Authors: Leif Davidsen
The
White Whale
could do up to seventeen knots. Vuk ordered Jon to push the engine to its limits. Flakfortet dropped away astern, and when Vuk was sure that they were out of range of the snipers he pushed Lise over to Jon. He, for his part, moved all the way back to the sternpost, from where he had a clear shot at them both. He had his back to the cylindrical white canister containing the inflatable life raft. Jon was standing at the old ship’s wheel. Lise was now almost demented with fear. Vuk, Carsten, Janos, or whatever his name was, was uncannily calm. Only the beads of sweat on the bridge of his nose betrayed, perhaps, the strain he was under. Jon’s hands were shaking so
much that he had to clench the wheel hard. The
White Whale
pitched and plunged in the low swell whipped up by a wind which felt as though it was bringing rain with it. The sun had vanished, and the black clouds that had hung over Sweden were moving over the Sound. Lise looked at the vessels in the channel: the ferry to Limhamn, sailboats hugging the shore, a tanker gliding majestically down toward the Baltic. A plane was turning in over Saltholm. A coaster flying the Russian flag was leaving Copenhagen harbour; and some way ahead of them one of those ugly river barges which reminded her of holidays in France appeared to be struggling against the current, it was chugging along so slowly.
‘Do you smoke?’ Vuk asked.
She nodded.
‘Light me a cigarette!’
She had lost her handbag, so she stood there staring at him in fear and bewilderment.
‘Skipper?’ he said.
Jon stuck his hand into his jacket and pulled out a packet of Prince, handed them to Lise, along with a lighter. With trembling fingers she lit the cigarette and held it out to Vuk at arm’s length. He took it with a steady left hand, the right one still pointing the pistol at them.
‘Have one yourselves,’ he said, as if they were exchanging polite chitchat at a cocktail party.
They lit up, although the wind made it difficult.
‘Where to?’ Jon asked after taking a long drag.
‘Set course due west towards the harbour.’
‘I can’t do that. I’ll run straight into the Dirty Sea. The
White Whale
is all I’ve got.’
‘Don’t fuck with me, mister,’ Vuk growled.
‘We’ll rip the bottom out of her.’
Vuk raised the gun, and Lise huddled against Jon.
‘Do as I say. Immediately before we reach the Dirty Sea you’ll receive a new order, to head south into Dutchman’s Deep,’ Vuk said.
‘They’ll catch you when you go ashore,’ Jon said.
Vuk did not reply, only puffed on his cigarette.
‘How could you do it? Who are you?’ Lise sobbed. She was trembling from top to toe and shivering with cold in her thin clothing. ‘Why Ole? Why? What had he ever done to you?’
‘Shut up!’ Vuk broke her off.
The radiophone rang. Vuk raised the pistol, motioning to them not to touch it.
He looked at the sky. It couldn’t be too long before the helicopter showed up.
‘Skipper! Where do you keep the lifejackets?’ he asked.
Jon pointed to one of the chests along the bulwark that served as benches on the small quarterdeck. The
White Whale
was making good headway now, bucking through the waves, and the first raindrops were falling onto the gleaming planks.
‘Take out two!’ Vuk commanded Lise.
Jon eyed him. Some of his fear seemed to have dissipated, possibly because he was now in his proper element, at the wheel of his boat.
‘You’re expecting a ship. Is that it? You’ve got a ship waiting for you.’
‘Shut up!’ Vuk snapped.
Jon turned the wheel slightly, and the
White Whale
slowly altered course.
‘What are you doing?’ Vuk asked.
‘She draws six feet. I’ve got to keep to the bloody sea-lane. Look at that buoy dead ahead of us!’
But Vuk’s eyes remained fixed on him and on Lise, who had got the chest open and was peering down at the orange lifejackets.
‘Stay on course and get those on. Both of you,’ Vuk rapped, tossing the last of his cigarette over the rail.
‘What are you up to?’ Jon asked.
‘It’s your decision,’ Vuk said. ‘Either with or without. But this is where you get off, so move it!’
Vuk removed a split pin, pulled the release and the white canister flew over the stern into the foaming grey water. He tugged on the cord, and the circular life raft began to inflate behind them.
‘What are you doing?’ Jon yelled.
‘Get a move on!’ Vuk barked.
Lise drew the lifejacket over her head and tried to tie it but got into a tangle with the strings. Keeping one hand on the wheel, with the other Jon assisted her. In turn, she pulled a lifejacket over his head, and he knotted it with deft efficiency. Vuk heard the helicopter before he saw it. There were two of them. One big air-sea rescue machine and a smaller one, the sort normally used for monitoring traffic. They flew out from the coast at a fair height. The big Sikorsky stayed on course for Flakfortet, the smaller one passed over the life raft, banked and whirred down towards the
White Whale
.
