Mr. Miller

by Charles den Tex

  One floor down, in the living room, I found a wireless phone. I grabbed it and ran back up the stairs. Back in the bedroom I punched in the number, looked at the phone in my hand and broke the connection before it had been made.

  ‘Did you call?’ Emma asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘What are you waiting for, you idiot!’ She screamed at me and dived forward again over the body of Gijs, which she refused to release. Gijs was still there, that’s all she needed to know.

  I placed the phone next to her.

  ‘Listen …’ I said. I didn’t get any further. Emma’s furious words cut mine off at the source.

  ‘I don’t need to listen! Do something!’

  I seized her shoulders and pulled her up.

  ‘Emma,’ I said. ‘I’m not here, okay?’ I gave her a shake. ‘I can’t be here. I’m not here and I never was here.’

  ‘If you keep on whining Gijs won’t be here either.’ I saw the restrained aggression in her eyes. She flailed her arm in an effort to knock my hands away. I didn’t let go.

  ‘This is my fault,’ I said. ‘I don’t know who’s doing it or why, but it’s safer for you and for Gijs if no one knew I was here.’

  ‘But you saw them, didn’t you? You can tell the police what they look like. You …’

  ‘The police are looking for me already,’ I said.

  ‘Great.’

  ‘For another murder.’

  All expression drained from her face. She stared at me with wide-open eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Okay …’

  I picked up the phone and gave it to her. ‘It’s better if you call. You’ve got to believe me.’

  She took the phone and for one second gave me a completely blank look, as if suddenly she could see what I saw. Then she turned away from me and bent over Gijs as if I was no longer there. As if I had never been there. Just as I had asked, but far worse than I could have imagined.

  It wasn’t until I was back in the hotel room that I began to function again. I showered, collected my clothes from the dry cleaning service, paid the bill and left. The less time I spent in one place, the smaller the chance that someone would find me.

  I returned the car to the rental company and took the train to Schiphol. I was anonymous there in the national exhaust hood. Less than fifteen minutes from the centre of Amsterdam I disappeared into the crowd of travellers and vacationers. I booked a room at the Hilton and spent several minutes watching the planes take off and land, staring in silence, trying to piece together the facts as I knew them.

  I had found a website on the internet that I didn’t understand. That in itself wasn’t very remarkable, since there were lots of things I didn’t understand. But this website was deadly, and that was indeed remarkable. I had never come across a deadly website before, and certainly not one that was linked to HC&P, the company that I worked for, a company that didn’t hire anyone until they knew everything there was to know about him.

  Everything.

  Until a couple of days before I would have found that reasonable and even appropriate. The company had grown prestigious by providing the highest possible quality for every conceivable situation, and it protected that status by following a few simple rules which it stringently applied. Logical. But now I saw it quite differently.

  Because the company knew so much about me, it could corner me at every turn. ‘Man is the information he carries’—and as long as they had their hands on that information they could apply pressure to whoever it belonged to. Wherever they wanted. And eliminate them, if necessary.

  As long as they had the correct information, that is, and that was where I could still make some changes. People no longer know who they’re in contact with. E-mail is both easy and deceptive. Anyone can open any e-mail address they want. If I want someone to think I’m Winston Churchill, or George Bush, all I have to do is open an address under that name and send my message. It’s that simple, except no one ever falls for it. Not if you get an e-mail from george.bush@zonnet.nl, for example. Not then. But if one of the partners at HC&P were to receive a message from an acquaintance, he might not pay sufficient attention and might answer the mail.

  At least that’s what I thought.

  Using Ina Radekker’s user name and password, I logged into the HC&P network and searched for the e-mail addresses of all the partners of the firm. Then I surfed from the HC&P network to several provider sites and opened a number of new e-mail addresses, registered in my name. But the name in the address itself was the man I was looking for, whose identity was unknown to me: Huib.breger@aol.com, h.breger@tiscali.nl and Huibbreger@hotmail.com.

