Mr. Miller

by Charles den Tex

  But a spook?

  Johan Wolfsen is almost two metres tall, and he wears his height well. Always erect, shoulders back, chin forward—a relaxed attitude marked by an easy balance. He let his eyes glide through the small interior. ’t Kalfje cafe is on the very edge of Amsterdam, just outside the ring road, on the Amstel. It’s not much of a place, a wooden shack with an extension built on, that’s all. But the location is terrific. It’s almost within walking distance of the city’s futuristic offices and big money, but it’s a relic of former times. Here the biggest issues could be reduced to their essence. Here you ate croquettes on bread and open-face ham-and-egg sandwiches at dark brown bar tables covered with little Persian tablecloths. Around you was nothing but fields, the river and the sky. A wet sky on that particular day.

  Wolfsen slapped the drops from his coat and looked around once more. His face was stern, expressionless. He had expected to find his managing partner here for a meeting whose purpose was not yet clear. His sharp eyes flashed back and forth, failed to find the one he was looking for and came to rest at a small table next to the window. He took off his coat, hung it over one of the chairs and sat down.

  He looked around expectantly, took his cell phone out of his pocket, tapped a couple of buttons, looked at the screen and put the phone away. Then he ordered a cup of coffee and waited. Two men came in, talking loudly, laughing, shaking the water from their clothes (pin-striped suits, shirts and ties). Bankers, from the looks of it. They searched out a place on the other side of the cafe and saw no one but themselves and the deal they were working on.

  The waiter served coffee, a cup with a spoon, a little container of cream, sugar cubes and a packaged cookie. Wolfsen looked at it, carefully removed the foil from the container and poured the cream into the cup. Then stirred.

  No one had come with him. I waited for almost five minutes, and as far as I could see he was alone. It was so quiet in the cafe that I could hardly have been mistaken. Wolfsen, the two men on the other side of the room, another older couple (also next to the window) and me. There simply wasn’t anyone else there.

  I stood up, walked to his table and placed a hand on the back of the chair across from him. Without saying anything I sat down. Wolfsen looked at me. He wanted to say something, but he swallowed his words. He looked around and then back at me. Neither of us spoke. I put him in control of the situation. I had too little going for me to take the lead in this encounter, so it was better for him to think he was in charge. And he was.

  He squinted at me and turned his head away, looked outside at the pouring rain and didn’t turn his gaze back to me for almost a minute.

  ‘Michael Bellicher,’ he said. ‘That’s you, right?

  I nodded.

  ‘Okay.’

  He fell silent again and kept on staring. His gaze at rest was more active than the spinning eyes of someone in the clutches of panic. Wolfsen was looking for something, and he kept on looking until he found it. In the meantime he said nothing. Behind his eyes a lightning-fast selection process was taking place. I recognized it from him and from other partners. Dozens, hundreds of possibilities were shooting through his head, and every possibility was being identified, classified, set aside or retained and applied to this situation. He knew who I was. He knew what my problem was. And yet here I was, sitting with him. Under false pretenses, but here nonetheless. And he was here. He could have known that the invitation to have lunch had not come from his director. All he had to do was check, nothing more, that’s all it would have taken, then he would have known for sure. But he didn’t. He was here. The details of the situation were crystal clear, and I trusted that he would come to the same conclusion faster and better than I. His silent gaze kept me in its sights and refused to release me while he thought things through and positioned himself. Then he smiled.

  ‘You look like shit,’ he said. ‘You look like you’ve been run over by a herd of couriers.’

  I swallowed and said nothing.

  Wolfsen was in no hurry. But he didn’t need to pretend we were here for the fun of it, either. ‘Okay, who is Huib Breger?’ he asked.

  ‘Huib Breger killed Ina Radekker.’

  ‘And you didn’t?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t buy it,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you just say so?’

  ‘Because I can’t prove anything and because other people can prove that I did do it.’

