“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?”