The Woman from Bratislava (33 page)

In this instance, Vuldom’s wry tones:

‘Toftlund …? Shall we get on with it? Or do you need more time to think?’

‘No, I’m ready now.’

‘Excellent. The rest of us have been ready for some time.’

Toftlund collected his thoughts and began, trying as he did so to find his way to that nucleus of self-confidence which he knew he possessed:

‘We’ve made the link between the various individuals
concerned
, and everything points in the same direction. Their stories tie up all the way down the line. Irma was born in 1940, her parents were Nazis – they’re both listed in the Bovrup Files. Her father was among the first to enlist when the Danish Legion was formed in ’41. He served on the Russian Front, then in Yugoslavia and, later, in Russia again. He appears to have deserted, but we now know that he was living illegally in Yugoslavia. Fritz was born in 1943, nine months after his father had been home in Denmark on furlough. He’s led a pretty undramatic life: trained as a baker, national service, married, children, comfortably off, runs a big business, solid citizen. The only slightly unusual thing about him is that he’s a regular donor to the Danish Legion Veterans’
Association
. But that’s because of his father, obviously. Fritz himself has been a member of the Conservative Party since 1982. Teddy was born in 1948. A somewhat erratic career, finances in a terrible mess, more wives and girlfriends that I can count, but nothing criminal on record. Adopted by his step-father. I’m sure it came as a complete surprise to him to hear that he had a half-sister and that his father didn’t die when he was a baby. Both Teddy and Fritz have been extremely cooperative. Same goes for Irma’s friends and other family members. The mother has forgotten her past. She’s in a nursing home on Fünen. Advanced Alzheimer’s. Impossible to get any sense out of her.’

Toftlund crossed to the table and took a swig of his mineral water before continuing:

‘The Nazi father returned home after the worst of the Danes’ thirst for revenge had been satisfied. After a couple of months in Faarhus prison camp his sentence was suspended. No public mention of this. No one seems to have paid much attention to
him until 1952, when he was recognised at a shooting party. He ran off back to Yugoslavia. We think he appropriated the papers of a Norwegian sailor who was reported missing around then by the Norwegian Seamen’s Mission. Later, a badly decomposed body was found in the harbour with the father’s papers on it. The German police believe the Norwegian was murdered. But they didn’t pursue the case at the time and now it’s just some yellowing papers in a file. Then there’s Mira, or Maria. Born around 1944 in what is now Croatia. The joker in the pack, if you like. Definitely an intelligence agent. According to my Slovakian contact possibly a double or even triple agent. All in all a woman of many talents.’

He paused again.

‘It began during the war. The Second World War and the
occupation
, but forget all thought of neo-Nazi conspiracies. It’s got nothing to do with that. Charlotte has been following up that line of inquiry …’

‘Keep it brief, Charlotte,’ Vuldom said.

Charlotte Bastrup drew herself up in her chair. Her grey blouse suited her slim form, Toftlund thought, and forced himself to
concentrate
on anything other than her lips, her eyes, her little ears and the body under the thin fabric, through which he could just discern her bra. Bastrup kept it short and to the point:

‘Twelve thousand young men joined the Waffen SS between 1940 and 1945. Six thousand of these served with the Danish Legion on the Eastern Front, and later with various SS units. Around three thousand of them were killed. The figures are a bit vague. These troops were dispatched with the blessing of the Danish
government
. Officers were allowed to keep their pension entitlements and so on. Their commander-in-chief made recruitment speeches on national radio. They were given a rousing send-off with a parade, brass band and all. When their great hero, a Commander von Schalburg, was killed on the Eastern Front, members of the royal family and the government attended the memorial service for him. After the war, most of the survivors were sentenced to
between two and four years in prison for having joined the other side. None of them were convicted of war crimes on the Eastern Front, even though the SS as a whole was condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunal for crimes against humanity. While some veterans of the Eastern Front were executed by the Danish police, this was for crimes committed on Danish soil. After the war people tried to forget that most of the Danes who fell during those ‘five black years’, as they are called, died fighting for the Germans. Not against the occupying power. Few, if any, history books mention that fact. And I certainly didn’t learn about it at school.’

