The Elephant Keepers' Children

  An hour has passed, and Tilte and I have briefly, yet conscientiously, related everything we’ve been through. We’ve put the newspaper clippings out on the table, and the invoices from the safe-deposit box, and as we run through events Hans begins to mull things over and eventually he gets to his feet as though intending to break something, perhaps a load-bearing wall or two. Once again this side of him emerges that is familiar to us only from those few occasions on which misguided tourists have made the mistake of picking on him and his female companions. Apart from that, meek is the word that most obviously springs to mind to describe my brother’s psychology.

  But now something has happened. So when he hears all this about our parents he gets to his feet.

  “They’re planning a robbery,” he says. “They’re planning to steal religious treasures that mean a great deal to a great many people.”

  “But something made them change their plans,” Tilte adds.

  “They want more,” says Hans. “If they changed their plans, it’s because they thought of something that would increase their yield. So I’m against our helping them. We should let things pan out. Even if it’s into the toilet.”

  Now Ashanti says something, and we have to concentrate on what she is saying in order not to become wholly absorbed by the sound of her voice.

  “I’ve never met your parents,” she says, “but I sense how very fond of them you are. That clinches matters. If you love someone, it will never go away.”

  Now that she has spoken, her being a high priestess makes perfect sense, because it’s plain to anyone how easily she might hold a congregation spellbound.

  Hans certainly is spellbound. He sits down.

  Then Tilte’s phone, which by rights is Katinka’s but now has a new SIM card inside it, rings.

  Tilte answers the call and listens for a moment, and then her expression becomes grave. A minute passes, perhaps. The call ends and she puts down the phone.

  “That was Leonora,” she says. “She’s worried. She wants us to meet her in fifteen minutes.”

  47

  The Institute of Buddhist studies is located behind the church on the square called Nikolaj Plads. It’s a quiet, idyllic place. People sit at small café tables in the square, enjoying that particularly Danish combination of second-degree burns and frostbite, because the temperature is twenty-seven degrees Celsius in the sun and minus something in the shade. Viewed from the outside, the institute looks like a place full of Danish history. There’s a gateway whose door resembles that of a church, and the gold lettering on a plaque says this is where the illustrious Danish poet Sigurd Skullsmacker lived until his rather untimely death in 1779.

  Inside, it’s a different story altogether. We’re received by a small monk in red robes who ushers us in. The house opens out onto a courtyard around which runs a covered cloister, and in the middle is a fountain and at each corner a guard. In the car, Tilte has shared with us what Leonora has told her about the place being a kind of monastery and university all at once, and this is where the Dalai Lama and the seventeenth Karmapa will be staying for the duration of the conference. Already, security people are milling about. The Danes among them, colleagues of Lars and Katinka from the Police Intelligence Service, wear sunglasses and earpieces, while the Tibetans are as tall as American basketball players and as broad as football goals.

  And yet there’s something about the place that makes you want to become a monk. In fact, this is an urge I have always felt, and since Conny left me it’s a feeling that’s grown stronger. If I could find a monastery with a strong first team I’d seriously consider doing something about it, though there would have to be close bonds with a nearby nunnery, because even though no one will ever take the place of Conny, and I am destined always to be alone, one wouldn’t want to be entirely devoid of female company.

  We’re led up some stairs and along corridors into a small room with a view over the roof of St. Nicholas, and at the table sits Leonora in front of her laptop, looking nothing like the happy, smiling coaching expert we know so well.

  She casts a glance at Ashanti, but Tilte and I nod approvingly. We sit down around the laptop.

  “When you delete things from a computer,” Leonora says, “you don’t actually delete at all. What you delete are file pointers, or electronic addresses. The information itself remains behind in other directories. Your parents didn’t know. So the hour they thought they deleted lived on, hidden but intact.”

