The Last Compromise (6 page)

‘Maybe
they realise this themselves,’ Hans said. ‘And it frustrates them even more.
History hasn’t been exactly easy on them, either.’

‘I
know that,’ Siim nodded. ‘Our country landed in a rough neighbourhood.’

Hans
got a passing waiter’s attention and ordered one more for each of them, so that
the beer would arrive when they’d finish the glasses they had now.

‘But
we’re inside,’ Hans said. ‘And right now the problem is not just getting into
the club where you want to be. Now the club doesn’t want you in to begin with.
Just look at the next candidate in the queue. They also used to be in the
Soviet sphere. You think Europe will even open negotiations with them, for
membership in the future?’

‘It
has to, at least it has to open talks.’ Siim put both hands on the table. ‘Europe
made a promise. If you are a European country, and if you are able and willing
to follow the rules, you can apply for membership. We cannot go back on that
just because Russia is bullying its neighbours. It would mean to prove them
right.’

The
beer arrived. They emptied their old glasses, gave them back to the waiter, and
started working on the new ones. They both took a swig, and then another one.
Breathed out.

‘How’s
Clarissa?’, Hans asked.

‘Good.
Very good. Two more months of research in Holland. I hope all the radiation in
her lab up there won’t make her infertile. We’re thinking about getting married,
and so on. How’s your own sex life?’

‘Long-distance.
It’s very safe sex.’

‘Is
Julia back in Estonia yet?’

‘No,
she’s still doing her fellowship at that hospital. But it doesn’t really matter
if she’s a thousand kilometres away in Estonia, or another thousand away in
some other direction.’

‘You
should meet someone here,’ Siim said. ‘See how it works out. If it doesn’t work
out with the girl in Brussels you can still go back to Julia, while she’s so
far away anyway. You can even try out several girls here.’

Hans
took another swig. No need to act all offended. It’s not like the thought had
never crossed his own mind.

‘I
need a favour, Siim,’ he said.

‘What’s
the favour about?’

‘I
need to make a few phone calls from your office to ask around about something.’

Siim
put on an evil smirk. ‘Will I get into trouble?’

‘No.
It’s just preliminary. If it’s nothing, then nothing will happen. It there’s
something, then there’ll be an investigation and we’ll get everything anyway.
But I can’t call from my own office, and I can’t use the phone of anyone else in
my building, we all have creepy numbers. It has to be innocuous.’

‘I
don’t know Hans.’

‘Relax,
it’s for the greater good,’ Hans smiled. ‘For our mutual fatherland.’

‘Am
I allowed to know what it’s about?’

‘I’ll
tell you when I know if it’s something or nothing, I promise.’

Siim
shook his head, smiling. It meant he agreed. They both took another swig. Hans
had to burp, and this time he only half suppressed it. ‘I should be going after
this one. Lots of work tomorrow. And you have your railroad stuff to do.’

‘Ah,
it will get approved with some changes, by compromise as usual,’ Siim sighed. ‘The
national governments want it themselves, they asked for it in the first place.
And the moment they approve it they will turn around and tell their voters that
Brussels is forcing absurd regulations on them. And the voters will love
hearing it. And then they’ll wonder why the anti-Europe parties are on the
rise.’

Nothing
to say to that. Hans listened to the music and the chatter for a few moments. He
didn’t want to close his eyes for fear of getting vertigo, but the atmosphere
was enjoyable whether his eyes were closed or open. Oh yes, Murphy’s was a fine
place, a very fine place to be.

A new morning,
the sun in the clear sky was already blinding the crowd hurrying along the
street. Pavel looked out the window, the right side, the side that wasn’t
obscured by the flag. His morning tea was no longer hot. If we wanted he could
just hold the glass with his hands now, without using the metal handle.

The
consular staff’s hospitality was running out. He could sense it. But he didn’t
need to try it for much longer. Even though he had just managed to relax his
mouth, he now pressed his lips tightly together again.

Brussels

Now
we’re making progress, Hans thought. Bright new morning, bright new progress. In
fact the morning wasn’t bright at all, outside it was still as grey and cold as
it had been the day before, plus now it was also getting wet. And he felt just
a little numb from last night’s beers.

But
the progress was nice nevertheless. Atomic energy department, sub-department
for reporting, administrative support unit. Based in Luxembourg. Six posts,
plus one head of unit. That was where the incoming national reports were
processed and converted into the first draft of Commission reports. Hans had
made the calls from Siim’s office. If anyone had wondered why he was asking, he
had said that it was for a study on the railroad policy implications of the
transport of nuclear waste. But that it was very tentative at this stage. He
had selected numbers within atomic energy that looked like they could be
relevant. Within the list he had chosen the people he would call. No heads of
unit, only assistants and administrators, the workhorses in the middle of the
hierarchy. Three conversations later he had obtained what he needed.

