Is anything worse now that Ali Shar is gone? Is anything better? Does anyone miss him? Steffensen has no idea. He realizes that he doesn’t know anything about this city, even though he’s supposed to be its official protector. His soldiers have orders to only venture into the city for brief drives that barely warrant being called patrols. Some of the alleys are so narrow that an APC can’t get through them and a jeep can’t turn. There are rumors that the Taliban are living in certain outlying areas, but as long as they don’t blow anything up or shoot at anyone, there’s nothing he can do.
Occasionally he allows patrols to drive through the city’s outskirts at forty kilometers an hour. In his reports he states that communication with locals is good.
Just how do drug lords and warlords share power? Is the Taliban part of the game? The thought strikes him as absurd, but he has no way of knowing. It comes to him in a wave of suspicion. Only Ali Shar was spotless, and now he’s dead; even if Steffensen doesn’t have blood on his hands, he still has a guilty conscience.
The mayor was not his enemy. Nor was the farmer. They’re the ones he’s supposed to protect. The farmer is the backbone of the country, the mayor a symbol of its renewal. All his negotiations, breaking one principle after the other—he did it all to benefit that kind of person.
He can see the blood pooling in one of Ali Shar’s eyes. And the burn wound on the back of the farmer’s hand.
7
“Shoot one of them,” says Mads to Camper.
They’re standing in the guard tower in the middle of camp and staring out over the monotonous desert, the view broken only in the south by the verdant vegetation along the Helmand River. Their gaze falls again on the hovering eagles who are as much a part of their view as the distant jagged mountains that resemble a wild animal’s open jaw.
A little beyond the bastion walls, the camp maintains its own waste site, a deep pit full of ash, soot, and half-burned garbage. Thin columns of smoke rise in the stagnant desert air. Black eagles hover above the pit like grim guardians of the smoldering fire. Unlike vultures, they’re not scavengers, though no one knows what endless war does to people or to the animals and birds trapped inside it. They assume that the piles of garbage attract rodents living unseen in passages buried beneath the sand and that the eagles swoop down on them when they foolishly rear their heads. The eagles watch in silent vigil from above—so different than the fluttering, screeching seagulls circling over the garbage dumps back in Denmark. The eagles have discovered an airstream that keeps them aloft. Maybe it’s the warmth from the garbage piles. At night they stay away, but in the morning they’re back again, as if they’ve never left their post. To them, the desert is an alien landscape. They only know the air.
Camper goes down to get his rifle. Why are they asking him to shoot an eagle? Because restlessness lurks within them, an impatience bordering on rage. Because something has to happen, even the minimal disturbance of the landscape provided by one less eagle in the firmament.
Camper climbs back up the steps with his rifle, now equipped with a silencer, and without saying a word places himself at the railing. He rests on one elbow while scanning the sky through the rifle’s scope. They form a circle around him. Karlsen is there, as always when Camper has a rifle in his hands, along with Mads, Simon, Sidekick, and Hannah. Daniel and Nikolaj stomp up the stairs. A short while later, Årslev shows up.
“Show us what you can do,” says Mads. Camper hesitates for a moment. He glances at Mads and then concentrates his gaze again on the rifle’s scope. His movements seem almost careless as he fires.
The heavy beating of an eagle’s wings stops. The others continue circling, unaffected, as if blind and deaf to anything other than their secret mission. The wounded eagle spirals slowly down toward the pit. No fluttering of the wings, no feathers flying through the air. Only spite remains in the still-living body, an ancient resistance to the ground dictating one last attempt at defying gravity. Flames flare, as if the heavily beating wings have fanned the fire, and the eagle disappears from view. A moment later it reappears, flames shooting from the feathers of its wings. With a will to live that thrills them with reluctant amazement, the eagle fights back, slowly rising, as if wanting to die in the air where it belongs. Meter by meter, it ascends like an unnatural sunset that, instead of fading behind the horizon, fights its way back in one last challenge to the impending night. Then flames and gravity win; the sky has to let go and the earth claims the eagle. The dying bird falls into the blackened pit among the garbage, where the eager rodents, once its prey, devour the eagle in a teeming assault.
