Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(37)

“Well, yes, some of it,” said Lev. “I was working from the other end, though. I don’t have any names yet, just a bunch of hedge funds and anonymous trusts and offshore accounts. As I said, it’s not all that surprising; there’s only a finite number of people with money like that.”

“That’s...” Rudi thought about it. “That’s a colossal amount of money.”

“Of course it is. You think they built the Line with coupons?”

Rudi looked out across the Strait. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks for letting me know.” He hung up and dropped the phone in his pocket. The ferry was starting to manoeuvre into the harbour at Kuivastu. He picked up his rucksack and started to head down to the exit doors.





A YOUNG MAN wearing the dark blue uniform of a Lahemaa park ranger was waiting at the bottom of the gangplank. Rudi entertained a brief notion of ignoring him and walking on by, but that was never going to solve anything, so he walked up to him.

“Hello,” he said. “Are you waiting for me?”

The young man looked him up and down – quite possibly measuring him against his father, Rudi had seen that look before – and put out a hand. “Kustav.”

They shook hands. “Can I help you with your bag?” Kustav asked.

“No, I’m fine,” Rudi told him.

Kustav looked at him again – the cane, the careworn look, the nondescript clothes. Not for the first time, Rudi thought he ought to dress like an International Man of Mystery, just to confuse people. “Okay. Well, I’m parked over here.”

‘Over here’ turned out to be a Park Hummer, looking somewhat out of place on this mostly flat, sparsely-populated, juniper-strewn island. It had also been scrupulously cleaned and waxed. “Where are you staying?” Kustav asked when they were strapped in.

“I’m booked into a guest-house in Soonda.”

“Okay.” Kustav started the engine and put the vehicle into gear. “That’s not far.”





“PERSONALLY, I THINK this is a disgrace,” Kustav said when they had left Kuivastu and the line of cars and coaches waiting to board the ferry.

“What’s that?”

Kustav waved a hand at the scenery going by outside the Hummer. “This.”

Oh. “I hardly think he’s going to mind.”

“Fucking government,” Kustav muttered.

“He did try to secede the Park from Estonia,” Rudi pointed out. “You can sort of understand them being vindictive.”

“It’s not right.”

“It is, however, in character.”

Kustav glanced over and gave him a look which confirmed to Rudi that he had, indeed, bought heart and soul into the Cult of Toomas.

“He wouldn’t listen,” said Kustav. “Man his age, riding around the park on a quadbike. We told him and he wouldn’t listen.”

Rudi had found, down the years, that it was possible to judge how long someone had known his father by parsing statements like we told him and he wouldn’t listen. Only people who had more or less only just met Toomas still thought there was any point in trying to tell him anything. And nobody who had known him for more than a couple of years could fail to acknowledge the essentially comic nature of his death.

“Who’s running things now?” he asked.

“Priidu’s Head Ranger.”

“Will Priidu be coming?”

Kustav didn’t answer, which told Rudi everything he needed to know. Of course Priidu wasn’t coming. Nobody else was coming; they’d sent their most junior colleague, just to keep up appearances.

The guest house in Soonda, a little village near the centre of the island, was actually a farm. Kustav drove the Hummer into the farmyard, and from the bits and pieces of squeaky-clean agricultural equipment carefully arranged here and there it was obvious to Rudi that it had been a while since anyone had done any farming here. The outbuildings surrounding the yard had all been converted into comfy-looking cottages, and Rudi saw a sign pointing down a path towards a ‘Children’s Zoo’. Probably goats and sheep and rabbits. Maybe an alpaca or two, if the children were lucky. He stood beside the Hummer feeling sad and a little empty.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning at eleven,” Kustav told him from inside the car.

“It’s only down the road,” Rudi said. “I can walk.”

Kustav looked at him for a few moments, then he said, “Okay,” and reversed back up the track towards the road. Rudi watched him go, and he stood looking up the track for a long time after the sound of the Hummer’s engine had faded into the distance before turning and walking over to the farmhouse to check in.





IT SEEMED TO Rudi that the chief emotions he had felt for his father for almost his entire life were frustration and anger. And really, he thought that was fair enough. His father had been selfish and mean and whiny and manipulative and the only two things he had ever believed in wholeheartedly were Baltic folk songs and the Lahemaa National Park. He’d risen to the post of Head Ranger of the Park, and dug his evil little fingers into the place so deeply that even after what would normally have been regarded as retirement age, even after Rudi’s brother Ivari had succeeded him, nobody could dismiss him.