Death of a Nightingale

Søren found his boss in the well-equipped exercise rooms under PET’s headquarters in Søborg. The Danish Security and Intelligence Service believed in keeping its employees fit. Søren knew Torben didn’t like to be disturbed in the middle of training, but they usually came to an understanding more easily in person than over the phone. Torben did put down his weights and listened with at least some patience while Søren sketched the circumstances surrounding Natasha’s escape and the killing of her ex-fiancé. Then he leaned back on the bench and grabbed the weights again to complete another set before answering.

“Spot me?” he asked. “I’ll try for twelve.”

“Okay.”

Søren positioned himself so he could help with the last repetitions if necessary. Lips pursed, Torben breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, in time with the motion. The weights shot up in an explosive press. Then he lowered them slowly, very slowly, to the outer position. Then up again with something that sounded like a snort. The Adidas shirt was dark with sweat and could probably be wrung out. At the ninth repetition, his extended arms began to shake, but Torben didn’t give in, and when Søren moved to put a hand under his elbows at twelve, he hissed an angry “no” and took it by himself.

He lay on the bench, hyperventilating for a few seconds, before he sat up and gave Søren a triumphant look. “Not bad, huh?”

Søren handed him the water bottle without commenting. He knew he should offer a friendly “Well done” or something like that, but he couldn’t quite do it. It felt increasingly false, like a scratchy old record that should have been thrown out long ago. He no longer felt at home in that sweaty, towel-swiping changing room community but didn’t know what to replace it with. Perhaps it was just that he didn’t have much in the way of relationships outside of work. Maybe he had made a mistake all those years ago when he hadn’t just agreed to have children with Susse. Maybe they would still have been together. Now she lived with her jazz musician husband in a bungalow with a white fence and cocker spaniels and pear trees in the yard, and her youngest had started high school. They were still friends—that much he had salvaged from the fire. And he wasn’t exactly envious of the family idyll, just … a bit pseudonostalgic. That could have been me. But it couldn’t have been, of course, because with him it would have been a different story.

He wrested his concentration back to the case, if it could be called that. Right now, there wasn’t much PET meat on it, he knew.

“I’ve called police headquarters,” he said. “They have a Ukrainian policeman sitting there who doesn’t speak English. From GUBOZ, apparently.” GUBOZ was the special division that dealt with organized crime in Ukraine. That was pretty much the only alibi Søren had for looking into the case. Fighting organized crime was, after all, a PET concern.

Torben considered him over the top of the water bottle with his cool steel-grey gaze. “That’s right. You used to be a language officer,” he said.

“Russian and Polish. Nineteen eighty-one and nineteen eighty-three.” Possibly the most intensive schooling Søren had ever been subjected to—a bombardment of words that approached brainwashing, constant tests, an eternal rhythm of classes, homework, physical training, sleep—classes, homework, physical training, sleep …

“Yes, today they’re learning Arabic and Afghani,” said Torben and screwed the lid onto the bottle again.

“Pashto. Or Farsi, depending.”

“Yes. Is your Russian still usable?”

“Pretty much.”

Torben nodded and dried his face, neck and shaved head with an often-washed greyish-white towel.

“Okay. Go ahead and give them a hand, since you’re so curious. And why is that, by the way?”

It was stupid to try to lie to Torben. As Søren’s boss, he took that kind of thing very badly, and besides, they considered each other old friends. That Søren had begun to doubt whether constant physical competition really could be called a friendship didn’t change the fact that they had known each other for over twenty-five years. “Natasha Dmytrenko’s daughter apparently lives in the Coal-House Camp. And Nina Borg, you know, the nurse from …”

“Yes, I remember her.”

“… Nina called because she was worried about the girl. And about the mother too.”

“What did she imagine you could do? Save mother and child from the cruel Danish police?”

Søren shrugged. “Something like that, I guess.”

Torben shook his head. “Aren’t you a little too old to be playing Don Quixote?”

“Don Quixote is old. Or at least middle-aged. That’s the point.”

Torben got up and returned the weights to the rack. “Thank you,” he said. “If there are other literary niceties I need to have explained, I’ll be sure to tell you. The point here, my friend, is that you are getting involved in something that most likely doesn’t concern either you or us.”

“I know. But the man is from GUBOZ, and that must mean—”

“That there is some suspicion of organized crime, yes, thanks, you don’t need to spell it out. Okay. Talk to the Ukrainian if you absolutely have to get involved. And if there’s something in it, it goes directly to our own OC boys. I want my group leader back on his counterterrorism perch by Monday at the latest. Understood?”

With PET’s usual fondness for English terms, OC was the accepted abbreviation for the Center for Organized Crime.

Søren mentally clicked his heels and saluted. “Yes, sir.”

Torben gave him a look but otherwise ignored the sarcasm. “Want to grab a brew later?”

That was Torben’s way of dealing with the boss/friend issue. The beer invitations usually came when he had been most boss-like.

“Maybe. Or … There probably won’t be time.”

“Up to you. You can join us for dinner if you feel like it. Annelise is doing a roast.”

“Thank you. But … maybe another time.”

“Mmm. Okay.” Torben had already turned around and was making his way over to the pull-down machine. Søren suddenly realized that Torben hadn’t for one moment expected him to say yes.