The Elephant Keepers' Children (42 page)

Bellerad stares blankly at Hans, at Jakob, and then at me. He looks toward the Jaguar. He tries to assess our relative strengths. And then he climbs into the Maserati, the two baldies follow him, and the car pulls away.

There's no doorbell to ring
, only a sign that says
Bellerad Shipping
. I place my ear to the door and can hear what sounds like sobbing. I knock. The sound stops. The door opens just a crack.

“Pink Messengers,” I say.

The crack widens. The man who peers out at me has tears in his eyes.

“You don't look like a messenger,” he says.

“Well, I am,” I tell him. “And the message I bring is a sorrowful one.”

And then Hans kicks the door in.

When Hans kicks a door in, standing behind it is not recommended. But that's exactly what the man is doing.

I don't know if you share my interest in the finer points of kicking techniques, but if you do I can tell you that from a technical angle Hans's kick involves the application of the same kind of force employed in football when delivering a long, flighted pass. This particular kick removes the hinges from the frame, propelling both the door and the man backward into the room.

Hans and Jakob Bordurio and I follow them in. We enter a large storage space, which occupies most of the building. The van is parked on the bare concrete, otherwise the place is empty.

“The New Testament doesn't condone violence,” says Jakob Bordurio.

Numerous central defenders undoubtedly wish Jakob had taken that stance during his time on the first team, because they would have been spared many hours of surgery and Jakob could have avoided all his red cards and subsequent suspensions. But I'm too polite to remind him about it.

Our host is on his feet again and making straight for Hans.

It's plain he's been crying, his face is streaked with tears, and normally I would have encouraged him to tell us what was wrong, because as everyone on Finø knows, the Pastor's Peter is a patient listener who has provided solace to many people.

But he doesn't give me a chance. He's up and at us so adroitly and with such elegance he would surely have drawn attention to himself at Ifigenia Bruhn's Dancing School, and now he thrusts a kick at Hans's knee.

It's the kind of brutal tackle that would have necessitated plaster casts and crutches had it been carried through to completion.

But Hans is no longer standing in the same location.

What the man in front of us has no way of knowing is that my brother Hans is now in the grip of the forces I have told you about, which rear up inside him whenever he finds himself compelled to defend women from dragons. So when the studs-first assault reaches its full extension, Hans is no longer in front of the man but at his side, and now he places a hand over the man's face, lifts him into the air, and slams him against the wall.

The wall is made of metal. Polly Pigonia once imported a gong from Bali for which my mother constructed a frame so that it might be used to call the residents of the ashram to yoga and meditation. Its deep resonance shimmers in the air.

The metal wall of the warehouse gives off a sound that reminds me of Polly's gong. The man's eyes glaze over, his legs give way, and he slumps to the floor and becomes temporarily absent from the proceedings.

It takes a matter of seconds to check the van, the little office, the toilet, and the kitchen, but the place is empty. Desperation begins to take hold. Now we must wait for the man on the floor to wake up so we can ask him about Tilte's whereabouts, and even then he's unlikely to reveal anything. He looks like a cold fish, despite his cheeks being moist with tears.

I peer through the blind and look out on the jetty where fairweather sailors dally, oblivious of how callous the real world can be.

In front of my eyes is the orange tugboat, about to raise anchor. A man in waterproofs the same color as the boat has the last of the mooring warps in his hand, and in the wheelhouse a woman stands at the helm. It's like they're waiting for something.

What I then see has me almost completely flabbergasted. Both of them are crying. Perhaps not wailing their hearts out, but crying all the same.

It's not unknown for sailors to shed a tear when heading out to sea and leaving their loved ones behind. But for two employees of the Port Authority to be crying ahead of a jaunt into the harbor on board Tuggy the Tugboat is rather more surprising. I turn around. The man on the floor is in orange waterproofs too. He may be from the Port Authority. But then again he may not.

“The boat,” I say. “Tilte must be on board.”

