Free Chez Max by Jakob Arjouni Page B

of the mines that Hallsund visited. More and more frequently, cameras or members of the security service saw workers there in the process of stealing. All the same, the stones were seldom found during the obligatory search when anyone left the diamond-cutting workshops. It was noticeable, however, that between the moment of theft and the time of their body search, the workers always paused briefly somewhere in Hallsund’s vicinity as he inspected a wall, a roof, or something of the kind.
    So at the airport they began looking closely at the Hallsunds again, although playing it down as far as possible. In that, as it turned out later, they made a bad mistake: they were looking for hiding-places. The more unusual and unimaginable a place seemed to be for hiding diamonds, the more hopefully did the security officers set about examining it. The wheels on suitcases, shoelaces, inside aspirin tablets, Hallsund’s dental crowns, match-heads, and all kinds of other things.
    Weeks passed in which neither the X-ray devices nor searches of the checked bags produced any result; the Hallsunds were clean. The border security officers, who still kept getting evidence pointing to them from the security services in the mines, began to despair.
    Until one day, one of them simply blew his top. Yet again, Hallsund was loudly carrying on about breasts and his government mandate or something, his voice echoing all over the customs area, when the aforesaid officer suddenly went red in the face, started shouting at Hallsund and didn’t stop, so that Hallsund’s vulgarities and threats were almost drowned out and for the moment he couldn’t intimidate anyone. Still bawling them out, the official forced the couple, at gunpoint , to hand over all their jewellery, watches and piercings – Björn Hallsund too would be wearing a ring or a pearl or something of the kind. While Hallsund immediately phoned his lawyer, and the officials were afraid his connections really would lead to governmental powers of some kind showing up and taking the jewellery, the whole case and their own jobs away, a quick examination showed that Inga’s necklaces did indeed contain stolen diamonds.
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    â€˜Another small contribution to the water supply?’
    The waiter had stopped at my table with a friendly and rather mischievous smile. Brought abruptly back from my thoughts, I didn’t understand what he was saying at first. I looked into his round, benevolent face, and vaguely grasped that in some way or other his question was meant to be a joke. I felt a momentary pang.
    It was incredible: not only did I loathe Chen from the bottom of my heart, I had just been weighing up the possibility that he might have been in the service of international terrorism for years, and yet he and his derisive remarks kept getting me down. You want to keep well away from anything in the least like humour – it’s simply not your bag.
    Not for the first time I was judging myself without wanting to – and, if I thought about it for a second, even against my will – by Chen’s comments, which were probably just arbitrary and intended to be coarse. Yes, there were situations in which he almost seemed to me to embody some kind of higher authority to which I must answer. That was the only way of explaining why the possibility of my failing to understand the waiter’s not particularly cryptic utterance at once almost paralysed me for a moment.
    â€˜I was asking whether you’d like another,’ said the waiter, ending the short silence, and at the same moment the penny dropped. I quickly interrupted him. ‘Yes, please, a double.’ I winked at him in a knowing and ironic way to smooth over my brief moment of bafflement.
    â€˜On its way,’ he replied, took my empty glass and disappeared into the bar.
    If you bought a bottle or a 0.5 glass of Brooklyn Original beer, fifteen cents went to support the maintenance of a clean