  Using one of those three addresses each time as the sender I wrote eleven e-mails, all with the same message, based on the notices that had appeared on the screen of Gijs’s computer. In English.

  Identity confirmed, but unavailable. Location NOT secure.

  Please input Mr. Miller.

  HBreger

  That’s all. The important thing was not the message but the reaction. Somehow I had to find a way in, a corner of the package I could pick at, and at that point a wild guess seemed better than endless brooding. ‘I shoot better when I move,’ said the Sundance Kid. He had to move in order to hit something. When he stopped moving, everything went wrong. That was my problem, too.

  Do something.

  The messages vanished through the data line, and in a little while the computer picked up new messages. Twenty-nine. I looked at them one by one. There were two that I really wanted to see. One because I was waiting for it. And the other because I wished it hadn’t been sent.

  23 Bellilog 06.19.04

  Okay, where do I draw the line? That’s a legitimate question. Where am I supposed to go? Wrong question. Where am I coming from? Here. I’ve almost reached that point right now. G has been caught. They’ve caught G. Who are ‘they’? Someone. People. People who are looking for me. I can say less and less, while I’ve got more and more to say.

  Miller?

  Who is Miller?

  Mail from: Jess

  Subject: bad news

  what are you saying?

  xxxx

  j

  Mail to: Jess

  Subject: Re: bad news

  what are you asking?

  Everything here 100% fucked. Tell you later, but it’s not good. Shit. When you are coming back?

  I love you. m.

  Mail from: Miller

  Subject: Confirmation

  Dear Mr. Michael Bellicher,

  You reached our website recently and failed to complete the registration form.

  Also we understand you are no longer at the Amsterdam Novotel.

  Please reconfirm with us.

  Sincerely,

  Miller

  24 Orange hands, white knees

  Miller? Miller knew I had stayed at the Novotel and sent me an e-mail about some registration form I hadn’t filled in. This was worse than I thought. That so-called innocent question meant that I had left that particular hotel just in time. Miller wanted me to know that he was right on my tail. If I wanted to stay ahead of him, I’d have to be more careful. I had no idea how he had found me there, but the fact that he had found me was clear.

  It was busy in the main hall of the airport. Thousands of people were on the move, all with the same kind of passionate cheerfulness, in expectation of the journey that would begin in a couple of hours or in expectation of the person they had come to collect. As I had less than a week before. In those few days I had changed from a successful consultant to a tourist with a backpack, a globetrotter in the Randstad. My appearance was beyond recognition. I hadn’t shaved in four days, my stubble growth had reached my ears. I was walking around in dirty clothes and in the wrong shoes. My suit had been dry cleaned and was hanging in the closet, waiting helplessly for a life that had been abruptly interrupted.

  I needed money. I stopped at an ATM, stuck my bank card into the slit and keyed in my pin code. Noisele
ssly the machine processed my information and rejected it. The message that appeared on the screen was so harsh and so simple that I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.

  Card invalid

  Transaction terminated

  That’s all it said. The ATM switched back to its start screen and acted as if I didn’t exist. As if I had never existed. My card had disappeared, never to re-emerge. The glorious anonymity of the ATM had turned against me. Now here I was, standing face to face with a machine, and I was powerless. A fully automated system had identified my card and ingested it. From one moment to the next I was cut off from my money. My property.

  I cursed and kicked the machine. Hard. Senseless violence exploded in my body. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to hit somebody. I screamed. People standing nearby looked at me. One man came up to me and reached out with an imploring hand.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  I nodded, forced myself to calm down, swallowed my rage and felt it sink into my body like liquid concrete.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Don’t mind me.’ I straightened my jacket and walked away, into the main hall. No particular destination. Rage still in my head, in my guts. I walked aimlessly from one end of the hall to the other, past hamburger joints and coffee bars, past supermarkets and book shops, drug stores and clothing chains. Slowly my agitation slackened. Finally I sat down at a small table in a sandwich shop. A girl with an international sort of cheerfulness came up to me and asked me what I wanted.