‘No, we’re good at sweeping the muck under the carpet,’ Vuldom put in. ‘As a nation we’re good at suppressing the darker chapters of our common history.’

‘That’s what Huey, Dewey and Uni said too,’ Bastrup said.

‘Who?’

Charlotte’s ear lobes reddened slightly, Toflund noted, but her voice was steady enough when she went on:

‘The three researchers at Roskilde University whom I’ve spoken to about this. Like just about every young person nowadays they all have these awfully long names – you know the sort of thing: Oliver Munck-Halle Ebbesen or whatever, so for simplicity’s sake I’ve christened them Huey, Dewey and Uni. They have a book about the whole affair coming out soon. Their research project. They also tell me that there’s a network of old front-liners and their descendants which is quietly working to have the Legion volunteers rehabilitated, bearing in mind that they went off to war with the government’s blessing – in other words were almost encouraged to go. They were only acting in the spirit of
collaboration
. So they say.’

Charlotte shrugged, as if to say that this was all history, part of the background, but not necessarily a line that would lead them anywhere. In any case this had all happened long before she was born and in many ways she found it hard to understand why it should be of such interest.

Vuldom looked at her:

‘There is a difference, Charlotte. Between looking the other way, and picking up a shovel to build earthworks on the west coast; between taking a job in Germany rather than lose your
unemployment
benefits, and taking up a rifle to fight for the Nazis. It was their choice. Just as other Danes, among them my father, chose, thank God, to put up a fight, enabling us to make it through by the skin of our teeth. Because in Papa Stalin’s eyes we were all
collaborators
. German-lovers. The Misty Shores. The model protectorate. They made their choices. Whether to keep their mouths shut. Or collaborate. Or go off to fight on the Eastern Front. Or to make a stand. It was their own, free, personal decision, and there was a price to pay. And no post-modern historian can change that, no matter how much they may revise Danish history.’

Vuldom’s voice was stern, reprimanding. The other four stared at her in some surprise, each of them absorbing the new little nugget of information about this very private person, Jytte Vuldom: that her father had been a member of the resistance.

Charlotte Bastrup cleared her throat once and only the slender fingers fiddling with her pen betrayed that she had just been given a small taste of the notorious Vuldom wrath which was liable to come pouring down on anyone who acted unprofessionally, was not serious enough about their work or simply stepped on her toes and said things which went against her ideas of justice and fairness.

Toftlund came to Charlotte’s aid:

‘I think Charlotte, like me, was unaware of what a touchy and controversial issue this is, even today. It can still ruffle the feathers of old front-liners and resistance fighters, their descendants and the historians, who can’t agree on anything. Incidentally, it’s
interesting
to note that these three researchers knew nothing of Irma’s association with the SS veterans’ movement. Or her father’s story. She has kept that under her hat, even though she is in many ways their mentor. Their guidance counsellor I think they call it down
there. In their research project she has steered them in the
direction
that accords with her view of events.’

Vuldom lit a cigarette. She was still upset, Toftlund could tell. Angry about something which seemed a small thing to him – unless, that was, it could help to get Irma convicted of the acts of treason which he was positive she had committed.

‘Interesting,’ Vuldom said. ‘Our little Irma is a consummate manipulator of others. She has learned from a great teacher, our dear Irma-Edelweiss.’ The sentence was left hanging in the air as if asking to be expanded upon, but no more came. Toftlund was standing out front, when she did not go on he picked up the thread:

‘Born, as I say, in 1940. Very attached to her father. Difficult adolescence in Silkeborg, to which they moved after the scandal broke. No one can remember the young man, E–. And the
mother’s
brain is too far gone. Irma and E– were never married. Not on paper anyway. In 1989 Irma married a fellow lecturer, he died of cancer three years ago. They had no children. She studied
literature
and history at the University of Copenhagen and went on to win a professorship at the University of Roskilde with a thesis in which she argued that depictions of female characters in classic Danish literature were false, inasmuch as they were based upon the capitalist, male-chauvinist society’s repressive image of women. She chucked, you might say, the whole body of Danish literature written by men on the midden of history.’