  The image of the exhibition room appears on the screen. It’s daytime, and workers are busying themselves at exhibition cases and with a raised platform at the rear of the room. Leonora runs the footage at normal speed. We can see the company names on the overalls of the workers and sense how different the atmosphere is here compared to a normal place of work. Everyone wears white gloves, they work quietly and meticulously like lab technicians. We watch them clear away when they’re done, and their cleaning would be a match even for me: after vacuuming, they wipe everything down with microfiber cloths and afterward there’s no sitting down for a beer at the end of the day, all they drink is mineral water, spilling not a drop and taking their rubbish away with them when they go, and after that the room is empty, apart from the sunlight of early evening.

  Leonora fast-forwards and the light fades.

  “It’s night,” she says. “Shortly after three o’clock.”

  There’s a faint light in the room, perhaps from the moon, perhaps from the lamps in front of the castle building. Not enough for a normal camera to pick up, but for Voice Security only the best equipment is good enough.

  We feel almost devout. We are watching the hour our mother and father have deleted.

  I don’t notice the figures until they’re inside the room. They have entered without a sound, the first sign of their presence being a faint white light passing over one of the black squares that mark the shafts above which the exhibition cases will be positioned. Then a voice comes out of the darkness.

  “Henrik, I think there’s a mouse!”

  The voice belongs to a woman, and she sounds out of breath.

  “Impossible, my dear. What you sense are rats. And mice and rats hardly ever—”

  Because the face is hidden and only white hair visible, our attention is focused on the voice, which is full in a way that would allow its owner to slip easily into the high tenor row of the Finø Church Choir. In which case, he wouldn’t need to be up at three in the morning. But now he’s cut short before finishing his sentence, because the woman emits a squeal, presumably at the mention of rats.

  Then two more figures appear.

  “Ibrahim, is it in place?”

  It’s Henrik asking. Ibrahim chuckles.

  “All set and ready. A little explosion first makes the cases descend into the box. Then comes the big bang inside. There’ll hardly be a sound on the outside. But the job will be done.”

  “Why can’t we keep some of it, Henrik?”

  Now it’s the woman asking. And one can understand her. Especially with all those rats.

  “It’s the principle of it, Blizilda. Divinity requires one to set aside one’s own needs. If one destroys for one’s own benefit, only hell awaits. My mother once said—”

  “I want new shoes, at least. Look at these heels …”

  Blizilda again. One feels only sympathy for Henrik. It’s clear that he is rarely allowed to finish a sentence. And yet it’s obvious, even in the dark, that his patience is being tested.

  “I’d prefer to say that anyone stupid enough to wear high heels on a mission such as this would be—”

  “Did I hear the word stupid, Henrik? Because if I did …”

  A movement in the darkness indicates the intervention of a fourth party, who now addresses the still-chuckling Ibrahim.

  “Aren’t diamonds hard? How can we be sure they won’t be left undamaged and sit there taunting us?”

  The voice is clear, and the accent foreign, though the man’s Danish is so fluent and
correct that even Alexander Flounderblood would have been pleased.

  Ibrahim giggles.

  “Diamonds are very hard indeed. But the temperature in the sealed box during the explosion will be very, very high. Maybe ten thousand degrees. The diamonds will be gone, vaporized. The technical term is pyrolysis. There’ll be nothing left inside the box. A little glitter, that’s all, or a smudge of black powder. You could hoover it up.”

  Silence. The mood is restored. And now again something white in the darkness. A handkerchief. Henrik dries his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s all so very emotional. I used to play here as a child …”

  He’s about to say more, probably something about his mother, but then he pulls himself together.

  “Let us pray.”

  The prayer is a disharmonious mumble, the four individuals praying separately rather than together. It takes maybe thirty seconds, and then all is quiet again.

  And with that they are gone. Just as I failed to see them enter, I miss their departure, and the room is at once empty, as though they had never been there at all.

  We sit quietly for some time. But then Hans says what all of us are thinking. It’s a new role for him, but my brother’s personal development is obviously accelerating.

