The Marco Effect

16

Zola sat for a moment and reviewed the situation. Any minute now, his contact would be calling routinely to hear his report on how the Marco case was developing. The timing was hardly appropriate.

He had sent the others out of the room, which was how it had to be. Only the dog remained behind. What had happened had happened and there were undoubtedly going to be repercussions the clan members definitely didn’t need to hear. It was imperative his near-divine status within the family remain uncompromised, for Zola’s dominance relied solely on maintaining his authority. No, this was a phone call of the utmost privacy.

When it came, he tried to begin without humility, declaring boldly that the whole sorry business was merely the fault of a silly young boy and that, as usual, he had the situation under control.

A frigid voice turned this arrogant sword of Damocles against him.

“We should never have chosen you people for the job,” came the curt reply. “If this boy is allowed to wander the streets, the consequences could be enormous for everyone, not least for yourselves. I take it you’re aware of that?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“So you’ve said before. How long has the boy been on the loose?”

“Listen! Marco’s been spotted in Østerbro. All the men operating out there have been alerted.”

“And what good is that when you’ve just told me he committed a break-in somewhere else in town entirely? He could be anywhere.”

Zola clenched his teeth. The man was right. It wasn’t good.

“Listen to me. All my own boys are out in Brønshøj right now. We’re dragging a net from there toward the city. Besides that, we’ve got three cars cruising the whole area up to Gladsaxe and out toward Husum.”

The voice at the other end didn’t sound satisfied. “I hope for your sake it’s sufficient. Apart from having his personal description, we know now that he’s actually wearing Stark’s necklace. Make sure the photo of it that you’ve procured gets out to everyone who’s searching. Next time you see him, just be absolutely certain you catch him, otherwise it’s better that you let him go. Do you understand? If he doesn’t realize we’re looking for him, it probably won’t be that long before we get another chance. OK?”

Zola nodded, though he resented the tone. The job had already been too costly by half. His brother had protested at the time, saying they should let it go, but the three hundred thousand they took in for taking care of Stark’s disappearance had been too tempting. The consequence of that decision had meant half the clan had been preoccupied since the end of November when Marco disappeared, and especially the last couple of days, which was extremely bad for business. With begging and thieving activities brought to a minimum, twenty-five thousand kroner were being lost every single day. The three hundred grand they’d got for kidnapping and murdering William Stark had long since been swallowed up.

A curse on that Marco! He should have clipped the boy’s wings the first day he realized how smart he was.

“We’ll be careful, don’t worry,” he assured his contact. “He won’t give us the slip again.”

“What was he doing out in Stark’s house?”

“We don’t know. We don’t know how he found it either. We’ll try to sort it out, OK?”

“We’ve talked about this before: Do you think the kid will go to the police?”

Zola paused to think. Anything he said in response would be a shot in the dark. Of course there was a chance he would turn them in. But the boy had been lying in that shallow grave when Zola and his father had discussed the body, so he knew his father was an accomplice. Maybe that would be enough to prevent him. On the other hand, it was true that he had broken into Stark’s house, and why had he done that? Blackmail was the first thing that came to mind. The little parasite would likely turn all his criminal tendencies back upon those who had fostered him. The more Zola thought about it, the more probable it sounded. Under no circumstances could Marco be given the chance.

“Go to the police? Yes, I’m afraid there might be a risk of that,” he therefore replied. “The boy must be stopped, whatever the price.”

“Excellent.” A long silence ensued, a clear sign that his employer found it anything but. “You must understand that I am compelled to mobilize my own network now, Zola,” he went on. “And by the way, don’t count on us contacting you the next time a similar job arises.”

–

Bank manager Teis Snap was so stunned, he had to steady himself against his desk. Seconds before, his chairman of the board, Brage-Schmidt, had informed him that his men in the field had conceded that the boy they were looking for had broken into Stark’s home. And before the full gravity of the information had kicked in, Brage-Schmidt had demanded half a million kroner in cash, to be paid into what he called the seek and neutralize the kid account.

“Murdering a child, here in Denmark?” Snap protested quietly. “Do you really want Karrebæk Bank’s shareholders to finance that? Murder carries a life sentence, and who’s going to be the fall guy if we’re found out?”

