The Marco Effect

1

Autumn 2008

René E. Eriksen had never been a cautious man. It was perhaps why he had gone from success to failure and back again in an endless chain of unpredictable events, which in the greater perspective nonetheless gave rise to a certain degree of satisfaction with his life. At the end of the day he put it all down to some kind of innate luck.

Yet in spite of this, René was by nature a pensive soul. When faced by the big questions and confrontations of childhood, he had often sought refuge behind his mother’s skirts. Accordingly, in adult life he instinctively made sure always to have a reasonably foolproof exit strategy on hand when casting himself into uncharted depths.

For that reason he had taken time to think things through when his good friend and former schoolmate Teis Snap, now managing director of Karrebæk Bank, had called him up that afternoon at his office in the ministry and put forward a proposal a man in René’s elevated public position under normal circumstances would have considered highly inappropriate.

The bank crises had yet to begin wreaking havoc, but these were days in which the greed of speculators and the irresponsibility of government financial policy were becoming plain to anyone who earned a living lending money.

That was why Teis Snap called.

“I’m afraid to say that Karrebæk Bank will go bust within two months unless we can get our hands on extra capital,” he’d said.

“What about my shares?” René blurted out with a frown, his heart already pounding at the thought of the first-class retirement under Mediterranean palms he had been promised now collapsing like a house of cards.

“What can I say? If we don’t come up with something drastic right away, we’re going to lose everything we own. That’s the reality of the matter, I’m afraid,” Snap replied.

The silence that ensued was a pause between friends. The kind of interlude that left no room for protest or more abstract comment.

René allowed his head to drop for a moment and inhaled so deeply it hurt. So this was the situation, and swift action was imperative. He felt his stomach knot, perspiration cold on his brow, but as head of office in the Evaluation Department for Development Assistance he was used to forcing his mind to think clearly under duress.

He exhaled. “Extra capital, you say? And what would that involve, more exactly?”

“Two hundred, perhaps two hundred and fifty million kroner over four to five years.”

Sweat trickled down under René’s collar. “For Christ’s sake, Teis! That’s fifty million a year!”

“I’m aware of that, and I find it most regrettable indeed. We’ve done everything in our power to draw up contingency plans these past four weeks, but our customer base just isn’t stable enough. The last two years we’ve been far too eager to lend out money without sufficient security. We know that now, with the property market collapsing.”

“Dammit! We need to do something quick. Haven’t we got time to withdraw our personal assets?”

“I’m afraid it’s already too late, René. The shares have plummeted this morning, and all trading’s temporarily suspended.”

“I see.” René noted how cold his voice suddenly sounded. “And what do you expect me to do about it? I’m assuming you’re not just calling to tell me you’ve squandered my savings, are you? I know you, Teis. How much did you salvage for yourself?”

His old friend sounded offended, but his voice was clear: “Nothing, René, not a penny, I swear. The accountants intervened. Not all accountancy firms are prepared to step in with creative solutions in a situation like this. The reason I’m calling is because I think I may have found a way out, one that might also be quite lucrative for you.”

And thus the swindle was initiated. It had been running for several months now, and things had gone smoothly indeed until a minute ago when the department’s most experienced staff member, William Stark, suddenly appeared, waving a sheet of paper in front of him.

“OK, Stark,” said René. “So you’ve received some contorted text message from Louis Fon and haven’t been able to get in touch with him since. But you know as well as I do that Cameroon is a long way from here and connections aren’t reliable, even at the best of times, so don’t you suppose that might be where the problem lies?”

Unfortunately Stark appeared less than convinced, and at that moment a warning of potential chaos in René’s future seemed to materialize.

Stark pressed his already thin lips into a pencil line. “But how can we be sure?” He gazed pensively at the floor, his unruly red bangs drooping down in front of his eyes. “All I know is that this text message came in when you were on your way back from Cameroon. And nobody’s seen Louis Fon since. No one.”

“Hmm. But if he’s still in the Dja region, mobile phone coverage is practically nonexistent.” René reached across the desk. “Let me see that message, Stark.”

René tried to keep his hand steady as Stark handed him the sheet of paper.

He read the message:

Cfqquptiondae(s+l)la(i+l)ddddddvdlogdmdntdja

He wiped the treacherous perspiration from his brow with the back of his hand. Thank God. It was gibberish.

“Well, it does seem rather odd, Stark, I’ll grant you that. The question is, does it warrant further attention? It looks to me like the phone just went haywire in Louis Fon’s pocket,” he said, putting the paper down on the desk. “I’ll have someone follow up on it, but I can tell you that Mbomo Ziem and I were in contact with Louis Fon the same day we drove to Yaoundé and we saw nothing out of the ordinary. He was packing for his next expedition. With some Germans, as far as I remember.”

William Stark peered at him darkly and shook his head.

“You say it probably doesn’t warrant further attention, but have a look at the message again. Do you think it’s coincidental that it ends on the word “Dja”? I don’t. I think Louis Fon was trying to tell me something and that something serious may have happened to him.”

René pursed his lips. In all ministerial posts it was a question of never appearing dismissive of even the most ridiculous hypothesis. That much he had learned over the years.

Which is why he replied with, “Yes, it is a bit strange, isn’t it?”

René reached for his Sony Ericsson that was lying on the windowsill behind him. “‘Dja,’ you say.” He studied the phone’s keypad and nodded. “Yes, it could be accidental. Look, D, J, and A are the first letters on their respective keys. Press three, five, and two and you’ve got ‘dja.’” Not impossible while it’s just lying in a person’s pocket, though the odds would certainly seem slender. So, yes, it definitely is strange. I just reckon we should wait a few days and see if Louis turns up. In the meantime I’ll get in touch with Mbomo.”

He watched William Stark as he left the office, following his every movement until the door was shut. Again he wiped his brow. So it was Louis Fon’s mobile Mbomo had been playing around with in the Land Rover on their way back to the capital.

Idiot!

He clenched his fists and shook his head. Mbomo being infantile enough to steal the mobile from Fon’s body was one thing, quite another was that he had not come clean when René asked him about it. And how the hell could the big dope have been stupid enough not to check for unsent messages? If he’d stolen the phone from the body, why hadn’t he removed the battery as a matter of course, or at least reset its memory? What kind of imbecile would steal a phone from the man he had just killed, anyway?

He shook his head again. Mbomo was a clown, but right now the problem wasn’t Mbomo, it was William Stark. In fact, Stark had been a danger all along. Hadn’t he said that from the start? Hadn’t he told Teis Snap the same thing?

Bugger it! No one possessed an overview of the department’s agreements and budget frameworks comparable to Stark’s. No one was anywhere near as meticulous as he in the evaluation of the ministry’s projects. So if anyone could uncover René’s misuse of development funds, it was William Stark.

René took a deep breath and considered his next move. The options weren’t exactly multiple.

“If ever you should run into problems in this matter,” Teis Snap had said, “then call us immediately.”

That was what he now intended to do.