‘Okay, jump – now!’ Vuk shouted, raising the pistol. But they simply stood there, benumbed. The sea was grey and streaked by the rain that was falling harder and harder, and to Lise the boat seemed to be travelling appallingly fast. The helicopter drew closer, dipped over the
White Whale
. Vuk pressed the trigger twice in rapid succession, shattering the glass next to Jon’s head and sending splinters showering down into the wheelhouse. They must have had binoculars trained on him, because the helicopter swung off to the right and rose steeply, as if to say it would be sure to keep its distance.
‘I said
now
!’
Vuk raised the gun again and aimed it right between Jon’s eyes. Jon took his hands off the wheel, stepped up onto the rail and threw himself as far out from the side as possible. Vuk turned the gun on Lise. She was shaking uncontrollably, didn’t know how she was to get up onto that rail and make herself jump. She only knew that she was more afraid of staying on the boat than of being in the cold grey sea. She saw Jon bobbing up and down in the waves behind the
White Whale
, and then she sprang, gasping as she ducked under the chilly water. She was seized by panic and swallowed water, but the life-vest turned her right side up and brought her to the surface, where she lay on her back, staring up at the big black clouds. She trod water and watched the
White Whale
speeding away from her. She was, in fact, a very good swimmer, and although the water was cold, after the long hot summer the temperature still hovered around twelve to fourteen degrees. And she was relieved to be free of that cool, calm man who never smiled. She waved to Jon and they backstroked towards one another. The helicopter flew down and circled around them. They waved up at it; it rose, turned and came back. Something square and yellow was dropped from the side of the helicopter; it
landed on the sea between Jon and her and automatically began to inflate into a life raft. Lise started to swim towards it. She reached it at the same time as Jon and clung to it, at once laughing and crying. Jon clambered into the raft and pulled her in after him. Once there she threw up and cried and cried until she thought she would never stop.
Jon kneeled beside her. He gazed after the
White Whale
, took his bearings from the coastline. The motorboat skimmed across Dutchman’s Deep, but instead of turning either south or north it carried straight on.
‘You bastard!’ he roared, shaking his fist at the
White Whale
. ‘You mean, fucking, murderous, destructive bastard!’
Seconds later the
White Whale
exploded in a flash of red and yellow as Vuk steered her full throttle into the Dirty Sea, where an old railway sleeper tore a hole in her bottom and checked her speed with such force that the diesel tank burst. Diesel oil mingled with the gas from the flask in the galley and was ignited by the red-hot steel of the engine.
The observer in the helicopter had been keeping an eye on the two people in the sea, to make certain that they got themselves into the life raft, so he could not substantiate Jon’s claim that he had seen a black-clad figure leave the
White Whale
seconds before she ploughed full tilt into the Dirty Sea. Nor could the observer say for sure whether the motorboat had been manned or not, for he had only managed to get his binoculars focused on her just at the moment when she exploded.
The helicopter flew low over the area, searching the waves. They spied a buoy drifting outwards on the current, otherwise no sign of life down there. Two sailboats had changed course and were heading towards the site of the explosion, but the captains knew all about the Dirty Sea and maintained a respectful distance. A Russian river barge and other, larger vessels in the vicinity also reduced speed – as required by maritime law in the event of a shipwreck. The shipping wavebands crackled with inquiries in a host of languages. All shipping was told to stay on course. Navigation conditions were difficult, and help was on the way.
But by the time the first pleasure boats reached the vicinity of the wreck, the man who had sailed the
White Whale
into the Dirty Sea was gone. The only trace of him was his tweed jacket, found drifting not far from his right
shoe, a thousand feet away from the wreck. His clothing had presumably been ripped off him when he was hurled into the water by the explosion.
Visibility was rapidly deteriorating as the easterly storm from Sweden swept across Zealand, bringing high winds and driving rain. At nightfall the search was called off.
The Russian barge which had been battling with engine trouble at a less than felicitous spot in the sea lane just off the Dirty Sea managed to get its tired old turbine turning again and ponderously proceeded on its scheduled passage to Limhamn in Sweden, where it discharged a load of ground soya, and the captain was given a right bawling-out for sailing the Sound in bad weather with such poor engine power, especially when he had been laid up for two days because of trouble with that self-same engine, which wasn’t powerful enough to drive a bloody Skoda. The captain explained in broken English that what with all the upheaval in his own country he had to go where the money was. And if his freight rates were lower than some others, well, he thought that was all part of the market economy to which he obviously had to adapt. The harbour-master at Limhamn informed him that he would never again be allowed to enter a Swedish port and that that went for all his fellow Russians and their leaky old tubs as well. Sweden had already banned his sister ships, the oil-carrying Volga-Neftis, from docking at Swedish ports.