Toftlund sounded as though he was quoting one of the
academics
he had interviewed, and this did not escape Vuldom’s notice:

‘That was some mouthful,’ she said jokingly, as if she knew he was not quite himself today. ‘Something you read?’

‘Nope. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. So much for Irma’s public life. But she has also had another life. We have a big, fat file on her. She was extremely politically active. Officially in the women’s movement, but she was also involved with several
revolutionary
factions operating within and around the far left and the
Communist Workers’ Party. She wrote articles about the
necessity
of violent action. Supported the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Knew people close to the terrorist bankrobbers in the Blekingegade gang. As a very young girl she was a Nazi, but appears to have had no trouble making the shift from there to revolutionary Marxism. From one form of totalitarianism to another. There’s possibly not that much difference between them anyway. One thing they
certainly
have in common is their hatred of middle-class society. Like Fritz she has kept in touch with her father’s old comrades.’

‘War makes for strange bedfellows,’ Vuldom remarked.

‘Sorry?’

‘I think it was Churchill who said that,’ she offered.

Bjergager gave a little cough. They turned to him in surprise. He generally did not say much during these sessions. He noted everything down and remembered everything, but he was not a hasty man, he preferred not to make any comment until he had had the chance to turn over in his mind the points discussed and the evidence presented.

‘Yes, Bjergager?’ Vuldom said.

Bjergager leaned a little way across the table:

‘Churchill did say something to that effect,’ he said in his deep, dry voice. ‘But that was because he was a well-read man. The original quote comes from Shakespeare’s
The Tempest
: ‘Misery makes for strange bedfellows’ or something like that. Churchill just changed the wording slightly – to explain his unholy alliance with Stalin against Hitler.’

‘Thanks for the lecture, Bjergager,’ Vuldom said and nodded to Toftlund who took a sip of water and glanced at Charlotte before continuing:

‘I think we’ll find the explanation for her treason …’

‘Which we cannot prove,’ Vuldom broke in.

‘… for her treason in her revolutionary youth. She’s no longer active. But then we haven’t had her under observation for some time. She’s never been convicted of anything.’

‘She’s just like all the rest,’ Vuldom said. ‘The Danes never started a revolution. There was no war. Their theories remained just that. Their cold talk of terrorism was never anything but talk. Their apocalyptic visions never amounted to any more than visions. They were lucky that all their revolutionary spoutings didn’t have serious consequences for the liberal society they hated so much.’

Toftlund did not know what apocalyptic meant, and was actually expecting to be enlightened, but Vuldom simply stubbed out her cigarette and glanced first at him, then at Charlotte Bastrup who was sitting with a pile of reports and her own notebook in front of her. Toftlund felt a shudder run through him, as if someone had opened a window, letting a chill draught into the warm, modern office. Vuldom’s gift for reading both situations and people was legendary, but she wasn’t a fucking mind-reader, surely?

‘Does Irma know you’re reading her account?’ was all she asked.

‘No.’

‘Do you mean to confront her with it?’

‘Yes. There are things there I can use. To which she’ll have to provide answers.’

‘How did you hack into it?’

‘That was Charlotte.’

Vuldom glanced inquiringly at Bastrup who raised her head and looked her straight in the eye:

‘It’s a standard Word programme. She had devised a code. Most people are pretty unimaginative. I started with her own name,
forwards
then backwards, then her brothers’ names, her father’s and so on. It turned out to be Teddy spelled backwards. I transferred the document from her computer when she was being interviewed or in the exercise yard.’

‘Teddy spelled backwards – not very original,’ Vuldom said.

‘People rarely are.’

‘There is another possibility, of course. That she wanted us to read it. That she assumed we were smart enough to break her
simple code. Have you considered that? Have you considered that our dear Irma might have wanted us to read her little memoir?’