  Wolfsen nodded. ‘Reality is the perception of reality,’ he said. ‘Truth is what people see, and what they don’t see doesn’t count. Is that what you mean? But you and Ina were the only ones in the building, right?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No?’

  ‘It can be proved that Ina and I were the only ones,’ I said. ‘In fact, it is being proved. But it’s not true.’

  Wolfsen said nothing. His attention was focused on the information he’d just been given. He hadn’t the slightest urge to deny my claims or to dismiss them as nonsense. He listened to what I had to say without passing judgment. He was taking stock. He considered the consequences of what I said, jiggled the details and moved them around until they fit—or didn’t. If something didn’t fit, he had a question to ask. A consultant to the marrow of his bones.

  ‘You realize what you’re saying?’ he asked.

  ‘That Breger …’ I didn’t get any further.

  ‘No, no, no, it has nothing to do with this Mr. Breger. You’re saying that HC&P, the world-famous, widely respected HC&P consultancy, has murdered one of its own employees. That’s what you’re saying.’

  That was it. That was the rock-hard conclusion behind all the incomprehensible systems, computers and networks. That was the inescapable agony I was being confronted with. A powerful multinational, packed to the rafters with people flush with clients—politicians at every conceivable level, entrepreneurs, scientists, high-ranking officials in the armies and police forces of more countries than I could name—did away with an employee, just because they thought it was necessary.

  ‘That’s what you’re saying,’ Wolfsen repeated.

  ‘Looks that way, yes.’

  He nodded. ‘Okay.’ Still no judgment. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No more for me,’ I said. ‘Make it something else—soup or something. Is that all right?’

  ‘One more time,’ said Wolfsen. ‘Who is Huib Breger?’

  ‘A guy from the Risk Containment Group.’

  His coffee and my soup arrived and I ate. Nice thick Dutch vegetable soup. Lots of grey-green tendrils, orange-brown discs and plenty of tender meatballs. Hot and salty. Just what I needed. ‘I’ve never heard of the RCG. Can’t find the company anywhere either. But Breger has a pass that lets him in and out of our building without anyone being able to trace it.’

  ‘And how do you know that?’

  I put my hand in my pocket and put Breger’s card on the table. Wolfsen picked it up and examined it from every angle. It was an ordinary plastic card, like hundreds of millions of others all over the world. It was printed with a logo in grey, silver and yellow. Simple, no fancy holograms. It did have a chip, though, and Breger’s personal data.

  ‘I can get into the HC&P building with this?’ Wolfsen asked.

  ‘And much more,’ I said, and I held up my hand. He could examine and feel the card as much as he liked, but I did want it back. For the time being this card was my only access to the system. I wasn’t leaving the cafe without it.

  Wolfsen held it up one last time, as if he were trying to look through it, and then he placed it on the table. With an outstretched forefinger he pushed it over to me.

  ‘Risk Containment Group,’ he said, ‘is HC&P’s own security company.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Listen.’ Wolfsen waved his hands as if he were trying to make amends for something. ‘HC&P works for so many highly-placed people that it needs its own security facility. Every time a chairman or a minister visits one of our offices,
we have to be able to offer them security. And we also have to guarantee absolute confidentiality. And before you know it …’

  ‘The Risk Containment Group,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. RCG. And RCG is a secret,’ he said. ‘Only partners are aware of its existence because only partners are in contact with those kinds of clients.’

  ‘So that includes you,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Yes, that includes me.’

  ‘So you know who Huib Breger is?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve never heard of Huib Breger,’ he said, ‘and if he is what his card says he is, Operations Director, then that’s impossible.’

  I spooned in the last bit of soup and asked the only remaining question: ‘If that is true, then why am I sitting here talking to you and not to one of the other partners?’

  Wolfsen said nothing. He could come up with his own answer to this question, too—and he did—but he had very little influence over the situation that this answer gave rise to.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ he said, but with a voice drained of all conviction. ‘Do you mean that I’m the only partner who doesn’t know this Huib Breger?’

  I nodded. ‘He’s beating down the door of Dries van Waayen’s office,’ I said.

