The Woman at the UEA

 

It seems an age when I met Director F. Nordstrom.  It was before the UEA arrests in 2048; and in retrospect, I am shocked with the easiness, comfort if you will, with which I managed to access it.  Had it not been for my medical background, Nordstrom wouldn’t have taken the bait of an interview and that would have been that.

            In the winter of forty-two I was a young and ill-tempered doctor, trying to be a journalist, with a love for alcohol and cheap women.  Freja Nordstrom was not a cheap woman.  The name was familiar with me after a Sky News bulletin.  That was three years prior to our meeting and so, after a spell with the Red Cross in Italy, my investigation into her wrongdoings turning up nothing and a medical article with The Aftonbladet, the UEA took me up on my offer. 

            The whole thing was bizarre, très à la Bond.  Waiting in my name were Virgin Galactic tickets to Copenhagen.  After the short flight and at the terminal, I was met by a silent military-looking type who flew me, at speed, over the gridlocked bridge that crosses the Øresund strait in a H-BMW 4J.  The thickset grey building, known as the Tower, was fifty storeys high.  Over the entrance to reception read the words, THE UNIVERSAL ENVIRONMENTAL ALLIANCE, and I stepped in and rode the glass elevator to the thirty-fourth floor.

            When the doors opened I belched and was welcomed by two women.  They stood with some formality and I was invited into a plush office that looked out over the water.  I noted the lightening petering over the smog towards Sweden and took my seat opposite the very handsome woman. 

            Her attentions were not focused on me or my luggage but on the perfectly-formed arse of her secretary.  I concurred, the Andy was a handsome craft and her short leather skirt did nothing to conceal it.  It seemed that Freja and I too had something in common, she spoke.

            ‘Drink?’

            ‘If you’re offering, Miss Nordstrom,’

            She couldn’t have been much older than forty but wore the look of somebody who had lived to a hundred.  The grey eyes were cold and distrustful of me.

            ‘Thank you,’ I said, taking the gin and slamming it down in one, I smacked my lips, produced my iPad and stylus.  This surprised her. 

            ‘What can I do for you?’

            I tapped the red square on my screen and produced the suppressed Mur-dock in my suitcase.  I flicked the safety off and replied coolly. 

            ‘Answer my questions, please.’

Nordstrom didn’t want to die and nodded.

            ‘Your name,’ I said.

            ‘Freja Mathilde Nordstrom,’

            ‘Where were you born?’

            ‘Fakse, Denmark.’

            ‘And your profession?’

            ‘Director-in-Chief of the UEA.’

            ‘Thank you,’ I said.  ‘In 2014, the EEA reported that air pollution caused nearly 500,000 early deaths in Europe.  Are you aware of this?’

            ‘You know I am,’ she said curtly.

           

I pressed on, ‘Your father filed the report, did he not?’

            She shrugged, the Mur-dock dozed off to the left and thudded into an expensive vase, startling her.

            ‘Well?’

            ‘That was some time ago.’

            ‘Before you were born.’

            ‘Then why ask?’ she said.

            I shot at something else for my own amusement. 

            ‘And the UEA shorted the European Environment Agency’s stocks and took over in what, ’22?’

            ‘Twenty-three,’

            ‘My apologies.  Your predecessor was, to put it bluntly, a corrupt sort?’

            ‘Very.  We shared a taste for the finer things.’

            ‘And that comes at a great expense?’ I said.

            ‘Often.  Government donations don’t fill one’s need for Ming vases.’ She explained.

            I looked at the shells on the red wine floor.  The priceless artifact was worth nothing and now in twenty pieces instead of one.  In the middle there was a Glock 53.

            ‘For me?’ I said.

            ‘A precaution.  One can’t be too careful.’

            ‘I suppose, mind if I smoke?’

            She gestured and I filled my pipe with Capstan Navy flake and smoked it.

            ‘If not, then what kind of donations pay for vases, and very nice Ming vases at that?’

            Nordstrom played with her long blonde hair, sitting forward in the chair, and raised a recently threaded eyebrow at me.  Some lost color and confidence flooded back into her pallor.

            ‘I thought you knew?’

            ‘I’d just like to hear you say it,’

            ‘Tease,’ she said.

            ‘Damn right.  But one can’t win the Pulitzer on supposition alone, you of all people must understand that.’

            She shrugged and became quite interested in me. ‘What’s Italy like?  I’ve only seen the reports.’

            ‘One hundred thousand and counting.  Children with second-stage lung cancer.  The WHO reported more.’

            ‘You’re going the right way about it,’

            ‘Not if the drink kills me first,’ I said.

            Nordstrom placed a well-manicured right hand on the table and tapped it.  ‘I like you Doctor,’

            ‘I don’t,’ I said and shot the hand. 

            She screamed and leapt to her feet.  I aimed for her head and after a few long seconds of hissing she held her tongue and sat down.  There was a knocking at the door and a staid breathy voice. 

            ‘If you go for the alarm under your desk again, I will shoot her in front of you and your other hand for good measure.  Understand?’

            She nodded.

            ‘O.K. Now tell her to take the night off.’

            There was some umming and ahhing over the intercom, some ‘are you okays’ and some ‘well if you’re sure thens’ before the echoing of wedges on marble.  There was a ding and a retreating murmur and the elevator left the two of us alone. 

            The voice held bitterness, ‘Why are you doing this?  They’ll have you.’

            ‘Car companies who pay to manipulate nitrogen dioxide statistics don’t scare me.  Men and women, like yourself, without moral compasses who gamble the lives of others for riverside condos, loveless marriages and fancy dinners at the Marchal do.  You scare me Miss Nordstrom.’

            ‘What do you want?’ she said.

            ‘The chance of a future for my kids and some respectability, now pass me the leather-bound ledger in your top desk drawer or so help me.’  

            She eyed me with contempt.  The drink stopped my gun hand from trembling and she tossed the book into my lap and sighed.

            ‘Ford, Volvo, Toyota, Mitsubishi – it’s all there.’

            ‘Do you think the charges’ll stick?’

            ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.  ‘A large fine will be paid and some compensation to the victims’ families.  And the respective governments will drive their production plants into the sea.  Any country at a loss for industry, say Georgia for example with their little war, will leap at the chance to start it all off again with the help of this money.  The US will…’

            ‘Thank you for your time,’ I said, cutting her short.  ‘The authorities’ll be in touch.’  I pushed my chair back and made for the exit, Nordstrom sat there in silence.  I contacted my editor at The Aftonbladet at once and the story was dropped a week later with a formal apology.