The Exception Read online

  Paul’s next swirl on his chair is especially vigorous.

  ‘No way.’

  Neither Iben nor Malene can think of anything to do or say for a moment.

  ‘Why …?’ Malene finally asks.

  Paul stares at them. ‘She isn’t sick. Simple as that.’

  Both Iben and Malene squirm at the thought of having to present an analysis of Anne-Lise’s mental state without any proper evidence.

  ‘Let’s do some straight talking,’ Paul says. ‘To force sick leave on an employee is something you only do when you’re desperate for a chance to sack them. It means that the problem is off your desk for a while and hopefully it will go away on its own. It never does, though.’

  Iben and Malene are falling over themselves to distance themselves from what he is implying.

  ‘No, that’s not it at all …’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  Iben winces. ‘You mustn’t take it like that. All we mean is, maybe Anne-Lise should take some time off. Some problem at home might be troubling her. Anyway, she clearly isn’t stable right now. You even offered her the chance to see a psychologist.’

  Malene follows this up. ‘What we feel is, she might slip into real mental illness unless she gets some peace.’

  Paul is unusually direct. ‘Look, you know as well as I do that to send someone home on these terms is to push them down the slippery slope towards dismissal. For Anne-Lise it would be nearly impossible to return to work here. She has a husband and children who will be affected, one way or another. Besides, the work she does here is excellent. We’ve hardly given the new measures time to work. You should do the decent thing and give Anne-Lise a chance.’

  Iben feels blood rushing to her cheeks. A pulse is starting to beat in her temple. ‘We only made the suggestion because we’re working so closely and collaborating with her is very difficult at the moment. We thought that it would be reasonable to give her some time to get on an even keel … and we’ve tried everything else. Malene saw to it that we, and you, had a meeting with Anne-Lise. And we’ve changed the way we work …’

  Malene interrupts. She sounds more upset than she probably wants to. ‘It might also be dangerous to let her carry on. No matter how difficult it is for us to think of her as … unbalanced, there is the matter of the death threats.’

  Paul stops her. ‘What’s this about the situation being dangerous for you? She’s the only one around here who had blood poured all over her.’

  ‘She could easily have set that up herself!’

  Malene catches Paul’s eye and then looks at Iben. The effect is to shift Paul’s attention.

  ‘Iben, tell Paul again about the books you’ve been reading.’

  Iben would dearly like this to end soon or, preferably, for it never to have started. She tries to run through some of her psychiatric insights, but her new knowledge sounds quite out of place.

  Paul watches her, his eyes clouding with such disappointment that Iben feels she can’t bear it much longer. He interrupts her. ‘I am personally convinced that the emails were not sent by anyone on our team. I expect you to trust the others in the same way.’

  Malene tries to offer a little support for her friend. ‘But—’

  He almost shouts now: ‘It is out of the question!’

  Then Paul stops turning around in his chair and speaks more quietly. ‘We do not, any of us, suspect Anne-Lise. Or Camilla. Period! The video camera is going to be in place over our front door pretty soon. Once we all feel safe, everything will sort itself out.’

  Malene opens her mouth, but a quick glance at Paul makes her close it again.

  They all reflect for a moment.

  Paul is the first to break the silence. ‘Look, I hear what you’re saying. Clearly there are problems, but I won’t mention anything about this at the board meeting today. I’m going to forget what I’ve heard, unless of course you would feel differently? It’s really to protect you. I’m afraid your behaviour wouldn’t look too good.’

  20

  Iben and Malene are sitting in the coastal-line train on their way to Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. DCGI and the Institute of Human Rights have joined forces to run a two-day conference on ‘The Re-establishment of Democracy and Civic Trust in the Former Yugoslavia’. Many people are expected to attend, including 140 international delegates.

  The train is relatively empty, because at this time of the morning the commuters travel into Copenhagen. The sharp November-morning light pours into the carriage. The sun stands so low over the horizon that it shines directly into their eyes as they try to observe the luxurious seaside villas.

  During the week after their awkward meeting in Paul’s office, Malene suggested to Paul that they should invest in a new piece of software. Running on a section of the DCGI site with restricted access, the program would allow researchers to read and review each other’s papers. Subscribers could arrange online meetings and keep chatting round the clock, as well as interact via notices on a bulletin board.

  Malene would take on the role of web master for this closed section of the site. Once it was up and running, DCGI would be on its way to becoming a virtual research centre, at comparatively minimal cost. Before Malene took her idea to Paul, she investigated the running costs and looked into what other organisations felt about virtual meeting places that were similar. She had tabulated advantages and drawbacks, alongside informed comments.

  Despite all this, Paul said no.

  Malene keeps coming back to Paul’s refusal. ‘All he had to do was check out what I had prepared for him. If the Swedes get there first, we’ll be totally sidelined when it comes to research support. I don’t understand him.’

  Iben can’t think of anything new to say. They have been over this several times already.

  Malene takes a drink from the large coffee she bought at the station and then starts up again. Her warm coffee breath envelops Iben.

  ‘I can’t help wondering if he is planning to take up another post, and wants to take my idea with him.’

