Game of Revenge

by Charlotte Larsen

  “But I have seen her byline!” James objects. “I read her bloody articles in Berlingske Tidende!”

  “So you have, my friend, so you have. Somebody is indeed impersonating this Sarah Stensgaard. Somebody we are looking hard to find. “

  “We?”

  “Of course, James, I take this quite seriously. And you should too. I am using a full operational team with excellent technical skills and lots of experience in finding people who don’t want to be found.”

  James sighs.

  “Yes, it is most unpleasant when it happens. It feels like a worse intrusion than a theft, doesn’t it?”

  James nods.

  “We are looking for her, James. Or them. We don’t know yet if there might be more than one person. And what you need to do until we find her or them, is nothing. Absolutely nothing! You have to pretend not to be suspicious and to be your usual self. Can you do that?”

  James is quiet for a moment. “Freddy, I have fallen in love with Sarah.”

  “Sarah doesn’t exist, James,” Freddy says, putting his arm gently around the big man’s shoulder.

  Chapter 35

  Jo is splayed out on the bed. He stands looking at her, raw desire burning in his eyes. He tied her ankles and wrists to the bedposts with soft ribbons. He kneels slowly, entering her ever so gently. Then he places his left hand on the side of her face and slowly forces her face to the side, his other hand now fastening around her neck. His hand is nearly large enough to reach all the way around her neck. He squeezes.

  She is choking, and this game stops being erotic for her. Before they slept together for the first time, he had insisted on a safe word. She had laughed, but he had persisted, and they had agreed on “summer rain,” since, as he explained, it must be a word that could not be misunderstood. As “no” or “stop” would be part of the process of submission. His words had sent her blood rushing to her chest, as she began to get an inkling of where he might take her. But now it was no longer a game, and she became even more tense as his large hand pushed her face sideways into the pillow, covering her mouth so that the only sounds that came out were unintelligible.

  If she uses her training, she thinks, she could be free in an instant, but her cover would be blown. No journalist would have the kind of combat training that could bring you out of a situation like this.

  For a few moments, as her windpipe was almost crushed, she debated this option. Instead, she bit his hand like she would nibble something edible—not hard, but she wanted to send a signal, nevertheless. When he lifts his hands from her cheek and throat, she turns her face him. To her surprise, his eyes glisten with tears, and he looks at her from a well of sadness. Her breath catches. She stares at him, wide-eyed, “James!” she whispers. “James!”

  The next morning, James gets up early and explains that he has a meeting in town. She watches him leave on foot. The massive cast-iron gate opens slowly and closes. Climbing the gate is no difficult task, provided nobody sees her, but she runs the risk of not getting back into the house before James, and then her cover would most certainly be blown.

  She has been waiting for this opportunity, but she had not anticipated that it would come with a certain awareness that she would have to act under his growing suspicion. She had all along thought that she could outmaneuver him. And she knew in her heart of hearts that the only reason he now had the upper hand was because she had become dependent upon him for a satisfaction she never thought would be hers. For the first time since working for Francis, Jo has relinquished so much of her control to a man. For the first time, she has almost let herself go, but only almost.

  She is slowly and irreversibly being torn apart. James has come under her skin in a way no man ever has. When he touches her, she only wants to let go of her control and submit to him, to let him own her. But her loyalty to Francis, and more so to her own professionalism, to her idea of who and what she is, pulls her in the opposite direction.

  Since she and James came back from Marrakesh, Francis has had a team watching James at all times. Most hours the team had spent sitting in cars outside James’s house, waiting a short distance away, yet far enough so that they couldn’t be seen from any of the house’s windows. Francis had different watchers and different cars. The days when she was not with James, she spent curled up on the back seat. It is mind-numbing work, Jo decides. Around 10:00 p.m. on days that Jo watches James’s house, she goes back to her flat for the night and returns by 7:00 a.m. She and the team know his daily schedule well enough not to expect James to go out for late evening meetings, nor does he leave the house before midmorning. But now she is in the house. And he is gone much earlier than usual. Jo knows something is up. She grabs her phone.

  Francis picks up on the first ring.

  “Is he being followed?”

  “Of course!”

  “I think he knows.” Her voice remains professional, cool.

  Francis is quiet for a while before he asks, “What do you suggest?”

  “To see who he is meeting with.”

  “But what will you use for cover? He will see right through it. He knows you too well.” Francis’s voice had lifted plaintively at the end of the sentence.

  He is jealous, Jo realizes. He always has been. He sniffed her scent in Marrakech and guessed she was in deeper with James than with any other man. She can't help laughing.

  “You find anything funny about this?” he snaps.

  “I am sorry,” she improvises, “I just saw myself in sunglasses and a bad wig.” She saw no such thing, but none of Francis’s inner circle had ever challenged his pride and vanity. “You know I can pull it off,” she continues, “all I need is my suitcase and a lift to where he is.”

  When Francis doesn’t answer straight away, she urges, “We need to move on. All of us. You understand that, don’t you?”

  His voice is resigned when he finally gives her the go-ahead she wants.

  A few minutes later, her phone rings. It is Francis again. “He has just entered Bernstorff Park with a man, I am told. It is just a few minutes away from where you are.”