The Russian captain couldn’t have cared less. He could retire now anyway. The young man had asked for nothing except clean clothes, vodka, coffee and cigarettes. Despite the wetsuit, he had been chilled to the bone when he climbed over the low rail an hour after some weekend sailor had rammed what had actually been a very pretty motorboat smack into the biggest underwater rubbish dump outside of any busy commercial harbour. The taciturn young man had hauled himself over the rail south of Saltholm just after they had begun their approach to Limhamn in the dark and the pouring rain. The captain’s four drunken crew members had been advised that they had suddenly been struck blind and deaf, as can happen to anyone who has been given a bribe or too much too drink, or a combination of both.
So only the captain had seen the young man.
And the captain asked no questions. Some things were none of his business. He knew the guys who had contacted him and paid him: you didn’t fool with them. And he had known other lads like the silent youth who had climbed over his rail, from his time as a submariner in the Soviet navy. Many’s the time when he had set lads like that ashore on one or other of these
low-water
coastlines. Set them ashore and picked them up again without the imperialists noticing a bloody thing. In the dear old country these boys were called
spetznats
, and they had climbed and swam as though they had had goats’ hooves and gills. Back then, he had been fired by patriotism. This time round he had been paid twenty-five thousand dollars for being at a specific spot at a specific time. He had had no trouble spotting the buoy and the black figure which had dived overboard in those perilous few seconds before the explosion and come up again just once, nostrils breaking the water on the lee side of the blazing wreck before it disappeared again, and the buoy could be seen starting to drift. The diver had swum into the submarine forest of twisted, algae-coated metal, concrete and crumbling brick, that devil’s reef. The captain knew the story. It would have taken him only a second or so to get the mouthpiece working, and then the rest of his equipment, before bearing towards his old river lass who, for such a sum, would happily pull him quite a way, hanging onto the ring attached to her hull for that very purpose. The captain drank another glass of vodka, thinking fleetingly that he might almost have done it for nothing. Simply to savour once more that old thrill he remembered from his youth.
But only almost, he thought to himself, watching the young man disappear across the deserted wharf, while he hollered at his lazy drunken sailors to get their fingers out and set course for Kaliningrad before the police came around asking stupid questions, as only the police – in every country and under every regime – can do.
L
ise and Per sat, their bodies not touching, on the sofa in her apartment, watching the nine o’clock news. In front of them they each had a glass of red wine and the remains of an almost uneaten Chinese takeaway that Per had picked up. They were on the second bottle of red wine, but the wine had really only left them feeling even more listless and drowsy. Lise had lost weight since the ‘incident’, as she chose to call it, and it did not suit her, but he thought nonetheless that a little colour was returning to her cheeks. Or maybe it was just the wine. She held herself at a distance from him that he could not seem to cross; it was as if a barrier had dropped between them. He knew why, of course, but as yet neither of them had wished to put it into words or talk about it. And maybe there were some things it was better not to talk about. For his own part, he was just so tired. Tired of meetings, tired of statements, tired of bosses, tired of the press’s conjecturing, tired of the thought that he would be made the scapegoat. Filled with anger and grief at John’s death and his inability to do anything for his partner’s wife and children. Tired of the whole damn business, which had left nothing but broken lives in its wake.
He wasn’t listening to the news. Instead his eyes rested on Lise again. He cared so much about her, but it was as though that first wild infatuation had burned out before it could blossom into full flame. The spark had been extinguished. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe it would be reignited when they made love properly again. The one time when they had tried she had wept as if her heart would break, only afterwards to say that she loved him for not leaving her but would he please sleep on the sofa or maybe it would actually be best if he went home. Or stay if he wanted. As long as she could be by herself, but not alone.
So now he was half preparing to go back to his own apartment. That had been the pattern over the past few days. They saw one another in the evenings, groped blindly for one another but never made contact, never talked, and then he left with not an angry word spoken, or any other words, for that matter, other than a banal ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’ and ‘See you tomorrow’. She didn’t want to be alone, but she no longer wanted to sleep with him either. He was supposed to both stay and go away. He felt miserable and exhausted and confused and didn’t know what to do, but still he spun out the time, knowing that soon he would have to say goodnight and go home to his own empty apartment, where his thoughts and feelings of guilt darted around the rooms like demons.
