Mr. Miller

by Charles den Tex

Intense mad-cow feeling, spongy synapses with signals disappearing and reappearing in entirely different form, subdued, distorted. Aggressive.

  Mail from: Jess

  Subject: sf

  work hard play hard, 24-7, in shape in gear. very cock-centered place, this. regenerated protozoa with egos. maybe something to it. far from finished. everything ok on the amstel? miss-u.

  jess

  Mail to: Jess

  Subject: Re: sf

  youre not cheating on me, are you? more than I could handle. floundering here. lots of xxx and everything else ive forgotten. belli

  6 Man is the information he carries

  I had been receiving some fat bonuses in recent years. For every follow-up assignment I managed to bring in I was given a percentage of the returns, even more if the assignment was brand new. Sometimes this amounted to tens of thousands of euros. And suddenly now my future was uncertain.

  No one had heard from me for two whole days. No colleagues, no clients, no one from management. Understandable for me, perhaps, but lethal for my job situation. It was a form of corporate suicide. HC&P gave its employees very little leeway, and I had gone way over the line. I was in the elevator, waiting for the doors to close. Clean underwear, clean shirt, white, no tie, dark blue suit with a narrow stripe, and enough gel in my hair to keep it in a state of high-spirited surprise. It wasn’t real, but it worked. I was still up to my eyeballs in alcohol. I looked neatly pressed, but inside chaos reigned, more than I could suppress. I needed all the help I could get, and until I got it I was shutting everything out, beginning with my family. Talking to them was out of the question, especially with Kurt. Not because Kurt didn’t say anything but because I couldn’t trust my own words. Everything I wanted to say meant something different than what I actually said, so I kept my mouth shut. Much better that way.

  That strategy probably wouldn’t work at the office, since HC&P saw information as the firm’s primary concern. Not the people, not the equipment, not the building or the clients, but the information. People were no more than the information stored within them and made accessible by them.

  Man is the information he carries.

  That sentence is engraved on a polished, dark granite pillar in the reception area of each of the company’s seven hundred twenty-three branches. It’s a small, stylish object, not garish or gaudy. On the contrary, if you didn’t know it was there you’d have to look for it, and that’s part of its attraction. It’s the company slogan, but perhaps more than that, it’s the basic principle behind its dealings in the world. Job applicants have to fill out long questionnaires and go through endless interviews.

  ‘If we don’t know what you know, then we’ll never know what we can do for each other.’ That’s how the leadership thinks at HC&P and that’s how the company works. Openness, and the sharing of knowledge and information: that’s the basis of collaboration. The company knows everything about me. It knows who I am, where I come from, where I live, my bank account number, what my favourite music is, what my strengths and weaknesses are, how high my IQ is (applicants with IQs under 140 are rejected out of hand), where my family lives, what illnesses I’ve had and when I last visited the dentist.

  IQ is important. Partner IQ is 180 and higher. Partners are the men with the ability to see through extremely complex situations and facts and to formulate new possibilities. Jessica is the first woman in the company to think and work at that level. What she lacks in experience she makes up for in untamed killer instinct. She’s faster and more accurate than the best of them. She can be totally concentrated and still remain accessible to others, as if her brain had two separate functions, just like breathing and seeing. Jessica is an IQ tempest in her own body, and there’s nothing HC&P would rather do than make use of her fearsome capacities. All within the rules of the firm, of course.

  The sliding door of the elevator was stopped by a strong, tanned hand. Dries van Waayen stepped into the gleaming, polished compartment.

  ‘Me, too,’ he said. Partner-director, fifty-six, his watch cost more than everything I was wearing put together. His expression was solemn but happy. Everything he did was important, and therefore serious. He enjoyed his work so much that he simply radiated satisfaction. Always, under all circumstances.

