by Willow Rose
"Black." Henrik said and found an armchair to sit in. As black as my soul.
"Be right back. Make yourself at home," Barbara said and disappeared. Henrik could hear her rummaging in the kitchen. He looked at the paintings on the wall. Modern art had never been his thing. All just a lot of random strokes with the brush in different colors and then they dared to call it art. In Henrik's mind, artists had always been a bunch of freeloaders and parasites. It always enraged him when he read about the artists who received lifelong support from the Danish government. Was he really the only one who could see them for what they really were? Was he the only one to figure them out? It was so obvious that they simply just didn't want to work. They were lazy and didn't want to contribute to society, so now he had to pay for them through his taxes? Henrik had tried to write letters to the minister of culture and open letters to the newspapers about it, but no one seemed to care.
Henrik clenched his fist and hit the armrest of the chair. He restrained his anger and closed his eyes.
"Here we are," Barbara said and entered the living room.
Henrik opened his eyes and looked at her. She was quite beautiful even for a feminist. Freaking man-hater, tell me why you still want your man to pay for dinner, huh? Why do you want him to hold the door for you if you're so freaking equal, huh? Let me show you who's in charge, I'll hold you down and fuck you back into your place. Treat you like a real woman.
"I brought a little brandy to spice up the coffee," Barbara said with a smile. "It's not too early in the day for a little brandy, is it?"
"To hell with that," Henrik said and poured himself a big glass of brandy.
Barbara stared at his almost full glass, then poured herself a little on the bottom of hers. Henrik lifted his and spilled a little when it ran over the edge.
"To new beginnings," he said and their glasses clinked. Then he gulped down the entire glass.
Barbara stared at him and he could tell she was getting uncomfortable, when he put the empty glass down on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Henrik smiled. "That hit the spot," he said. Then he leaned over and smashed his clenched fist into Barbra's face. "So did this."
The punch threw her backwards. Her nose was bleeding and she was staring at him with great confusion. "What?" she mumbled and spat out a tooth.
"Now we can talk properly," Henrik said. "How many of you are there out there? Who is in charge?"
Barbara's eyes rolled in her head as she was trying to understand what Henrik had said. "What? What are you talking about? Why the hell did you hit me?" She tried to get up from the chair, but was too dizzy and fell backwards.
Henrik tried hard to relax, to hold back his anger. He felt like the paintings were staring at him, laughing at him, reminding him what a sucker he had been all of his life, working so hard paying his taxes and for what? So these talentless freeloaders could throw a few strokes with a brush on a canvas and call it art? Was that what they paid them to do?
"Please leave," Barbara stuttered. Her voice was shaking with fear. It annoyed Henrik even more. He tried to think of something nice. Like his third grade teacher had told him to when he felt that anger rise inside of him. Just think of a beautiful meadow, think of the ocean, think of flowers, or your mom and dad. Whatever calms you down. Then count backwards from one hundred.
Henrik did all of that right now. He saw the beautiful meadow, he pictured a waterfall in Hawaii, he imagined he was on a boat in the ocean fishing and drinking beer, he pictured the most gorgeous woman dancing in front of him wearing absolutely nothing at all. But still, he couldn't calm himself down.
"You need to leave now," Barbara said.
"I'm afraid I can't do that." Henrik said through gritted teeth. He poured some coffee from the pot and slurped it loudly.
"What … What do you want from me? Why have you even come here?" Barbara asked.
"I want to know who you are working for. I've had my kidney stolen and I want to know what happened to it. Who has it?"
"I …" Barbara tried to talk, but her mouth hurt. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Come ON! Don't you think I know? How stupid do you think I am? I know you're all working together. Don't take me for a FOOL. I know how it works. I have figured ALL of you out. All I want to know is what you have done with my stolen kidney. Where is it?"
Barbara was trying to get up from her chair again and this time she succeeded, holding on to the back of her chair. She reached out for the phone. Henrik watched her while laughing. Finally she managed to get the phone in her hand, when Henrik kicked it out of her hand and slammed his fist into her face once again. Barbara fell backwards, her head hitting the tiles so hard it sounded like a melon cracking. Henrik walked closer and looked at the blood that was running from the back of her head onto the white tiles.
What a mess.
40
January 2010
When Valdemar turned fifteen, he had long ago stopped asking if his father was going to come for his birthday. Not that Valdemar had forgotten about his father, no Anna knew he thought about him a lot and about how he had hurt his mother and him by leaving for another family.
And he hated him for it. The longing for his acceptance and love had turned into a resentment that Anna saw growing inside the eyes of her sweet young boy every day that passed. It blackened his insides, darkened his mind, and poisoned him with a deep, grieving sadness.
Valdemar would never tell her if she asked about it. He would say things like "Daddy didn't mean to hurt us, Mom. The other family needed him too."
