I quickly checked the other rooms. The situation in the kitchen, the bedroom, the dining room and the bathroom was relatively normal. My clothes were in the closet and all the dishes were intact. The furniture had survived the onslaught, and they had left the floor covering alone. In the living room I went to the window on the street side and peered down from one corner. The two men were still in the blue car. They hadn’t noticed a thing.
Back in the front hall I went to the wardrobe next to the door. I reached past the coats to the shelf above the fuse box and felt around with my fingers. The passport was still there, right next to the box of fuses. I smiled and slipped it into the inner pocket of my jacket.
That was one. Now the cheque-book with the RIB. In the living room I went to the bookcase to the right of the window. On the uppermost shelf I felt between two books, The Thin Man and The Continental Op, and pulled out the thin chequebook. Perfect. Untouched. I put that in one of the inner pockets of my jacket as well.
Done. I could leave, but I didn’t go. A few minutes later I caught myself starting to pick things up and put them back, without being aware of it. I put a couple of folders back in the cabinet and straightened up some papers. I was standing in the middle of my study with a binder in my left hand and an archive box in my right when it suddenly dawned on me what I was doing. I was in my own apartment, and in a kind of reflex I wanted to get everything back in order. It was a logical reaction at the wrong moment. I put the two things neatly in their place in one of the cabinets and called Bert.
‘It’s me. I’m leaving.’
‘Give me two minutes.’
I took the elevator to the ground floor and looked out through the little window in the front door of the entranceway. Soon Bert came out. He crossed the street and walked to the other side of the blue car. Then he bent over the window on the driver’s side. I waited a couple of seconds until Bert had engaged the men in conversation. Then I opened the door and stepped outside. My hands were burning from the scrapes, and I felt my knees with every step I took, but I walked to the end of the street without limping or dragging my leg. On the corner of Rijnstraat I looked behind me. Bert was still standing next to the police car. He looked at me, raised his hand and waved. I waved back, just as easily, and disappeared around the corner.
By the time I got back to Schiphol everything hurt. My arms, my legs, my shoulders and my head rose up in protest against every move I made, as if I had wrenched every muscle in my body during the jump and the fall. Next stop was the drugstore, where I bought band-aids, iodine, analgesic cream and a large package of paracetamol. I took it all with me to my room and began an extensive round of self-medication. I washed the scrapes on my hands and dabbed them with iodine, applying band-aids wherever possible. I took three paracetamols and spread some of the analgesic cream on my knees. Then I stood in front of the mirror, orange hands and white knees. My head was spinning. I looked like a deadbeat delinquent who had just been beaten to a pulp. But in the Hilton. I would have to pay for this day anyway, so I figured I might as well make the most of it. I dropped onto the bed, exhausted.
That was all I could take.
25 The sterile light of the train
The Thalys glided peacefully out of the country into Belgium. Still early morning. Late June, the lovely weather of the past few days had disappeared. Grey clouds hung high in the sky. Every now and then blazing beams of sun broke through, but never for long. The farther we travelled, the thicker the cloud cover. Fine with me. It seemed to make me less vulnerable, more hidden.
My backpack had been stored at the Hilton’s check-in counter. Everything I had was in it, safe in its enclosed space. If I wasn’t carrying it with me I couldn’t lose it. All I had in the train was a plastic bag.
With a notebook and a pen I sat at the narrow fold-out table and wrote. I had four and a half hours before arriving in Paris. During that time I wrote down everything that had happened. Not in my blog; this wasn’t for others to read. This was for me alone, to keep from forgetting and to help me understand. To try to find the connection between the facts and the aggression. There had to be a reason for the violence. At first I had thought Ina Radekker had stumbled upon financial misdoings, fraud. She worked in Finance & Control, so that idea seemed logical. But since the attack on Gijs it seemed somewhat less likely. Gijs was a numbers genius, but he knew just as little about the administration of the office as I did. Nothing. Not only that, but the only reason they had tracked Gijs down was because I was there. They weren’t interested in him but in me.
