Mr. Miller

by Charles den Tex

  That’s what it said. Simple and hard, and inescapably clear. RISC was an ancient, time-honoured military strategy for overwhelming an enemy: ravage the homelands until the core is destroyed, then attack on the peripheral fronts. Finally they’ll collapse, too, because there’s no core left to keep them alive. And Western Europe was the peripheral front.

  Suddenly the image on the screen split in two. The text was moved to a column on the left and the map of the world filled in most of the screen on the right. In the text, hyperlinks and possible contacts to points all over the map began to flash. The computer was importing calculations that were completely unknown to me. This was a project on a scale quite different from what I was used to. After about a minute of calculating, the flock disappeared from the map of the world and a new network opened up, a network of lines that indicated the relationships between Europe and the United States, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

  The image solidified into a red outline. A second line was projected over this, a blue line, and suddenly it became clear what the flock was: an overview of activities and policy in countries all over the world by which predictions could be made as to how the total effect of all those efforts would influence the balance.

  This was some kind of scenario-calculating program, but on an enormous scale. It could be used to calculate the effect of decisions and events. The program was a cross between a computer game, a management game and a simulation program.

  The information density was unpredictable, but at the same time the information was presented in such a way that its significance could be clearly seen at a glance. It showed the details and the main lines and the relation between the two, so that important details became visible automatically, as it were. It was fascinating to see how the small details influenced the big ones, to follow the course of that influence and to see how the dealings of people all over the world related to each other. Everything is connected: not only did the screen prove that to be true but it also demonstrated how it all works. The image was intoxicating, addictive, and I was part of the scenario. The way I coached and supervised the Dutch Minister of Justice was reflected in the development of the entire world. The tougher he was in drawing the borders of Dutch tolerance, the more influential the radical conservatives in Europe would become. Because if the world famous Dutch tolerance failed, then there was no other option than confrontation.

  The capability of the program was staggering, and the idea that it was linked to RISC gave me goose bumps. It was to protect this that Ina Radekker was murdered—I didn’t doubt that for a second. There were interests at stake here that were infinitely greater than money. This had to do with belief, and belief has always been the deadliest human attribute. RISC had a goal, and the EC Summit on Security and Integration was one of the important steps on the way to that goal. The basic principles for the coming years were going to be laid down at the Summit. And somehow, this crazy bird-flock program of Mr. Miller monitored all the changes that were taking place and processed the results so the most effective policy could be dictated. The toughest policy.

  Suddenly a dialog box sprang up right in the middle of my reflections. The message was simple. It said:

  Do you wish to speak to Mr. Miller?

  Yes—No

  Did I wish to speak to Mr. Miller? What was this about? Of course I wanted to speak to the man, but he didn’t know who I was. I had logged in with Huib Breger’s login codes, and why would Huib Breger want to speak with Mr. Miller? That was the question. I could adopt Breger’s identity and ask Miller anything I wanted. The temptation was great. At the same time I realized that I could only do that once. Before my virtual conversation with Mr. Miller was over they’d discover I wasn’t Breger, and after that I’d never be able to use his ID again. I’d only get one chance and I’d have to milk it for all it was worth. But that wasn’t now. I had to know more before I could go any further. Quickly I clicked ‘No’ and leaned back, unprepared for the chat statement that then popped up on the screen.

  Huib, if you don’t want control, then leave the net alone, will you?

  29 Automatic answer

  This was for real! This was the world in a shoebox. This wasn’t just power, it was omnipotence. If you don’t want control, then leave the net alone. That could mean only one thing: I wasn’t looking at an HC&P computer program, I was engaging live on a network. The changes and displacements I saw there were a reflection of what was happening in real time. Do you wish to speak to Mr. Miller? The question resounded in my head, louder and louder. The longer I looked at the screen, at the information flying in flocks all over the world, the more anxious I felt and the more improbable it became.

  HC&P had offices in a hundred and twenty countries, and every office had its own computers that were all linked together in a single network. But the information I had just seen at the Ministry of Justice was not stored in an office computer. That would have been impossible. Only the Ministry had all that information. So if I could look into the data of the Ministry of Justice via that network, then I probably also had access to information from all the other ministries, and all the companies in the country that were quoted on the stock exchange. And that was only in the Netherlands!

  Such a vast amount of information was more than one computer could ever process. The only way to do it would be to download the information directly from the systems of the companies and organizations themselves. But that was almost impossible. It would require disabling all sorts of security systems and firewalls. It might be possible for one company, or even two, or maybe three or four, but in order to gain access to all those organizations in all those countries you’d have to have an incredibly good code breaker at your disposal. Moreover, the access codes were all being changed on a regular basis, which meant you’d have to have an army of people on staff just to keep an eye on everything. Unless that, too, was computerized.

  Yet it was the only way I could think of. If it was a real, live network, then it would have to have unlimited access to systems that were closed to outsiders. Hermetically closed.