  Coffee.

  While she went to get my order, I checked to see how much money I still had. Of the nine hundred I had withdrawn there was less than three hundred left. Enough for now, but the room at the Hilton would soon take care of that. If I were to stay there, my money would be gone in two days. And I still hadn’t bought anything. No food and no personal stuff, no toothbrush, no toothpaste, no comb, no razor and no new chapstick. Things I needed. Badly needed.

  The only thing I still had was a savings account in France. I had opened it once after receiving a nice fat bonus. I had wanted to buy a small vineyard around Bergerac, an idea that never panned out. After an initial deposit in the account I hadn’t done anything with it. I didn’t need it here and it wasn’t bothering anybody there. A little less than twenty thousand euros, deposited there in cash. Perfect. Except I didn’t have a debit card or a credit card for the account. I did have a French cheque-book and an RIB, a relève d’identité bancaire. With that and my passport I could withdraw money. But I had to do it in France.

  Both those things were still in my apartment.

  Despondent, I drifted through the airport hall. I knew what I had to do and I knew I would do it, too, but my first reaction dragged on longer than I wanted it to. All around me was the sound of music, happy and energetic. The smells of fast food, fresh bread and French fries, fruit juice and coffee. In the various cafes and snack bars, TV sets were broadcasting noiseless news images out into the world. Wars and negotiations, dead people and sports. Riots in a city. Somewhere. People running. Men in helmets and carrying automatic weapons were shooting at someone who couldn’t be seen. Blurred images. A blindfolded woman on her knees. Masked men with machetes dressed in black. Arabic letters. Subtitles: The infidels have gathered to attack us. They cannot attack us. Ministers in grey suits, sober faces.

  ‘A double bacon burger and a diet Coke,’ I said to the girl behind the counter.

  She laughed at me the way only girls behind fast food counters ever laugh at me. Because they’re supposed to. It’s her job to like me. I’m paying for it. It’s included in the price. ‘Large Coke?’ she asked.

  ‘Large Coke,’ I said.

  Deurloostraat was only partly awake. I had a pretty good view of it from a side street. Parked diagonally across from my front door was a car with two men in it. It was the only car with people inside, and they didn’t seem as if they were about to get out or drive away. They just sat there in a dark blue Kia, a nondescript vehicle that would never stand out anywhere if it weren’t for those two men.

  I lived at number 56, three floors up. Next to me, at number 58, lived Bert Vaasen, who was married to Francine and never went out before noon on Saturday. Bert had a key to my apartment in case I ever forgot mine. I had a key to his apartment, too, if he forgot his. The difference was that I had already come knocking at his door several times but he had never come to mine.

  ‘Which is just as well,’ he said then, ‘because you’re never there anyway.’

  Bert never forgot his keys. It just wasn’t in him. He was an accountant and he counted everything ten times before going out the door. He was fifty-something and had the face of a man who’s always right because he’s a man, with all the opinions that went with it. To him I was a ludicrous loudmouth who never knew what he thought; he was the reliable bellyacher who knew all too well what he thought. Bert and I got on like a house on fire. He ranted at the government and the banks and insurance companies, and I did, too. A drink with Bert usually ended up with an exchange of prejudices that left both of us relieved and able to get on with life.

  I took out my cell phone and called his number.

  ‘Hey, Bert. It’s me.’

  ‘Yeah, I can tell,’ he said. ‘Forgot your key?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not that. But I’m out here a little further down the street, and …’

  ‘Thought so. You see the flatfeet?’

  I laughed. ‘Blue Kia,’ I said.

  ‘Jerks,’ said Bert. ‘See you in a minute.’

  I retraced my steps down the side street, turned on to Rijnstraat and entered Deurloostraat again from the other side, approaching the police car from the back. Then I crossed the street to number 58-60 and rang Bert’s bell. As I waited for him to buzz me in, I turned around and looked left and right down the street. The men in the car on the other side didn’t respond.

