Edge of Sunset: Greta Arendt, #1

By G. Arendt

It is the year 2045. A powerful European politician is murdered in the street. A populist politician, Alain Timmers, replaces her and reverses long-established policies. The CIA see revenue for the US arms industry under threat and call on the uniquely skilled Greta Arendt. Meanwhile, European politicians scrabble clumsily to seize power and money. Scorning the rule of law, European governments, their spy agencies and the European Institutions fight for advantage against the churning political background.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greta Arendt
• Release date: May 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201953492

G. Arendt

Contact G.Arendt at: [e-mail]

Book preview

Part 1:

Coming of Darkness

Chapter 1

She had not realised it was already so dark. The security guard opened the doors for her and she walked down the steps away from the lights of the European Parliament building in Brussels. The session had lasted much longer than she had expected. Despite the darkness and the lateness of the hour, she decided to keep to her decision to walk home. She needed a little fresh air to clear her head. It had been a difficult and frustrating day. It seemed that every day was now long and hard for the Chairwoman of the European Parliament’s Legal and Finance Committee. It had been so since the Financial Reform of the EU in 2035 and had worsened in the ten years that had passed since then. Now, in 2045, it was particularly difficult after the success of the 4people movement in recent elections.

Ms Marjo Marin noted, with a twinge of conscience, that her driver was still waiting for her at the bottom of the steps.

‘Oh, Wim,’ she said apologetically. ‘I have been inconsiderate keeping you here. I should have told you I intended to walk home. Sorry.’

Wim reflected to himself that she was perhaps the only Member of the EP who would even think of apologising to a mere driver. Anyway, he was being paid while he waited so he really had nothing to complain about.

‘Think nothing of it, ma’am,’ he said politely, actually reaching up and touching his cap.

He watched her stroll in the general direction of the Place Jourdan. Wim could guess the route she would take to arrive at her apartment.  He decided he would bring the car round and keep an eye on her until she was nearer home. It was usually pretty safe around here, but you never could be certain.

Ms Marin strolled through the night unaffected by the slight chill. As a native Finn she found even the Brussels winters mild and she had formed something of a habit of walking home when it was not actually raining. She crossed the Place Jourdan just as Wim pulled up behind her, some distance away, in the official car. He watched her cross the road. There were a few people, mostly vapour suckers, sitting out on terraces, he noted, but it was quiet enough.

Wim turned his attention back to Ms Marin, now passing by the gates of the Parc Leopold.  As she crossed the road, a tree on the edge of the park shimmered as a large flock of small birds took flight. Ms Marin, who was not in the least religious, had an unexpected vision of the tree of life dissolving as a thousand souls flew to heaven with one rapturous sigh. Wim saw a dark figure slip out from the park. It closed upon Ms Marin from behind. He tried to shout a warning but his throat had seized up. The street light flashed briefly on a blade as the figure reached forward and slashed the chairwoman’s throat from behind. Within seconds the figure disappeared, merging into the dark under the trees in the park.

Wim and a few of the people who had been sitting on terraces rushed to the huddled shape on the pavement. Even in those few seconds, Ms Marin’s heart had pumped litres of blood out of her body. Wim, shocked beyond thought, saw the great dark pool around the body as a black hole penetrating down to hell with the body suspended above it waiting for the fall. He fumbled in his pocket for a phone and called the emergency services although he could see it was too late to help her. She was gone.

THE POLICE WERE FIRST on the scene, with an ambulance following seconds later. Wim was sitting shivering in the car when one of the police officers walked over to him.

‘Are you all right? A bit shocked?’ he asked, not unkindly.

‘Yes. I’m all right. I saw it happen.’

‘Right. There be someone along to take a statement in a few minutes. If you don’t mind waiting.’

Wim shook his head. He was, in any case, not in a fit state to drive home.

‘Did you see her ID card?’

‘Haven’t moved her, haven’t touched the body. Get seriously kicked if we did.’

‘She’s called Marin. That’s her second name. She’s an MEP. Finnish.’ The policeman looked at him thoughtfully. This was information he would have to pass on to his superiors very quickly.

‘Thanks. I’ll let the detective know.’

Then there was more waiting. Probably it was not very long. Wim’s hands were shaking a bit less when a detective came to talk to him.

‘They tell me you knew her?’

‘Yes. I told that officer her name.’ Wim was strangely reluctant to say the name again.

‘Yes. Got that. I understand you were also a witness?’

Wim explained what he had seen, although it had all become bigger and blacker in his mind’s eye than it could have been in reality. Evidently what he said was like enough to the statements of the other witnesses because the detective nodded in satisfaction.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘The big question. I suppose you can’t describe the man you saw?’

Wim could see in his imagination only a huge figure wielding a knife which had grown as big as a sword. Was he imagining the preference of the detective not to have a description?