  Iben doesn’t think so. Malene can probably read it on her face.

  ‘Then what? Do you think he has other work in mind for me, something I haven’t even heard about yet?’

  The train has passed through a forest and the sunlight hits Iben’s eyes.

  ‘It couldn’t be something to do with cutting back on our activities, could it? Like working less closely with the researchers?’

  That would be idiotic and Iben says so. They both look out at the houses slipping past.

  ‘Malene, there’s one more possible reason for his decision,’ Iben says. ‘I’ve been thinking it over for a while.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look, it’s only based on a hunch. Nothing solid.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The way I remember it, when I arrived at the Centre, you always had Paul’s backing for your ideas, not just for this kind of project. Right?’

  Malene nods.

  ‘And Paul wasn’t all that alert to what the library might need.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘It seems to me that, between then and now, something has changed – something that no one has wanted to talk about so far.’

  Malene has pushed her coffee away, and her eyes are fixed on Iben.

  ‘What occurs to me is that Paul is very anxious about running such a small outfit. He’s aware of the risk that someone higher up might look at the DCGI and decide it’s time to merge it with another organisation, inevitably a bigger one. We’d be absorbed, sooner or later. Until recently, Paul believed that the Centre had to grow or die, which is why he used to encourage you to work like crazy on whatever research initiatives you came up with, so that we could secure new areas of expertise and therefore more support from grants.’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly how it used to be. And now it’s like—’

  ‘What if Paul has picked up on a hint that we’re going to be cut off from the Ministry for Science, Technology and
Development? I don’t know anything, of course. But what if? In that case we’d almost certainly be transferred to the Foreign Affairs Ministry. And then, in one of their rationalisation rounds, Human Rights would swallow us up. That’s a no-brainer.

  ‘If Paul has heard rumours like that, it would explain why he’s always so nervous before going to meetings at the Ministry. And, being Paul, he’ll already have thought through the next twenty moves in the game and planned ways of winning it.

  ‘Say that he has noticed that state research libraries are small units scattered among the different ministries. Now there’s a possible plank to cling to, because the more vigorously our library expands, the greater Paul’s chance of presenting DCGI as “a major library with additional research facilities”. That in turn would give him scope to manoeuvre DCGI into the arms of another ministry, like Culture, or Justice, or Asylum Seekers, Immigrants and Integration – whatever takes his fancy. He’d be safe in his director’s post then, and nobody would be breathing down his neck, because the system accepts that research libraries are independent units, however small.’

  Iben can see that none of this has occurred to Malene. At least there are some advantages to lying awake and alone at night, Iben thinks.

  ‘Look, Malene, if this is his rescue plan, then your initiatives could ruin it. He’d prefer to become part of almost any ministry as long as it isn’t Foreign Affairs. If avoiding that means scaling down everything you’ve proposed in support of research, so be it.’

  ‘But he was so keen on the Centre being associated with this conference and the one about the Germans in 1945. What do you make of that?’

  In the aisle next to them an elderly lady fusses about with her little wheeled suitcase. Malene seems not to notice her at all.

  Iben speaks quickly now. ‘Paul is walking a tightrope. Some years from now, he and Frederik will be competing for the same top post. They both already know it. Before then, Paul has to demostrate that he is more capable of building a stronger, better organisation than Frederik. But in the current situation he feels that all research initiatives must be one-offs, like conferences and so on. That would mean that from now on, your function in the day-to-day work of the Centre would be to support Anne-Lise.’

  Malene sits back heavily in her seat, staring into middle distance.

  ‘I haven’t heard anybody say this and I don’t know anything for sure,’ Iben says, ‘but I can’t help speculating.’

  Iben cannot recall having seen such bright sunshine in November. The delegates have gathered in the restaurant and on the outside terrace, enjoying the views over the sculpture park on the slope down to the sea. Iben recognises quite a few people. Malene, who has managed research assistance practically single-handedly for three years, is very well informed about who everyone is. Quite a few people comment on the email threats or on articles in the DCGI on-line magazine. Others, who haven’t met Iben since her return from Africa, tell her how happy they were to learn that the hostage episode had ended in such a satisfactory way. ‘It’s great that you all got out alive,’ they say, even though it was four months ago.

  New delegates are arriving all the time. Malene notices that one of the speakers from Bosnia looks lost and goes off to explain the conference set-up to him. Paul is outside in the park with Morten Kjærum, Executive Director of the Institute of Human Rights, and Birte Weiss, who used to be the Minister for Research and Information Technology. Anne-Lise stands by his side and appears to be trying to follow their conversation. This is the first time Paul has invited the Centre’s librarian to a conference.

  At ten o’clock, Morten Kjærum welcomes the delegates in the great hall downstairs and is followed by the first speaker, a young city mayor from Bosnia.

  His body is as taut and powerful as a soldier’s, even under the layer of fat that the southern European diet has deposited ever since the Dayton Peace Treaty. From where Iben and Malene are sitting, he looks almost boyish. Like the other delegates from the former Yugoslavia, but unlike their Danish hosts, he is wearing a dark suit, white shirt and wide tie. The style of his dark hair reminds Iben of Russians in old spy films.

