Night on Fire

1

1I was racing toward disaster.

The night before, a chartered MD-11 Trijet had blown up after takeoff from Bangor International, killing all four hundred and eight people on board. I was the State Department’s representative on a federal terrorism task force and I had to be on the 6:00 PM Global Airlines flight from Copenhagen to New York. I dodged around less hasty travelers, a blond woman in no-name running shoes loping past Kastrup Airport’s duty-free shops.

Brilliant strips of neon in primary colors slid by me. I saw masses of Nordic furs, Swedish vodka, Georg Jensen pipes. Passed travelers lugging heavy bags from the liquor store. Spotted a plainclothes cop dressed too warmly for a Danish June, scrutinizing the passersby.

Up ahead the readerboard listed the status of departing flights. Beyond, harshly lit corridors branched off toward the gates.

A six-foot monument blocked my path. The cop, immovable as stone. I stopped abruptly, breathing hard. I moved to one side. So did he.

He was slightly stooped, topcoat hanging open in front, showing the regulation white shirt and tie, concealing the reason for his underarm bulge.

I flashed my passport, black with the gold embossed eagle beneath the logo. DIPLOMATIC, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. “US State Department,” I said. “Urgent and official business.”

“My business is also official.” The cop’s eyes were charcoal, pouched in sooty-colored flesh that gave his face a melancholy cast. “Also urgent,” he added somberly. “You are Kathryn Collins?”

The worried gaze, the regretful tone. A messenger of death. My alarm was instant.

“Stefan Krajewski?” I asked. “Has something happened to Stefan?”

His forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know that name,” he began slowly, “but—”

I interrupted. “My father?”

His features smoothed out. “I have no news of your family.”

Not my lover. Not my father. I shifted my weight from right foot to left, ready to sidestep him again. “I don’t have time—”

He pushed his card toward me. “This is official business of the Danish police.”

Reluctantly, I took the card and read. POLITIASSISTENT NIELS-JØRGEN JESPERSEN. And under that in French, LIAISON, CORPS DIPLOMATIQUE. The policeman assigned to interview members of the diplomatic corps when they ran afoul of Danish law.

A mistake then, stopping me. The digital clock on the departures board read five-fifty. “I can’t miss this flight. You’ll have to talk to someone at the embassy.”

“I have spoken with your security officer.”

“Bella Hinton? Didn’t she tell you? I don’t have time for this.”

“I must ask you to come with me,” he said unhappily.

“You know an American airliner exploded last night in Maine?”

His nod was mournful. “And you will be taking part in that investigation.”

Not a question. So Bella had told him why I was leaving Denmark. I said, “I have to be in Bangor tomorrow morning.”

“That will not be possible.” A pair of uniformed policemen appeared beneath the fluorescent lights behind him, coming our way. I felt the short hairs rise on the back of my neck. He’d brought backup. Was he anticipating violent resistance?

“You think I’m a criminal?” Disbelief made my voice rise. “You aren’t going to arrest a diplomat—”

“I would not do that.” Jespersen’s hand was on my elbow, his grip firm. He motioned to his two cohorts, cookie-cutter Vikings with collar-length blond hair swept back from their pale faces, boxy jackets accenting the breadth of their shoulders. They stepped behind me. Other travelers cut to the right and left of our compact quartet. I caught a few curious glances, but nobody tried to intervene. Jespersen added, “Bella assured us you’d be eager to cooperate.”

He was letting me know he’d checked my status. I wasn’t an accredited member of the US mission, my special assignment to Denmark short-term only. Not protected by diplomatic immunity. He could arrest me if he felt like it.

The digital readout on the departures board jumped ahead another minute from five-fifty-four to five-fifty-five. I’d never make my flight. Except they’d have to hold up the plane while they extracted the suitcase of a passenger who failed to board. I had one, maybe two minutes to talk my way out of this.

I said, “I’ve been ordered home by the president.” Technically, it was the attorney general who’d called in the special interagency task force on terrorism, but Jespersen wouldn’t know that.

The task force had six members and our qualifications didn’t overlap. To achieve good results, we had to work together from the beginning of the investigation. Each of us had accepted the one fundamental rule of membership: When we were called, we’d drop everything else and be on-site from Day One. I hiked the strap of my carry-on bag higher on my shoulder and tried to free my elbow.

Jespersen’s grip tightened. “I’m sure your president will forgive a few hours’ delay,” he said. “And don’t worry about your luggage. The airline company will send your suitcase to the American embassy.”

I searched my mind frantically for a compelling argument that would break Jespersen’s hold. I couldn’t think of one. “Very considerate,” I said in a voice flat with resignation. I let him start me moving toward the concourse, the other two cops sauntering behind us. Twenty feet along one hallway he took us through a door marked PRIVATE, down a set of metal stairs and outside to the area between the arrivals lounge and the police substation.

A breeze off the Øresund added the briny smell of the sea to the airport’s overlay of exhaust fumes. Jespersen propelled me toward an iron-gray BMW. Its color matched the skin around his eyes. He pulled open the front passenger door. “We’ll take my car.”

“Take your car where?” I slid onto the leather.

He pushed my door shut. The two uniforms had disappeared into the airport cop shop. Maybe they’d decided I was harmless. Or more likely other cops were at our destination.