‘I couldn’t even swear that it was a man. It was just a black figure. With a hood, I think.’

The detective nodded. That was what one of the other witnesses had said. Another had said it was a man wearing a cap. He knew he would not find more consensus than that. He told Wim he could go after they exchanged contact details.

The detective stayed as the scene of crime technicians filmed the body and searched for evidence that was not there. The patrolmen were dispatched to search the park for the figure that was long gone. The detective called his central control to discover if, by chance, there had been a surveillance drone scanning the area. Not that there was much chance of identifying an individual if he wore a hood or a peaked cap, but they might discover in which direction he had escaped. It had to be tried. For the record.

Wim vanished into the dark, seeking comfort from home and family. The detective contacted his superior, waking him from a pleasant dream. He reported tersely.

‘Not a mugging, then,’ responded the higher official.

‘Not a robbery. And then there’s the use of the weapon. Not a mugging gone wrong by any stretch of the imagination. And maybe a target-specific killing. No description of the assailant.’

He explained that the victim was Ms Marjo Marin.

‘You’ll have seen her on-screen. She’s one of the high-powered ones. Pulling the money strings.’

‘I don’t like the smell of this,’ said the superior. ‘I smell politics. I smell assassination.’

‘Can we pass it on to someone, sir?’

‘We’ll give that a damn good try. Follow all procedures. File a report. Get a case number. We try to pass it on. Whether we do or don’t succeed in that, as far as we are concerned it’s another unsolved. Got it?’

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the detective with a definite note of approval.

In the subsequent days, the case was passed to a unit that tended to deal with political crime, that is to say, criminal politicians. The head of that department astutely recognised that blame, if it descended, should be spread over as many heads as possible. He argued that a crime involving a figure of the stature of Ms Marin should be investigated by the best of the available resources. A task force was created using resources from several departments. It was a master stroke, conveying the impression of action and commitment of resources while actually doing nothing. There was a press release which named several important officials, to their gratification, although they had nothing to do with the criminal investigation. Soon the public forgot. The second planned press release, which would have called on any member of the public who had seen anything to contact the police, while assuring the same public that all possible leads were being followed, was not needed.

A WOMAN WHOSE ID CARD said she was Greta Arendt, an American citizen of German birth, enjoyed the weak sunshine as she sauntered along the Rue Foissart beside the Justus Lipsius building, the former headquarters of the European Council in Brussels. The building had been re-purposed after the Urban Riots which had flared across Europe in the late 2030s and now provided affordable housing. There was an art project in progress she noted. It took up most of the length of the street. Someone had realised that the area had been residential before the devastation to the community caused by the construction of the original Justus Lipsius building in the twentieth century. The nineteenth century facades of the houses and shops that had made up the Quartier were being recreated in wood and paint and then glued onto the side of the building. Greta wondered if the mock brick facades, narrow windows and fake Art Nouveau, wrought iron balconies were an aesthetic improvement over the facade of Justus Lipsius which looked like something Hitler might have asked Albert Speer to design. But she recognised the populist emotions driving the art project. The Brussels Town authorities had long before given up trying to stop this sort of work. A placard proclaimed it was a project of the political movement, 4people. It was prudent not to interfere with them.

Greta turned the corner and passed through the entry gates on the Rue de la Loi. The ground floor of Justus Lipsius was now a shopping mall. Many of the shops had gone broke, leaving only a legacy of boarded up windows and doors. But a café survived. It was called Just Lipservice and Greta had arranged to meet Michel here. She had flown in from New York last night and was just relaxing again after a lengthy assignment. Michel, a busy competition lawyer, had been attending a morning meeting in the new Merkel building which housed the downsized European Commission across the road, the original Berlaymont building having been destroyed during the prolonged rioting. This café was a convenient meeting point for both of them.

Michel Delacourt, a comfortable-looking, middle-aged man was already in possession of a table. Greta joined him.

‘Feeling better? Rested now?’

‘Much better. Not over it yet, though. The jet lag gets worse with each year that goes by. It’s a reminder that I’m not as young as I was.’

Michel smiled. Greta was a few years younger than he. Certainly not old. Well-built, with darkish hair, she reminded him slightly of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. But less muscular, perhaps. He had told her this once and she had laughed, looking at a copy of the painting. She retorted that she neither had one bare breast nor was interested in liberty nor in leading the people to it. It was a simple truth. They ordered coffee and sandwiches and chatted of nothing in particular. Michel asked what Greta was planning for the afternoon.

‘I need to go to my apartment. I need to dump my bags and find clean clothes. That sort of thing.’ They each kept their own separate apartments, sometimes living together for a while: not an uncommon arrangement among professional couples. ‘I might get some more sleep this afternoon. What about you?’

‘I need to return to the office. I have two client meetings this afternoon. Maybe see you later tonight?’