  ‘Bellicher,’ he said. He had the ability to sound friendly in the chilliest way. ‘Is it just the two of us?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  As the door slid closed for the second time, Van Waayen placed a hand on my shoulder and gazed at me with a look that revealed nothing but the shameless pleasure he took in being himself.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘because we have to get together some time and talk about the future, don’t you agree?’ He pushed the button for the fifth floor with his forefinger. For a moment it looked as if the only effect of the elevator’s upward movement was his eyebrows, which rose to unprecedented heights. The smile disappeared from his face. ‘Because you understand, of course, that your future looks quite different than it did a couple of months ago.’ He did not expect an answer. The bad economy, the plummeting stock market, the encroaching silence with regard to mergers and takeovers, the collapse of telecommunications and the draining of the IT sector, along with my recent two-day hiatus—all this was reason enough to discuss my future at the firm.

  I nodded, pursed my lips a bit and attempted a vague smile. It made little difference.

  ‘My office,’ said Van Waayen. ‘Around lunchtime, I thought. That work out for you?’ This was not a question. Make sure it works out.

  ‘About twelve-thirty,’ I said. We both knew what this was going to be about.

  Van Waayen nodded. ‘Fine,’ he said.

  The elevator came to a halt with a sigh. The gentle electronic imitation of a gong and a blinking number indicated that we had arrived at the fifth floor.

  ‘This is me,’ Van Waayen said. ‘Last in, first out. Goes for me, too. You see?’ He laughed and vanished down the corridor. His corridor. Distinctions are made to be drawn. And just as the elevator began moving again it hit me: I was going to be fired. Even the last dregs of alcohol were no solace. In point of fact I was already out. Virtual, maybe, but what were a couple of hours in the big scheme of things?

  The elevator shot upward, pressing my throat down into my heart. When I swallowed, it squeezed the rhythm out of my chest and my body stiffened into a dry cramp. This was more than I could take on. I couldn’t get fired. It was impossible. My body seemed to resist the very idea. Being fired meant I’d be cut off from everything I had: the technology, the profession, the systems. Cut off from the assignments that had brought me to the heart of every major development. Mega-assignments that I could easily work on twenty hours a day, driven by the commitment to find solutions where often no solution had been found before. Where the solution didn’t even exist until I found it. Until we found it. Racing through the country for every client, every assignment a different team. Connected. With everything. If I no longer had that, then all that was left was the content. And content is for losers. The prospect alone took my breath away.

  Panting discreetly, shallow panting, not too fast, I got out of the elevator on the ninth floor. My lips were so dry I was afraid they’d crack. Briefcase in one hand and chapstick in the other, I rushed to my hot desk. Gazing out over Amsterdam I spread the balm over the tiny, sharp flakes of skin and the stinging fissures in my lips. It relieved the taut dryness around my mouth, but no matter how I looked at it, the morning only grew shorter. Twelve-thirty was arriving as it had never arrived before. Inevitably. Twenty-five more minutes. Twenty. Fifteen.

  I can’t let this happen, I thought, no matter what.

  ‘I’ve had more dissatisfied clients on the phone in two days than in the past fifteen years …,’ Van Waayen said. He looked at me in silence.

  I didn’t respond.

  ‘… your clients,’ he went on. ‘Erik Strila from Justice has never called so many times before. If you leave a minister hig
h and dry without letting him hear from you, you’re doing something wrong. And I’m putting this very mildly. I’ve had to spend two days tying myself up in the most awkward knots to make sure it didn’t get any worse. But don’t worry, all the clients have been reassured and they’re all sticking around. Which is more than I can say for you.’

  My own problem was only third on the list, if that. The client came first and the firm came second. Rightfully so, perhaps, but Van Waayen exaggerated. The power of the client is that he can walk away and go elsewhere. That may be true, but in real life clients aren’t so quick to walk away. That wasn’t a factor here, either, but his having to come up with excuses for me was galling for him. Worse than I could have thought.