  “They’re going to blow the treasures to smithereens. They’re terrorists!”

  He looks across at Ashanti. And then he realizes that the scene of this intended terrorist attack is in close proximity to where she is scheduled to perform.

  They may well have amazing trance dancing in Haiti. But we’re not bad ourselves on Finø, as Hans now demonstrates. He leaps to his feet, his blue eyes glazed over, and his trance is of the more uncontrolled variety. His hands open and close as though reaching out to squeeze the juice from a pair of boulders.

  And then he is stopped in his tracks. The arm that stops him is only slender, but it belongs to Ashanti and it breaks his trance and ushers Hans back into the real world with its view of Nikolaj Plads.

  “That’s what Mother and Father discovered,” says Tilte. “They wanted to make certain no one had spotted their little installation underneath the floor, whatever it might be. So they went through the footage. And found this. It made them change their plans.”

  We sit still, paralyzed and mute before the empty screen. Eventually, Hans speaks: ‘This means it’s out of our hands. It’s no longer a family matter now. What we’re going to do is to put this computer under our arm and go quietly along to the police station on Store Kongensgade where other people will be able to take care of this, and then the five of us are going to drive into the country and rent a holiday cabin with a bombproof cellar and stick our heads into the bush until—”

  Hans comes to an abrupt halt. Tilte has raised her arm.

  “Can we see that last bit again? The part where they’re praying.”

  Leonora presses Rewind and we hear Henrik’s distinguished voice repeat the words: “Let us pray.”

  We listen to the voices as they mumble.

  “Listen to each voice in turn,” says Tilte.

  I’m able to identify Henrik, nearest the camera and the microphone. He’s reciting the Lord’s Prayer. The other voices merge together.

  “Again,” says Tilte. “Run it again. Concentrate on one voice at a time.”

  Now I hear the clear voice with the accent. It seems to be chanting. The words are inaudible, but as the child of a pastor I would say that the rhythm is foreign to Danish liturgy and might at a push be an Eastern raga.

  I pick out the woman’s voice, deep and introvert, almost plaintive and accompanied by the jangling sound of prayer beads, a rosary or a mala.

  “They’re not just from different countries,” Tilte says pensively. “They’re from different religions, too.”

  Hans is on his feet again. “That can’t be right. They’re terrorists. And terrorists always belong to the same religion when they act together. Besides, we needn’t pay it any more attention. This is a matter for the police, the intelligence services and Interpol.”

  Tilte remains seated. “It’s now twelve o’clock,” she says. “We have eight hours until the conference kicks off. Seven until people start to arrive.”

  Hans begins to twitch. He knows where Tilte is headed.

  “If we hand this over to the police,” Tilte says, “they’re going to ask us how we know. Which means we’ll have to snitch on Mother and Father. And they’ll discover that we’re on the run. The wheels will all be set in motion, I’ll be sent to Læsø, and Peter will be put away in the Children’s Home at Grenå.”

  Hans has ground to a halt. I’m at the window, yet to find my point of view. On the square below, where we have parked the Mercedes belonging to Hans’s employer, a black van is waiting. It might be the darkened Finø glass of its windows that makes me aware of it and causes my famous memory to kick in, the one that has secured me many a stupendous victory when playing games involving the recognition of number plates on family camping trips. The registration of this black van is T for Tilte and H for Hans, and the first figures are 50 17, the seventeenth of May, which is the date on which Finø FC gained promotion to the DMISL, the Danish Minor Islands’ Super League.

  “Two hours,” says Tilte. “We’re so close. Let’s give ourselves two hours.”

  “To do what?”

  The question is Leonora’s.

  “The man with the white hair,” I say. “Henrik. He said he played at the castle when he was a child. We could show the footage to Rickardt.”

  48

  For a baton, Count Rickardt Three Lions uses a Havana cigar as long as a headmaster’s cane, and now he gestures sweepingly with it in the direction of the panorama window.

