Page 25 of The Collector
“I’m surprised you need it.” Martin recited three numbers. “Just to be clear, youdointend to return everything, don’t you?”
“Barring some unforeseen development.”
“These things add up, you know. A million here and a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”
“I need some of that, too.”
“There’s a couple hundred thousand in the safe,” said Martin with a sigh. “Help yourself.”
14
Funen
The Coalition for a Green Denmark was founded in 2005 by Anders Holm and nine other students from Aalborg University’s department of politics and society. The group’s primary objective, spelled out in its grandiose charter, was a carbon-free Danish economy by the year 2025. It created a website that no one visited, organized symposia and marches that no one attended, and obtained signatures on lofty petitions that few people in positions of power or influence bothered to accept, let alone read.
Which led Anders Holm, two years after the Coalition’s formation, to undertake a shift in tactics. The days of pamphlets and petitions, he declared, were over. The group would now embark on a campaign of provocative direct action, a campaign that included a series of embarrassing hacks and denial-of-service attacks on the computer networks of Denmark’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases. The Danish police were never able to apprehend the hacker responsible, in part because only Anders knew her identity: Ingrid Johansen, a brilliant student from the university’s department of computer sciences.
Ingrid was proud of the hacks she had carried out for the Coalition, but it was the druglike rush of breaking into supposedly secure computer networks that she found most exhilarating. She carried out a few more jobs for Anders—against polluters and powerful businessmen and even a government minister—but soon her skill at the keyboard alone was not enough to satisfy her addiction. It was too easy, too safe. Feeding her habit required the assumption of greater risk.
Like most thieves, she honed her skills by shoplifting. Before long she was picking locks and pockets, especially in the bars of Aalborg, where her victims were often addled by alcohol. She learned to be outgoing and flirtatious, which did not come naturally to her, and to welcome the advances of men—older men in particular, as they generally carried more cash and other valuables and were easily flattered by attractive young women. Ingrid’s looks, she discovered, were an asset. The face of crime in contemporary Scandinavia bore little resemblance to hers.
She left the university at the end of her second year—on the pretense of starting her own IT consultancy—and embarked on a one-woman crime wave that stretched the length and breadth of Denmark. She stole her first diamonds in Copenhagen and sold them for a fraction of what they were worth to a Serbian gang in Frankfurt, a transaction she had been lucky to survive. It was then that she bought her gun, a Glock 26 subcompact, from a member of the Black Cobras street gang in Malmö. The Cobra, whose name was Ibrahim Kadouri, taught Ingrid how to use the weapon and how to sell stolen jewelry without getting killed in the process. Ibrahim knew an Armenian in the Diamond Quarter of Antwerp, a reputable fence, if there was such a thing. Ingrid returned the favor by giving Ibrahim ten thousand kroner in cash and two hundred stolen credit cards for which she had no use.
By the time she turned thirty, she was taking in upwards of a half million euros a year as a thief in addition to the legitimate income she earned from her consulting business. She purchased the cottage in Kandestederne and, after a particularly productive summer in Saint-Tropez, her villa on Mykonos. She stole only from the wealthy—they were the ones with the money and the valuables, after all—and kept only what she needed to finance her admittedly comfortable lifestyle. The rest she donated to charity using anonymous wire transfers or DHL parcels stuffed with cash.
Through it all, Ingrid remained a committed environmentalist and climate activist. Her homes were carbon-neutral, and her car was a plug-in hybrid Volvo XC90. At half past four on Friday afternoon, it was moving southward down the Jutland peninsula on the E45. Ingrid wore a fashionable Rhanders beanie and lightly tinted sunglasses, rendering her all but unrecognizable. Her Glock was in her handbag, which was resting on the passenger seat. The leather document tube containingThe Concertby Johannes Vermeer was in the Volvo’s forward trunk.
The skies over Jutland had finally cleared after forty-eight hours of torrential rain and wind. Ingrid crossed the Little Belt Bridge at 5:00 p.m. and headed eastward across Funen on the E20. The sun was still shining brightly when she reached the auto plaza in Vissenbjerg. She attached the Volvo to a charging station at the Q8 and, taking only her handbag, entered Jørgens Smørrebrød Café.
Two tables were occupied, one by an unhappy-looking Danish couple of late middle age, the other by a man of perhaps forty who was wearing a dark business suit beneath a car-length overcoat. Not Danish, thought Ingrid. A Finn, perhaps. Maybe an Estonian or Latvian. Good shoes, nice wristwatch, probably a few hundred in his wallet. Not an easy mark, though. He looked confident, sure of himself. He also seemed to have no interest at all in Ingrid, which wasrare. Most men couldn’t help but cast at least a glance of appraisal in her direction.
She ordered coffee and a chicken salad smørrebrød from the girl behind the counter and carried it to a table against the window. The unhappy Danish couple departed the café first, at 5:45 p.m., followed ten minutes later by the man who might or might not have been from Finland or one of the Baltic states. Outside, a man in his mid-sixties was filling an E-Class Mercedes sedan with petrol. With his tweed jacket and beige rollneck sweater, there was no mistaking him for anything other than an antiquarian book dealer from Copenhagen—and a crooked one at that.
He returned the nozzle to the pump and eased his Mercedes into a space in the car park. When he entered the café, he was carrying a cheap-looking attaché case. He purchased a coffee and, with both hands occupied, approached Ingrid’s table. Rising, she embraced him warmly and plucked the phone from the patch pocket of his tweed coat.
He sat down and placed the attaché case on the chair next to him.
“When are you going to get rid of that car?” asked Ingrid as she slid Peter’s phone into her handbag.
“It’s only three years old.”
“Which means you’ll get a very good trade-in price when you switch to a hybrid or electric model.”
“I like the feel of a gas engine.”
“And how will youfeelwhen the rising seas inundate your beautiful bookshop on Strøget?”
“I’m on the second floor,” replied Peter, and held out his hand.
Frowning, Ingrid surrendered the phone.
“You’ve lost your touch, girl.”
“The painting in my car would suggest otherwise.”
“It belongs to my client.”
“Not yet,” said Ingrid.