  Wolfsen cursed, under his breath and with restraint, but his anger was palpable. The fact that he did not know one of the firm’s employees, and a director at that, was not important. The firm was too big to know everyone. Even if Wolfsen thought he ought to know who the Operations Director of RCG was, it was still possible not to know him. But the fact that all the other partners did know this man, that he was present in the building the night of the murder and that absolutely no one knew anything or said anything about it—that he could not accept. That was absurd. He was the only one who didn’t know, that was the difference, which meant that he was not the kind of partner he thought he was. His colleagues, the men he worked with every day, who were supposed to be treating him as their equal, had never told him that even at HC&P some people were more equal than others. He belonged to the others, to the same group I was in. For someone who had imagined himself on the other side, that was a lot to swallow. Wolfsen did it in style. He blinked a couple of times, rubbed his chin, scratched the back of his head and called for the waiter.

  ‘Two young jenevers,’ he said, and while he waited for his order he took out his cell phone and dialled a number. Looking at me with a gaze that both demanded my attention and ignored it, that made me feel distinctly insecure, he said nothing until the call was answered. For that brief moment neither of us spoke.

  ‘Caspar,’ he said without taking his eyes off me for a second. He had Caspar van den Vogels on the line, the company’s managing partner. ‘Caspar, Johan here. Yes. Listen, that e-mail from that Huib fellow, is that something I need to be concerned about or what?’ He listened without moving, neither nodding nor shaking his head. A little while later he said, ‘… I thought so. Yes. No, exactly. That’s all I need to know. Thanks a lot.’ He ended the call and put the phone on the table in front of him. He said nothing and waited until the waiter came. The man laid down two coasters, and on each one he placed a small jenever glass filled to the brim and frosted due to the low temperature of the drink.

  ‘Two young jenevers,’ said the waiter.

  Wolfsen placed the thumb and forefinger of his right hand around the stem of the glass and waited until I had done the same. We sat like this across from each other.

  ‘What did Caspar say?’ I asked.

  He smiled, tightened his grip on the stem, raised the glass a centimetre from the surface of the table and held it still, arm outstretched.

  ‘No shaking,’ he said.

  We raised our glasses in unison.

  ‘Caspar told me not to worry about it and that he would take care of the business with Huib. No problem.’ He lightly touched his glass to mine. ‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘To everything I don’t yet know.’ He brought the glass up to his lips and tossed it back in one draught. I did the same. I felt the cold drink slide down my throat and for a moment I was back in the unthreatened world. This was Holland. Here the grass was green and the rain was wet. This was the korfball champion of the world and the inventor of the frikandel, where third-generation Moroccans were still regarded as foreigners and not as Arabic Dutchmen. Here it was safe and peaceful. Strange things never happened here. Not here. Two kilometres away from here they did, though. That’s where the Netherlands fell apart and people were stumbling over the fragments.

  Wolfsen brought things back into focus. ‘Let’s get this straight,’ he said. ‘The police are looking for you in connection with a murder, and by helping you I become an accessory. On that much we agree, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘So why should I help you, instead of turning you over to the police?’

  I said nothing. This was the question I didn’t want to answer, that I couldn’t answer. There were so many reasons—too many, perhaps—but all of them were my reasons. He had to help me because I was innocent, even though I needed his help just to prove it. He had to believe me because there was no one else inside the company who could, because the company—his company, our company—had apparently done something wrong. Apparently. It was all so vague and unconvincing.

  Suddenly I realized what he was up to, and at the same time I realized why I couldn’t answer him. He had withdrawn into the safe no-man’s-land of the consultant, where everything is always the responsibility of the other guy, where every appeal to one’s own commitment can be brushed aside by another question, another consideration, a new possibility or a forgotten aspect. But not now. Not with Radekker dead and Gijs just out of the hospital. Not now that everything had been taken away from me, now that nothing was mine any longer: no family, no home, no friends. I had nothing, except for the fear that I might lose that, too.

  Now it was different.

