The Seventh Child (74 page)

His boss’s explanation was concise and crystal clear:
Meeting about the future. Present: just you and me.

Like an omen, the rain, now in its third straight hour, poured down from the skies on yet another dismal day. When the national minister arrived, his black umbrella—the one with the party monogram stitched into the waterproof material—was sopping wet.

The dying man lay, as he had the last time Enevold had seen him, in the grotesquely large bed that took up half of the room. His shrunken body was elevated to a sitting position, and he greeted his guest with a faint wave of his right hand.

Even though his death seemed imminent, he still held the power to rule the kingdom and to reduce each and every one his subordinates to nothing if he saw fit; thus the otherwise confident national minister hardly dared breathe for fear of triggering the man’s wrath. The treachery with the Tamil boy, he realized—for which the Ministry of State was now liable—had worsened with the latest development of the boy’s death. That he had yet to be sacked could only be explained by the appearance of guilt, and the resulting scandal it was likely to create. The prime minister had no intention of being carried out of his office as a leader of the opposition.

“Have you read the
Independent Weekend
?” The prime minister cut straight to the issue at hand.

“Yes.”

“They’re already calling.”

“Yes.” Ole Almind-Enevold had no idea what to add to that. He was afraid to strike the wrong tone, or say the wrong thing.

“The little Tamil boy
…
is dead.”

“Yes,” Almind-Enevold said for the third time, confirming the dreadful news.

“Can you do nothing more than affirm what I say?” The prime minister grabbed the small remote that controlled the enormous bed’s hydraulics and pressed the red button that lowered the bed to a horizontal position.

He almost said
no
, but caught himself in time. “There are rumors that
he’d
joined the Tamil Tigers.”

A muted buzzing filled the office, and, along with the bed, the prime minister once again rose like an Egyptian Pharaoh in a 1970s horror movie. “Yes, Ole. Rumors
…
and that’s exactly the problem. The only thing people will pay attention to is that the boy is
dead
—and then they’ll say that we killed him.”

“No, I certainly don’t think
…
” Almind-Enevold paused at the worst moment—before the crucial denial. After all, they’d had the boy deported.

“
Deported to His Certain Death
,” the prime minister said. “That will be the headline
…
for weeks to come.”

The prime minister sat up straighter; in his mighty bed he was a foot and a half taller than Almind-Enevold, who stood at the foot of the bed. He hadn’t been asked to sit.

“I once had a canary,” the prime minister said.

“A what?” Ole Almind-Enevold’s mouth fell open in surprise.

“A
canary
. Are you deaf? As a child,” the dying man whispered. “It died just like this
…
in a straw bed
…
drained of energy, wings clipped and unable to fly. But it could still sing. And it
sang
to me until the very last moment.”

Almind-Enevold understood the point his superior was making. The prime minister was dying, but even his weakest call would be heard everywhere, and obeyed.

“First you concoct a plan—which you carry out without my express approval, even though it all seems entirely unnecessary—and then
…
” Furious, the prime minister paused, and Almind-Enevold remained at the foot of his bed, breathless, awaiting the fatal words that would mark the end of his career.

But they didn’t come. Or rather, the prime minister gave the death sentence a new spin: “I intend to call a special press conference tomorrow. It will take place right here, and I plan to make a very special announcement.” A small trail of blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth, down his chin. “Think about it until then, Ole. You can make your decision—
your decision
—before that. For your sake, and the sake of the party.”

There was no mistaking it. Being sacked in disgrace could be avoided if the Almighty One—as a result of the Tamil boy’s death—resigned.

Better today than tomorrow.

For Almind-Enevold, the remainder of the visit occurred in a fog. When he returned to the Ministry of National Affairs, the Witch Doctor, Bog Man, and Carl Malle were all waiting for him.

“Everyone is calling
…
all the media
…
” the Witch Doctor began. There were red splotches high on his sunken cheeks.

“Shut up!” the Almighty One shouted.

The scheming assistant recoiled as though
he’d
been whipped.

“You’re fired!”

A look of relief crossed his face, and—with the same swift movement as a cockroach dashing for a lifesaving crack in a thick concrete wall—the former top advisor scuttled out of the room.

Bog Man collapsed in one of the minister’s fine antique chairs, his skin blue from the bridge of his nose to his temples. To the dismay of the two remaining men, he started giggling, his stiff upper body rocking from side to side. “Isn’t it marvelous?” he sniggered, spit forming peculiar bubbles in the corners of his mouth. “A Danish administration has been ripped to shreds by a Tamil case
…
by an eleven-year-old boy
…
isn’t it just
…
” He collapsed into another snigger, foamy bubbles running down his chin.

“Shut up!” Malle snapped.

Bog Man began to cry, and Malle escorted him roughly to the door. Outside, the rain was pouring from the darkened skies. If the broken department head had wanted one final glimpse of the rainbow he’d always longed for—and his well-deserved retirement in his little Harewood garden—then the moment had now passed forever.