  The talk deals with the Serb ethnic cleansing in his own locality, but despite this the presentation is unemotional and plainly instructive.

  He reads out statistics from the overhead projector:

  184 people were killed.

  416 houses were burnt to the ground.

  1,783 persons were expelled.

  73 persons were exposed to rape or torture or both.

  He sticks to basics for the rest of his talk too. Most of those present know the facts already and no one takes any notes. At the end, many people wonder why in the world he was invited.

  Someone asks a question: ‘How come you survived?’

  He replies carefully, in a tone that remains factual and unengaged: ‘Some of us had feared what would happen before it did. We had gathered together. They told us to hand over our weapons, but we bought new rifles from Serb soldiers. Then the top Serbs ordered that all the men should go to the school in the town. We ran off into the forest. They shot the men in the school later that day. We lived in the forest for several months.’

  The mayor is standing with his back half-turned to the audience, looking up at the bright square with its tabulated numbers. He speaks in monotones.

  ‘Then the Serbs surrounded the forest. They said they would let us live if we surrendered and kill us if we refused. I was in command of the whole group and I decided that we would not surrender. We learned later that every single one of us would have been killed if I had decided the other way. We ambushed twenty Serbs in the forest and took them prisoner. Then we did a deal. The prisoners would be freed if we were allowed to travel to a Bosnian enclave. We joined the Bosnian army there. I fought and quite soon was made a colonel. I led my men to free my town. Then they made me mayor.’

  No one can think of how to comment. For a few seconds the entire audience hesitates and then a few questions are asked based on his talk.

  During the coffee break, Iben goes off to look for Paul and finds him on the terrace, deep in conversation with the board chairman, Ole Henningsen. Ole is a heavily built man in his early sixties who sports a large white beard. Before he became interested in genocide research he wrote several historical works about the Soviet Union. He is one of the experts on contemporary history who regularly appears on television. Sometimes he does quiz shows too.

  Iben notices Frederik’s blond head above the crowd. He is walking away, possibly after having just left the other two. Paul is leaning forward to speak confidingly with Ole, who is known to be happy with the way Paul runs things. As Iben arrives, she hears the last words of what has clearly been a complaint about the way the Danish Institute of Human Rights had tried to exclude the Centre from being a co-organiser of this conference.

  ‘… seems to me that they simply weren’t interested in using our expertise.’

  Paul’s eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses and it is possible that he hasn’t yet noticed that Iben has joined them.

  ‘I’m considering taking the issue up with Morten.’

  Iben knows that the DCGI only got in on the act because Paul heard through some of his contacts that DIHR was planning the conference. He managed to make sure the Centre was involved at the last minute, just before the invitations and press releases were sent out.

  One result of this collaboration is that the conference lasts for two days instead of one, which has made it more attractive for delegates from abroad. DCGI contributed only 15,000 kroner, but added its unrivalled mailing list of European researchers interested in post-war Yugoslavia. Iben also spent several hours on the layout of the conference papers and Paul wrote a full-page article about the conference for Information, describing the speakers’ backgrounds and speculating about the likely outcome.

  Because the arrangements were made at the last moment, there had been no time to inform the board members – including its depu
ty chairman, Frederik Thorsteinsson. And because Frederik didn’t know of the plans, his Centre for Democracy only heard about the conference when it was too late to join in the organising of it. Paul in his capacity as member of the Centre for Democracy’s board might have mentioned it to Frederik, but it seems that he didn’t. At least, Iben assumes he didn’t.

  When Iben joins Paul and Ole on the terrace, Ole immediately changes the subject and, in his pleasant voice, asks her how she is. All the board members have been very attentive to Iben ever since she returned from Kenya. Ole goes on to praise her recent articles.

  Back in the hall the next speaker is an ageing Bosnian journalist and intellectual.

  ‘Now we have to force ourselves to hope again. We want a better future for Bosnia. And we will achieve it, with the help of organisations such as those represented here today.’

  The speaker’s elaborate descriptions of his captivity in a shed outside Sarajevo make Iben feel oddly unfocused, as if her past is trying to return to her.

  Omoro stands in the circle. He sings.

  She pushes at the carapace of the dead beetle in the mud wall.

  But she doesn’t want to think about that. Not now.

  They break for lunch and Iben sits next to Malene at one of the long communal tables in Louisiana’s restaurant. Their table is at a right angle to the huge windows and to the panoramic view of Øresund’s glittering water. Beyond the straits, the outline of the Swedish coast is unusually clear.

  All the delegates are busy networking in a mixture of languages, mostly English or the Scandinavian ones, and the noise level is terrific.

  Malene scatters lots of salt over her food. She’s on a conference high.

  ‘I’ve had a chat with Frederik and slipped a mention of Erik Prins into the conversation. As far as I could make out Erik hasn’t said anything bad about me to Frederik. Naturally I didn’t ask him point blank; he wouldn’t have said anyway. It was just that I sensed he acted towards me the same way he always has.’