“Fuck, man,” exclaims Mads. “Why didn’t anyone take their camcorder with them? We could have uploaded this onto YouTube. That would have been fucking awesome!”
Camper is unfazed by the effect of his direct hit. Without a word, he packs up his rifle and walks down the stairs.
8
The meeting in the mess tent is reported to Steffensen, who realizes he needs to do something. Later, a voice inside him says, later. That voice is his problem. He’s not present. He feels like he’s standing on a floor of rotting planks about to give way.
Steffensen has never cared for the chaplain’s sermons. He finds them pompous and overwrought, bordering on ridiculous in their meld of religious and nationalist romanticism, which if taken seriously would result in the catastrophic impression of their entire mission as a medieval crusade.
Every Sunday he comes to the camp chapel. Afterward, he says hello to the chaplain and, hypocritically, thanks him for his fine speech. The chaplain returns his handshake and looks straight into his eyes with an earnestness that always makes Steffensen look down.
Steffensen removes his reading glasses and stands up when the chaplain comes in. The office is furnished modestly, but there’s no doubt that you are in command central. There are ordnance maps on the walls, bulletin boards, and computers everywhere. Messy stacks of paper cover the large desk. He intentionally avoids shaking the chaplain’s hand.
Instead, he throws one arm out in a vague welcoming gesture as if to say: Yes, this is how I live. With his other hand, he points to a chair, and the chaplain sits down across from him. Steffensen can feel his usual routines failing him. Although he knows he needs to put the chaplain in his place, deep inside he feels that he’s the one who needs to confess.
“I want to speak to you,” says Møller. “It concerns something important.”
Surprised, the commander in chief looks at his guest. I’m the one who called the damn meeting, he thinks. The chaplain makes it sound as if it’s the other way around.
“And what, if I may ask, is that?” His tone is intentionally cutting. Any officer could hear the warning in it. The chaplain hears nothing.
“I want to talk about the fallen,” he says.
Steffensen starts slightly. “The fallen?” he asks foolishly.
“Yes, the ones back home.”
“Back home? What are you talking about?” Having already started on the wrong foot, he needs to pull himself together.
Amazed, the chaplain stares back at him. “A striking number of the soldiers’ relatives have fallen victim to accidents recently. There’s even been a murder. It affects their mood. I share a good rapport with the soldiers. They’ve started talking, and they see a pattern. They believe a war is happening on two fronts.”
Steffensen is suddenly feeling quite present. “On two fronts?”
“The men think . . . how should I say it . . . that there is a terror group . . . an Islamic underground army . . . going after their relatives back home in Denmark.”
“Well, that’s pretty far out. I hope you are using your authority to disavow those kinds of rumors.”
“I’m not sure they aren’t right.”
“Now that’s completely nuts. Everything will fall apart if that kind of rumor is allowed to spread. It has to be stopped immediately. And that’s your job.”
Steffensen has stood up.
�
�No,” says the chaplain, “that’s your job.”
The chaplain stands up, too. They face each other, as if readying for a confrontation. Steffensen realizes that they’re really two men at a loss, seeking each other’s advice. He immediately sits down again as if to defuse the situation. The chaplain hesitates and then also sits down.
“You must be able to see it for yourself,” says Steffensen, trying to smooth things over. “Where would all this lead? Our situation is already dangerous enough without these kinds of rumors.”
“Maybe we should have seen it coming,” says the chaplain. “We go to war in their country—they go to war in ours.”
“We’re at war against the Taliban. There are certainly no Taliban in Denmark.”