  ‘That’s not what I hired you for,’ he said. ‘Seriously. Yesterday I had to send Peter to The Hague at a moment’s notice. Preparations for the EU summit are continuing, whether you show up or not. I also discussed it with the other partners, and we can’t act as if nothing happened, you understand?’ He wasn’t laughing. The interests of a satisfied client were more important than ever. ‘The EU summit is our biggest assignment. Coordinating European security and integration policy puts us squarely in the middle of all the relevant ministries. Justice is crucial. And what do you do? Apparently this kind of responsibility is not in reliable hands in your case. So if I don’t step in now we’ll have no end of trouble, and what will we have to show for it?’

  It was a conversation with lots of logical conclusions drawn from indisputable developments, but it wasn’t about having a conversation. It didn’t even look like a conversation. It was an offer of three months’ salary and a promise to spend the next six months helping me find a new job. In concrete terms: a good eighteen thousand euros, five interviews with an outplacement advisor and not the slightest prospect of work, since dismissed consultants are an almost unemployable group. Especially communications consultants. I’d be turning in my car, my cell phone, my laptop and my clients, knowing only too well that the combination of mortgage and flexible credit line would be ruthlessly pulled out from under me within four months.

  I did not respond to the offer. I had already decided that. Subconsciously. Instinctively. I pursed my lips, shook my head slightly and raised my eyebrows.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’ But I didn’t go along with it, for the simple reason that I didn’t agree with it.

  ‘Take your time,’ Van Waayen said. There was an obligatory sort of reasonableness in his voice. ‘Then we’ll talk further. I always have time on Friday.’

  ‘Today is Wednesday,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever. You get what I mean. You don’t have to leave before lunch. That’s not how we treat each other here. But one way or another we have a conclusion to draw. You know that as well as I do.’

  Twenty minutes later I was back in the corridor. I hadn’t agreed to anything, hadn’t admitted anything, and I hadn’t eaten any of Van Waayen’s sandwiches. All there was in my stomach was a corrosive pool of coffee and acid. Nothing was left of what I had once been so sure of. The immense HC&P building, which last week had still been the foundation of a rock-solid future, was now anything but. One decision would put me on the other side of glitter and security. If I let go now, I’d never get back in. That much was certain. So I didn’t go anywhere. In fact, I stayed.

  After lunch I called my contacts and rescheduled all my appointments. With plenty of apologies and placation I managed to charm my old clients one more time. Why I don’t know, but there was nothing to it. I called Erik Strila, who seemed surprised to hear from me. Word of my departure had apparently gotten around. He listened to my excuses but skirted around them, as if he had heard other ones already. Better ones. And he had.

  ‘Erik,’ I said, ‘how often have we seen each other and talked over the past year?’

  ‘Too often to mention.’

  ‘And all those times I always showed up. I was always perfectly prepared. True or not?’

  ‘True, yes.’ He agreed, but it sounded like a forgotten memory. A consultant is as good as his last achievement.

  I said it to make sure it got said. I wasn’t gone yet. Erik Strila was the client with whom I had the best working relationship. He was my contact at Justice. I had embarrassed him in front of his minister and he wasn’t going to forgive me easily.

  ‘We’ll talk sometime,’ he said. He even avoided saying goodbye.

  All by itself, and almost imperceptibly, my subconscious came to a decision. My head was making assessments that I wasn’t even aware of. What I knew, what I had done, what I had heard—everything lined up in neat rows, vertical and horizontal, compared, tallied up, subtracted, weighed and turned over one last time before being approved or rejected. While I was making my phone calls and talking it struck me: somewhere behind my eyeballs, along the finely branched nerve cells in my head, among the hundreds of millions of contacts there was one that stuck out.

  Clear as glass.

  Hard as war.