Stuff like that that Anna knew he didn't mean. On the inside, his hurt grew deeper and deeper and for every day that passed, he became more and more isolated. Valdemar had taken a liking to computers and had taught himself hacking. Using nothing but his toes on the keyboard and the mouse placed underneath his table, he was able to hack his way into government sites and secret police files. In the beginning, he showed his mother proudly, but later he learned it was better to keep it a secret since Anna had freaked out and told him he would end up going to jail.
But she knew it hadn’t helped that she told him that. He told her that he wasn't doing it anymore, but she knew he was. And she had no way of controlling it. Part of her was very impressed with his skills on a computer and in the garage where he still spent hours and hours creating inventions that Anna had never seen anything like. She had tried to threaten him with taking the computer away, but he knew she didn't mean it. The computer was his everything and, on Anna's modest salary, it was a big sacrifice for her to be able to buy it for him. She wasn't going to take it away and have wasted the money. So instead, she decided to try and keep an eye on what he was doing now and then. But truth be told, Anna had no idea what she was even looking for.
Valdemar was a lonely child. He didn't have any friends, but somehow Anna sensed that he didn't care much about it, about other children. She had a feeling he didn't like them much and found them to be childish and immature for him, since he had been a grown-up trapped in a child's body ever since he was no more than two years’ old.
One Wednesday afternoon, a week after his birthday, Valdemar was sitting in his room, when Anna walked inside. He hurried up and hid something under the table by kicking it, but it was too late. Anna had seen it.
"What are you up to now, Valdemar?" she asked.
"Nothing," he sighed.
"Come on. I'm your mother. I know you. I can smell when you're up to something. Hand it over."
Valdemar picked it up with his feet and handed it to Anna. She looked at it, but could make no sense of what it was. "A dry erase marker? What's so special about that?"
Valdemar looked guilty and Anna realized there was something inside of the marker. She pulled it out. It looked like a small circuit board and a lot of wires.
"What is this, Valdemar? Talk, or I'm definitely taking away the computer."
"You'll just get mad," Valdemar said.
"I'll
try not to," Anna said. "Now speak up. What is this?"
"It's a key."
"A key?"
Valdemar nodded. He pulled out something else from under his desk with his feet and gave it to Anna. It looked exactly like a lock to a hotel door with a handle and everything. A small red light was blinking on top of it.
"What is all this?"
"It's a master key for all hotel room locks." Valdemar said.
"It’s what?"
"I found a hole in the code to the Onity HT lock system for hotels. Approximately ten million Onity HT locks are installed in hotels worldwide. This accounts for over half of all the installed hotel locks and can be found in approximately a third of all hotels," he said.
"And this is one of those locks, I take it?" Anna asked.
"Yes. The Code key values consist of 24 bits of data and are used to gain entry to locks. A lock contains a guest code key value and, generally, one or more master code key values. Rather than programming the lock anew for every guest or when master keycards need to be made, a concept called card cycling is used. When a valid card is introduced to the lock, the lock's code key value is moved up to the value on the card. This allows the lock to automatically invalidate old cards when new ones are used. A 24-bit code key value has 16.7 million unique values, but this is divided by the lookahead plus one, as any card in that range will be valid. Thus if you have a lookahead of 50, the key space is reduced to only 328,965 values. With the lookahead set to the maximum, 255, the key space is reduced to only 65,536 values. While this means that, even in the worst case, you would need to try 32,768 cards in a door, on average, to open it, this introduces another problem. If two doors happen to be close enough in code key value that their lookahead values overlap, it's possible that a legitimate guest card intended for one door can open another door at the same property. When the doors are assigned initial code key values, these are separated by 1,000 to make this less likely. However, all doors are not created equally in a hotel, it's very likely that certain rooms will see higher turnover than others, leading to a situation where the code key values are likely to overlap …"
Anna stopped Valdemar. "I have no idea what you're talking about, but this is not a good idea, Valdemar."
Valdemar looked down. He bent his head. Anna stared at the dry erase marker with curiosity. "So it works on all locks to all hotels, huh?"
Valdemar lifted his head. "Most hotels. Only those that use the Onity HT lock system."
"So how does it work?"
Valdemar smiled. With his feet, he grabbed the marker out of her hands. He put the circuit board inside and closed it on the back, then he grabbed the lock and put it on the table. Anna watched closely and couldn't help feeling a little proud of her son, yet terrified he would get himself in trouble with this.
"Now the Onity brand of key card locks most commonly used in hotels have a power jack on the bottom that doubles as a 1-wire communications port …"
"Simplify it, please," Anna said.
"Okay," Valdemar said. "See that small hole underneath the lock?"
Anna bent down and saw it. "Yes."
"Okay. Now I place the end of the marker down at the bottom here and give it a small push into the hole and then … now look, did you see the lamp went from red to green?"
"That's right, I saw that," Anna said, trying hard to not sound excited.
"Now you can turn the handle." Valdemar said.
Anna reached down and turned the handle.
"And the door is open."
Anna looked at her boy, then leaned over and kissed him. "You're a genius," she said. "Just promise me one thing."