  Ina Radekker had landed in the middle of a system whose existence she wasn’t even supposed to know about. That had been the end of her. And I had penetrated the system much further than she had. The only reason I was still here to think about it was because they hadn’t been able to find me. They. Huib Breger. And who else? Who was Huib Breger anyway, other than being important enough to gain control of the network if he wanted it? From a certain Mr. Miller.

  I logged out and wrote everything I knew in a long e-mail to HB2 in South Africa. I gave him the details of his disappeared namesake as well as the details from the card, and I sent him the web address where he could log in on the site of the network. I also told him that anyone who logged in would be monitored, that the system manager could find out where you were in a heartbeat down to the street name and house number, and that unauthorized use could lead to the permanent severance of every connection.

  ‘I don’t know what it is,’ I wrote, ‘and I don’t know how it works, but somehow it has managed to get me on the wanted list for a murder they committed. Everyone is looking for me. The police want to lock me up, and your uncle wants to log me out for good. I’d be grateful for anything you can tell me, as soon as possible. Be careful!’

  After I had sent the message I surfed to the various e-mail addresses I had opened in order to send mail in the name of Huib Breger. It was time to see whether any answers had come in. There was one response to the Hotmail address, and it was short.

  Message understood CU in Brussels. Talk there. CvdV

  CvdV was Caspar van den Vogels. He was not only the managing partner of the office in the Netherlands but he was also a member of the European Board, which coordinated the activities of the firm in the various countries of Europe. ‘In Brussels’ meant at the regional conference, which this time was being organized around the theme of the approaching EU summit. Anyone who had anything to say at HC&P Europe would b
e there. Even partners from the United States and Japan were coming to make sure the right information ended up at the right place. So Caspar van den Vogels knew Huib Breger, and knew him well enough to make an appointment with him in such telegraphic language. Dries van Waayen and Caspar van den Vogels, two of the eleven.

  I had sent e-mails to three others from this address: Klaas Nandringa, Wiebe Groothand and Sander Wispe. None of them had responded yet. I knew that Wiebe was in China, and maybe he wasn’t checking his e-mail regularly. Klaas was up to his eyebrows in the re-structuring of one of the biggest installation companies in Europe—and in the Netherlands, too, obviously. The same was true for Sander. Neither one of them had responded yet to my message.

  I surfed to the Tiscali site and checked the e-mail there, too. I had sent messages from that address to Rob Bank, Siem Kampen and Jan Willem Keizer. Rob and Siem had answered. Rob wrote:

  Please inform when location is secure, Rob

  In all its simplicity, the message spoke volumes about Rob Bank. He knew what was ‘secure’ and what wasn’t, he knew what he should or shouldn’t do as long as the ‘location’ was not ‘secure,’ and everything else was a piece of cake. Rob knew what it was all about. Deep in thought, I opened the mail from Siem Kampen and read a stack of messages with questions and answers, messages that clearly should not have been sent to this address but had ended up there by accident.

  —Huib, is this really from you? Siem

  —NO, IT’S NOT FROM ME! I DID NOT SEND ANY MESSAGE! HB

  —If it’s not from you, then who’s it from? Siem

  Siem Kampen was on the ball. Sending the last e-mail to my Tiscali address by accident was a blunder, of course, but a blunder that worked in my favour. The Tiscali address had become useless. Huib Breger would be able to trace the spot from which I did my e-mail, and that was something I wanted to avoid. I quickly left the site and surfed to AOL. That was the address I had used to send the message to the last four partners. I had received only one answer, from Johan Wolfsen, the oldest partner and someone who tended to march to his own drummer. He had come to the firm after having built up an impressive practice on his own, with an extensive clientele. The firm kept bumping into him in their dealings with their own customers, and he had increasingly proved to be a competitor no one could ignore. When Johan Wolfsen spoke, his clients listened. HC&P had bought his company, Wolfsen Consultancy, and had paid far too much for it. Eight employees and an annual turnover of almost two and a half million: they offered him four times that amount plus a position as partner, everything guaranteed, gilt-edged and insured. Johan Wolfsen was sitting pretty at HC&P, and he wrote:

  I don’t know any Huib Breger and I have no idea what this is all about. This message was probably sent to the wrong address. If that is true, this note confirms it. Regards, JW

  That was him, all right.

  I didn’t know what would happen when I sent those messages, nor did I know what to expect. But as soon as I saw the response from Wolfsen I knew that he was the reason. I was looking for a partner, someone as high up in the company as possible, someone who knew as little as I did—someone who didn’t know there were some very bad men walking around the company, men who were serving interests quite different from those of the company’s clients, men who had no trouble at all considering interests that were unknown to the company staff. I was looking for someone who knew none of this, but who had so much to say in the firm that people would listen to him. And my first task was to make sure that he would listen to me.

  I opened a new e-mail address with yet another provider, this time under another name. Not Huib Breger, but not under my own name either, which had too many associations and was too contaminated. My own name might actually keep him from listening to me (by e-mail anyway), and the beauty of the internet is that you can be whoever you want. You can build on your personality ad infinitum, all of it virtual, all of it sham, until it becomes a means of making contact. Then the virtual shifts and ends up influencing the actual because of the way you present it. I opened up an address with xs4all that contained the name of his boss, Caspar van den Vogels, a man he was supposed to listen to, and I wrote:

  Huib Breger is the new man at RCG, from America. Seems to be taking over everything here, extremely disagreeable. It’s time for us to catch up, but somewhere else. Tomorrow, twelve-thirty, ’t Kalfje, on the Amstel.