“You’ll have to go back,” Malle whispered to Almind-Enevold.

“Go back?”

“Yes. To the prime minister. What you have to tell him will be the most important thing in your career. For both you and the nation. Ever.”

The minister stared in befuddlement at his last and oldest advisor (there really hadn’t been any others). Malle leaned toward his friend and longtime ally—the man they’d nicknamed the Runner so many years ago, and who in the last days of the war had shot an informant in an alley near Svanemøllen—and he saw that he still had it in him.

The security advisor whispered his next words so close to the national minister’s ear that, even if the room had been wiretapped, no one could have heard what he said. In times like these, and with a government like this, you could never be too certain.

“Dead?” The Professor wrung his hands like a theatrical emcee at a provincial flea market (and perhaps that was what he was becoming now, as his life’s ambition loomed near), but Peter Trøst wasn’t fooled by his reaction.

Trøst had limped into the lion’s cage on his crutches and had just sat at the table in the front of the Concept Room with the Professor and the Concept Boss when Bent Karlsen, the news editor, rushed in, the usual remnants of egg salad on his unshaven chin.

“He’s dead!”
Karlsen shouted. “They’ve just reported from the Ministry of State that the prime minister is
dead
! They’ve declared three days of national mourning.”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” the Professor cried at the top of his lungs. Peter had enough presence of mind to use one of his crutches to push the soundproof door closed. These days, no outsiders were granted access to the Concept Room, which the waning television-station staff sardonically referred to as the Führer’s Bunker. Here, the Professor and his remaining executives spent their time leaning over plans for glorious new concepts and hitherto unknown program formats—which in one stroke would turn defeat to victory and save Channel DK from the brink of bankruptcy. Given the prospect of a global financial crisis, the American mother station was busy saving itself and had decided to cut all ties with its loss-making Danish experiment. A message that had been delivered the previous evening.

“This is a
sign
…
!” the Professor exclaimed. “I knew it would happen
…
We’ll get through this crisis after all. When Almind-Enevold becomes the mightiest man in the nation, everything will work out.” The Professor paused as though
he’d
said too much.

“Yes, and he was present,” Bent Karlsen said as he gobbled up a piece of lettuce stuck to his chin.

“Who was present?” the Concept Boss asked.

“The minister of national affairs was there when it happened. They were discussing his future rule when the prime minister had a heart attack—and died in less than a minute. They’ll bring him out of the ministry tonight. With the honor guard and—”

“Thank you, Karlsen. You may return to work,” the Professor said, interrupting his subordinate in midsentence and summarily dismissing him.

The news chief made his retreat to the door, half bowing, the way people do at the moment of defeat. Then the Professor drew a breath so deep that his throat rattled for several seconds. “This is truly amazing
…
It is so grand
…
so grand I almost can’t believe it is happening in our time. What an
incredible, indomitable
mind
…
” His voice brimmed with air.
“What courage!”

Nobody replied. But they knew who he was talking about.

“Now it will be clear to everyone
…
all my critics. With Ole at the helm, everything will work out. We’ll get state subsidies, we’ll have goodwill—we’ll get all our viewers back
…
and we’ll expand our audience!”

Trøst noticed that the Professor had, for the first time ever, genuine and sincere tears in his bloodshot eyes.

“Everyone who has left the sinking ship these last months
…
all these traitors
…
media careerists, good-for-nothings, whore reporters, all the ones who let us down
…
now they’ll all see that we won in the end.”

Trøst studied his boss without replying. His leg prickled. Doctors didn’t know what was wrong with him. He could walk, but only with difficulty, and the undiagnosed illness had postponed his departure from Channel DK indeterminately. With so much compassion pouring forth for the beloved star reporter, the Professor could hardly fire him yet.

“We won!”
the Professor said again.

Trøst stood—strangely, since he hadn’t ordered his legs to go anywhere—and left the Concept Room. He just managed to hear the Professor’s objection before the heavy door slammed behind him. He took the elevator to the lobby where the last loyal receptionists greeted the Cigar’s ever fewer guests and employees.

Walking outside, he felt as though
he’d
finally entered the Light after an eternity in Darkness. He turned his gaze toward the southwest and blinked.

Throughout his life, Nils Jensen avoided situations that were embarrassing or uncomfortable—situations in which others became self-conscious or in which he was forced to say things that might hurt them. So,
he’d
decided to wait until his mother had gone grocery shopping and he could be alone with his father.

“There’s something I need to ask you and Mom about
…
”

From behind his thin glasses, the old night watchman looked at his son mildly.
He’d
been reading the Sunday paper, an activity that tended to take the better part of a week.

Nils tried the simple sentence again—this time directed only at his father: “There’s something I have to ask you about, Dad.”

“Yes?” said the man
who’d
guarded the Black Square against burglars and shady individuals for fifty-four years before his retirement.

“Why did you say the
boy
…
?” The question came out of the blue—even to Nils—and for a moment there was total silence in the living room. It was a bizarre question.