They. And who were ‘they’?
Breger. And Miller. And who else? Van Waayen? And who was Ruud? Who had sent Ruud to Radekker’s apartment? And who had taken him away? Because after getting conked with the dumbbell Ruud wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere alone. Who were the American men in Gijs’s house? Americans? Why Americans? Sent by Miller? So who was Miller?
And why me? Because I was demonstrably the only other person who had been in the building that night. The conveniently guilty party. The man no one would miss. Maybe, but why didn’t they just leave that up to the police? The only other thing I knew was the web address, an address that was of no use to me and that had me utterly baffled. Except for the fact that it was linked to The home of Mr. Miller. Miller again.
I wrote and wrote. I kept re-ordering the same facts from different perspectives and in different hierarchies: chronologically, according to interests, contacts, money and the work. The work of HC&P. What were the firm’s most important assignments? Strategic advice for large companies, policy development for government ministries, reorganizations, restructuring of public services—there was no aspect of society that HC&P didn’t have some share in. All those assignments were important, but none of them could top the projects that the firm was doing for the European Union, and at the moment the EU Summit on Security and Integration was the biggest project of all. The firm was working on preparations in twelve different countries. Hundreds of consultants were trying to make some sense out of the chaos of rules and procedures, and at the same time trying to find an answer to the growing unrest in the countries of Western Europe. Reports and inventories generated endless quantities of numerical data, which could only be interpreted by means of the proper models. HC&P provided those models, supplied the frames of reference, worked out the interpretations and presented the results in handsome reports—each and every week, because each week there were new figures, new facts. And each week the tone became more forbidding, the politicians more nervous and the future more uncertain. The time pressure was enormous. The summit would be taking place in a couple of weeks but the negotiations were happening now. Day after day. What later would be adopted as new European policy in the areas of immigration, integration, refugees, anti-terrorism and security was now being decided. Even I was working on it. The communication training I was providing to the Minister of Justice had everything to do with the persuasiveness of the Dutch point of view. And not just in the Netherlands.
That was where the interest of HC&P lay. The stakes were extremely high: bringing this project to a successful conclusion would guarantee the role of the firm in the EU for years to come. Even the corporate headquarters in America was following its progress. That’s why Jess was there. She was one of the European consultants who had the ability to compare EU policy with that of the United States and see the points of connection.
With so much riding on this work, perhaps assessments were being made that were different from what I would consider normal. But what was the reason? What had Ina Radekker found that had to remain absolutely secret at all costs? What had I found? It wasn’t fraud. I no longer believed that. It was the website. Something was happening on that website, and whatever it was, it had to do with the EU project. The longer I thought about it the more certain I became. I just didn’t know why.
In Paris I emptied out my savings account, and with more than twenty thousand euros in my pocket I bought some new clothes. A pa
ir of pants, T-shirts, a jacket with a gazillion pockets (all with zippers), underwear, socks, a cap and a pair of lightweight walking shoes. When I got back in the train at the end of the afternoon I looked like a commando on vacation.
As the Thalys tore through the landscape of northern France at three hundred kilometres an hour, I tried to reach Gijs. No answer. I let the phone ring endlessly until the phone company cut it off. He had probably been taken to a hospital, but I didn’t know which one. I couldn’t call his neighbour Emma because I didn’t know her last name. At the office they might know something, but I didn’t dare chance it. I didn’t want to have any contact whatsoever with HC&P for the time being. Yet I did want to know how he was doing. I wanted information. Something.
I got out my old cell phone and called voicemail. There were more than two hundred new voice messages and almost as many text messages. It was the police, inundating me with calls to convince me to give myself up. After ten messages I turned the phone off. I wasn’t available to anyone. Fine. Ultimately I had only one choice: I had to take care of this myself.