Now
Hans was sipping his machine coffee from a plastic cup as he went through the
list he’d just printed out. He had a printer in his own office, a little perk
everyone on his floor enjoyed, more or less justified by the need to print out
confidential documents sometimes.

His
computer made a sound, telling him an e-mail had arrived. But it was only one
of the usual security warnings. Brussels police were informing Commission staff
that protests by farmers had been authorised for Friday. The farmers were
probably protesting about their milk prices having gone down, or about trade
with countries outside the European Union being opened up, which in the end
might have the same result. A square and two adjacent streets were going to be
blocked by tractors and closed for traffic for most of Friday afternoon.
Commission staff were advised to behave prudently.

Hans
returned to his work at hand. He read the names on the sheet. The head of unit
was a man called Stavros Theodorakis. The six posts were, in alphabetical
order, Pedro Maluenda, one vacancy, another vacancy, Ilona Velikova, Anneli
Villefranche, Boris Zayek. Four people manning six desks. Poor Mister Theodorakis,
running a unit like that. Two of his six posts were vacant. At the next round
of budget cuts he would be kissing these posts goodbye forever. They would take
them away from him, since apparently the unit was functioning just fine at
two-thirds capacity. They would give the posts to another unit somewhere else.
Except this administrative support unit was
not
functioning just fine,
as Hans seemed to have found out. As he seemed to have indication to further
explore.

Not
enough staff. Hans looked at the ceiling. Perhaps the irregularity in the
reporting was due to the fact that the unit was understaffed and overworked?
That the omissions in the lists were simply mistakes? Typos, basically,
something copy-pasted into the wrong line by a tired worker late in the
evening? Hans realised he had never seriously considered this option. His boss
Tienhoven had not said anything, just kept it experimental, and let him go
right ahead. Let the young man make some mistakes, it’s part of life. He’s
talented, but this will make him more mature. Viktor hadn’t said anything
either. It was just him.
Your stupid games. You child.

Hans
took a breath and looked back down on the list in his hand. Either way is fine,
he thought. If it’s all just a mistake they would find out. After all
anti-fraud, or audit, or criminal investigation was not about uncovering as
many crimes as possible, or putting as many people as possible in jail. A low
incidence of crimes could just mean a low crime rate, which was good.
Prosecutors should be happy about it. Hans looked out the window. The sky over
Brussels was dark and heavy. Tiny raindrops were holding on to the glass.
Anti-fraud people should be happy about the absence of fraud, but clearly they
were not.

His
computer made another sound. An e-mail had arrived, and it was from Viktor.
There was some explanatory text in the body of the message, and two attached
Excel sheets.

Luxembourg

Boris
Zayek was going through the same routine on the second country he was handling,
which was Latvia. Opening, checking, verifying, inserting. He had gone straight
to work after arriving at the office, no hot chocolate this time. Anneli had
already been there when he’d come in. That was usually the case on Wednesdays.
Something about her husband and her children. She brings them to school, he
goes to work early and picks them up, or the other way around, except on
Fridays, some deal like that. That was not Zayek’s main concern right now.
Later today his boss Theodorakis would announce the rotation, and that was the
concern. Zayek would lose the North and be given another European region to
handle. But it was never known in advance who would get what, which made
planning ahead difficult.

For
now he needed to finish Latvia. Not a large country, at least in terms of
population size. By area it had the surface of Holland and Belgium combined. But
it was the location that made it special. Why weren’t the Russians interested
in Latvia? He had it here, it was right in front of him. And it was so obvious.
Maybe too obvious.

Zayek
remembered his first operational experience back in Germany. It had been in the
army, just like he had planned. Not all of his military service had been
enjoyable. During basic training there had been physical exercise, which had
been tough, and being yelled at all day had not been pleasant either. Although
mostly he had been just sitting around waiting like everybody else. His fellow
soldiers were all morons. But then, after basic training, and for the remainder
of his service, he had been assigned to do desk duty for the regimental
administration. His job had been to type over written requests for leave and
expense claims into a newly installed computer. So he had sat in his camouflage
uniform at a desk all day, shuffling papers and typing. But his office had been
near an archive and he knew where the keys were, and inside the files were
lined up on open shelves. And so several times a month he would slip in and
make photocopies of anything he could get a hold of. Instructions, manuals,
names, phone numbers. Because he knew that real foreign intelligence was not
about getting a blueprint of a new missile, or something similarly spectacular.
It was about getting many little pieces of information which in themselves were
insignificant. Railroad schedules, the maximum weight supported by a bridge,
employment records. He had compiled three thick envelopes of paper sheets. The
Russians would know what to do with it, they were better professionals than he
was, he’d assumed. Now the hard part had been to make contact with the Russians,
because still no-one had actually sought to recruit him.

Brussels

‘Viktor
from statistics e-mailed me the first part of his analysis of the raw data,’
Hans said. He was standing in front of his boss’s desk. The door connecting
Tienhoven’s office with the corridor was open. So was the secretary’s door.

