Five pedophiles murdered execution-style in Denmark.
The title of the e-mail message cut straight to the chase and the contents were an unholy mess of facts and fiction. First, that the Danish state was apparently hiding the fact that the five murdered men in Copenhagen were pedophiles, in order to protect the country’s export of child pornography, which aligned rather nicely with the fact that Denmark allowed and supported pedophilic associations and Web sites and steadfastly refused to collaborate with the police in other member states of the European Union. Moreover, the legal consequences for the sexual abuse of children were ridiculously minimal and functioned largely as an official sanction of the phenomenon. Two concrete examples were then cited and analyzed. In conclusion, the recipient was urged to forward the message to others and also to write a letter of protest addressed to the Danish embassy in Washington, D.C.
Half a million letters were sent to various American post-office addresses on Tuesday night. The choice of destination had been Per Clausen’s, and his arguments had not invited any objections. It had been a spring day in May, and the group was enjoying the sun and a glass of white wine on Erik Mørk’s terrace as they planned the e-mail campaign.
Per Clausen said, “The United States is the locus of conspiracy theories par excellence and has a long history of being a breeding ground for bizarre theories. Aliens from Roswell; manipulated moon landings; not to speak of the country’s intelligence service, which—as everyone knows—is constantly popping off presidents, movie stars, and famous musicians, when they can spare the time away from their substantive LSD production. We can be certain that hundreds of warped minds or strange groups will forward the message, and naturally from their own perspective as the incontestable truth, which can only be doubted by complete idiots or dubious state-sanctioned leaders.”
The Climber, Erik Mørk, Stig Åge Thorsen, and Helle Smidt Jørgensen nodded comprehendingly. None of the others felt compelled to go along with Per Clausen. Nonetheless, he continued to bang on the door that was already open.
“And Danes look up to the United States. They may not want to admit it, but what happens in the USA sets the agenda in our media, and whatever garbled rumors have taken hold there will be much more long-lived than fifty thousand pieces of junk mail in Danish letter boxes. Whether it is the truth or a lie or—as in our case—a little of both, is beside the point. If there is a discussion on the matter in the United States, it will rub off on Denmark.”
It was Stig Åge Thorsen who ended Per Clausen’s monologue. He said haltingly, “You know, Per, that’s all very well and fine to send e-mails to the USA, but… uh… I saw a show about the moon landing that they claimed took place and …”
Per Clausen smiled broadly. Erik Mørk waved his arms and said, “We all get your point. How many e-mail addresses would you say I should get a hold of?”
“Half a million. It’s a big country.”
The first real hit of the campaign turned out to be in Baltimore, where a disgruntled systems analyst uncritically took over the message as his own. As luck would have it, the man had been fired after nine years of employment with Ericsson, the Swedish communications giant. The reason was corporate downsizing, which he found deeply unjust and took very personally. At the same time, he was not particularly proficient in his knowledge of geography and firmly maintained that Denmark was a large Swedish province. To him it was evident that the e-mail was telling the truth. The lack of morality in Stockholm was well known and it did not surprise him that things were even worse in the provinces. As revenge for his dismissal and as a kind of noble gesture he forwarded the e-mail to all sixty thousand employees at the company. In addition, he created his own abbreviated version that he sent to a quarter of a million Vodaphone customers via his SMS-server in London, well aware of the fact that he could be fired only once.
Many e-mails died by the Delete button or got caught in spam filters, but a few came through intact and hit their mark. This was the case with a lumber baron and business owner from Knoxville, Tennessee.
The lumber baron was a ninety-three-year-old man who had emigrated as a child with his parents from Onsild in Himmerland, after which he had never set foot in Denmark again. But he remembered very well the old country with its golden, rippling fields of grain and idyllic little farms where the hollyhocks banged against the crooked windows while the sun sank and the people lit candle stumps. If they didn’t simply pull on their nightcaps and creep into the hay, exhausted after a day’s battle with weeds. When the old Danish emigrant read the e-mail he flew into a blinding rage—something he was accustomed to doing and a habit that had not grown milder through the years.
He had fared well in the USA—very well, even. He was the sole owner of eighty lumber retailers spread across the state. It had started as a local lumber emporium, which he had built up and steered with a hard but sure hand throughout his adult life. A few years ago he had been forced to retreat from the day-today affairs and after that he settled with overseeing his many markets as chairman, which meant that he involved himself in everything and made life hell on a daily basis for a handful of managers who had to jump and dance according to the old man’s whims. Even now.
The old man’s frail body trembled with anger at the fact that someone was accusing his native land of showing a despicable liberal softness toward child molesters, and two of the company’s top officers were ordered to put everything else aside and, under his leadership, prepare an appropriate response to the offensive e-mail. The executives wrote a short memorandum that stated that in Denmark people were severely punished for any form of disorderly conduct or perversion. The rare sexual offenders that escaped the executioner’s ax could look forward to years of labor in the royal quarries, for this was how the old man believed things worked. His two coauthors were very aware that this was at best a form of wishful thinking and at worst a form of dementia, but they both had families to support and neither of them wanted to lose his job over the state of the justice system in an inferior European nation. And by now they were accustomed to a little of everything.
The letter was posted on bulletin boards in sixty lumberyards, where no one read it except staff members who had great fun with the old codger’s latest whim. Thus the rumor found its way into yet another of its dead ends, but in one of the stores there was a customer who had come in to get a key made. As host of the most popular radio show in Chattanooga, she was always on the lookout for stories with surprising angles and unexpected twists. She asked two clerks what they were smiling at.
On its way west, the campaign gathered momentum and in one of its many iterations the e-mail was transformed into a drawing. A drawing with a punch far stronger than Per Clausen’s and Erik Mørk’s studiously crafted words.
Two reasonably serious news agencies in Madison and Indianapolis had separately put out the story about the hanging of five Danish pedophiles and indicated that the national police were keeping the truth from the public. Both gave the Internet as a source, which was another way of saying that no one could vouch for the truthfulness of the information, but very few people took any notice of this. A middle-aged man in Tucson, Arizona, heard the news from his neighbor, who clearly enjoyed sharing it. Summary executions and subsequent mutilations were in her opinion the right kind of treatment for those kind of animals, which the state government could certainly learn from. The brief conversation across the fence energized and inspired him. He made his living as an artist who specialized in weeping children, and it was a good living. A great number of his unhappy faces hung in houses around the Midwest and his pictures were in demand. Maybe he wasn’t a great artist. His repertoire was a bit too narrow for that and his talent insignificant. But few could—as he was able to—capture the helpless despair in the eyes of little boys who had been forgotten by God, but not the priest. Sharp cold twinges and short uncontrollable twitches appeared in his face, neck, and abdomen, which was normal when he worked. He said a fervent prayer before he went to his studio and began to work. Eight years at the Catholic Mercy School in Cleveland had left him with a fear of God in his soul and a fear of the world in his body.