Late that evening I arrived in Amsterdam. I took the tram from Central Station to the Herengracht and walked east until I was level with Gijs’s house but one canal further north. In the pale illumination of the streetlights I read the nameplates and found her name on the third door.
Emma Silverschmidt.
Couldn’t miss it. I took a couple of steps back and looked at the building. It was big, much bigger than Gijs’s—almost twice as wide. Basement, large front door and two tall windows on the ground floor, with two more storeys above that. There was still light shining in a few of the windows. I rang the bell, and soon I heard a bit of thumping behind the door. Then came her voice, quite unexpectedly, from a little speaker right next to my ear.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked.
‘Me,’ I said, not realizing how stupid that sounded until after I had said it.
‘That’s good,’ said Emma, ‘’cause I’m here, too. Anything else you wanted to say?’
‘Michael,’ I said.
‘Am I supposed to know you?’
‘The shed guy,’ I explained.
‘Michael Shedguy?’
‘You know. The guy in your shed, friend of Gijs.’
There was a moment of silence. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said finally.
‘That’s what you said the last time.’
The door opened. Emma was not big, but she filled the doorway with her presence. ‘Yes?’ she asked, making it clear that I was not being invited in.
‘How’s Gijs?’ I asked.
She didn’t answer right away but looked at me again with that flat, empty gaze I had seen in her eyes before. Not cold but clinical, as if she were assessing me.
‘Gijs is doing well,’ she said.
I had to swallow the lump in my throat. ‘You sure?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘As well as can be expected,’ she said, and fell silent.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Oh, that’ll be a great help,’ she said, and now her voice was bitter. ‘If you can’t stick around when it matters, don’t show up later with your commiseration. Not the done thing, at least I don’t think so.’
I avoided her glance and looked at the wall next to me, where I noticed another nameplate for the first time. A nameplate with its own bell.
E. Silverschmidt
Psychiatrist, practice
Suddenly I understood why she could be so distant, so blank. How she could be so totally invisible behind her own eyes. It was a professional glance that she used to observe me and to keep me at a distance. I didn’t say anything, because everything I said was wrong. Emma had decided that I was an untrustworthy coward because I had let Gijs down. Because I had let her down. Then before my very eyes I watched her face assume a mask of friendliness.
‘Will that be all?’ she asked. Her hand was already on the door. ‘Because I think we’d better end our conversation right now.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Wait a minute. Where is he?’
‘He’s at Prinsengracht Hospital, here in the neighbourhood. One more night, for observation. Tomorrow he’s coming back home.’ She looked at me, eyebrows raised. Suddenly she began addressing me formally. ‘Shall we let it go at that? Then you can go home as well,’ she said.
I sighed. With great effort I forced my face to smile. ‘If only it were so simple,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t have had to come to your door.’
Central Station was a swarming mass of eating and drinking humanity. The passageway under the platforms smelled of beverages, pizza and French fries. A young guy on one of the stairs was throwing up and his friends were looking on from a distance and laughing at his misery. It wasn’t midnight yet and many of the young people were already up to their eye sockets in beer, breezers and rum-and-cokes. There was an unreal atmosphere of spent pleasure, premature hangovers and heated opinions. Quarrels and shouted words reverberated throughout the tunnel under the platforms, Dutch, Moroccans, Turks and Surinamese raucously claiming the space around them.
Police and railroad personnel were patrolling everywhere. Here and there a fight was broken up. Some groups of young people dispersed of their own accord as soon as the uniforms came near, others stuck together in order to demand their rights with as much force as they could muster. The place was open to everyone, so that included them. Confrontation was in the air, on a small scale but intense and passionate. Small gangs formed border posts to secure their own territory. The dividing line between extravagant fun and untrammeled frustration was thin. This was the tough side of integration, the reality behind the figures and statistics, the feeling of people who had lost any understanding of what they were seeing. And to tell the truth, I myself no longer knew whether the facts were lagging behind the reality or vice versa.