“No one,” came the curt reply.

“No one? I don’t follow you. What do you mean?”

“It needn’t come to that. But if it does, I suggest we make René E. Eriksen accountable.”

Teis Snap stared at the photograph of himself and René on the desk in front of him. Two young students with beaming smiles and an ocean of broken ideals since.

“You’re out of your mind,” he said as calmly as he could. “René would never accept that under any circumstances. Why on earth would he?”

“If it becomes necessary, we shan’t be asking him. He’ll confess of his own accord.”

“How?”

“In a suicide note.”

Teis Snap pulled his Strand & Hvass office chair from the desk and sat down heavily on its soft leather. Suicide, if it became necessary, Brage-Schmidt had said. He hoped to God it wouldn’t.

“To be on the safe side, and to make sure we don’t suddenly run out of time, we have to formulate that note right away,” Brage-Schmidt went on. “First of all we need to cover up any links between Eriksen and our middlemen among the Cameroon officials. I want you to instruct him to do that himself. He’s the best choice in that respect. Is everything under control with our stocks in Curaçao?”

“Yes, they’re all still in the safe-deposit box at Maduro and Curiel’s Bank there.”

“And we’ve got the keys?”

“Yes, René and I have both got our own, but I’ll need his power of attorney.”

“OK, sort it this afternoon. After that, you fly down there and gather all the stock certificates, then cancel his safe-deposit box agreement with MCB. We have to get those certificates out while he’s still alive. If something goes wrong and we need to beat a fast retreat, then we’ll have them as well as our own. Are you with me?”

“I suppose, yes.” Teis Snap was sweating profusely as he struggled to assess the consequences. “If worst does come to worst, how do we explain his suicide?” he ventured, the final word petering into a whisper.

“Sexual abuse of a young boy, of course. That René E. Eriksen, along with his subordinate, William Stark, regularly had sex with this Marco, and the shame of it had long ago prompted Stark to choose the ultimate way out by committing suicide.”

Teis Snap may have been shaken, yet he felt his heart rate steady somewhat. The advantages of such an explanation seemed plain. Even William Stark’s disappearance would be accounted for.

“But this of course presupposes that we get our hands on the boy. After all, we can’t have him denying the story. And what then, if we find him? Once he’s out of the way, who’s going to point the finger at Stark and Eriksen for abusing him?”

“They’ll accuse themselves in Eriksen’s suicide note. We will include details of precisely where he got rid of the boy’s body before doing away with himself.”

Snap frowned. So many disagreeable decisions with equally disagreeable consequences had originated behind that same brow in the course of time. But fake suicides and kids’ corpses were not obvious fixtures in his world. He had known René from their schooldays, on top of which he had children of his own, albeit older than the boy they were searching for.

“I understand. A truly frightening perspective, I must say, and yet logical. But we still need to find the boy.”

“Exactly. Which is why I want you to immediately release the half million for our search operation. My contact has bloodhounds who are used to sniffing people out. All we need is to get them flown in. Transfer the funds and we’re in business.”

Snap smoothed his hand over the desktop. The money was no issue. The quicker it was done, the better, no question about it.

“I’ll organize the transfer right away. But woe betide us if the authorities ever catch on. That’s your department, OK? Make sure it never happens.” The emphasis on “your” was pronounced. “I don’t want to know what you do or where and when you do it, understand? René is an old friend of mine, after all.”

“They’ll do their best, I’ll make sure of it.”

“Who are these people you’ll be flying in, anyway?”

“I don’t think you should worry about that, Teis, do you?”

–

René E. Eriksen had been sitting in his office, routinely running through the presentation his minister was scheduled to make in the parliamentary debate the following day. Over the years, he had learned to steer his superiors through the roughest of gales, and no matter who happened to form the opposition, their attacks invariably came to naught, for René E. Eriksen had mastered the art of saying nothing of importance. When debates were most heated, the crux of the matter always remained untouched, because it was known only to him, his closest officials, and the minister himself. Eriksen was therefore revered among his peers in the steep pyramid of government officialdom, and the ministry’s permanent secretary could safely turn his attention to other matters.

This was one of those good, average days when René E. Eriksen felt he was on top of things. At least until a thrumming noise from a desk drawer informed him of someone wanting to speak to him on the rarely used prepaid mobile.

