48
Strøget
It was the appearance of the hazmat team of the Danish National Police that alerted the media to the incident on the Strøget. Clad in their lime-green protective suits, the specialists initially cordoned off only the area outside the popular H&M boutique. But just thirty minutes later, with no explanation to the public, they sealed the kilometer-long pedestrian street from end to end and ordered all the shops and restaurants to immediately discharge their customers and shutter their doors.
When at last the police issued a statement, it shed little light on the matter. A man they described only as “a Spanish national” had suffered a medical emergency while walking along the Strøget shortly after four in the afternoon. He had expired at Copenhagen University Hospital at 6:26p.m.A second person, a woman who had attempted to resuscitate the victim, was receiving treatment at the same hospital, for what reason the police did not say. In the statement’s only glaring falsehood, she was characterized as a Good Samaritan who had merely happened upon the scene. In truth she was a surveillance specialist from the Danish security and intelligence service who had been walking behind the victim when he collapsed.
The statement made no mention of a man, described by numerouswitnesses, who had prevented the woman from rendering further aid to the victim, and by some miracle there was no cell phone video to confirm the witnesses’ accounts. He too was taken to Copenhagen University Hospital, but only for observation, as he was experiencing no symptoms of illness. He finally signed himself out at 7:00p.m.and, accompanied by an attractive Danish woman in her late thirties, traveled by motorcar to PET headquarters in Søborg. Lars Mortensen met them in the lobby.
“The two of you picked a fine time to go for a stroll along the Strøget.”
“You’re lucky we did,” replied Gabriel. “Otherwise there would be more than one other person fighting for her life tonight.”
“Her respiratory system is shutting down. They’re not at all sure she’s going to make it.”
“She’d already be dead if she had tried to give Ivanov mouth-to-mouth.”
“How did you know to stop her?”
“It was obvious to me that Ivanov had been poisoned with a nerve agent.”
“We think it’s Novichok.”
“The likely candidate. The question is,” said Gabriel, “where was it administered? And by whom?”
“Not bywhom,” replied Mortensen. “Bywhat.”
They headed down to the op center and found Christopher sitting in a chair in the back row. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said to Gabriel. “You saved a lot of lives this afternoon.”
“With one exception.”
“Wait until you see this.”
Lars Mortensen was still on his feet. “Let’s start at the end, shall we?”
One of the techs punched a key on his computer, and a CCTV image appeared on the screen—Captain Yuri Ivanov lying on the paving stones of the Strøget, surrounded by a circle of some twenty people. A woman was kneeling beside him, hands on his chest, fingers interlaced.
The tech set the scene in motion, and a few seconds later Gabriel entered the image from the left side of the screen. His attempt to save the life of the surveillance specialist bordered on assault and battery. The onlookers were clearly startled by what they were witnessing.
“That video,” said Gabriel, “must never see the light of day.”
“Don’t worry,” replied Mortensen. “It won’t. But here’s what happened before you arrived.”
The tech punched another key. The shot that appeared on the screen was from the same camera, but the time stamp was ninety seconds earlier. Yuri Ivanov entered the image from the right. His step was heavy, and he appeared disoriented. Then his legs buckled and he crashed to the pavement as though he had fallen from a third-floor window. The PET surveillance officer was there in less than ten seconds. The crowd gathered quicky around her.
“Her name is Freda Hansen,” said Mortensen. “One of our best officers. She noticed something was wrong about a minute before he collapsed. Little did she know that she was standing not ten meters away from Ivanov when he was poisoned.”
The tech switched to a new CCTV camera. Yuri Ivanov was standing outside the entrance of the redbrick Church of the Holy Spirit, one of the Strøget’s most well-known landmarks. It was 4:00p.m.exactly. In less than two minutes Ivanov would be lying unconscious in the street.
“Watch carefully,” said Mortensen.
A few seconds into the video, at 16:00:13, Yuri Ivanov glanced at his phone. Then, nine seconds later, he waved a hand in front of his face, as though he were brushing away a cobweb.
“Did you see it?” asked Mortensen.
“No,” admitted Gabriel.
“That’s not surprising. Neither did he.”
