fish: eel, stewed in white wine, decorated with dill, and a plain grilled sole. Fragrant and fresh, both of them.

  ‘Arne, you�
��re a genius,’ said Charles. ‘The way you treat fish, I would have thought you had a mermaid in your ancestry somewhere.’

  They started to eat. The Fiskehusets was crowded now, and the sunlight filtered in through the streaked glass windows, tumbling through the aromatic steam of turbot and plaice, herring and sole.

  Charles said, ‘Cutting people in half, that was the trademark of a Soviet assassin who rejoiced in the code-name of Krov’ iz Nosu which literally means “nose bleed”. Appropriate, under the circumstances, don’t you think? His real name was Aleksei Novikov, and he was a shock-worker at Kuibyshev during the 1950s, one of the udarniki. As far as we know, he was working in a smelting plant when he was accidentally splashed with molten iron-ore.’

  Jeppe’s fork remained poised above his fish. Charles, with his mouth full, said, ‘Go ahead. Don’t let a little Krov’ iz Nosu spoil your lunch.’

  He swallowed, and then he said, ‘The story goes that Novikov was so severely burned that he almost died. His face was burned away, his hands, most of the skin off his chest, his thighs. But somehow he managed to survive. He was incredibly powerful, incredibly fit. Something like six feet four, that’s nearly 1 metre 90 to you. He went through years of skin-grafts; then he started a physical therapy programme that would have killed anybody else, weight-lifting, running up and down mountains of slag. He ended up so powerful that the Army began to take an interest in him as a special kind of killer. He was trained in the SPETSNAZ for three years, then appropriated by SMERSH, for military counterintelligence work. I believe he was responsible for twenty-two hits during the late 1960s, early 1970s. But most of his work was inside the Soviet Union, dealing with traitors in the Soviet Army, and Army generals who were found to be on the take. That’s why he developed that rather flamboyant style of wasting people, pour encourager les autres. Marshal Zhukov once called him “the conscience of the Army”. Quite a conscience, huh? Come on, eat your fish.’

  Jeppe said, ‘I don’t think I’m hungry.’

  ‘Have another drink, then.’

  ‘I don’t know, Charles, this worries me,’ said Jeppe. ‘Why should a killer like – what did you call him? – Krov’ iz Nosu – why should a killer like that be called in to Denmark to deal with a man like Nicholas Reed? Usually, if the Soviets want to take out one of your agents, they do it discreetly. No fuss, no bother. But this man is grandstanding.’

  Charles sucked dill-weed off his front teeth. ‘You sound more American by the minute,’ he remarked. ‘Watch less TV. Stop hanging around with American reprobates like me. And for Christ’s sake eat your fish or I’ll eat it for you. This eel is heaven on a plate.’

  ‘But why?’ Jeppe nagged.

  Charles shrugged. ‘How should I know? Maybe they’re trying to warn off some of Reed’s friends, whoever they may be. More likely, they’re putting on a show for the US Intelligence Services. You know what the Soviets are like; they think the Nordic countries are their territory. Maybe Reed stuck his nose in a little too far. I mean, if the State Department wanted to put a lid on his killing, you can guarantee that he was a US agent. Maybe he’s gotten into something too sensitive for both sides. It happens, you know.’

  Jeppe picked at his sole for a moment, then laid his fork down. Charles immediately reached over and lifted the whole fish off his plate, set it down on his own, and began to bone it with the dexterity of the very hungry. ‘You’ll regret this,’ he told Jeppe. ‘Tonight, when you start feeling ravenous, you’ll think about this fish, and regret it. In fact, you’ll probably hate me for ever, for having eaten it.’

  ‘Charles,’ said Jeppe, ignoring this banter, ‘I want you to do me a favour.’

  ‘Official or unofficial?’

  ‘Just between you and me.’

  ‘What makes you so eager to carry this business any further? Don’t you know when you’ve been warned off? If they catch me at it, then they’ll know straight away who sent me. Everybody from San Francisco to Novosibirsk knows that you and I are drinking partners. Which senior Danish intelligence officer was stopped by the Politi with which retired CIA director singing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” outside the Tivoli at three o’clock in the morning? Come on, Jeppe, old chum, think about it.’

  Jeppe said, ‘I’m serious, Charles. Something is happening; I feel it. Something unusual. The traffic we’ve been picking up from Moscow has been – what, too normal, if you can understand what I mean. No crises, no problems, even though they’re carrying out the biggest summer manoeuvres for ten years. And the traffic we’ve been picking up from Britain and the United States has the same curious quality. Everything’s fine, everything’s normal. Have you listened to the news lately?’

