The Last Compromise (7 page)

‘For
each staff member the records show the languages they speak,’ Hans said. ‘As
you know, to be recruited at the Commission you have to speak at least two
European languages, and to be promoted you have to speak at least three.’ Hans
took a set of sheets and handed them to Tienhoven.

‘Here.
Pedro Maluenda. He speaks Spanish, French and English.’ Tienhoven turned over
the first page as Hans continued talking. ‘Stavros Theodorakis, their head of
unit. He speaks Greek, French and English.’ Next page. ‘Ilona Velikova. Czech,
Slovak, English.’ Next. ‘Anneli Villefranche. Finnish, Swedish, French,
English.’ And then the last one. ‘Boris Zayek. English, German.’

Hans
paused, and added, ‘It’s about this Zayek. He does not speak Bulgarian.’

Tienhoven
kept reading. ‘His nationality is Bulgarian, born in Sofia,’ he said, still
looking at Zayek’s sheet. ‘He could have grown up somewhere else. If he grew up
in Britain or Ireland he could have learned German at school, or he had a
German girlfriend. Or boyfriend. If he grew up in Germany he would have had
English at school like everybody else.’

‘Yes,
the thing is, he passed the job competition with Bulgarian as his first
language,’ Hans said, trying to keep his excitement down. He handed Tienhoven another
set of sheets stapled together. They were copies from Zayek’s recruitment
office file. ‘The math questions, the logic questions, the interviews, the case
study under time pressure, the presentation exercise, the simulated group
discussion, everything. The assessment during the recruitment process required
excellent knowledge of Bulgarian, a language which, according to his employment
file, Zayek doesn’t speak.’

‘And
this did not raise any alarms,’ Tienhoven said, half as a statement, half as a
question.

‘The
recruitment office is in charge of putting qualified candidates on the reserve
list,’ Hans said. ‘My guess is that once you’re on the list, the recruitment
office doesn’t care about you anymore. Because from then on Commission
departments, if they have a specific vacancy to fill, will do the actual
hiring. They contact people who had made it onto the reserve list. And they’re
interested in your CV, your experience, your personality. Not in how you made
it to the list.’

‘We
do cross-reference these things,’ Tienhoven said, finally raising his head and
looking at Hans.

‘Yes,
but we are anti-fraud, we check much more than that,’ Hans said, quietly. He
didn’t want to sound self-important about where he worked. ‘Zayek had applied
for, I am sorry to say, a low-key support unit, with what seems to be a dull
job routine, in the middle of nowhere. The wrong end of the wrong town, as
Viktor from statistics told me. The boss there cannot fill his unit, two out of
six posts are vacant. Maybe he was worried that if he couldn’t hire enough
people the Commission will scrap his vacancies altogether. He was probably
begging Zayek on his knees to accept the job and to stay. And it’s not like his
job actually requires any knowledge of Bulgarian.’

Tienhoven
waited for a second, then he said, ‘An outside observer would now say that you
have found some errors in some reports that no-one reads, and a staff member
with some mix-up in his documents. And you are connecting the two, and you are
suggesting something on that basis.’

Hans
said nothing. Just stared at his boss. He should have presented it more
cautiously, with caveats. There seem to be reasons to believe. There are
indications. Clues. Hints. It would have been the mature thing to do.
Apparently. His older brother Margus would have brought it on more slowly, and
he would’ve gotten farther. Now Hans could still hastily add that this had all
been experimental, mere research, just like Tienhoven had ordered. A test to
see whether statistical analysis could reveal something. Even if it was something
harmless, explicable, unconnected.

The
phone on Tienhoven’s desk rang. The boss glanced over to see which name would
appear on the display, to decide whether he would take the call or not. He took
it. He got right up, walked over to his desk, lifted the receiver to his ear
and said his name. Hans kept looking at him. Tienhoven was standing behind his
desk, listening to the voice in the receiver. In a second he would make a mute
gesture in Hans’s direction, telling him to either stay and wait or to leave
and come back later. But he didn’t make any gestures, he just kept listening.
So Hans stayed right where he was.

