Authors: David Hewson
The woods north of Hillerød were dense and dark. The green army G-Wagen moved slowly down the narrow lane. Jarnvig at the wheel. Angry.
‘This is ridiculous. We can’t keep looking.’
‘Bilal used to come here,’ Raben said. ‘He told me about it. You could break in. Go underground. See all these places they used during the Cold War.’
He waved at the broken wire ahead. Flat green land beyond it, forest in the distance. No buildings. Not even a sign.
‘We should call the police,’ Jarnvig said again.
There was a shop along the road.
‘Keep driving, will you?’ Raben said.
‘I’m taking orders from you now, am I? We could get hold of Arild. Bilal worships him. If anyone could cut a deal . . .’
The roadside shop was for local campers. Fruit and vegetables. Gas. Clothing. General supplies.
‘Let’s ask someone,’ Raben said.
He told Jarnvig to stop the jeep. The two of them walked into the ramshackle store. A short bearded man stood behind the counter.
‘Can I help? We’ve got fresh potatoes—’
‘We’re from the army,’ Jarnvig said. ‘Looking for a deserter. Probably in fatigues. Acting a bit scared. He’s—’
‘He’s sick,’ Raben said.
‘What kind of sick?’ the man asked, reaching for something underneath the counter.
‘A bad kind. He’s young-looking. About twenty-eight. Dark hair. Dark skin. Immigrant. He’d probably want to buy food or . . .’
The bearded shopkeeper pulled out a double-barrelled shotgun, held it loose in his arms.
‘Don’t get many people this time of year. Those you do get . . . sometimes they act funny.’ He looked at them. ‘What kind of bad?’
‘We can deal with it,’ Raben said.
The man nodded at Jarnvig.
‘You’re the second squaddie who’s walked in here with a gun on his belt. I’d get arrested if I went round like that.’
‘Where did he go?’ Raben asked.
He laughed.
‘Come into a shop and you’ve got to buy something. It’s only polite. Everyone knows that.’
Jarnvig muttered something, nodded at the cigarette stand and threw fifty kroner on the counter. ‘Give me twenty Prince.’
‘Prince cost a hundred out here, mister,’ the shopkeeper said with a big grin. ‘It’s the transport, you see.’
Raben was getting furious. Jarnvig threw another note on the counter.
‘Where . . . ?’ Raben started.
‘Go left. A couple of hundred metres down he took an old track into the woods. Not seen that used in years. You ought to find him just from following the tyre tracks.’
‘He had a woman with him?’ Jarnvig asked.
‘Not that I saw. You want to buy something else?’
But by then Raben was hurtling back towards the Mercedes.
Torsten Jarnvig sat in the passenger seat, shaken by Raben’s crazed driving as they careered along the overgrown trail.
There was only one set of tyre marks ahead. He could have followed them. Would have done too. But Raben was a
jaeger
, just like Jan Arild all those years before in the Gulf, the Balkans
and places they never talked about. Like dogs after a scent, they didn’t pursue a quarry. They chased it down.
The woods were coniferous, thick and dark, even in winter. From the state of the ground it looked as if only one vehicle had been this way all season.
A crossroads. Raben didn’t even stop before taking the Mercedes into a hard left swing, rounding the corner at such speed the vehicle almost toppled over. Jarnvig clung to the door handle,
didn’t say a thing. There was no point.
The track narrowed. There was open space ahead. At fifty kilometres an hour they burst into a clearing. An old black Land Rover was parked on a concrete pad. A rusty, low watchtower to the
right. Raben stamped on the brakes, kept the wheels bursting in and out of lock, brought the vehicle to a halt in a dead straight line.
No one in the Land Rover. Behind it was an ancient fence topped with rolls of barbed wire. A yellow sign, rickety, now at forty-five degrees: MILITARY AREA. KEEP OUT.
Raben stretched out his hand. How long did Torsten Jarnvig think about this? As long as he did in the Iraqi desert, when he was alongside Jan Arild, wondering how to stay alive.
He took the army handgun from his belt and handed it over.
‘Call the police,’ Raben said.
‘Do you want me as backup?’
That was a look Arild gave him from time to time too.
It said:
Are you kidding?
‘There’s space enough for a couple of thousand soldiers underground here,’ Raben said. ‘Their radios won’t work. They won’t know where I am.’ A sour,
hurt expression on his face. ‘I’d rather not get shot again. Tell them that too.’