  ‘Sure. They’re starting new disarmament talks next month in Vienna. What’s so threatening about that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jeppe. He sat back, hesitated, and then knocked back his glass of schnapps. ‘Maybe I’m going bandannas.’

  ‘Bananas,’ Charles corrected him.

  ‘Well, mad in any case,’ Jeppe agreed. ‘The whole Soviet Army is mobilized; they’ve even brought up their reserve divisions into Poland. The Baltic Fleet is sailing around like a tiger in a cage. We’ve had eleven reports from Swedish Intelligence of crawler-subs invading Swedish territorial waters; one came within 800 metres of the Swedish royal palace in Stockholm; and our own Navy have located Soviet submarines passing through Store Baelt, and even through Storstrommen and Stege Bugt. Yet, what do we hear from Britain and the United States? “The Soviet Union is simply over-compensating for having been obliged to come back to the nuclear conference table.” “They’re just showing how concerned they are about peace.” Well, does that make any sense? It doesn’t to me. Do you show that you’re serious about peace by marching up and down with tanks and missiles, and calling up your reservists?’

  Charles wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Jeppe? I mean, come on, spell it out. What are you trying to say?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jeppe, unhappily. ‘But my bones are aching, and nothing seems right.’

  ‘You don’t seriously think that if the Russians were considering going to war, America would sit back and smile and say that everything was fine? Or Britain, for that matter? We have hard-line anti-Communist administrations in both countries. Come on, Jeppe; the President would be beating the drum by now, if there was any suggestion of war. So would Mrs Thatcher.’

  Jeppe said, ‘I hope my feelings are wrong, believe me. But you can check for me, Charles. Just do a little legwork.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Charles, you owe me.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Lunch, if nothing else.’

  Charles took out another cigarette, then decided against it, and put it back again. ‘Let’s have another drink,’ he suggested.

  Jeppe said, ‘It won’t be difficult. All you have to do is go to the offices of Klarlund & Christensen, and find out whatever you can about Nicholas Reed. You can say that he was a friend of yours, and that you’ve heard about his death, and that you’ve just come to see if there’s anything you can do to help.’

  ‘You’re a very ingenious man, Jeppe,’ Charles told him, sarcastically. ‘How about some cake?’

  Jeppe said, ‘Please, Charles. This is very important. Something’s going on, and I can’t seem to get a hook on it. Please, Charles, I need to.’

  ‘Well…’ said Charles, rubbing the back of his neck, and scruffing up his hair. ‘I was hoping that I’d given all that kind of stuff up for good.’

  ‘Spoken like a white man,’ said Jeppe. ‘Here’s the address, Klarlund & Christensen, 6 Vesterbrogade, next to Den Permanente.’

  ‘I hope I know what I’m doing,’ said Charles.

  Six

  ‘No,’ said Hans Klarlund, decisively. ‘We knew nothing about Nicholas at all. We didn’t need to. He did his job, and went home, and that was all we required. He was an excellent architect.’


  ‘That’s what his mother always used to say,’ replied Charles, trying to be friendly and anecdotal. ‘“One day, Nick,” she used to say, “you’re going to be another Frank Lloyd Wright.”’

  ‘I see,’ said Hans Klarlund, tightly. He was obviously not a Frank Lloyd Wright enthusiast. He was short-haired, bespectacled, stripe-shirted, sitting behind a desk that was nothing more than a sheet of heavy glass supported by two wooden trestles. His office, to Charles, was forbiddingly neat. The only picture on the walls was a clinical drawing of the Sydney Opera House, by Jørn Utzon. Outside the uncurtained windows, there was a depressingly intense view of the Hovedbanegården, the central railway station, and the corner of Bernstorffsgade, where the Tivoli gardens lay. A few red and yellow balloons drifted up into the afternoon sky. Blowing east, thought Charles, towards the Gulf of Finland, and Leningrad. What would the Russians think of them, as they saw them sail by? That we in the West are nothing more than playful innocents; children who release balloons while the bear prowls around our back door?

  He remembered the way in which Ivan Yerikalin used to question him, over and over, unable to believe that the West was so unaware of the power and the political intent of the Soviet Union. ‘You know that we have to invade you one day, just to survive. Otherwise our empire will turn in upon itself, and collapse. We must always look outwards, because if we turn our heads inwards and look at ourselves, we will be unable to bear what we see. Did you know that in the first few months of this year, over 15,000 people fled from Poland; more from East Germany; even more from Hungary. One day, those who are unable to flee will turn upon their masters. It almost happened at the end of the Second World War; it can happen again now, at any time. That is why those belligerent geriatrics in the Kremlin must continue to expand their empire. Expand, or die. That’s what they think; and the rest of the world must tremble every night and every day, just to keep them in power.’