  “All the deepest cities have a square as their spiritual centerpoint. Think of St. Peter’s in Rome. St. Mark’s Square. The Church Square of Finø Town. The square in front of the cathedral in Århus. Think of Chartres, or the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. In Copenhagen that place is Kongens Nytorv.”

  We’re seated on the terrace of the Hotel d’Angleterre. On the other side of the glass windbreak, life goes on as ever. Tourists puzzle over how Copenhagen in April can be full of sunshine and spring and yet conceal a freezing northerly wind in its top hat, so no one knows whether to go about in bikinis or ski suits. At the edge of the elliptical parterre known as Krinsen in the middle of Kongens Nytorv, a red double-decker sightseeing bus stands waiting for its passengers, and on the table in front of the count at the hotel overlooking the square is a plate of smørrebrød heaped high with delicacies, and a tall glass of frothy beer.

  “The Seaman’s Mission of Nyhavn,” the count goes on, “the Christian foundations of the Royal Theatre, Heiberg’s Elverhøj, the ballets of Bournonville. Profound works indeed, and evangelical. One feels the vibrations from the Church of Holmen.”

  With his knife, the count separates the layers of one of his open sandwiches. From a small metal box he picks a pinch of something resembling curry powder. He winks at Tilte and me.

  “Magic mushroom. Plucked only yesterday from the green lawns of the northern suburbs. Dried and brought to me by the little blue men this morning. Where was I? Ah, yes. Kongens Nytorv. Can’t you just feel how close we are to the Palace Chapel and the Marble Church? The Institute of Buddhist Studies. St. Ansgar’s and the Catholic Institute. What a magnificent force field.”

  And then he realizes that not one of us is sharing his enthusiasm.

  Tilte puts Leonora’s laptop down on the table in front of him.

  “Rickardt,” she says, “there’s something we want to show you.”

  We’ve been here for five minutes. Ashanti captured Rickardt’s attention even as we approached his table. Her presence prompts him to put down his cigar.

  “A pleasure indeed to meet you,” he says. “Enchanted, I’m sure.”

  Then he sees the rest of us and nods, only to turn his attention back to Ashanti.

  “You’re a foreigner, I see?
Perhaps I might show you the city? I have a Bentley waiting. A convertible, of course.”

  “I’d love to,” says Ashanti. “Would there be room for my partner?”

  Count Rickardt looks up at Hans, then back at Ashanti, at Hans, then Ashanti. He licks his lips, and Tilte and I can tell that a variety of scenarios are passing through his mind, none of which I would care to outline here, seeing as how this is meant for families.

  But then he pulls himself together and shows a glimpse of the spirit that comes of six hundred years of nobility.

  “I have a better idea,” he says. “You and Hans take the car. A drive north along the Strandvej, two young lovers in an open Bentley. A truly religious experience.”

  And at this moment the smørrebrød and the beer are served, whereupon Rickardt proceeds to extoll the virtues of Kongens Nytorv, only to be curtailed by Tilte putting Leonora’s laptop on the table in front of him.

  A moment passes before Rickardt identifies the room.

  “The old chapel,” he says. “Where I shall soon be singing.”

  Tilte speeds up the film. It becomes night. The four figures enter.

  “People,” says the count. “What are they doing there at night?”

  “Listen to the voices,” says Tilte.

  She turns up the volume.

  “I think there’s a mouse!” says the woman’s breathless voice.

  Rickardt shakes his head. He’s blank.

  Tilte runs the sequence from the beginning again. Now that I’ve seen it several times, I’m able to make out the figures as they enter.

  “Impossible, my dear. What you sense are rats.”

  Something has caught Rickardt’s attention. The film continues.

  “It’s all so very emotional. I used to play here as a child …”

  Rickardt makes a sign. Tilte freezes the image. Rickardt turns the laptop to view the screen in shadow.