Greta agreed they should talk later. Michel apologised for needing to leave, kissed her and rushed to the metro. Greta stirred her coffee, needlessly, thinking about nothing, mildly jet-lagged. A young woman who had entered the café soon after Greta stood up and left her table at the back of the room. Moving to the exit, she brushed past Greta. As her skirt touched Greta’s table, a small piece of paper slipped from her hand and fell beside Greta’s cup. The woman continued towards the exit without pause. Greta gave no indication of having noticed anything and made no move to pick up the paper which she now saw was very like a piece of the paper used to wrap sugar. It would certainly look like that to anyone glancing at her table. She was disconcerted. If this was a contact she had been followed without her being aware. Attribute that to the jet lag, she thought with annoyance. 

She sat still, playing with the coffee. She was actually watching reflections in the windows to see if anyone behind her was taking notice. After some minutes had passed and several other customers had left to return to their offices, she moved her hand a fraction and acquired the piece of paper. As she took her payment card out from her cardholder she slipped the paper inside.

Greta was a little surprised. She had not expected a clandestine contact here. It should have been unnecessary. There were other arrangements in place. She wondered if something had gone wrong with those during her absence. Could it be a trap? If she was now carrying compromising material she could jettison it fast enough. Who was that woman? She was sure she knew her although she had only seen her from behind. She was definitely someone she had seen before. Probably the connection would come if she stopped thinking about it.

Unhurriedly, she left the café and visited Michel’s apartment where she collected her luggage, deposited the previous night. She was much more alert now and pretty sure no one had followed her this time. She called a taxi and within a short time she was in her home office inside her own apartment. Here she felt it was safe to remove the paper from its container. She unfolded it. It was simple enough. The message was addressed to her as Sasha. This was the code name by which she was known to the various US intelligence services that employed her, believing that she was an American called Greta Arendt. The use of the code name was meant to assure her that the message was genuine. It told her that at seven o’clock that evening she should be in the area of the Jubel Park that remained public. She thought she should sleep before then.

THE EMBASSY OF THE United States to the Kingdom of Belgium was a large construction of concrete and blast-proof glass. Passers-by glanced at the building, some fifteen stories high and set back from the road behind thick reinforced concrete walls, not realising that there was almost as much below ground as above. Visitors passed through a check-in procedure and then descended through a tunnel underground into the visitor reception area. As they walked through the tunnel, they were scrutinised by electronic systems searching for weapons, chemical explosives, tracking devices, recorders, bugs of any kind and communication devices. Once in the reception area, they passed through more conventional scanners and were checked over by trained sniffer dogs.

This lunchtime, two men, officials on the Embassy staff, had passed through this routine, as they did every day. But instead of taking the escalators up to their offices they descended to the communication centre. Here, the scanning was even more arduous. It was useless, the thinking went, to have secure end-to-end communications if anyone at the end point could record the communication and walk out with it. Entry to the facility was strictly limited to those who had a pass signed personally by the head of security. The pass was valid for one specific session only. The two men handed over their passes for checking. The passes were made out to men called Pike and Trout. Newcomers tended to assume these were code names taken from a list of fish types. Perhaps there was a bird list and fruit, and maybe flowers. New recruits worried about how they would be assigned to a list. One new recruit muttered about a sorting hat. Another pointed out that Kingfisher was acceptable as a cover name but what about Pansy or Kumquat? But, worry was needless: Pike and Trout were the operatives’ real names. Their working lives were plagued with fishy jokes: ‘Watch out for sharks, going back to the school?’

The sadly named pair were required to enter separate cubicles where they stripped. An unpleasantly intrusive body search took place (the unfortunate official charged with the use of the probe was known as Hot Rod). A scanner searched for devices injected under the skin. It was all considered quite serious.

‘Watch what you’re doing with that thing. I could get a permanent injury.’

‘Now, now. No point in carping at me. I’m just doing my job.’

After surviving this, the two men were permitted in the secure communication centre. Essentially a large, shielded metal cage, it provided a broadband audio-video connection with complex encryption. On this occasion, the Embassy facility was connected to Virginia, the current location of Director Benson of the CIA. It was early morning for him but he did not waste any time.

‘Good morning, Pike, good morning Trout. You need to brief me on the Timmers situation?’

‘Right. You remember that Chairwoman Marin of the Financial and Legal Committee was murdered a few days ago.’

‘Yeah, I was briefed on that.’

‘Her deputy has taken over. Fait accompli. That’s Timmers. He’s now in the chair.’ The distance and layers of encryption added time delay and a little distortion but it was easy to see the Director was not pleased.

‘We’ve discussed previously that there is potential impact on the US. Mainly through the funding that flows from the European Parliament’s Committee into the East European Security Group. And from there into arms purchases in the US. Right.’

The two men shook their heads.