  “Get me a dog!” Jo almost shouts into the phone.

  “But, really…”

  “Just get it. Now!” her voice is unusually shrill.

  And really nobody would recognize her as she enters the same gate that James and another man came through thirty minutes earlier. From her suitcase, she has chosen a Mackintosh, big boots, and a woolen bucket hat over a short dark wig and tinted glasses. It had taken her only less than ten minutes to change her face completely with the help of her makeup bag. Her skin is now much darker, her eyes brown, eyebrows heavy, and her mouth wider. Her words to Francis echo in her mind: “In dark glasses and a bad wig.” Well, here she is in dark glasses and a wig. Not a bad wig, though. In fact, it was one of the best wigs.

  Jo’s talent for disguising herself lies not in her ability to dress and use makeup, but in her body language. She can move with the paranoid alertness of a young man on the run, with the forcefulness of a police officer going for a shoplifter, or with the slow, sensuous satisfaction of a senior citizen walking her dog. She moves with the sturdy, confident steps of a dog walker who spends hours every day walking in high grass with a leash. There is indeed a leash in her hands and at the end of it a small mongrel of a dog. More fur than body, Jo thinks. Where Francis got it from, she doesn’t know, but the dog is her alibi. A great, safe alibi.

  She looks around and spots only single people walking their dogs, so she picks up her pace. She doesn’t know what direction her prey took, only that they had come through this gate. From the gate, two trails spread out in opposite directions. A large meadow spreads out in front of her and, in the distance, Jo notes a nearby thicket. She decides to hang out in the meadow and await them.

  The sun is still in its winter mood and hangs low on the horizon, where its white light filters through the haze created by the gradual heating of the earth. In shaded places, however, the night’s frost
still lingers. This morning is magical, she realizes; whether it is the haze that seems to envelop the world in fairytale lighting or whether these are the very last moments of a kind of dream, she has let herself partly live for the past month.

  The dog is desolately sniffing around. Occasionally, he raises his head and looks mournfully at her. You too, pal, are hit by the blues, she tells the poor dog in her mind.

  After ten minutes, her vigil is over. She spots James first. The other man is walking on James’s left side, which leaves the man in the shadows. James, on the other hand, is illuminated by the sun. Her heart skips a beat as she moves quickly toward them. She reckons she will be able, with some snappy walking, to catch up with them before they reach the gate.

  She sets off, the dog reluctantly dragging along. Occasionally, she jerks the leash so hard that the dog loses ground and swings a short distance in the air. She hates that little bastard of an excuse for a dog, but as a cover, he is perfect.

  She is right behind the two men now, and she can make out the other man’s shape. He is middle-aged, and she has seen him before. Her mind flips through the files she has in connection with this case. It takes her a few moments before it hits her. Walking beside James is Niels Bang-Henriksen, and he is not looking happy.

  Chapter 36

  Two dark SUVs, heavy and most-likely armored, given the sound of their massive weight on the tarmac, come down the one-way St. Kongensgade from his back. He does notice the particularly deep snarl of the engines, but Copenhagen is full of young men in cars with ferocious, snarling engines. He takes no notice. He should have.

  One car stops suddenly in front of him, another behind. Two athletic and muscular men dressed entirely in black, faces hidden behind sunglasses and caps, jump out in front of him at the same time that somebody else throws a dark hood over his face, effectively depriving him of sight. It is a smooth, well-choreographed, and professional operation.

  His pride overtakes him. He abstains from protesting. He is not willing to show himself as a kicking and screaming amateur. He doesn’t want to give them the pleasure. Also, as another professional, he knows resistance is useless.

  However, something must have woken his instincts moments prior to the attack because he feels no shock, no fear, no confusion. His thoughts are clear, his emotions under control. The only giveaway his body produces in response is a dry mouth and a fast-beating heart. I have been an idiot! He chastises himself. A bloody arrogant idiot! Why the hell didn’t I listen? Why did I not take the signs seriously?

  He commands himself to focus on the now, to collect information, to be the agent he has taught others to be. He breathes deeply, but silently.

  Nobody speaks. He hears the tires on the asphalt, the gentle clicks as automatic gears adapt to the ebb and flow of the city’s traffic, the slight rustle from the driver’s seat, which may be the sound of the driver changing into a new set of clothes. He cannot ascertain whether the passenger seat is empty. He is sandwiched between two men on what he assumes is the back seat. He is certain they are men from their weight and distinct smell of sweat and hormones. Furthermore, he recognizes the scent of Axe to his left.

  What else? What other clues are available to him?

  The car smells new. There is no lingering smell of food, tobacco, refuse, or whatever people bring into their cars. Nor does it smell of adrenaline, blood, or any other of the telltale smells of violence. This car might as well have come directly from a dealership, he decides. Or it has been given a thorough cleaning after its last use.