He
looked around his boss’s office. The weather outside was still depressing, but
at least it had stopped raining. Hans gave the walls a closer look. There was
no art, just a calendar and an organisation chart. A picture of what had to be Tienhoven’s
daughter was standing on the desk. She was Hans’s age on the picture, she had
fair hair, freckles and a sweet laugh. He didn’t see the picture now, because
it was turned towards the occupant of the desk, not to the visitors. But he’d
seen it often enough in here, and he remembered the image, the face. She would
have been cute growing up, but now she was an attractive young woman. Hans
frowned and focused back on his boss, who was just ending the phone call.

‘Yes,’
Tienhoven said into the receiver. ‘Yes, please do.’

He
hung up and looked over to Hans.

‘That
was Clarke. Looks like somebody else is interested in your project.’

Hans
paused for a moment. Geoffrey Clarke was the director-general, Tienhoven’s
boss. ‘Clarke is interested in Zayek?’

‘No,
not Clarke. He just called to tell me. His
boss
is interested.’

Hans
raised his eyebrows. Above Clarke there was only the top level of the Commission.
These people were not bureaucrats, not even senior advisors. These were
politicians. Maria Schuster-Zoll, the German member of the European Commission.

‘And
she’s not interested in your guy or anybody in particular,’ Tienhoven said,
sitting back down at the little table he’d just left. ‘She probably doesn’t
want to know any details, let alone names. But she lets us know that she wants
us to liaise with the German foreign intelligence authorities to help them check
out someone specific in the atomic energy department. Someone in Luxembourg.’

The lunch break
was nearly over, they couldn’t stay forever.

But
they lay there in such a tight and warm and comforting embrace. This was
precisely what she wanted to do. Stay forever. Of course this was silly, a
stupid thing to even think. And she would stop thinking it in a few moments. There
were certain realities in life which they both knew very well. They weren’t
teenagers. Not even newlyweds. Almost the opposite.

‘Sorry,
wait a second,’ he whispered to her.

He
freed himself from her embrace and went to the bathroom to take the condom off.
Anneli watched him disappear from view. Of course she would wait a second. This
was part of it as well, in the end. This was not the anticipation, not the
excitement. Not the mutual pleasure, not the selfish pleasure. Not the skin,
not the open mouths, not the gliding touches, the breathing. But it was just as
much real. In the movies people had unprotected sex all the time, even with
complete strangers. But she had a husband. And children.

She
looked up. He came back and lay down next to her, still naked, his face turned
to hers, his arm resting on her body. He didn’t say anything. He was just
looking at her. She was now looking at the ceiling. The curtains were drawn,
the pale grey sunlight shone weakly around the edges.

‘We
have to get back,’ she said, quietly. But she didn’t move.

He
didn’t reply. And he didn’t move either.

They
just lay there for a long while in the warmth of the hotel bed. They had warmed
it up themselves with the heat of their bodies.

Finally
she sighed. She took his arm off her body and forced herself to get up. She started
looking for her clothes.

Viktor
turned around and tried to remember where he had put his glasses.

Brussels

‘You
meet with the German secret spy guy,’ Tienhoven said.

‘Me?’
Hans was still sitting at his boss’s little table. He was not entirely
comfortable with this idea, although he immediately felt the thrill. A certain
heat pressing from the inside against his chest. He knew it well. But this was
going very fast. Just a moment ago he’d felt like he was getting ahead of
himself with that Bulgarian theory of his, and now it was already turning into
a joint clandestine operation with the intelligence service of the largest
European Union member country.

‘This
is not an official investigation, remember?’, Tienhoven explained. ‘This is just
experimental research, with a little probe. We haven’t questioned anybody, we
haven’t seized any files or computer drives, we haven’t suspended anyone or
anything.’

‘And
this means?’

‘If
I get involved already now, at my level, our mutual boss Geoffrey Clarke will
want to cover himself. He will bring in Nathalie Bresson from the legal
service. If you know what I mean.’

Hans
knew what he meant. In her previous life Bresson had worked at the ministry of
justice in Paris. She was brainy but cautious, as you presumably had to be in her
position. But Hans knew that his boss held a more explicit opinion. Tienhoven had
never been to law school himself, but he had dealt with a lot of members of
various legal professions. And he was convinced that French universities didn’t
teach people to find solutions. They taught them to be afraid of the professor.
Which meant the graduates were worthless when it came to solving problems.

‘So
you go meet the German,’ Tienhoven said. ‘And you just chat, informally, see
what he wants from us. If it is related to this nuclear business, maybe he can
add something to help you. If it’s something else, you can explain a little how
we work, in general. If you start feeling uncomfortable, say you have to check
with your superiors. If it’s harmless, you solve it right there.’