  Wolfsen and I had met each other two or three times at meetings, but we had never had direct contact. So I didn’t think he’d remember who I was. That’s what I was counting on: that I would recognize him and he wouldn’t immediately react to my being there.

  I pushed the button and the message was gone. An answer wasn’t necessary—as long as he showed up tomorrow. I had no idea what to say to him to convince him of my innocence and of the strange things that were happening at the office. I still had a little more than twenty-four hours to come up with a good story, and I knew I could use a little help. I called Gijs but there was no answer. Not even voicemail. I sent him an e-mail asking if we could see each other as soon as possible, and while I was sitting there thinking an answer arrived. An automated answer.

  Gijs van Olde Nieland will be unavailable for the next two weeks, until July 4.

  I cursed.

  30 Bellilog 06.19.04

  The last time I spoke to anybody, I got room service. The time before that I got punched in the face. Nuances, details, minor differences in a world under pressure. I’m not a believer, but my lead is evaporating. Holiness is growing, everywhere, holy chair, holy stone, holy field, holy oil, holy light. Real holiness, the holiness of hardened men with a broad grasp of history and a deep knowledge of the Scriptures. Holy Scriptures, almost forgotten. Room service, send up a Bible, please. No, I’ve used up the Bible that was here. And a Quran. And throw in a Talmud while you’re at it. And a diet Coke, for the digestion. A fight between parties, neither of which is mine. Did you ever have that? Forced to choose, just when you thought you’d entered the sixth dimension for good? Where that choice doesn’t even exist anymore. And then the punch in the face. Because it turns out I’m in the seventh heaven, and everything is starting all over again.

  Dry lips, always these dry lips. Words get stuck when I try to pronounce them. No matter how much chapstick I use. I’m keeping an entire chapstick factory afloat.

  Mail from: Jess.

  Subject: Re: Re: bad news

  what I want to know is what the hell are you doing!? everybody here is talking about the Dutch Dirtball, and that’s you. our relationship is really starting to make things shaky for me here. you know how they are: you’re either for us or against us. the corporate family is sacred and i don’t know what i’m supposed to say anymore. TALK TO ME, BELLI!

  xxx

  j

  Mail to: Jess

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: bad news

  if you don’t know what you’re supposed to say anymore, be careful you don’t say the wrong thing. jess, i miss you more than i thought. words cause pain. what are you trying to say? what do they know about us there? love you

  the milk white kid

  Mail from: HB2

  Subject: spook

  Uncle Huib has been gone for years. Big problems with everyone. All the time. My father, his brother, thinks he’s a ‘spook,’ but that makes him sound nicer than he is. If I can believe what my cousins, aunts and uncles tell me, Uncle Huib is some kind of terrorist.

  Huib

  Mail to: HB2

  Subject: Re: spook

  Terrorist? With a beard? Haven’t seen anyone like that around here.

  Michael

  31 No shaking

  I was sitting at a small table in a corner of ’t Kalfje cafe, nervous from waiting, strung out from too much coffee and dripping with water. Half an hour too early. Outside it was raining with enthusiasm, as if precipitation had just been invented. The scooter I had rented in order to reach this remote spot quickly—and to leave it just as quickly—offered
me no protection whatsoever from the downpour. My hair was dripping and my lips were dry. Wiping myself with paper napkins, I tried to keep my nerves in check, but in the end it just made it worse. The longer I waited, the more significant the meeting with Wolfsen became. He was the only one inside the company with enough power to help me. There was no one else. Not for me anyway.

  The people I hung around with were co-workers, occasionally someone I had come to know through a client, but always people with a direct or indirect connection to HC&P, the corporate family. And it wasn’t until I was sitting at that small table in the cafe that I realized how total the absorption was. The company supported me and I lived for the company. The company was everywhere. From early in the morning to late at night, often fourteen hours a day, I thought about HC&P, talked about HC&P and did things for HC&P. Even my relationship with Jessica was twisted to suit it, or half twisted, because the harder I worked, the more the work swallowed me up, the more was asked of me, the more work came for me and, again, the harder I worked.

  In South Africa, HB2 was sitting alone, fiddling around with a computer. I hoped he could provide me with more information, certainly after his last remarks. So Huib Breger was a spook—a spy? But who was he working for? The Risk Containment Group? That would explain why the organization couldn’t be found anywhere. And what was a secret service—any secret service—doing at the office of HC&P? And what did they want with Ina Radekker? The firm was involved in all kinds of confidential projects, even secret assignments. HC&P served as a regular advisor for the World Bank and the EU. Clients like these required the services of the firm’s entire network. Naturally the firm had dealt with secret information before, and it had probably worked with its clients’ security services as well.