Then he worked his way through the wire.
It took a minute to find the entrance. Cold War. Built to shelter from a nuclear blast. They’d been mothballed by the time Raben came into the army. But the word was they
were never totally out of commission. Some bright spark had realized the end of one conflict, even a half-century stand-off between the world’s great powers, didn’t spell peace on
earth. The time might come again . . .
Raben remembered this as he edged through the open heavy iron door set into what looked like a derelict guardhouse surrounded by blackthorn and elder bushes. He had a torch but he didn’t
need it. The place was lit up like Strøget at Christmas. Two lines of bulbs in a whitewashed ceiling led down a stone staircase that seemed to go on for ever. The place had power. Was still
breathing, alive.
Jarnvig’s P210 pistol sat steady in his hand. He took the steps one by one, moving slowly down this steep artery into the earth. There was nowhere to hide in this freezing, dank refuge
beneath the ground. Not for him. Or Said Bilal.
Buch found Erling Krabbe on the main staircase in the Folketinget.
‘I left you some messages . . .’
The People’s Party man looked even more evasive than usual.
‘I was about to call you back. After my next meeting. Look . . .’
MPs and civil servants were wandering up and down, glancing at them. Krabbe walked down to the next landing, disappeared into the shadows of a corridor. Buch followed.
‘Just tell me,’ he begged. ‘Will you join the Opposition in bringing down Grue Eriksen?’
Erling Krabbe bit his bloodless lower lip, said nothing.
‘Dammit!’ Buch barked. ‘You know he’s not fit to stay in office. The man’s as guilty as hell. They found proof that family was murdered in Helmand.’
‘You only have Rossing’s word for that and he’s chosen to take the blame . . .’
‘Rossing’s the scapegoat! And a happy one too. He won’t get prosecuted. He’ll be back in government in eighteen months. It was the truth. You know it too.’
Krabbe glanced at his watch so quickly Buch knew he hadn’t even checked the time. Then he started to walk off.
Buch’s hand came out and grabbed his arm.
‘What the hell’s going on here?’ Thomas Buch demanded. ‘I’ve got a right to know.’
Krabbe peeled Buch’s fat fingers from his arm.
‘I’m not going to get into bed with Birgitte Agger without thinking it over. You don’t honestly believe it’s justice she’s after.’
‘This isn’t about politics. It’s about right and wrong . . .’
Erling Krabbe was staring at him, as if he’d seen something new.
‘It really is that black and white for you, isn’t it?’ He laughed. ‘I suppose it was for me once. But it isn’t and it never will be.’
He went back to the staircase, started to walk down the steps.
‘So it was you who spilled the beans, was it?’ Buch bellowed, his voice echoing off the walls, making heads turn everywhere. ‘When I told you Rossing had confessed. You went
straight to Grue Eriksen like the lapdog you are?’
Krabbe came back, astonished. Hurt, Buch thought.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘You’re the only one I told!’
Erling Krabbe folded his skinny arms and waited.
‘Apart from . . . my own people,’ Buch said more quietly. ‘People I trust, naturally.’
Krabbe laughed at him.
‘Oh honestly. Did your week as a minister teach you nothing? There’s no one you can trust in this place.’
A pat on the arm. A look that seemed almost kindly. He held out his hand.
‘I’ll call you when I’ve decided,’ Krabbe said.
Buch shook his dry, cold fingers then watched him go.
Back through the endless corridors, into the Ministry of Justice, mind racing all the way.
Karina was at her desk alone.
‘The Prime Minister’s office called wanting a meeting,’ she said when he marched in. ‘I declined. I hope that was right.’
‘I suppose.’ Buch walked to his desk. ‘Who prepared the documents yesterday? After Rossing came in here and I asked someone to make a note of what I told you
afterwards?’
‘Plough,’ Karina said. ‘I offered but he insisted.’
‘Who typed it? Which secretary?’
She tugged on her blonde hair.
‘Plough did it himself. He said they were busy with other things.’
‘Could someone have seen his report and warned Grue Eriksen?’
‘No! He printed it out and gave it to me. Then he went over to the Prime Minister’s office . . .’
Buch looked at her.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Thomas! It was about that post in Skopje. You’d intervened on his behalf, hadn’t you?’
‘And the office called him in?’