  7 Bellilog 06.16.04

  I am a communications consultant and I wouldn’t want to be anything else. I can’t even imagine being anything else. Being a consultant is a state of mind. In the meantime this is how things are stacked up: VW is a partner and I’m a junior—not any more, actually, but that has yet to be confirmed, so until then I am—and partners never have to be right because a junior is always wrong. Life may not be fair, but that’s no big deal. That’s power. And because HC&P is a respectable company, a junior will always make sure that a partner never has to exercise his power. Because you just don’t do that. Having power is chic, but exercising power is vulgar. And vulgar is a no-no. A vulgar consultant is an oxymoron. A vulgar consultant does not exist. He cancels himself out.

  That’s how things stand, and the only chance I have is to pass something on to the partner that will make him more important than he already is. Not in my eyes, because I don’t even count, but in the eyes of his colleagues, the other partners, the chums. That’s where the points are tallied up.

  Take your time and keep on walking, the door shuts by itself.

  Mail from: Jess

  Subject: Re: Re: sf

  cheating? floundering? excuse me? what’s this about? hot and thinking of you. does that help? love u

  8 The remains of able-bodied comrades

  At the end of the afternoon I put my things in my briefcase, stuck my cell phone in my pocket, zipped my laptop into its bag, took the elevator to the third floor and locked myself in the canteen.

  No one was there. All the tables were cleared, the floors swept. A salutary peace reigned. I walked coolly to the back as if I knew what I was doing and put my stuff in the farthest corner, the one closest to the kitchen. I pushed the swinging door open and looked inside. No one there, either.

  Excellent.

  I turned the latches on the entrance doors to lock them from the inside. They were swinging doors without keyholes. Nothing could have been simpler. No one had ever considered the possibility of a person wanting to ensconce himself in the canteen. Why would they?

  Now I was sure that tomorrow I’d be able to get into the building, if only because I had never left. It was thinking and acting at the very lowest level, but there had been instances of a person’s building pass failing to work the day after a candid evaluation talk. The person never got any further than the downstairs reception area. There was always a reason for immediate refusal of entrance. The most common was confidential company information about the client. Information was sacred and everyone accepted the need to protect it. Exaggerated? Perhaps, but in the consultancy world everything is exaggerated. People said goodbye from a distance, never in each other’s company. That only muddied the waters. It was as simple as that, and I was not about to end up on the street in such a childish way.

  With every move I made I became calmer, more convinced that I was right. I made coffee, turned off the light and withdrew into the corner I had made for myself. Laptop on a small table, cell p
hone off. I didn’t want anyone to call me. That would be too bizarre. I clicked through the documents in my computer and stared, sometimes for minutes at a time, at the memos and reports I had written for clients. A lot of the most recent work was for the Ministry of Justice. Media training for the minister, communicating the security policy. That was my work. What made it fascinating was the scale of the assignment, knowing that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of people would be affected by the results. Amplifying small suggestions until they became noticeable changes. That’s what I was staring at, and the waiting came naturally.

  All around me the building grew quieter and bigger. Fewer telephones rang, fewer people walked through the corridors, the elevators went up and down only now and then. There were always a couple of midnight oil burners. HC&P had deadlines and interests that sometimes kept consultants at their desks until deep into the night. Even that was normal. I knew I wouldn’t be really alone in the building until two or three o’clock in the morning, and even then I couldn’t be sure. Because of the extreme working hours the alarm system was almost never in operating mode. It was there, all right, but no one ever turned it on because someone was always busy somewhere in the building. There was a night watchman downstairs armed with a battery of video cameras who kept an eye on the most important places. The canteen was not one of them.

  I got hungry. In the kitchen I found well-stocked supply closets. I could hold out for a week here if necessary. There was plenty of bread and sandwich makings in the refrigerators, and salads of every shape and size. With a plate full of everything and a can of Coke to quench my unremitting thirst, I turned the light back out. I ate by late daylight, drank another can of Coke and waited for the rest of the evening. And the night.

  I woke up on the floor. The Coke had done its work and was ready to move on. I stood up, my limbs stiff, stretched and looked around. It was dark. The only illumination was the small exit light above the door, a little white man running against a green background. It was ten past two.