"And that is?"
"Don't ever use it, alright?"
"It was never meant to be used. It was just an experiment."
41
August 2012
I waited nervously for what felt like hours at the hospital before the doctor came out and told me Sune was in recovery.
"We managed to close him up. He’s lost a lot of blood," the doctor said.
I was standing next to officer Jansson who had driven me to the hospital in his police car with blaring sirens and all.
"But he will make it?" Officer Jansson asked.
"It's too early to determine. The next twenty-four hours are crucial. We'll keep him under close observation."
"But he can live on without a spleen, right?" Officer Jansson asked.
"Yes. You can live perfectly well without your spleen. But because the spleen plays a crucial role in the body's ability to fight off bacteria, living without the organ makes you more likely to develop infections, especially dangerous ones like those that cause pneumonia, meningitis, and other serious infections. His own doctor will make sure the patient is given vaccinations to cover these bacteria."
I sat on a chair once the doctor was gone. I hid my face in my hands. "I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe it."
Officer Jansson sat next to me. He put his hand on my shoulder. "I'm sure he'll be alright."
"He has a son," I said. "I need to tell Tobias. He's back in Karrebaeksminde with his nanny."
Officer Jansson nodded. "Let me take care of that. I'll get the local police to contact them and have him transported here. Don't worry about that part."
Officer Jansson left the room talking on the phone. I took mine out and looked at it. Then I called Jens-Ole and told him. I hung up crying, then called Peter and told him not to say anything to Julie until I knew if Sune was going to live or not. Peter was very quiet and said nothing but yes and no.
Probably feeling guilty, I thought when I hung up.
The wait was terrible. My emotions ran amok. At one point I was crying for Sune and for the baby that might not get to know his father, then I was overwhelmed with guilt. If only I had been there. Maybe the organ thieves would have left him alone? Maybe I could have stopped them? Then I became angry. Angry at the thieves, at this cruel way to treat other people.
Officer Jansson soon returned. "Tobias is on his way in a police car. They told him his father was in the hospital, no details so far."
"I'll take care of him when he arrives," I said.
"Good." Officer Jansson sighed. "I'm afraid I have more bad news. There was another case last night."
"Two cases at the same time? What's going on here?" I asked.
He exhaled and touched his forehead. "I have no idea. This is crazy."
"What happened this time? Organ theft again? You think it was the same person?"
"That's the strange part. It was a woman this time. All the others have been men," Officer Jansson said.
"Maybe it doesn't matter to them if it is a man or woman. An organ is an organ, right? On the black market, it probably doesn't matter. Or do you think they might be responding to orders? That someone places an order for a spleen from a woman to make sure it fits?" The thought was repulsive and made my stomach turn.
"I have thought about it. But the worst part about this one is that it was performed in her own home."
"What?" I asked.
"She lived in an apartment in Silkeborg, where she was found this morning by a friend she was supposed to go to Aarhus with today. The door wasn't locked, so the girlfriend walked right in when the woman didn't answer the door. She found her on the floor, blood everywhere."
"What organ had been stolen?"
"That's the even stranger part. She had been cut open using one of her own kitchen knives and several organs had been cut loose, but none were missing. When the forensic team put her together it was all there. Some were on the floor and blood had spurted everywhere, like the person doing the cutting had gone berserk, but nothing was missing."
"That doesn't sound much like the other cases?"
"No not at all. In the three previous cases, the organ thieves have been very professional and even left the victims in ice with a note to tell them to call 112 when they woke up, if they woke up."
I felt sick picturing Sune sitting in the batht
ub filled with ice-cubes. Who in their right mind could be this cruel?
"Maybe there are many of them out there? Maybe this one wasn't as controlled and professional as the others?"
"I don't know. It makes sense that there should be more of them since they struck at almost the same time last night in two places in the same town."
"Kind of makes you want to lock your door with extra locks, right?"
"And sleep with one eye open," Officer Jansson said. "I don't think I'll be able to sleep again before this case is solved."
42
August 2012
Sune woke up late in the afternoon and the doctor told me we could see him. Tobias had arrived and I had been reading to him for a long time to make sure he wasn't too scared.
"Daddy's going to be fine," I kept reassuring him.
Sune was very pale and could hardly look at us when we walked in. Tobias pulled free from my hand and stormed to him. He threw himself on top of him.
"Tobias! Be careful," I yelled.
Sune tried to smile, but was in too much pain.
"Hi buddy," he said hoarsely and put his arm around Tobias' back.
"Daddy. Daddy. I missed you so much. They say you were sick, what happened to you?"
Sune cleared his throat. "Well, I'll tell you all about it another day. When I'm feeling better, okay buddy?"
"Okay Daddy."
Sune closed his eyes for a few seconds. I hated to see him in pain like this. "How do you feel?" I asked.
"Like crap," he said. His eyes met mine, then he tried to smile. I walked closer and grabbed his hand.