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.