You
dog, Hans thought. How can it be harmless if Commissioner Schuster-Zoll makes a
call from up high? From the gigantic metallic-looking building that one could
see from the conference room window, and that was basically the Mount Olympus
of the Commission? Tienhoven just didn’t want to find himself in the first line
of defence, that had to be it. He wanted to be the reserve line, the backup, he
wanted to be prepared for what was coming his way.

‘Relax,’
Tienhoven said, as if sensing that Hans needed more assurance. ‘This has to be
low-profile, no big story. They somehow persuaded her to help the process along,
but she couldn’t start anything really official just because she’s German.’

Hans
thought about it. Commissioners were not meant to represent their home country,
that was true. Instead they had portfolios on subject-matters, like cabinet
ministers. Schuster-Zoll was Commissioner for internal affairs and good
administration, overseeing anti-fraud among other things. The fact that she was
also German was more or less coincidental. She could not authorise, let alone
order, any action on that basis alone.

Maybe
Tienhoven just wanted to give Hans some freedom. After all, if some
whistle-blower inside the Commission turned to anti-fraud, it was not unusual
for them to first meet informally and chat. Without any senior staff present.
Hans had already done such meetings before, in bars or cafés.

‘You
don’t speak German, right?’, Tienhoven asked.

‘No,
I’m trying to improve my French.’

‘No
problem, so you’ll speak English. And don’t let them come here,’ Tienhoven added.
‘These people are trained in manipulating other people. It’s all mind games. If
they need us, they can’t expect us to invite them right over, like we have
nothing else to do. Clarke said the guy’s in Cologne right now. You don’t have
a car, right? Borrow one of ours then, and meet with him halfway.’

‘What,
like in Aachen?’

‘No,
not Aachen, that’s in Germany. Take Liège or Maastricht. But don’t drink any
beer. They’re trained in that as well. They swallow a cup of oil before, and
then they get you drunk. Gabriela?’

His
secretary opened the door and peered inside. Tienhoven said to her, ‘I’ll now
forward you an e-mail from Clarke, please call the number that’s mentioned
there and agree on a meeting between Hans and this Frank Hoffmann. In
Maastricht, this afternoon.’

Luxembourg

‘Have
you thought about Easter?’, Viktor asked. ‘It’s at the end of next week
already.’

He
had just finished buttoning his shirt. Anneli knew he always put on the shirt
first, the trousers second, so they would cover the shirt’s bottom edge neatly.
Otherwise he’d have to stuff the shirt into the already fixed trousers.

‘I’m
sorry Viktor,’ she said, buttoning up her blouse. ‘I really need to go. Stavros
is doing his holy rotation ceremony again. He loves it, it’s the highlight of
our calendar.’

‘Nothing
big, not a whole weekend, just something like we did in February,’ Viktor said.
‘And not
during
Easter, obviously. After that.’

Of
course not during Easter. Those were the school holidays.

‘I
know,’ Anneli said. ‘And I’m not against it. I just didn’t have the time to
think of something. And maybe we shouldn’t overdo it, either. But right now I
have to run.’

She
finished the blouse and gave him a kiss on the lips.

‘I
liked that,’ Viktor said.

‘Me
too.’ Anneli made a point of smiling, and hurried to the door. ‘Your turn to
pay!’, she sang as she disappeared into the dark corridor that led to the
staircase down to the hotel lobby.

Maastricht,
the Netherlands

Hans
was sitting at the agreed time outside a street café with a view on Vrijthof, a
large square open only to pedestrians. It was late afternoon, traffic between
Brussels and Maastricht had been forgiving. Hans didn’t own a car now, but back
in Tallinn he’d had one, mainly to go to Lake Peipus or visit his parents in
Tartu, and his driving was still fine.

It
was relatively cold outside, Hans was wearing his winter jacket, the dark grey
one with the zippers on the pockets. But at least the sun had come through, and
it was shining in his face. There was a small half-empty bottle of still water
on the table. It was still so that Hans wouldn’t have to suppress any carbon
gases during the conversation, or exhale them through the nose. The place was
one in a whole row of cafés all facing the square. On the far side of the
square there were two cathedrals, the one on the left built from red stone, the
one on the right built from brown stone. Maybe it was one Protestant, one
Catholic, Hans wondered. Maybe the red one wasn’t a cathedral at all, just a
bell tower for the massive brown thing. He was trying to distract himself from
the fact that he was actually a little nervous.