It meant Teis Snap had some important news.

This time his briefing was short and steeped in detail, a far cry from Snap’s usual style. It was almost as if his old school chum had learned every word by heart. But whether this was the case or not, the information he imparted was alarming indeed.

A boy who could reveal the murder of William Stark was on the loose. And to prevent the otherwise unavoidable avalanche of scandal, he had to be done away with. The search was already on.

A boy!

“For that reason we need to wipe out our tracks. I want you to get rid of anything that might link you to us and to your lackeys among the officials in Yaoundé. For our part we’re erasing all traces of our connections to the folks distributing the funds and removing as much evidence as we can that links us with Cameroon, OK? Moreover, I want you to call the relevant authorities down there and tell them the project’s on the back burner for a while. Tell your staff it’s a routine investigation of administrative irregularities in Yaoundé, but make sure those damn pygmies get some of what’s coming to them until the storm has blown over. Get hold of Louis Fon’s replacement and instruct him to buy lots of banana plants as quickly as possible. Get it sorted now, not tomorrow. Are you with me, René? You’re the only man we have who can do this easily, without fuss and without a trace.”

“Hold on a minute, Teis. I thought I’d made it perfectly clear I didn’t want to know what you were up to behind the scenes.”

“You did. But the way things are at the moment, there is correspondence and records we need to get removed from the system. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand the gravity of the situation. Just as you made sure to secure Stark’s laptop and prevent anything compromising leaking from that source, we now need to get hold of this boy, because if we don’t, the whole shebang could come tumbling down around us, especially if we’re not prepared. But we will be prepared, won’t we, René?”

René nodded to himself. He could follow the logic, yet at the same time a devil was prodding his subconscious with its fork. Teis Snap and Jens Brage-Schmidt might benefit from his carrying out these orders, but what about him? Would he, in reality, be worse off? Would he then risk being left alone in the firing line if the scam was uncovered? Or was there something more to this nagging doubt?

“One other thing, René. We’re a bit worried about our stock in Curaçao. If things go wrong here in Denmark, Brage-Schmidt reckons the stocks can be traced back to us, in which case there’s a risk of it all being confiscated. But now we’ve found someone willing to give us ten percent below the day’s quotation, so I need a signature from you to the bank in Curaçao, a power of attorney so I can get into the safe-deposit box and retrieve all the certificates.”

“I see. And what if I want to keep my share? Why should I hand over ten percent of fifteen million to some stranger when I can get the full rate on the market? I’m not with you.”

“You know as well as I do that we need to stick together on all our decisions, René, and on this one you’re in the minority.”

René felt his neck muscles tense. It was as if the executioner’s hatchet hung in the air above his neck. All alarms were going off at once. It wasn’t only Snap’s instructions but also the circumstances in which they were issued. Calling him about something as important as this without prior warning. It was most irregular. It required a personal meeting at the very least, where they could make the appropriate decisions in consensus.

Were they going to make off with all the proceeds and disappear? How could he be certain they respected his interests and that his share wouldn’t suddenly vanish into thin air?

He mobilized all his instincts and experience. This eruption of chaos was not going to be at his expense. That much he knew.

“I want guarantees, Teis. Written guarantees, so I know where I stand. You can buy my shares in Karrebæk Bank at the going rate. Transfer the sum to an account in Danske Bank. Until you do, there’ll be no power of attorney. Once you’ve sold the stocks, you’re to send all documents of transfer and registration by courier to my office here in the ministry, along with your written declaration. I’ll be waiting here until it’s done, Teis.”

Snap sounded calm, but René knew better. Teis Snap was furious.

“You know I can’t do that, René, so stop all that. We haven’t the funds to purchase your stocks at market price, and if we can’t, then you’ll be forcing us into the hands of third-party shareholders who we can’t control. They’d be able to demand seats on the board and gain too much insight. It’s not on; I can’t allow it. Not for the moment!”

“OK. So what if my response to that is to go against your killing the boy?”

He counted the seconds. In their student days, Teis Snap had never possessed the sharpest mind, and little had changed in that respect. Despite his financial acumen, Snap would never be the source of any groundbreaking ideas. Experience told René that the longer Snap’s pause, the greater the dilemma he felt himself to be in.