  He then focuses on being in control. He remembers his training and how the instructor hammered into them the line, “Do not give them full control,” not only because you stop being a human being if you do, but because your body reacts with further stress and fear if it perceives that you think you have lost all control. The instructor’s voice reverberates in Francis’s memory: “Keep something to yourself. Anything.” It doesn’t matter what it is. It may be your name or the origin of your parents’ ancestry. All that matters is that you decide what you won’t tell: “Because tell you will; believe me, sweethearts!” The instructor’s voice becomes clear and present to him, perhaps because it was well known between them that the instructor himself had been through the Taliban’s most brutal torturer and had lived to teach other people ways to survive. Only, it was whispered, the instructor would never have children, nor would he likely be able to make a romantic partner happy.

  Francis finds comfort in the knowledge that other people have been where he is now. This realization might be the only comfort available to him. That and the fact that his team eventually will figure out that he has disappeared, and when they do, they will not sit around discussing strategies. They will leap into action, and they will be unstoppable and merciless. He desperately needs somebody to be unstoppable on his behalf right now. He has never needed it more.

  From the sounds and sensation of the car, he follows the car’s progress on a mental map of Copenhagen. They have passed the Hotel d’Angleterre on the right, the National Bank further ahead, also on the right. They have not turned once but have followed the road toward the south of the city. He guesses they are heading toward the highway, which may take them west or east. East only takes you one place: the bridge across Storebælt to Sweden. In Sweden, there are enormous areas of unpopulated forest to disappear in. Going west provides several options that take you to different parts of Denmark.

  They turn right. From the song of the tires, the wind whispering madly against the windows, and the sense of relaxation in the men on either side of him, he can tell they are on the highway. He is almost certain that they have taken the westbound exit.

  But who are his captors? And more importantly, what do they want?

  There is a whole host of disgruntled people to choose from, but only a few of them would be able to put together an operation like this. First, hiring a team like this takes serious money. Second, you need to be well connected to find the kind of people who can put a team like this together. The list of potential enemies behind his abduction is, in fact, rather short. And one single name stands out in an embossed font.

  Dear God, he prays to a god he has never believed in, but which now seems to be all he has.

  The car slows down, leaves the highway, and turns left onto a smaller road. He estimates they drive fifteen minutes on this road going almost straight west. He has no data to confirm this, only a sense of direction that may be illusionary. Then the car slows down again, turns sharply right, and hits a dirt road littered liberally with deep potholes. Unkept, Francis thinks about the road, unused, unseen. His heart beats harder. He breathes deeply to calm his wild heart. In a few minutes, the reprieve will be over. Someone will yank him from this car, and the worst nightmare of his life so far will begin.

  Chapter 37

  For Niels Bang-Henriksen, the morning begins as usual. The scent of freshly brewed coffee wakes him, and after a quick shower, he joins his wife in their spacious kitchen downstairs. Their breakfast is laid out: a mug of steaming hot coffee and a full bowl of porridge with cream and sugar. Toast, fruit, and tea are laid out for his wife. In the background, the radio broadcasts the morning news at a low volume, and he feels warm, for the oven is turned on for no other reason than his wife’s sensitivity to the cold.

  She is already seated in her usual chair, nestled into its cashmere plaid, both her hands nursing a cup of tea.

  This girlishness of his wife’s is something Niels never tires of. He stoops down and kisses her on the cheek. “Good morning, dear.”

  “Good morning,” she mumbles. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Like a baby.”

  They have had this exchange, word for word, every morning since they got married. He loves her and the cozy atmosphere she creates for them, but occasionally, in his innermost secret place, he has blamed her for his lack of success in the world. She has never urged him on, never demanded anything from him, never praised him the few times he bro
ught home a business victory. All she wants is to sit on the couch, her head on his shoulder, watching TV. His two sons have turned out like their mother: unambitious, sweet men. Only Camilla has inherited his insatiable ambition.

  The porridge is sweet and warm, the coffee scalding. His wife is looking at him with love. All is well. But he knows what will come next after he has had a few sips of his coffee.

  “Niels?”

  “Yes, my dear?”

  “Why do you think we never hear from Camilla? I am beginning to get worried about her.”

  “I know, darling. Listen, I will call her when I get to the office.”

  She nods, satisfied for now. His wife’s relationship with her daughter has always been aloof. She never understood her daughter’s aggressive ambitions. Thus, his wife has always been happy to delegate the parental responsibility of Camilla to him.

  He reaches for the newspapers when the doorbell sounds. They look at one another in surprise: who could be knocking on their door so early in the morning?

  The carrier hands Niels a large yellow envelope after having ascertained his identity. Niels opens the envelope still standing in the doorway, and then he wishes he hadn’t. His legs buckle under him, and he must lean against the doorframe for a moment.

  His wife calls, “What is it, Niels? Is it about Camilla?”

  “No, my dear. Just a message from work. I need to go in right away.”

  “From work? But why don’t they use your phone?”

  “I don’t know.” He kisses her, drinks the rest of his coffee, and is on his way to the office shortly afterward.

  Today, he wishes that they had never moved H’Allure to this building of glass and transparent walkways. Everything is exposed here, even his facial expressions as he sits in his corner office. Normally, he loves his office, where he can overlook Hellerup Yacht Club and on a clear day has a view across the water to Sweden. Today, he would much rather have curled up in a dark, closed room where nobody could watch him.