  ‘Why should you help?’ I said. ‘I don’t know, and I’m not supposed to know. It’s entirely up to you. If I have to convince you, then it’s pointless. You can only do something if you yourself want to. For whatever reason. Because you feel like it or because you think it’s important, it doesn’t matter.’ Just talking about it made me angry. I spat my words out with barely disguised rage. Why did I have to do everybody’s thinking for them? I hadn’t done anything wrong. ‘It’s your decision,’ I said, ‘so don’t try to foist it on me. Okay? I’ve got enough to deal with.’ We looked at each other. ‘I don’t care if you play the consultant,’ I said, ‘but please do it after you’ve made your decision. Not before. I’m not a client, I didn’t bring an assignment, I don’t have a budget and I don’t have the authority to decide. I can use all the help you can give me, but you have to really give it. Otherwise we’re just jerking each other around.’

  Now it was my turn to stand up. I went to the bar and ordered two more drinks. I didn’t doubt for a minute what Wolfsen would decide, but I didn’t have to watch him do it.

  I walked back to the table with two glasses on a small tray, without shaking, without spilling. Carefully I put down one for him and the other for myself. I said nothing. He said nothing. I sat down and raised the glass.

  ‘What’s it going to be?’ I asked.

  He smiled. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I have to make my own decisions. But I do have a few more questions.’ During the next half hour he led me away from the muddled profusion of details in my head to the questions I should be asking, and to the answers I was looking for. Not that he had the answers, but he knew how I should adjust my focus in order to see what I was missing. All the questions I myself had already asked came up as well. Wolfsen organized and analysed. For me, but mainly for himself. Who was Breger? What was his function? What was so secret about the work at HC&P? What was so secret that it justified calling in the firm’s own secret service? He kept on asking until he had heard enough.

  ‘So you’ve got to get into the software,’ he finally said.


  No matter what question he asked, it all boiled down to the same thing: no one at HC&P was going to give me any answers. No one was going to open his mouth. The proof I was looking for was somewhere in a computer, and the only way to get to it was via the software.

  Wolfsen wrote something on a scrap of paper and shoved it across to me. It was a name: Vince Batte. With a phone number underneath it.

  ‘Just call him,’ said Wolfsen. ‘I’ll make sure he knows what he has to do.’

  ‘And who is Batte?’ I asked.

  ‘Someone at WorldWare. They make all our programs. If anyone knows how to navigate our systems, it’s Vince. He can also arrange to get you a pass so you can make use of the company network without setting off all kinds of alarms right away.’

  He picked up his cell phone and punched in the number on the scrap of paper. He waited, but the call switched over to voicemail. ‘Call him tomorrow morning,’ he said, ‘and I’ll send him an e-mail right away. Okay?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, shoving his chair backward. He stood up and paid the tab at the bar. While we were putting on our coats, he said, ‘I’m not going to do anything until I hear from you again. And let me know how it goes with Vince. Take it easy.’

  He gave me a brief slap on the back, pulled his head in between his shoulders and sprinted to his car in the little lane across from the entrance to the cafe. A few minutes later he drove away, windshield wipers sweeping back and forth. Then he turned left onto the dike, left again at the windmill and disappeared behind the bushes a hundred metres further on. I grabbed my scooter, strapped on the helmet and sat there in the pouring rain, staring into the distance.

  32 Involuntary reactions

  Water sprayed off both sides of the scooter. It wasn’t even four in the afternoon but it seemed like nighttime. The cloud cover was so thick and the rain so heavy that it was hard to find any trace of daylight. The traffic circle in front of the RAI was flooded, and I had to brake and swerve here and there because the puddles were too deep for the scooter’s small wheels. I looked left and right, in front of me and behind, to keep an eye on the rest of the traffic. In the pouring rain it was hard to tell which way the cars were going. I took a left at the bowling alley, shot past a couple of cars and was soon riding along the side of the RAI. The road here was practically empty. Almost everyone was driving straight on into Scheldestraat.