‘A
sample of two countries now,’ Hans continued. ‘It’s not finished yet, but the
pattern keeps getting more and more suspicious. Information from the national
authorities disappears from Commission reports. We know which unit handles the
raw data. While we wait for the rest of the analysis, I would like to request
the personnel records for some cross-referencing. It’s only five people.’

‘You
know this is not an investigation yet,’ Tienhoven said. ‘Only the
director-general can open a formal investigation.’

‘I
know, but you can authorise a little probe.’

Come
on, come one, say it.

Tienhoven
asked, ‘What are you hoping to find?’

Hans
wasn’t sure what, he’d have to look first. ‘There could be irregularities in
someone’s biography, or some link to an industry from a previous employment, or
some link to the four countries where the uranium is disappearing. It’s a
routine random probe, basically.’

‘Except
it’s not random.’

Hans
had nothing more to add. Please?

Tienhoven
nodded. ‘Okay.’

Yes,
we’re in business.

‘Thanks,
Willem.’

Hans
left Tienhoven’s office, briskly walked down the corridor past the row of
closed doors and returned to his own office. He sat down and looked around. Not
bad. When he’d first seen his office he had assumed he’d have to share it with
somebody else. There were plenty of Commission departments where such a space
would hold one administrator, one assistant and an intern. Siim for example had
an office to himself over at transport, but it was the size of Hans’s filing
cabinet. Not bad, not bad at all. Hans revived his screen to make the request
to the personnel department.

Luxembourg

Evidently
he couldn’t just walk into the Russian embassy with his photocopies. Zayek would
have looked like a fool. So he’d sent the packages by post. Three heavy
packages, addressed to the Russian embassy. He had put a slip of paper with his
name and his army unit number into each envelope, so that they could find him
and recruit him and take it from there. At least they would know where it had
come from. But they hadn’t called. Not the next day, not in the weeks that
followed, not during the remainder of his service. He had kept sitting behind
his desk in his camouflage uniform, typing, waiting. But then again, it had all
made sense. Obviously they couldn’t send him a letter saying thank you. That
would have exposed them in case the letter got intercepted. Or in case they
thought that the material was a trap, that the envelopes had been sent by the
Americans, or the BND, to test them somehow.

After
the army he had studied at the university closest to his home town. Law at
first, but he had found it tedious and the lecture halls had been crowded. Then
he’d switched to business administration. It hadn’t been a very good subject
either. The lecture halls were just as crowded, it had turned out. The things
they’d had to learn didn’t seem very scientific, and he had found the math
difficult to follow. He’d been almost thirty by the time he graduated. He had found
a job at the municipal administration of a nearby town, halfway between his
home town and his university town, and that was where he’d lived, and that was
where he’d worked. The computer back in the army had been new, the one at the
municipality old. Then suddenly things had happened very quickly.

And,
by God, it had been extremely invigorating. Not just the trust and the
responsibility that he had been suddenly, finally accorded. It had also been
quite simply a baffling career leap. All his colleagues, all the Annelis and
Pedros and Ilonas around him at the Commission had needed to revise for months
to pass the entrance exams. They had all needed to sweat and stress out about
the assessment centre, where they’d been given a big task and not enough time,
just to see them prioritise and work under pressure. All that sweat and
exertion just to end up on a list of names, not even in an actual job but merely
on a reserve list from which they still had needed to apply for posts inside
the Commission. They had needed to do all that, but not him. Not Boris Zayek
from Germany with his dubious foreign passport. The sad-looking gentleman from
Russian intelligence, who had never told him his fake name let alone his real
name, had explained it all to him. This is your new name, you are already on
the reserve list, now go and apply for a job. You understand the responsibility
that you now have, the trust we put in you, the debt you owe us, and the means
we have to protect your secret. Our secret. Oh, yes, he’d understood all that
very well. Astonishing, thrilling. Invigorating. There’d been no better word
for it.

Brussels

‘I
think I found it. It’s their languages.’

The
personnel records had arrived during lunchtime. Now Hans was sitting opposite Tienhoven,
at a small table in the corner of his boss’s office. There was a small stack of
papers lying on the table between them. Both doors were closed, the one leading
out to the corridor and the one between Tienhoven’s and his secretary’s office.

Tienhoven
was listening, the usual serious look on his face. He had been a pretty senior
police investigator in the Netherlands, in the city of Utrecht, before joining
the Commission. There had been a job competition specifically for senior posts
within anti-fraud. Big or small, young or old, they all had to pass the
competition. Even senior policemen from Utrecht, which was not the country’s
quietest town. Hans had been to Utrecht once. The city map had showed traces of
medieval urban design, with canals that used to be moats. But there’d been nothing
picturesque about the city. It had been a disturbing monstrosity made of
concrete and teeming with people who’d either been hurrying somewhere, or who’d
been loitering about, nothing between those extremes. Or maybe that was just
the area around the train station.