“Did I say it was not, Carl?”
“How far would you say it is from Damascus to Sab Abar?”
“A day’s journey. More than two hundred kilometers.”
“A day’s journey?”
“Things take time there. First you have to go through the city, and then there are the mountains.”
That matched with what Carl saw on Google Earth. It would be hard to find a more desolate place. “Your name is Hafez el-Assad. At least that’s what it says in the Immigration Service’s documents about you.” He typed in the name on Google and found it instantly. “Isn’t that a rather unfortunate name to be carrying around?”
Assad shrugged.
“The name of a dictator who ruled Syria for twenty-nine years! Were your parents members of the Baath Party?”
“Yes, they were.”
“So you were named after him?”
“Several people in my family have that name. I can tell you that.”
Carl looked into Assad’s dark eyes. The man was in a different state than usual.
“Who was Hafez el-Assad’s successor?” Carl asked abruptly.
Assad didn’t even blink. “His son Bashar. Should we then not stop this now, Carl? It is not good for us.”
“You might be right. So what was the name of the first son, the one who died in a car crash in 1994?”
“I do not remember right now.”
“You don’t? That’s odd. Here it says that he was his father’s favorite and chosen successor. His name was Basil. I’d think that everyone your age in Syria would be able to tell me that without hesitation.”
“That is correct. His name was Basil.” Assad nodded. “But there are so quite many things that I have forgotten, Carl. I do not
“Suppressed them?”
“Yes, that sounds right enough.”
OK, if that’s how he’s going to act I’m not going to get any further like this, thought Carl. He was going to have to shift gears.
“You know what I think, Assad? I think you’re lying. Your name isn’t Hafez el-Assad at all. It was just the first name that came into your head when you applied for asylum. Am I right? I can just imagine that the guy who falsified your papers had a good laugh over it, didn’t he? Maybe he’s even the same man who helped us with Merete’s phone book. Am I getting warm?”
“I think we should make a stop now, Carl.”
“Where are you really from, Assad? Well, I’m used to the name, so why change now, even though it’s really your surname, isn’t it, Hafez?”
“I am Syrian, and I come from Sab Abar.”
“You mean a suburb of Sab Abar?”
“Yes, northeast of downtown.”
It all sounded very plausible, but Carl had a hard time accepting the information at face value. Maybe ten years and hundreds of interrogations ago. But not anymore. His instincts were grumbling. The way Assad reacted wasn’t quite right.
“You’re actually from Iraq, aren’t you, Assad? And you’ve got skeletons in the closet that would get you deported from Denmark and sent back to where you came from. Am I right?”
Assad’s expression changed again. The lines on his forehead were erased. Maybe he’d caught sight of a way out; maybe he was just telling the truth.
“Iraq? Not at all. Now you are sounding dumb, Carl,” he said, offended. “Come home and see my things, Carl. I brought a suitcase from home. You can talk to my wife. She understands a little English. Or my girls. Then you will know that what I am telling you is right then, Carl. I am a political refugee, and I have been through a lot of bad things. I do not want to talk about it, Carl, so, could you please leave me in peace? It is true that I did not spend a lot of time with Hardy, the way I said, but it is very far, up to Hornb?k. I am trying to help my brother come to Denmark, and that takes time too, Carl. I’m sorry. I will tell you things straight in the future.”
Carl leaned back. He was almost to the point where he wanted to smother his skeptical brain in the sugar water that Assad was dishing out. “I don’t understand how you could acclimate yourself so quickly to doing police work, Assad. I certainly appreciate your help. You’re a spooky kind of guy, but you do have skills. Where does it come from?”
“Spooky? What is that? Something to do with ghosts and things like that?” He gave Carl a guileless look. Yes, he did have skills, all right. Maybe he had a natural talent. Maybe everything he’d said was true. Perhaps it was just Carl who was turning into a sulky grouch.
“It doesn’t say anything about your education in the file, Assad. What kind of training did you have?”
He shrugged. “There was not very much, Carl. My father owned a small company that sold tinned goods. I know everything about how long a tin of stewed tomatoes can last at fifty degrees Celsius.”
Carl tried to smile. “And then you couldn’t keep out of politics, and you ended up with the wrong name. Is that it?”
“Yes, something like that.”
“And you were tortured?”
“Yes. Carl, I do not want to talk about that. You have not seen how I can get when I feel bad. I cannot talk about it, OK?”
“OK.” Carl nodded. “And from now on you’re going to tell me what you’re doing during work hours. Do you get me?”
Assad gave his boss a thumbs-up.
The expression in Carl’s eyes allowed Assad’s gaze to relax. Then he held up his hand for a high-five, and Assad smacked it.
So that was that.
“OK, Assad. Let’s move on. We’ve got other things to think about,” said Carl. “We need to locate this Lars Henrik Jensen. I’m hoping it won’t be long before we’ll be able to log on to the Civil Registration System, but until then, let’s try to find his mother, Ulla Jensen. A man out at Riso. .” He saw that Assad wanted to ask him what Riso was, but that could wait. “A man told me that she lives south of Copenhagen.”
“Is Ulla Jensen an unusual name?”
Carl shook his head. “Now that we know the name of the father’s company, we have more angles we can check. To start off, I’m going to call the Registry of Companies. We can only hope that it hasn’t been shut down too. In the meantime, go through the address-finder directory and look for the name Ulla Jensen. Try Brondbyerne and then move south. Vallensb?k, maybe Glostrup, Tastrup, Greve-Kildebronde. Don’t search all the way to Koge, because that’s where the company was located before. Try north of there.”
Assad looked relieved. He was just about to go out the door but turned around to give Carl a hug. His beard stubble was like needles, and his aftershave was some cheap knock-off brand, but the sentiment was genuine.
Carl sat at his desk for a moment, letting the feeling wash over him after Assad had waltzed across the hall to his own office. It was almost like having his old team back.
The answer came from both sources at once. The Registry of Companies had been functioning without interruption throughout the computer crash, and it took only five seconds on the keyboard for them to identify HJ Industries. It was owned by Trabeka Holding, a German firm, and they’d be happy to look for more information if Carl was interested. They couldn’t see who the owners were, but that could be found out if they contacted their German colleagues. After they gave Carl the address, he shouted over to Assad that he could stop his search, but Assad shouted back that he’d already found a couple of possible addresses.
They compared results. There it was. Ulla Jensen lived on the site of the bankrupt HJ Industries, on Strohusvej in Greve.
Carl looked it up on the map. It was only a few hundred yards away from where Daniel Hale had burned to death on the Kappelev highway. He remembered standing there. It was the road he’d looked down as they’d surveyed the countryside.
He felt the adrenaline starting to pump faster. Now they had an address. And they could drive there in