A roll-up door leads directly onto the quayside and it's unlocked. Hans presses a button and it goes up with a clatter. Now we're outside in the sun.

It goes without saying that three defenseless youngsters should never be foolhardy enough to assault grown men. But we're afraid for Tilte. And Hans is no longer under control. For my own part, I feel as if I've been propelled into motion and cannot come to rest until brought to a halt, dead or alive. Even Jakob Aquinas Bordurio Madsen seems driven by the kind of momentum I haven't seen since his first calling, which I'd bet my shirt on comes from what might only be referred to as
true love
.

And yet everything almost goes wrong.

When the man with the warps catches sight of us, he first takes a handkerchief from his pocket and dries away his tears, and then he makes another seemingly innocuous movement and produces a gun.

One can only admire his style. There's no messing about to unbutton his waterproofs, no threats uttered, and no needless fumbling around with a shoulder holster. In fact, one hardly notices the movement at all, and then all of a sudden he has something in his hand that may well have a short barrel but is equipped with a long magazine and a retractable shoulder support of ergonomic design.

And then there's the expression on the man's face. I would imagine that if I were going to wave a submachine gun around in Copenhagen's Free Harbor in broad daylight at the busiest time of day, I would first glance around me rather sheepishly and give the situation a great deal of consideration, but this man has no such concerns: he casts a single glance in the direction of the other boats and has already made up his mind.

We never learn exactly what he has decided, because at that same moment someone on the tugboat calls out to him, and that person is Tilte.

Her cry prompts him to swivel around. It's a movement that never reaches its conclusion. Because now he catches sight of Basker.

Basker must have escaped from the car to come to our aid, and I must say he's worked fast.

It's well known that fox terriers are good with children. Most people will also be aware that they are intelligent animals. What may be rather less familiar is the fact that the primeval instincts of the fox terrier have never been bred away. Though Basker might look like a cuddly toy, in genetic terms he's a wolf weighing in at eight kilos. This becomes salient now. I see that his eyes are yellow, and it's very seldom indeed they are ever this color, but when they are I can only advise people to lock their doors and windows and barricade themselves into their basements.

Unfortunately, there's no time to tell the man on the quayside any of this. Moreover, he is clearly not an animal lover, nor does he know the first thing about dogs. He aims a kick at Basker, which is the equivalent of trying to frighten a sabre-toothed tiger with a bottle of perfume.

Basker sets his teeth into the man's leg.

Basker possesses three kinds of bite: a snap, a nip, and then something like a buzz saw and an angle grinder mounted on a bear trap. He employs the last of these, causing the man to emit an ear-splitting howl as his leg buckles beneath him.

If at this point the man had let go of his gun, what ensued might have been rather more gentle. Regrettably, he does not. And therefore Ashanti and Pallas Athene now go for him. Or rather: the red Jaguar does.

This is a car with truly impressive acceleration. It's doing 90 kph by the time it reaches us, sideswiping the kneeling man and sweeping him along the quayside before veering off and hurtling directly toward the waters of the harbor.

The tug is basically on its way out, maybe a meter and a half from dry land. But its deck is lower than the quay. The Jag projects into the air, crumpling the railing and landing crosswise on the foredeck.

It's only a small boat, and the car is longer than the vessel is wide, so the sight is at once surprising and outlandish. I sense from the woman in the wheelhouse that she, too, is taken aback by the sudden presence of a Jaguar on deck.

Pallas Athene climbs out of the car, walks around it to the door of the wheelhouse, enters, and delivers a punch to the woman's jaw.

There are many ways to deliver a punch to another person's jaw, but I venture to suggest that where Pallas Athene has made her mark, no roses shall ever grow. One minute the woman is standing proud at the helm in the salty breeze, the next she's something to step over and ignore, in a heap on the deck.

And then Tilte is in the doorway.