“What is it you need me for?” I asked as soon as Jespersen got behind the wheel.

He maneuvered us out of the parking space and headed for the highway leading into Copenhagen. He kept his eyes on the traffic and said, “kriminalinspektør Blixenstjerne would like to ask you some questions.”

A police inspector had questions for me? “About what?”

“A case he’s working on.”

The case had to be a homicide. The aura of death hung over Jespersen’s every movement. Anxiety knotted my stomach. Who had died?

Before I could ask, Jespersen said, “You arrived in Copenhagen June first. And sixteen days later you’re leaving?”

He’d blocked my question by asking his own. An interrogation was underway. I shifted in my seat to watch him. “I was supposed to stay three months. But that got changed this afternoon.”

He glanced toward me. “You got a new assignment?”

“I told you,” I said. “Ordered home because of the airliner explosion.”

“And how were you given this order?”

“I got a phone call from the States around 3:00 AM. I called a couple of people in the US. At five I went into the embassy to use the secure phone. Around eight their time—two o’clock here—I was reassigned.”

“From 5:00 AM until 2:00 PM you were at the American embassy?”

He was making me recap my movements for the last twelve hours. I chose my words with care. “Until three. I went back to my flat to pack. Returned to the embassy around four-thirty. Picked up the paperwork and tickets, headed to Kastrup.”

We were on Amager Boulevard. A leafy canopy blocked the sun. The shade blurred the rushing traffic, darkening the colorful compacts to the same dull sheen, turning us all to ashy-brown lemmings racing toward the harbor.

Jespersen said, “You moved quite swiftly?”

“As fast as possible,” I said. My hand tightened on the armrest. I’d had to lobby hard to win appointment to the sole State Department opening on the task force. I was qualified—no one disputed that. But last December, I’d side-stepped an FBI interrogation and taken part in a quasi-official European investigation of an airliner bombing in Scotland. The secretary of state had approved my participation after-the-fact and I’d gotten a meritorious salary increase for my “display of initiative.” But my detractors in the FBI still grumbled about that refusal to follow the bureau’s lead. To win them over, I’d promised that I’d adhere scrupulously to the task force operating procedures.

The MD-11 had gone down in Maine on Tuesday night. Now it was Wednesday afternoon and I’d missed the last direct flight to the US today from Copenhagen. I couldn’t wait until tomorrow for the next one. A tardy arrival in Bangor would cost me. I’d have to return to Kastrup this evening and fly to another airport with a late-night transatlantic flight. There had to be someplace in Europe where I could make connections that would get me to the US by morning.

I mentally urged Jespersen to hurry up.

He took the Long Bridge over the harbor and continued straight on Hans Christian Andersen Boulevard. Tourists clustered outside the entrance to Tivoli. I sat up straighter. Jespersen hadn’t turned toward police headquarters. “Where is this Blixenstjerne?” I asked.

“I’m taking you to him.” He didn’t slow as we passed the American embassy’s concrete-and-glass cube on Dag Hammarskjölds Allé. No point in inviting another non-response to my questions. And definitely time to exercise my all-American right to remain silent. Muscles tightened inside my chest. We were driving north onto Østerbrogade, the same route I’d followed back and forth to work for the past two weeks. Jespersen was taking me home.

Helsingborggade, the street where I lived, was blocked off with barricades and yellow tape. Late afternoon sunlight glimmered on a white ambulance, the trademark falcon outlined in stark red, talons extended as though dropping toward its prey. Clustered on the pavement around it were late-model cars in solid colors. I counted three Volvo station wagons in shades of green, so uniformly anonymous that they had to be official vehicles.

Jespersen bumped up onto the sidewalk and stopped twenty feet from the apartment complex where the embassy rented a furnished flat for me. Beside my building’s front entrance lounged a uniformed cop, murmuring into the microphone on his shoulder.

“What happened?” I asked.

Jespersen said, “Get out of the car, please.”

I had my seat belt undone and my door open. By the time I was standing on the sidewalk, another man had joined us. He was shorter than Jespersen, with clear blue eyes in a pink face, wearing an apple-green shirt with a plaid tie. He smoothed the tie before he said, “Ernst Blixenstjerne.”

I waved a hand toward the ambulance. “What’s going on?”

Blixenstjerne turned an inquiring face toward his colleague.

Jespersen shook his head. “Ingenting.” Not a thing.

He’d told me nothing, as he’d clearly been instructed. Blixenstjerne wanted to surprise me. The tightness in my chest connected with the knot in my stomach, my whole torso tensing.

Blixenstjerne’s voice was dispassionate. “When were you last inside your flat?”

“She left at four-thirty,” Jespersen said helpfully.

“We’d like you to take a look at it.” Blixenstjerne motioned for me to follow him into the building. In the lobby, I smelled ground pork cooked at a high temperature. Someone in the building had made frikadeller for dinner. I felt an instant of longing for a simple, predictable existence.

To the right of the entrance, the door to my ground floor flat stood open. I stepped into the foyer and took a breath, bracing myself for things I’d seen on television—smashed furniture, chalk outlines, blood stains. I looked through the archway into the living room and had to exhale fast to keep from throwing up.