Lise was watching the news through drooping eyelids, but she straightened up when Peter Sørensen appeared, standing outside the door of the prime minister’s office, and a little ‘live’ logo started flashing in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
Speaking to camera, Sørensen said that Prime Minister Carl Bang was now back in Copenhagen after his tour of the Jutland constituencies. It was because of this tour that the prime minister had been unable to spare the time to meet the Iranian-born writer Sara Santanda, who had been the subject of an assassination attempt on Flakfortet in the waters off Copenhagen.
Then came the pictures from Flakfortet they had seen so many times: Vuk’s cold face, which was hard to make out because of the light and the black beard and hair. You could see the pistol on the edge of the shot of Per launching into his flying tackle of Sara, before the picture tipped as the cameraman was hit. John’s body, the body of the television cameraman, the blood and the pale, horror-stricken faces. Per glanced at Lise, but she just went on watching. Maybe she had now seen these sequences so many times that it no longer hurt in quite the same way. The events of that day had been examined from every angle in all the papers and had already been dubbed ‘the Flakfortet massacre’. The same shots had been shown again and again on every channel, on the normal news broadcasts and in one special edition after another.
Peter Sørensen was saying that Sara Santanda had gone to ground again and was being treated at a secret location in the United Kingdom for shock and for the injuries she sustained when Detective Inspector Per Toftlund all
but killed her instead of protecting her life, as was his job. Toftlund, who had been responsible for the security surrounding Santanda’s visit, had declined to comment on the matter, the reporter said.
‘Arsehole,’ Per muttered.
‘Ssh…’ Lise said as the camera zoomed out to show Prime Minister Carl Bang stepping through the glass door of his office and presenting himself for interview. Carl Bang chose his interviews carefully and always preferred to speak live on the television news so that his words could not be edited. In this case he had issued only a brief statement to the press and left his minister of justice to carry the can. That was often how he worked where matters of policy were concerned. He let his lieutenants spy out the land, debate, argue and get lambasted by the media and then, once a line became clear, he would step in with a couple of fatherly words. He never appeared on television unless he himself had chosen the time and the place. As now, when it had been decided to set up a board of inquiry to look into the whole Flakfortet affair and assign responsibility.
‘Prime Minister, you haven’t wanted to make a statement before now,’ Peter Sørensen began, ‘but the minister of justice has said that someone will be held accountable for the fact that things went so terribly wrong at Flakfortet. Is that also how you see it?’
Carl Bang wanted to look straight at the camera but remembered from his media training course that this made a bad impression on viewers. So instead he looked gravely at Peter Sørensen and answered him in what he himself believed to be an avuncular, authoritative and responsible voice, although others found it preachy and annoyingly didactic:
‘First, I would like to say that this was, of course, a highly regrettable and deeply tragic incident. And that it should happen on Danish soil is quite unheard of and totally unacceptable. That cannot be emphasized strongly enough. But at the same time we must be grateful that Ms Santanda survived. We are now in the process of checking whether the relevant authorities had taken adequate security measures to protect this great writer who was visiting our country. And we will find out who is to blame for the fact that this terrorist managed to escape. If that is what happened. Because there seem to be conflicting reports on this point. If there has been any dereliction of duty,
those responsible will be called…how can I put it?…to account. Naturally. Nothing will be swept under the rug. Senseless terrorism has now made its presence felt in Denmark. This is something to which we must now adjust.’
‘What about Iran? Will this have any effect on Denmark’s relations with the state of Iran?’ Peter Sørensen asked.
‘Well, it would appear, from the investigations so far, that the hit man was acting alone. That he was a crazed fanatic, so we ought not to jump to any hasty conclusions about other sovereign nations. We will have to wait for the inquiry to ascertain the exact sequence of events. Everything points to the terrorist having drowned while making his escape. All of this will be looked into, and only once we are in possession of all the relevant facts and have considered them very carefully will we decide whether there are grounds for further deliberation.’
Peter Sørensen was about to break in, but the prime minister carried on undaunted:
‘I would also like to take this opportunity to extend my condolences to the families of those members of the press who died in the course of their work and the police officer who was killed in the line of duty. All honour to their memory!’ He paused for a moment, looked straight at the camera, then turned his head away again: ‘This was a tragic event and, fortunately, a very rare one in our otherwise very safe country. I feel for all the families, both those of the people killed at Flakfortet and those whose loved ones died elsewhere at the hands of this barbaric terrorist. Thank you.’
Carl Bang made to leave, but Peter Sørensen said quickly:
‘Do you regret not having had the time to meet Sara Santanda?’