“There are twelve thousand Afghans in Denmark,” says the chaplain. “It only takes five to ten people for a terror group to strike hard. It’s not unlikely that it will happen. What’s unbelievable is that it hasn’t happened already. Think about the Algerian War of Independence. That war didn’t just happen in Algeria. There were acts of sabotage in France, too.”
“That was different.” Steffensen suddenly feels exhausted.
“Different, how?”
“France was a colonial power. Only the Mediterranean separates the two countries.”
“War is war,” says the chaplain. “Anyway, that’s how the men are feeling. Something needs to be done—and you’re the CO. You have to do it.”
And what exactly is it I have to do? What he’d like to do is scream the question into the chaplain’s face. “If you’re right,” he says instead, “it’s a case for the intelligence service. They’ll have to look into it. Give me the names and I’ll report it.”
He stands up to indicate that the conversation is over.
9
Steffensen contacts the Danish Defense Intelligence Service and reports the rumors circulating throughout the camp. He receives a call on the encrypted phone. The voice on the other end of the receiver, who introduces herself as Amalie Strøm, speaks to him as if he were a subordinate. She dismisses the rumors as completely unfounded. He thinks he hears an admonishing tone in her voice. Under no circumstances is he to pursue that lead. If the soldiers sense any kind of official receptiveness, it could have the most negative consequences, not only in the camp but also among the public back home. Does he understand that?
He recognizes the name. Amalie Strøm first made a name for herself in the media as a security expert. No matter what she had to comment on, her voice maintained a cool neutrality. Once she was offered a career in the secret service, she vanished from public life.
“Danish society is nothing more than a large village of thatched roofs,” says Strøm.
“And a single spark can make it all go up in flames?”
“Exactly. Imagine if some vet hears these rumors coming out of your camp. He gets mixed up in a fight with a bunch of young immigrants. He’s a ticking time bomb—the words ‘trauma’ and ‘syndrome’ apply in every conceivable configuration. And once he gets beaten up, he’ll yell, Terrorists! Al-Qaeda in Jutland! Taliban in Nørrebro! They’re going after relatives! Exclamation point! They’re going after veterans! Double exclamation point! One call to the newspapers, and before you can count to three the whole story becomes breaking news. And once the media get involved, along comes their conjoined twin, the politicians. Everyone loves a conspiracy. And then what do we do?”
“You’re asking me?”
“I don’t need to. I already know the answer. We either have to intern all of the suspects—about two hundred and fifty thousand, that’s how many Muslims there are in Denmark—or we have to intern all of the soldiers’ relatives. That seems a little more manageable. Let’s say closest family members, plus sweethearts. So we wind up somewhere around two to three thousand. Where shall we intern them? At the barracks? Do you get what I’m saying? It starts with a rumor in Camp Price and ends with a state of emergency in Denmark.”
“Does that mean that from here on in it’s the headless fools in the media who are running the country?”
“No,” says Amalie Strøm. “It’s the people’s feelings that are running the country. And no one can ignore them. Not even the government—or the secret service. We live in a democracy.”
“How in the world do you want me to prevent what you call rumors from spreading? The soldiers are in daily contact with their relatives. I guarantee you the story has already started to circulate. It’s only a question of time before it reaches the media.”
Silence on the other end. Steffensen is not quite sure how to read it.
“Tell me what to do,” he finally says. “It’s pointless to order me to just deny the rumors or tell the soldiers that they aren’t allowed to write or talk about them. I don’t have that kind of authority.” He feels he is exposing himself. “What should I do?” he repeats.
“I would suggest closing down all communication in and out of the camp.”
A conclusion he should have come to on his own. Maybe it’s a test of his ability to make decisions in stressful situations. And he just failed. It might also be an attempt to pass the problem off on him. In that case he has managed the difficult but necessary art of evasion.
“You mean confiscate the soldiers’ cell phones, put a padlock on the container housing the camp computers, prevent them from communicating with their relatives, and totally isolate them? That will seriously drive them crazy. Then they’ll be certain that something’s wrong back home. And what about the Brits? They’ll never put up with being denied access to the internet and their phones just because there’s rumormongering in Denmark.”
