The Climber, Erik M?rk, Stig ?ge Thorsen, and Helle Smidt J?rgensen 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 ?ge 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 M?rk 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-to-day 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.