Carl Bang permitted himself a weary little smile:
‘Of course. I’m sorry my schedule did not allow it. It would have been a great thrill to meet such a great writer. What more can I say? I hope there will be another opportunity.’
‘Do you really think she would want to come back to Denmark?’ Sørensen asked, but Carl Bang had turned on his heel and retreated through the glass door to the safety of his office.
‘Hypocrites! God, they make me sick!’ Lise exclaimed.
‘They’ll fob all the blame off on us as usual,’ Per said.
‘On you personally?’
‘Yep. I’ll probably wind up taking the rap,’ he remarked matter-of-factly.
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Fairness doesn’t come in to it.’
They sat for a while watching the television, although their minds weren’t really on it.
‘But what happened to him?’ she asked.
Per shrugged.
‘
Quien sabe
?’ he said in Spanish. ‘Who knows?’
‘I have a feeling he got away,’ Lise said.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then why haven’t you found his body? And why did two Russian ships just happen to be in the area? They could have been owned by the Mafia. Why was his rented car found at the Stockholm-Helsinki ferry terminal? Did it drive itself to Stockholm? Did it swim across the Sound, maybe? Answer me that!’
Most of this he had heard before. It was the press’s favourite sport: painting scenarios, speculating, conjecturing. Per couldn’t take it anymore, not least because he simply did not understand how Vuk had got away,
if
he had got away. But he would find out, that was for sure. If he was allowed to. He thought about what Lise had just said. Swim across the Sound maybe? Was there a lead there? Might Vuk have trained as a frogman? If he had, then that opened up a whole new channel of investigation. Because he would be able to do things that ordinary mortals could not do. Things one could only learn at the Special Forces Schools around the world, skills Per himself had been taught. But in order to find out they would need the Serbs in Belgrade to give them some information, and that could only be achieved by dint of diplomatic pressure, so the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would have to get to work on the Germans, the Russians and the Americans. What if they could get hold of his service papers? Well, if nothing else, he could start by ringing round the diving shops in Copenhagen. He brightened up a little. There were avenues here that could be explored – assuming, that is, that he could get the go-ahead. Which wasn’t likely. Ten seconds ago he had been sick of the whole business, now his head was buzzing with ideas again. Although it was probably a big waste of time. He fully expected to be suspended for the duration of the inquiry.
But all he said was:
‘He’s in the water, trapped under a sleeper. His bones are being picked clean by those big fat eels down there. They’re going be particularly tasty this year.’
She dug her elbow into his side, snorting in disgust. It made him so happy. It was the first time she had been able to joke with him just a little.
‘Ugh, you’re horrible,’ she said, but he could tell by her voice that she didn’t mean it.
‘If he did get away – and I say
if
– then we’ll get him eventually. We have his name, pictures of him and masses of fingerprints. He’s on wanted lists all over the world, and one of these days he’s going to get caught, you can bet your life on it. If the bloody Iranians don’t knock him off themselves for not fulfilling the contract. He’ll have to spend the rest of his life on the run. He’ll never be able to go to bed at night without looking over his shoulder. He’ll have to watch his every step, spend all his money on protecting himself. He won’t be able to trust a soul. He’ll have to stay on the move all the time. It’ll drive him out of his mind. He’ll make mistakes. And in the end he’ll die, if we don’t catch him first. If he’s alive.’
‘I wonder who he really was. Or is. Vuk, or Janos, or Carsten or whatever the hell he’s called.’
‘The product of a new world order,’ Per sighed, and she heard the note of weariness in his voice. They were both very far down, but perhaps they could help each other to climb up to the surface again. Did she have that much more to lose? Could she ever hope to find love again? Wasn’t she surrounded, day in day out, by lonely people who scanned the lonely-hearts ads on the sly? What did she have to lose?
Per leaned back in the sofa. Lise turned down the sound with the remote control, took his hand and snuggled up against him. She felt the surprise with which his body welcomed hers.
‘You scared the hell out of me, Per,’ she whispered.
‘I know I did.’
‘I felt so betrayed, so abandoned.’
‘I know.’
‘I was scared shitless.’
‘I know.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever really forget it.’
‘I know.’
‘No matter what happens.’
‘I realize that.’
‘But I’m willing to try,’ she said, turning her face up to his. He stroked her cheek as if she were a little child.
‘I’ll probably be suspended,’ he said, placing a finger on her lips as he added: ‘I might go to Spain for a while…’
‘I’d like to come with you, if you’ll have me. And after that we’ll just have to see what happens.’
‘I can’t ask for more than that. As long as I don’t lose you,’ he said.
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s liable to happen any time soon,’ she said and closed her eyes.