Free The Last Compromise by Carl Reevik

doesn’t speak.’
    ‘And
this did not raise any alarms,’ Tienhoven said, half as a statement, half as a
question.
    ‘The
recruitment office is in charge of putting qualified candidates on the reserve
list,’ Hans said. ‘My guess is that once you’re on the list, the recruitment
office doesn’t care about you anymore. Because from then on Commission
departments, if they have a specific vacancy to fill, will do the actual
hiring. They contact people who had made it onto the reserve list. And they’re
interested in your CV, your experience, your personality. Not in how you made
it to the list.’
    ‘We
do cross-reference these things,’ Tienhoven said, finally raising his head and
looking at Hans.
    ‘Yes,
but we are anti-fraud, we check much more than that,’ Hans said, quietly. He
didn’t want to sound self-important about where he worked. ‘Zayek had applied
for, I am sorry to say, a low-key support unit, with what seems to be a dull
job routine, in the middle of nowhere. The wrong end of the wrong town, as
Viktor from statistics told me. The boss there cannot fill his unit, two out of
six posts are vacant. Maybe he was worried that if he couldn’t hire enough
people the Commission will scrap his vacancies altogether. He was probably
begging Zayek on his knees to accept the job and to stay. And it’s not like his
job actually requires any knowledge of Bulgarian.’
    Tienhoven
waited for a second, then he said, ‘An outside observer would now say that you
have found some errors in some reports that no-one reads, and a staff member
with some mix-up in his documents. And you are connecting the two, and you are
suggesting something on that basis.’
    Hans
said nothing. Just stared at his boss. He should have presented it more
cautiously, with caveats. There seem to be reasons to believe. There are
indications. Clues. Hints. It would have been the mature thing to do.
Apparently. His older brother Margus would have brought it on more slowly, and
he would’ve gotten farther. Now Hans could still hastily add that this had all
been experimental, mere research, just like Tienhoven had ordered. A test to
see whether statistical analysis could reveal something. Even if it was something
harmless, explicable, unconnected.
    The
phone on Tienhoven’s desk rang. The boss glanced over to see which name would
appear on the display, to decide whether he would take the call or not. He took
it. He got right up, walked over to his desk, lifted the receiver to his ear
and said his name. Hans kept looking at him. Tienhoven was standing behind his
desk, listening to the voice in the receiver. In a second he would make a mute
gesture in Hans’s direction, telling him to either stay and wait or to leave
and come back later. But he didn’t make any gestures, he just kept listening.
So Hans stayed right where he was.
    He
looked around his boss’s office. The weather outside was still depressing, but
at least it had stopped raining. Hans gave the walls a closer look. There was
no art, just a calendar and an organisation chart. A picture of what had to be Tienhoven’s
daughter was standing on the desk. She was Hans’s age on the picture, she had
fair hair, freckles and a sweet laugh. He didn’t see the picture now, because
it was turned towards the occupant of the desk, not to the visitors. But he’d
seen it often enough in here, and he remembered the image, the face. She would
have been cute growing up, but now she was an attractive young woman. Hans
frowned and focused back on his boss, who was just ending the phone call.
    ‘Yes,’
Tienhoven said into the receiver. ‘Yes, please do.’
    He
hung up and looked over to Hans.
    ‘That
was Clarke. Looks like somebody else is interested in your project.’
    Hans
paused for a moment. Geoffrey Clarke was the director-general, Tienhoven’s
boss. ‘Clarke is interested in Zayek?’
    ‘No,
not Clarke. He just called to tell me. His boss is interested.’
    Hans
raised his eyebrows.