Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(69)
Forsyth rubbed his face. The room they were sitting in was small and modern and unfashionably bare. Its only furniture was a desk and two upright chairs. He had the impression it wasn’t used very often. Through the window behind the Iberian, he could see a seething curtain of windblown snow that occasionally drew aside to reveal another building across a dreary courtyard, all net-curtained windows and dreary balconies.
“Why would they tell their families that they were going to work on the TransEurope Rail Route if they weren’t?” he asked.
The Iberian shrugged and spread his hands.
“They were going to work on the extension in Magadan,” Forsyth ventured. “It’s a long way away. A bit wild.”
The Iberian nodded sadly, as if disappointed to find a suspected character flaw in the man sitting opposite him. “You must appreciate, Mister Forsyth, that a project on the scale of the TransEurope Rail Route could not hope to continue if its farthest-flung sites were hopelessly out of contact with its central authority.” He clasped his hands on top of his pad. “We are aware of every citizen working for the Company.” He lifted his clasped fists and lowered them slowly back onto the pad. “And these two men are not among them.”
Forsyth sat where he was on the uncomfortable chair.
The Iberian unclasped his hands and twitched one shirt cuff to reveal a silver Piaget. “I am sorry we could not be of more assistance,” he said, squinting at the watch. “And I am afraid I have another meeting scheduled.”
“I know these two men,” Forsyth said, leaning across the desk, tapping the pad, and enjoying the Iberian’s unexpressed displeasure. “They’re reliable, hard-working men. If they said they were working on the Line, that’s where they were.”
The Iberian stood. “Mister Forsyth,” he said stiffly, “the citizenship list of the TransEurope Rail Route is a matter of public record.” This was not entirely true. If you looked closely enough at the citizenship list, and were prepared to do some intensive cross-referencing, many of the names turned out to be sockpuppets and aliases. The Line welcomed the wealthy and hard-working, and was sometimes not too fussy about their pasts. “If your missing gentlemen are not included in it, they were never citizens. And if they were never citizens, they never worked for us.”
“Surely it’s better to let their families know what’s happened. That would be the most important thing. In the case of compensation, I’m sure we could reach an understanding.”
The Iberian shook his head and scooped the pad up from the desk. “Understanding.” He dropped the pad into a jacket pocket. “These men were never citizens of the TransEurope Rail Route, Mister Forsyth. We do not know who they are or where they are. I suggest you consult their families and their creditors for possible reasons for their disappearance.” He walked to the door and opened it. “It has been our experience that many people who wish to escape their familial and financial responsibilities give us as their last address.” He favoured Forsyth with a frosty little smile. “It seems that we have become, in the popular imagination at least, a modern Foreign Legion, a place where people go to forget, or at least to become forgotten. It is rather tiresome, if I may be frank with you.” He consulted his watch again. “And it takes up more of our time than we can spare.”
Forsyth sat where he was. He was a tall man with hunched shoulders and a full head of prematurely-white hair. He had found that sometimes his physical presence could be intimidating if he remained still and looked determined.
The Iberian said, “It cannot have escaped your attention that the Independent Trans-European Republic is experiencing a period of flux.”
That much was an understatement. “I’m grateful for your time, if that’s what you mean,” said Forsyth.
“There is no work in Magadan at the moment,” the Iberian continued. “Our citizens there have been redeployed to carry out routine maintenance in other parts of the Republic while this situation continues. If your missing men were ever in Magadan, they are not there now.”
“If they have been redeployed, there must be records.”
“There are,” said the Iberian. “And their names are not among them.”
Forsyth got up from his chair. “I didn’t get your name,” he said.
“Perfectly true,” said the Iberian.
3.
THE ENGLISH PUB on Senatorska had draught Guinness and seventeen different brands of vodka. Marek, the owner, had spent a year behind the bar of a pub in Darlington. He had returned with a shining vision of what an English pub should be like, but he’d been unable to get hold of most of the requisite fixtures and fittings. The seating was upholstered in an awful scarlet velour and there was a dart board, but he’d had to take the darts away after one particularly horrific brawl. He’d wanted a pool table, but the nearest one was in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder and would have cost half his annual income.
“Why do we always come here?” asked Ewa.
“Reminds me of home,” Forsyth said.
“You told me you hated your home.”
“That’s what I meant.”
Ewa was Forsyth’s occasional girlfriend. She painted huge abstracts on panels of plasterboard in an abandoned flat in the east of the city, and sold them for unlikely amounts in the galleries on Nowy swiat. She was just back from an exhibition in Berlin, and as usual when she returned home she was full of loathing for Poland.