“We make an agreement with the Brits so they can stay connected. But for the Danes—no way. Preventing the spread of these rumors has to be our first priority. We need to have peace in the workplace.”
“Peace in the workplace?”
“We’ll start an investigation. First we’ll put the local police on the case.”
“And if it turns out there’s something to all this talk?”
“I don’t think we’ll get to that point.”
“And in the meantime—what should I do?”
“You’re their CO. You have to see to it that you’re handling the situation in the camp.”
Amalie Strøm hangs up.
10
As soon as their cell phones are confiscated and the containers with the computers and phones have padlocks on them, the soldiers become convinced that there’s a connection. Before it was all insinuations, guesses, rumors, and the chaplain’s inflammatory sermons. Now they know it. The misfortunes back home in Denmark form a pattern. They’re not accidents—they’re terrorism.
They’re warned repeatedly not to use their cell phones while they’re in the camp. Calls can be traced, and the soldiers have been told that their relatives sometimes receive anonymous calls telling them that a son or brother or spouse has been killed or kidnapped and at that very moment is being tortured. The Taliban listens in on all cellular traffic coming out of the camp and they have their own network among the Afghan immigrants in Denmark. None of them has ever met anyone it’s happened to, and many of them have dismissed the stories as the usual paranoia intelligence officers produce to justify their own existence.
Next to the computers are notes forbidding them from talking about their activities. Never mention any planned patrols. Never write about tomorrow, only about yesterday. Now they know it’s serious. Someone in Denmark knows whom they’re calling. They aren’t satisfied with scaring relatives with anonymous calls. They’re tracking them down and trying to kill them.
Whenever a soldier is killed, and the flag flies at half-mast, Operation Minimize is always set in motion. That means that the containers housing the telephones and computers are locked. They’re forbidden to call home or write e-mails until the deceased’s relatives have been informed. Now the situation is permanent—but not because of the fallen out here. It’s at home that they’re falling, and a call
can become an invitation to murder. They’ve become a danger to their own relatives. A text message saying they’re doing well and there’s no reason to worry could mean someone’s death. An e-mail to a girlfriend full of sappy declarations of love could send her to the grave. There’s war in Denmark—and they’re the reason why.
No longer allowed to watch TV in the common area, they’re cut off from the outside world.
Sidekick films the locked containers and zooms in on the hanging padlocks. Soldiers sit with long faces at the tables in the mess tent. Årslev, his upper lip swollen with snuff, stares blankly at the plastic cup in front of him. He’s talking about different kinds of beer and their aromas. What he can find in a beer is incredible: the taste of hay, wild berries, quince, caramelized birch sap, unripe pineapple, dried papaya, coffee. And the aromas! Citrus and pine needles, cedarwood, grass, orange candy, lily of the valley. But today he rattles them off in a tired litany. He spits again.
“I don’t care what it tastes like,” says Viktor. “I just want to knock back a cold pilsner.”
“I don’t know what’s worse,” says Sørensen. “That the kids are missing me or that I’m missing them. I feel like the world’s worst father. If they could just hear my voice. Or I could hear theirs. One second. Just for one second.”
“What would you say to them if you had only one second?” asks Sylvester.
Sørensen speaks to Sylvester in a new way, no longer admonishingly or indulgently, but inquisitively, as if he forgets that the other is only an inexperienced young man. Maybe Sylvester’s age is actually an advantage. He’s not much older than Frederik and Anton, so he can still remember how it was. “Christ, I used to pee the bed sometimes, too,” the older man says cheerfully. “Difficulty concentrating in school? All the time. School—it just wasn’t me. And look at me now! It’s going pretty damn well. How many people trust me with their lives when I make my rounds with the sweeper?”
The First Stone Page 18