Research I have conducted with Tilte indicates that if there's one thing the great saints and travelers within the human mind have been in agreement on through the ages, it's the notion that people inhabit their own realities, and it's quite certain that Basker and Ashanti and Jakob Bordurio and Pallas Athene and Hans and I have all been looking forward to this reunion with very different expectations. But what we share is a feeling that together we have saved the princess and that what is to follow will involve tears and
embraces and eternal gratitude at the very least. But what happens is that Tilte assumes a stance in the doorway of the wheelhouse where she can be seen by us all, and then she fills her lungs with air and yells: “Do you know what you are? Dimwits!”

We're seated around the table
in the boat's saloon, and you'd have to see the scene to believe it. Those who see it are Hans and Ashanti and Pallas Athene and Jakob Bordurio and Basker and me. And what we see is that the woman from the wheelhouse and the man from the storage facility and the man who was given a little nudge by the Jaguar are all seated with us at the table as free as the birds, because Tilte has forbidden me and Hans to tie them up. Moreover, she has ordered Hans to make coffee, which he has now done, and aside from offering refreshments to the three floaters, Tilte is now applying a dressing to the man Basker has bitten, all the while she comforts him and calls him
poor little Ibrahim
.

“Half an hour ago,” she tells us, “Ibrahim said farewell to arms forever. He only drew his gun because he feared he was being attacked. Isn't that right, Ibrahim?”

“It was self-defense,” Ibrahim says. “And perhaps old habit, too.”

Basker considers him from his corner. Basker's eyes are still yellow, and his nose is smeared with blood. I can tell he's hoping that Ibrahim's old habit will prompt him to draw from
the hip in self-defense one last time, so Basker can finish off his hors d'oeuvre and move on to his main course massacre.

Little, however, would seem to indicate that this will be likely, because Ibrahim is crying again.

“Before you came barging in so violently,” Tilte explains, “Ibrahim was telling us about his childhood, and we'd got to the part where his mother made him lie on wet sheets all night in punishment for having wet the bed.”

“I'd just like to say at this point,” says the woman from the wheelhouse, “that compared to my own upbringing, which I shall tell you about presently, Ibrahim's was a bowl of cherries.”

We look across the table at her. The side of her face that came into contact with Pallas Athene is swollen enough to look like a case of the mumps. It makes her diction rather slurred, but nonetheless one gets the gist: she wants Ibrahim to conclude his confessions in order that she can take the stage herself.

Now the man who flew back with the door when we entered the warehouse speaks. His gaze is somewhat unsteady, indicating that he is suffering from a concussion, and his face looks rather on the flat side following his encounter with the door.

“I'll hold back on my own story,” he says. “Otherwise, you'll find it hard to go on.”

I can tell from looking at Ashanti and Pallas Athene and even Jakob that they are in shock. Which is only understandable. This isn't exactly what one would expect from the flower of international terrorism.

Hans and I are better prepared. We know Tilte, and we know the kind of effect she can have on people. All she needs to do is buy a packet of chewing gum and the lady in the kiosk begins dictating her memoirs and ends up inviting her home to save her marriage and train her disobedient dog and cure the kids of their picky habits.

And yet the situation is surprising even for Hans and me, and even Tilte recognizes the need for an explanation.

“We had an hour,” she says. “After they kidnapped me. While we were waiting for Bellerad to arrive. I spent that hour telling them about the door.”

The three floaters nod.

“It was very intense,” Tilte goes on. “So I invited them into the coffin. Of course, I didn't have a real coffin on hand. But there was a wooden crate. It's not quite the same. But once we'd removed the submachine guns and the explosives, it was all right. Luckily, I had this with me.”

At first I'm unable to see what it is she's holding, but then I recognize my old MP3 player, the one with
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
at two-thirds the speed.

“It was a very profound encounter,” says Tilte. “By the time Bellerad got here, everything had changed.”

The woman with mumps nods.

“When Balder—that's Bellerad—turned up, we turned the money down. And the passports, too. And then we suggested he have a go in the coffin. He didn't want to. But we'll ask him again.”