  When I got up to Bert’s apartment, I wanted to tell him what was going on and why I had called on him, but he didn’t even listen. Without saying a word, he picked up the previous day’s newspaper, folded it open and laid it on the table in front of me. Murder in Amsterdam South, police are looking for Michael B. Photo of me next to the article with a black bar across my eyes, but De Telegraaf has mastered that art so well that anyone could see who I was.

  ‘You need coffee?’ Bert asked. He didn’t wait for my answer. ‘Francie,’ he shouted to his wife in one of the other rooms, ‘we have a murderer in the house. Make us a cup of coffee, would you?’

  With a steaming mug under his nose, Bert told me how ‘they’ (the police) had searched my apartment a couple of days before. ‘It was like they were moving you out,’ he said with a curse. ‘They must have had their paws on everything at least three times. Really, I’m not exaggerating. Am I exaggerating, Francie?’

  Francine shook her head. ‘They were at it all morning,’ she said. ‘Showed up at eight o’clock, downstairs. I don’t know how many of them there were, but …’

  ‘Five,’ said Bert. ‘Five men. Jerks.’

  ‘Until at least twelve-thirty. And they came back again once that night, but I think there were only two of them and they didn’t take long. They were gone within the hour, right, Bert?’

  ‘Less.’

  Twice there had been people in my apartment. The police in the morning and others at night. I couldn’t imagine what they thought they’d find there, but that hadn’t stopped them from turning everything upside down.

  ‘And now?’ Bert asked.

  ‘I’ve got to get in,’ I said. ‘Through the balcony.’

  Bert looked at me. He understood what I meant and why I wanted to do it, but it took a while for him to accept it.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Sort of,’ I said.

  ‘Then it’s okay.’

  We walked to the other side of the apartment, through the kitchen and out to the narrow balcony running along the back of the building. Bert’s balcony was adjacent to mine, sep
arated by a low brick wall. I put one foot on the railing and one hand on Bert’s shoulder.

  ‘Give me a boost,’ I said. Bert grabbed me around the waist, and before I knew it I was standing with two feet on the narrow masonry three floors above the ground. Bert’s fist was clamped around my belt.

  ‘You shouldn’t think about these kinds of things too long,’ I said. ‘It only makes it worse.’

  Bert laughed. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked again.

  I nodded. ‘No,’ I said, ‘but that won’t do me any good. Now!’

  Bert let go. In one long, sweeping movement I grabbed the top of the brick wall to my left, swung my right leg away from the balcony and around the wall and set my foot on the railing on the other side as far as I could reach. Then I threw my upper body over and dove onto my own balcony, head first. I scraped my hands open on the bricks and crashed onto my knees on the concrete floor.

  ‘Well?’ came Bert’s laconic voice from behind the partition.

  ‘I’m bleeding from three places and I’ll probably be a cripple for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Bert. There was a moment’s silence. ‘Are you coming back soon? What are you doing over there anyway?’

  ‘I don’t think I should try this again,’ I said, rubbing the sore spots on my hands and legs. ‘I’ll get whatever there is to get and just walk out the front door. They won’t be expecting that.’

  Bert didn’t respond.

  ‘Okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Actually it would have been much smarter if I had gone inside,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe. But I also want to see how it looks inside. I want to see for myself.’

  ‘Right,’ said Bert. ‘Call me before you go.’

  There was less to see inside than I had expected. A few places had been rifled through, but most of the stuff was where it belonged, more or less. The greatest chaos was in my study and in the living room. Everything there was strewn all over the floor. Folders, binders, papers. The drawers of my desk were open, and most of the contents had been pulled out and simply flung in every direction. I couldn’t understand how anyone expected to find anything this way. It didn’t make sense. The mess was more an expression of fury than of furious searching.