you’ve got some unfinished business with that incident. And when you mention your two colleagues who weren’t as lucky to escape with their lives and limbs intact, it reminds you of something, and you practically come unglued. When you’re ready to tell me the truth, I’ll be happy to see you again. Until then, I can’t help you.”
He uttered a small sound that was meant as a protest, but it died out of its own accord. Instead, he looked at her with an expression of desire that women no doubt could read but could never know for sure was there.
“Wait a minute,” he forced himself to say before she went out the door. “You’re probably right. I just didn’t realize it.”
He frantically considered what he could say to her before she turned around and made a move to leave.
“Maybe we could talk about it over dinner?” The words just flew out of his mouth.
He saw that he’d misfired badly. It was such a stupid thing to say that she didn’t even bother to deride him.
Instead, she gave him a look that expressed concern more than anything else.
Bille Antvorskov had just turned seventy and was a regular guest on TV2’s
Personally, Carl couldn’t stand the man.
Even in the receptionist’s office, Carl was made aware that time was short and Bille Antvorskov was a busy man. Seated along the wall were four gentlemen, and it was obvious that none of them wanted anything to do with the others. They had placed their briefcases on the floor between their feet and their laptops on their knees. They were all busy as hell, and they all dreaded what they would encounter behind the closed door.
The secretary smiled at Carl, but she didn’t really mean it. He had summarily forced his way into her appointment book; she just hoped he wouldn’t do it again.
Her boss received Carl with a characteristically wry smile and asked politely if he’d ever been in this part of the office complex on the edge of Copenhagen’s harbor. Then he gestured toward the huge picture windows that stretched from one wall to the other, sketching a glass mosaic of the multifarious state of the entire world: the ships, harbor, cranes, water, and sky, fighting for attention in all their grandiosity.
The view from Carl’s office wasn’t quite as good.
“You wanted to talk to me about the meeting at Christiansborg on February 20, 2002. I have it here,” Antvorskov said, typing on the computer keyboard. “Well, look at that: it’s a palindrome. How funny.”
“Say what?”
“The date: 20.02.2002. It’s the same whether you read it backward or forward. I can also see that I was visiting my ex-wife at precisely 8:02. We celebrated with a glass of champagne.” And then he added in English, “Once in a lifetime!” After which he smiled, and that part of the entertainment was over.
“I take it you wanted to know what the meeting with Merete Lynggaard was about?” he went on.
“Yes, that’s right. But first I’d like to hear something about Daniel Hale. What was his role at the meeting?”
“Hmm. It’s funny that you should mention it, but he didn’t actually have a role there. Daniel Hale was one of our most important developers of laboratory techniques. Without his lab and his excellent coworkers, a great number of our projects would have just hobbled along.”
“So he didn’t participate in project development?”
“Not the political or financial side of development, no. Only the technical side.”
“Then why was he at the meeting?”
Antvorskov bit his cheek for a moment, a conciliatory habit. “As far as I remember, he phoned and asked to attend. I no longer recall the reason, but apparently he was planning to invest a lot of money in new equipment, and he needed to keep up to date with political developments. He was a very diligent man; that may have been why we worked so well together.”
Carl caught the man’s self-admiration. Some businessmen made it a virtue to hide their light under a bushel. Bille Antvorskov was of a different breed.
“What was Hale like as a person, in your opinion?”
“As a person?” Antvorskov shook his head. “I have no idea. Reliable and conscientious as a subcontractor. But as a person? I have no idea.”
“So you didn’t have anything to do with him privately?”
This provoked the famous Bille Antvorskov growl that was supposed to pass for laughter. “Privately? I never set eyes on him until the meeting at Christiansborg. Neither he nor I had time for that. And besides, Daniel Hale was never at home. He would fly from Herod to Pilate in an instant. One day in Connecticut, the next day in Aalborg. Back and forth, constantly. I’ve probably scraped together a few free miles myself, but Daniel Hale must have left behind enough to fly a class of schoolkids around the world at least a dozen times.”
“So you’d never met him before that meeting?”
“No, never.”
“But there must have been meetings, discussions, price negotiations. Things like that?”
“You know what? I have staff to handle those things. I knew Daniel Hale by reputation, we had a few phone conversations, and then we were in business. The rest of the collaborative work was handled by Hale’s people and mine.”
“OK. I’d like to talk to someone here at the company who worked with Hale. Is that possible?”
Bille Antvorskov sighed so heavily that the tightly upholstered leather chair he was sitting on creaked. “I don’t know who’s still here. That was five years ago, after all. There’s a lot of turnover in our business. Everyone’s always looking for new challenges.”
“I see.” Was the idiot really admitting that he couldn’t hold on to employees? He couldn’t be. “Could you possibly give me the address of his company?”
Antvorskov frowned. He had staff to handle that.
Even though the buildings were six years old, they looked as if they’d been constructed only a week ago. “InterLab A/S” it said in three-foot-tall letters on the sign in the middle of the landscape of fountains in front of the garage. Apparently the business was doing just fine without its helmsman.
In the reception area Carl’s police badge was scrutinized as if it were something he’d bought in a practical- joke shop, but after a ten-minute wait a secretary arrived to speak with him. He told her that he had questions of a private nature, and with that he was immediately escorted out of the lobby and into a room with leather chairs, birchwood tables, and several glass cabinets full of beverages. Presumably it was here that foreign guests first encountered InterLab’s efficiency. Proof of the laboratory’s high status was everywhere. Awards and certificates from all over the world covered one whole wall, while another two displayed diagrams and photographs of various projects. Only the wall facing the Japanese-inspired driveway leading up to the building had any windows, and the sun was blazing in.
Apparently it was Daniel Hale’s father who founded the firm, but this was long ago, judging by the photos on the wall. Daniel had successfully followed in his father’s footsteps in the short time that he’d been boss, and clearly he’d done so with pleasure. There was also no doubt that he’d been loved and given plenty of incentives in the right direction. A single photo showed father and son standing close together, smiling happily. The father wore a jacket and waistcoat, symbolizing the old days that were on their way out. The son had not yet come of age, which was obvious from his smooth cheeks and big smile. But he was ready to make his mark.
Carl heard footsteps approaching.
“What was it you wanted to know, sir?” said a plump woman wearing flats.
The woman introduced herself as the public relations manager. The name on her ID badge, which was clipped to her lapel, was “Aino Huurinainen.” Finns had such funny-sounding names.