‘I don’t remember. Ask him when he gets back.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know. Now can we . . . ?’
He went through more papers, scattering them everywhere.
‘Who leaked that memo to Birgitte Agger? Did we ever find out?’
She folded her arms.
‘Plough looked into it. He didn’t get anywhere.’
Buch went to the nearest document mountain, started sifting anxiously through it.
‘Where’s the information on the military squad? Ægir?’
‘Thomas!’ Karina cried in a high, piercing voice. ‘What’s going on?’
Nothing in the papers. Buch picked them up, launched them at the sofa, watched them flutter round the room.
‘Calm down,’ she ordered. ‘I won’t talk to you if you’re going to be like this. I’ll walk right out of here . . .’
He kicked a pile of box files, stumbled to the desk. It was there all along. A list of the soldiers in Raben’s unit. Mugshots, profiles.
She followed, trying to reason with him.
‘Listen, Thomas. I know Plough was angry with Rossing. He’s never liked the man. But he didn’t want you to go for the Prime Minister because he thought you couldn’t
win.’
Buch flicked through the pages. Myg Poulsen. Raben. Lisbeth Thomsen. Photos, brief service records and a few personal details.
A head shot he’d never really looked at before. There’d been no reason.
‘Does Plough have a son?’
She groaned.
‘He did. He died last year. Plough took it very badly.’
‘In a traffic accident, right?’
She nodded.
‘Plough lives in Nørrebro? What street?’
‘Baggesensgade. What’s this about?’
‘If I’ve still got a driver,’ Buch said, heading for the door, ‘tell him I’m on my way.’
‘And if not?’
Buch ran his fingers through his pockets, checked the wallet there.
‘Maybe you could lend me some money for a taxi?’
Karina Jørgensen handed over two hundred kroner then went to the desk and retrieved the file.
It was open at the squad member no one looked at.
Hans Christian P. Vedel. Killed in a car crash on the Øresund bridge. Suicide, the police said.
A picture of a serious, plain young man, gloomy eyes staring straight at the camera.
An address in Baggesensgade.
‘Thomas . . .’ she started, but Buch was gone.
Lund and Strange were in the first car to meet Jarnvig outside the underground facility.
The heavy iron door was open. A long staircase, lights all the way.
‘They’re in there. Raben went after him,’ Jarnvig said.
‘Is he armed?’ Strange asked.
The colonel nodded.
Lund got out her gun, Strange did the same. More cars were arriving. Two cops from the first ran over.
‘There are going to be more exits than this one,’ Strange told them. ‘See if you can pull up a plan or something. Make sure every one’s covered. Tell Brix nobody’s
to enter until we’ve checked it out.’
The first officer looked uncertain.
‘If you wait a minute you can tell him yourself . . .’
‘My daughter’s in there!’ Jarnvig yelled.
Lund set off down the long stairs, gun ahead of her, listening. The place smelled like a gigantic mouldering tomb, the air stale and fusty.
Strange was soon with her. They half-ran down the first flight of stairs, stopped at the bottom. The place changed here. The floor was cracked and damp in places. The walls looked as if
they’d been hewn from the native rock. At regular intervals there were doors that must have led to subterranean offices, barracks, storerooms.
‘How big’s this place?’ she asked as Strange went forward, looking left and right.
‘God knows,’ he murmured. ‘How the hell—?’
A distant sound. Footsteps, loud and rapid, hard to pinpoint as they echoed off the walls.
Strange looked round, listened, pointed to the right and they began to run.
Raben was deep in the bowels of the underground camp, checking every door. The ones he met were open. And then he got to a closed one. Red paint and the number forty-four on
the outside.
Put his good shoulder to it, felt the old iron creak then move under his weight.
Through, gun in one hand, low and ready.
There was another section here, rooms and corridors. All part of the hidden tide of fury waiting to loose itself on a Russian army that would never come.
A noise not far away.
Her voice. Crying with pain and fear.
Raben leaned against the damp wall, brick here, not rock. Then he edged slowly, quietly forward, got to the end, saw bright lights beyond in what looked like a wide room to the right.
One brief moment of reconnaissance. His head flew round the door, flew back.
In that fraction of a second he saw them. Louise on her knees, hands tethered. Bilal standing, a gun to her head. The place was a generator room. Vast antiquated machines down one side. Places
to run for cover.