‘No longer potential impact. Timmers has wasted no time. He has announced that the policy is reversed. No money, repeat, no money for the EESG.’

‘Is he nuts? Does he understand what the EESG is?’

‘We briefed him on the whole thing ourselves. Took him through it right from the beginning. NATO collapsed when the US withdrew from the treaty in 2030. The EU went into navel-gazing about whether it could hold tentative discussions about a possible agenda for the negotiation of an agreement on whether steps could be initiated towards a potential configuration...you know the story.  In short, they sat on their hands while Russia played games on both sides of the border. Nothing in the EU has changed since then.’ 

‘Yeah, I know the story. Does he know what happened in the east?’

‘We explained in words of one syllable. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech republic plus Moldova got fed up with Russia making incursions into their territory. They effectively split from the EU because it couldn’t make any decisions on the issue and formed the EESG – East European Security Group.’

‘He knows the US has a defence treaty with that group plus the UK?’

‘Absolutely he knows. That’s what he hates. He accuses us of trading in hate but he’s a pretty good hater himself. He says they are dependent territories of the US so the US should pay. The EU money is not being properly used 4people. That’s his slogan. He says it is used for fattening US shareholders and for hate. Not for people.’ The director muttered under his breath. Then spoke openly.

‘This is serious. If he goes through with this it means millions of dollars do not flow from the EU to the US.’

‘Two things, boss. First, its billions for our armaments industries every year. Second, it’s not a matter of if he goes through with it. He has done it. Game over. Decision.’

‘OK. Got it. Here’s a directive: Implement the contingency plan we already agreed.’

‘OK. That’s what we expected. We already made initial contact with an outside agent.’

‘Make sure he’s good and reliable.’

‘She, actually. Code named Sasha. She’s going to be in a key role. She’s good, reliable and best of all, she’s an outsider.’

THE NIGHT WAS BEGINNING to shutter the world. Greta sat on a bench in the small public area of what remained of the Jubel Park. To her left stretched the luxury homes still largely occupied by MEPs, despite the fury the case had aroused. There was a broad consensus among commentators and contemporary historians that the exposure of corruption associated with the sale of the park and its re-development was the initial trigger for the Urban Riots. The great curve of the former museums threw bright lights into the sky as the clubs, bars, restaurants and the movie complex opened for business. Not far away a group of people dressed in white outfits practised Tai-Chi exercises. They were using a portable source of music. It would help confuse any attempt to use directional microphones to record any conversation where Greta was sitting.

She spotted a movement near the gate. It looked as though the girl from the café was keeping the appointment. She seemed to be alone. The girl moved without haste, casting glances around to check the surroundings. Greta relaxed and removed her hand from her weapon as she finally realised where they had met before. The girl was a press attaché in the US Embassy in Paris. Except, of course, if she was here performing this little job she was not just a press attaché but something more covert.

The girl approached and sat on the bench. She watched the Tai-Chi group without speaking. It was obvious that none of the group were taking any interest in Greta and her companion. They probably had not even seen the women sitting in the semi-dark.

‘Sasha, do you remember me? They said you would and that eye recognition would do. No passwords or any of that nonsense.’

‘Yes. We met some while ago in Paris.’

‘That’s right. I’m just the messenger.’ She broke off and suddenly asked, ‘Sasha, what’s that one doing?’ Her eye direction indicating a lone member of the Tai-Chi group who stood alert, watching the trees like a meerkat on sentry duty.

‘Don’t worry. He’s not interested in us. He’s watching for parrots.’

‘Parrots – you mean surveillance drones? Why would that bother the Tai-Chi crowd?’

‘It wouldn’t. It doesn’t. No, I don’t mean the spy drones. I’m not using slang. I mean literally the green parrots. They’ve become dangerous, you know. Some kind of virus has caused them to become half blind and especially at dusk they become confused. They panic and attack people and animals. Some people have been badly bitten – hospital cases. They go for the eyes. They’re quite a plague. And these guys have those flapping white sleeves. Might alarm the birds.’

‘Seriously? What’s the virus?’

Greta smiled.

‘Well that’s a whole encyclopaedia of conspiracy theory all by itself. But it’s because of the half-blind parrots that we have the slang for the spy drones.’  The girl nodded, apparently filing away this piece of trivia in her memory. Then she decided to come to business.

‘As far as spy drones are concerned, I should say we’re safe enough here. There’s a job they want you to do, if you’re interested.’

‘I could be. What is it?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just the messenger.’

Greta heard this with surprise. If the girl did not know the content then she was apparently a cut out, isolating the Embassy from involvement with Greta. They had never taken such precautions before. She felt a pang of concern.

‘Should I go to the Embassy for briefing?’ Greta was sure it would be a negative answer but she wanted to know. The girl shook her head.

‘Do not, repeat, do not, go near any