This time, however, the interlude was surprisingly brief, and Snap’s reply likewise.

“But you won’t, René.”

And then he hung up.

–

During the next half hour, René E. Eriksen was not to be disturbed. He closed his door, signaling to his subordinates that he’d gone into hibernation.

Since the fraud had been initiated, René’s shares in Karrebæk Bank had risen by two hundred and fifty percent. His stock was now worth precisely 14.7 million kroner, a sum that, if managed wisely, could be converted to twenty-five years of relative affluence somewhere on the other side of the world. However, after all these years his wife was still influenced by the ideals that an office girl from the provinces during the course of a long life sees, reduced to residential bliss in the suburbs of Copenhagen and two weeks twice a year somewhere in the sun. Attempting to separate her from her mail-order catalogs and the occasional looking-after of grandchildren too full of snot to go to kindergarten would be tilting at windmills.

But regardless of whether his wife could be persuaded or not, here in this dusty office, whose dark panels and reams of bureaucracy-driven paper comprised his horizon, grew the increasingly incontestable notion that this was how it had to be. And since Teis Snap was refusing to help him, pummeled as he was by impending catastrophe and unpalatable decision making, René opened the drawer and took out the calling card that had been pressed into his reluctant hand a couple of years before by a zealous young man who apparently thought it was OK to recruit financial clients at kids’ birthday parties.

It was this thin-haired upstart of a backstreet banker whom he now called, and within two minutes had cheerfully agreed to sell René’s shares in Karrebæk Bank for half the usual six percent commission. For 441,000 kroner he could head off to Karrebæk Bank’s headquarters and collect the registered shares out of the deposit box. Just like the transfer, the transaction itself was a mere formality.

René was content. There was a risk that the unregistered stocks in the custody account in Willemstad in Curaçao would be lost, though he would not give them up without a fight. But without being willing to make that sacrifice if the situation so demanded, he would be unable to free himself of Snap and Brage-Schmidt. And this was imperative.

He got up and pulled a folder from the shelf. In it were fifteen sheets of paper, tantamount to a life-insurance policy.

The first pages were copies of the personnel department’s dossier on William Stark: personal data, terms of employment, curriculum vitae, and all kinds of facts relevant to his position. The rest of the pages were manipulations of files he had found on Stark’s computer, and, finally, a single sheet left in his desk drawer pertaining to his stepdaughter’s latest treatment.

The idea for these manipulations had come about when the police had questioned him about Stark in regards to his disappearance. At the time the interview had been quick and painless, the questions simple and superficial, his answers likewise. But what if they should come back with more questions? And what if Teis Snap and Brage-Schmidt pulled the plug on him?

In case that happened he needed to construct a story, one that could hold water. Therefore he had removed the little lithium battery that powered the clock and put it in Stark’s laptop and had begun to modify information in the files concerning the Baka project.

This he had done one evening at home, long after Lily had gone to bed. Beneath the light of the architect lamp on his desk he delved into Stark’s virtual universe with bated breath, noting immediately the presence of two login identities, MINISTRY and PRIVATE, of which only the latter required a password.

Within a few minutes René realized the wisdom of their having done away with William Stark. All too many of Stark’s entries concerned irregularities and anomalous procedures relating to the Baka project. While these entries uncovered nothing specifically illegal, they sowed suspicion that there could be something that warranted further investigation. The fact that Stark hadn’t gone that far was their good fortune. Now, in any case, he no longer had that option.

After he had finished, René sat up most of the night trying to establish the password Stark used to access PRIVATE. When eventually he was forced to give up, he went downstairs into the basement, opened the trapdoor to the crawl space under the floor and hid the laptop. There it could remain undisturbed until he needed it again.

And now, a couple of years on, he was sitting with the modified documents based on Stark’s notes. Notations that had once cast doubt upon René’s management of the project but which, thanks to his manipulations, now pointed the finger at Teis Snap and William Stark himself.

Next it was only logical that he took out the rearmost sheet from the folder and in the corner, using William Stark’s characteristic handwriting, wrote:

Transfer to Maduro & Curiel’s Bank, followed by Teis Snap’s mobile phone number.