There were ten or twelve young men moving through the train carriages with two conductors some distance behind them. The atmosphere was frightening. The group came very close in the sterile light of the train, shouting boisterously and whipping each other up. In groups of four or five they addressed the passengers, faces no more than ten centimetres away. Too close. Too loud. Straining for every wrong answer. Ten pairs of eyes that didn’t miss a trick.
At Schiphol the night was still in full swing. I meandered through the airport’s main hall and aimed for the exit, doing my best to avoid the patrolling security guards. There were guards on duty right up to the hotel entrance, and after a while I began to get used to it. Apparently they weren’t looking for me, and as long as I didn’t do anything to attract attention I had nothing to worry about.
I was so fixated on the guards that I failed to notice Breger until I was standing right behind him. I recognized the back of his head, his roughly shaved hair and his solid neck, and I recognized his voice with that strange, somewhat sing-song accent. He said, ‘Okay, you guys go upstairs, I’ll take care of the bar.’ He pointed to the entrance to the bar opposite him.
I quickly turned around and hoped he wouldn’t recognize me. In my new clothes I looked like a tourist, not a consultant. Slowly, without making any sudden movements, I walked back to the desk. My head was seething with questions.
This wasn’t possible! How could Breger know I was here? Here, in this hotel, at Schiphol. How could he find me so quickly? The spacious lobby had suddenly become oppressively small. The man on the other side of the desk looked at me with expectation.
‘Good evening, sir,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I left my backpack here with you. Bellicher. I’m in room 517,’ I said, and I waited.
The man smiled, said ‘of course,’ turned around, took the backpack out of a cabinet, handed it across the counter, and said, ‘There was someone here asking for you, by the way. If you have a moment, …’
‘No,’ I said, and put a finger to my lips. My heart was pounding in my throat. My breathing became shallow. I forced myself to remain calm, hoisted the backpack onto my
back, pulled my cap down further over my eyes and turned towards the exit. Breger was standing right behind me. He stepped aside to let me pass. All went well, exactly as I had hoped. But when Breger turned around to gesture to one of his men he knocked the cap off my head. In a reflex action I leapt away. Breger responded, excusing himself. ‘I didn’t see you,’ he said, and bent over to pick up my cap. He saw my face, and for a moment he scowled. His eyes narrowed, and I knew he was about to recognize me. It was unavoidable. The recognition only took a couple of seconds, maybe longer.
Long enough for me to get to the door of the hotel.
‘Hey!’ he shouted. I could hear the sound of bumping and cursing behind me. Breger was beating a path through the crowd. I ran outside and headed for the entrance to the main airport terminal, zigzagging through traffic. Racing at full speed, I tore into the hall and tried to disappear amid the masses. Breger was bigger and stronger than I, but I was nimbler, so I kept looking for the most densely packed crowds. Jumping and swerving left and right, I made my way through faster than he did. He was right behind me and was bound to catch up with me, since he was faster on the straightaways.
Turning sharply to the right I ran into a coffee shop. Without hesitating I threw myself among the clientele, jumping over chairs, tables and people and ended up back in the hall on the other side of the cafe with a couple of metres to spare.
Air was straining and hammering in my chest, acidosis pulling my muscles apart from the inside. I ran straight through the hall to the Burger King on the other side with Breger gaining on me. Heading for the counter, I raced between two rows of waiting customers and at the very last minute went in for a slide between their legs, ending up on the other side of the row. Breger crashed into the counter at full speed, gasping for air. I grabbed the first chair I saw, shot back along the line of people and rammed the legs of the chair into his back. Then I pounded away on him with everything I had. The people around me started to shout and scream. I grabbed Breger by his jacket and hurled him over the last bit of stainless steel counter. His jacket tore in my hands and Breger disappeared on the other side, beneath a rack of waiting hamburgers.
Mr. Miller Page 12