The
German had agreed to meeting with him here. It meant that the Germans needed
the Commission more than the Commission needed them, Hans assured himself. He
looked around him again. At the table next to his a group of university students
were having an early beer. They were talking in fluent English, each with a
different accent. Behind him people were squeezing through the narrow gap
between the entrances of the cafés and the chairs and tables outside them.
No-one was walking across the square, they all went through the gap.

‘I’m
Frank Hoffmann, nice to meet you.’ The man looked at Hans as he came out of the
gap, a smile on his face, a little lost, like he had forgotten everything else
around him. Same age as Hans, perhaps a little older. Short fair hair, light grey
jacket.

Hans
got up from his chair. ‘Hans Tamberg. Pleased to meet you.’ They shook hands,
and they both sat down.

‘Officially
I’m not even here,’ Hoffmann whispered leaning across the table, still smiling,
in a fake conspirational voice. ‘My real name is not Hoffmann either, as you surely
understand.’

Hans
smiled back at him, tentatively. ‘But it’s still your name, fake or not, right?’

‘They
give us a new fake family name every five months,’ Hoffmann continued, like he
could hardly believe himself how exciting it all was. ‘We get to keep our first
name, though, otherwise we’d all go crazy.’

‘Is
Frank your real name, then?’

‘Of
course not, haha!’ Hoffmann was positively cheerful. Hans liked him already.
Which, he realised, must have been precisely the point. Still, it felt good to
start out on such a positive note.

Hoffmann
said, ‘So Hans, how can we help each other?’

‘I
don’t know, you tell me.’

‘There
is a man working for the European Commission, his name is Boris Zayek.’
Hoffmann had not hesitated for a moment before starting telling him. Clearly he
knew exactly what he would and wouldn’t say. ‘We believe that he’s really
working for the Russian intelligence services.’

Hans
stared at him, trying not to form any particular facial expression. ‘How do you
know?’

Hoffmann
continued, again without pausing. ‘Because a Russian defector showed up at our
consulate in Saint Petersburg. He says the man who works for the Commission is
in fact a German citizen who is using a false identity. It looks like it’s
true. I am instructed to expose him, us together with you.’

Petten,
the Netherlands

The
familiar hum filled the control room. Professor Koopmans saw his own reflection
in the thick glass. His wrinkled face looked tired. He changed the focus of his
gaze and looked right through the glass. Inside, two people were clumsily
moving around in their enormous protection suits, like astronauts on a space
station. Men or women, impossible to tell. Orange lights started flashing, both
behind the glass and in the control room.

‘Two
more seconds, like last time,’ the dark-haired woman at the panel said. Her
name was Clarissa, she was here for two more months on a research grant.
Everybody here was from somewhere else. This was the Joint Research Centre.
Koopmans himself was Dutch, he had grown up on the North Sea, seventy
kilometres down the coast, but that was mere coincidence. Just having the right
passport or the right birthplace did not get you very far around here.

The
hum got lower and softer. The orange lights were no longer flashing. Clarissa
turned around to face him, and said, ‘That was it, plus one more hour for the
secondary cooling cycle. The computer will work the rest of the day and all
night. And now we wait.’

Koopmans
kept looking at the astronauts inside, at the glass, at his own reflection.
Yes, now we wait. He turned around, pushed against the heavy door, and stepped
outside onto the steel platform, ten metres above the ground. A sharp cold wind
was blowing from the sea. The wide sky above the sea and the dunes was grey.
Tiny drops of cold water started covering his face.

Down
below he saw a man half his age stride through the wind towards the base of the
platform. It was Kenneth, also here on a research grant. He reached the base of
the stairs, raised his head, and shouted up to Koopmans, ‘They say they
checked! They can’t deliver it, because it’s cancelled! All of it!’

Koopmans
breathed in the cold air. He squinted into the wind, then closed his eyes. He let
the water drops chill his face, let them wet his eyelids. He looked down to
Kenneth again, and started carefully walking down the steel stairs. Above and
behind him was the door through which he had just come. It was set in the top
floor of a large windowless concrete cube. Behind it was another, even larger
concrete structure. Beyond it, dwarfing them both, rose the towering menace of
the reactor dome.