Mr. Miller

by Charles den Tex

  36 Bellilog 06.22.04

  When my mother called in the police, my father left home. He left her. Three hours after I slipped out the back door, he closed the front door behind him. A weekend bag in one hand and his car keys in the other, that’s all he needed to put an end to thirty-four years of marriage. That was a couple of days ago, and now he’s gone. Dad is gone. Out of the house. He’s left Mom. He had already left, but now he’s left with his desk, his computer, his clothes, his books, his boots and his photos. Pete e-mailed to tell me. He was there. I wasn’t. I wasn’t even there when my family put an end to itself, took itself apart, dismantled itself. Since yesterday I’ve been a loose part, like a car bumper in a junkyard. Still a good bumper, but no more car. The whole is gone and now we’re only the sum of our parts, if that, because what are the parts? Brothers and sisters—one sister, singular—and uncles and aunts, cousins—but where?—what? Parents?

  This was between him and Mom, Dad said, says Pete. And God, probably, although I haven’t heard anybody mention it. Better that way. But the questions are still being stripped down to their essence. Can I still go home? Is it still home? If all the parts have been replaced, is it still what it once was? Is my mother more a mother without my father? And vice versa? Because they don’t interfere with each other’s identity? Are the parts better without the whole? Is the bumper more a bumper without the car? Yes, of course, because then it’s finally a bumper in all its glory. There’s no hood or door to distract people or demand their attention. But there’s nothing left to bump, either.

  Something like that.

  Mail from: HB2

  Subject: Do you know where he is:

  Mail to: HB2

  Subject: Re:

  In Amsterdam or Brussels. I think.

  37 Be daring

  Even before daybreak, the alarm began its piercing beep. Jessica’s right hand gave the button a smack, and in the silence that followed she slid out of bed. I heard a couple of sounds, not many: a door, some footsteps. Then I fell back asleep and didn’t wake up until Jessica squatted down next to the bed and tapped my forehead with one finger.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Anybody there?’

  She waved a couple of keys in front of my nose.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘A new set of keys. To let yourself in and out. I’m going and I won’t be back until about eight o’clock tonight. Maybe a little earlier. See you then, okay? Take it easy.’

  I groaned and mumbled things that were supposed to sound like ‘okay’ and ‘thank you,’ but actually I was still asleep. I heard her moving around until the front door shut with a click. For the rest of the morning I was aware of nothing.

  That afternoon I put her sweatpants and sweatshirt back on, went to the kitchen to look for something to eat, made some coffee and crawled over to my laptop, which I had set up in the middle of the night. Soon I was on the internet, surfing to Huib’s secure site. He had shown me how to use the HC&P network to look into someone else’s computer, and I wanted to give it a try. Preferably with someone I knew, one of my own clients, someone I could call while we were looking around in his computer. Using the chat feature I sent Huib to the computer of Erik Strila, head of communications at the Ministry of Justice in The Hague.

  Huib found the computer without any difficulty. And faster than I expected, the documents and programs began rolling across the screen. A little while later I was looking at a document that changed on the screen as I watched.

  ‘So he’s working on it now?’ I asked Huib.

  ‘What you see on your screen is what is happening right now, at this moment, in his computer.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Give me a couple of minutes.’

  I picked up my cell phone and searched for Strila’s extension. He answered immediately, a little distracted at first, and surprised. He had understood from my boss that I was no longer with the firm, so he wasn’t sure in what capacity I was calling him.

  ‘You see what I’m saying?’ he said.

  I laughed and reassured him.

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard, but everything you’ve heard is true,’ I said.

  ‘Then you’re really fucked,’ he said.

  ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘But let’s not get into that. Listen, Erik, I have a couple of questions. Very simple ones. May I?’

  ‘As long as they’re not too personal.’

  ‘What kind of computer are you working on?’

  Strila responded immediately. ‘Oh, on the computer I always work on at work, on my laptop. Everyone here works with them, so I do, too.’

  ‘Laptop,’ I repeated. ‘Okay, what brand?’

  ‘Datwell.’

  ‘I thought so. Next question: are you working right now?’

  ‘Yes.’ Again without hesitation.

  ‘Writing something?’

  ‘Yes, a report on a meeting. Nothing special. Do you want to know what it’s about?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want you to type something. Just type the next sentence of your report. Don’t say anything. Just type.’

  ‘Does this have anything to do with your work, or …?’

  ‘Just do it,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  For a moment nothing happened, but after a couple of seconds the cursor began to move across the screen. Strila was writing.

  ‘… is the most important target group,’ I read aloud as the words appeared on the screen, ‘and therefore … cannot … be … limited …’ The more I read, the slower Strila typed, until he stopped entirely. He said nothing. I said nothing. Soon the cursor began moving again. I read: How do you know what I’m writing?

  ‘Because I can read it here on my screen,’ I said.

  Strila cursed.

  ‘And that’s not all,’ I said. With a couple of clicks of the mouse I opened a new menu and chose the program by which I myself could work in Strila’s document. I changed a couple of sentences in his text and wrote a couple of new ones without him being able to do anything about it. Through the phone I could hear Strila’s protests.

  ‘That’s impossible!’ he shouted.

  I saw on my screen that he had closed the document. It didn’t make any difference to me. I could just keep on going. When Strila opened the document later on, he’d see that I had made a number of changes in the text. All that time, he’d never know that someone was working on his computer. There were no flashing LEDs, no additional sounds. With a highspeed connection his computer was continually on line. From the moment he turned on the laptop he was connected to the internet. That’s why I could access his computer. It was normal, even though it wasn’t right. But the fact that he had no way of knowing what was going on was not normal. Strila was furious, and he demanded that I stop doing whatever it was I was doing.

  ‘Now!’ he said.

  ‘Erik, listen,’ I said.

  ‘Now!’ he repeated. ‘I want you to close that program now!’

  ‘It’s not my program,’ I said. ‘I can’t close it. I wouldn’t know how.’

  ‘Okay, then I’ll do it.’ It was quiet for a moment. I could hear the laptop clicking and beeping through the phone. In the middle of my screen a small window appeared with the text:

  Host computer shutting down.

  A little while later a new text appeared in the window.

  Host computer inactive.

  The text in the window rolled itself into a ball that disappeared into the status bar at the lower right, where it reappeared as a small icon, a little computer with a red line running through it. But nothing else changed.

  ‘Shit!’ I said out loud.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Strila asked.

  ‘You turned your computer off,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, what do you think? I can’t allow …’

  ‘Erik, ERIK!’ I shouted, ‘you don’t get it! You turned off your computer, but it doesn’t make any difference! I’m still in!’

  Strike cursed loudly. ‘But that’s impossible!’ he shouted. ‘I
turned it off. I’ll pull the plug out of the socket. There.’

  No change.

  ‘Oh, no? What about now?’ said Strila.

  In an instant his report disappeared from my screen and I was looking at an empty grey field. In the middle was a window with the text

  Host computer unavailable.

  ‘What did you do now?’ I asked.

  ‘Pulled out the phone cable,’ Strila said.

  ‘Okay, that helps.’

  That’s how the entire HC&P network worked. With today’s technology, all the computers were connected to the internet all the time. The only thing you needed was a way to get past all the security systems. That meant that all the computers, including Erik Strila’s, had to contain some kind of program that would disable security. But try as he might, Huib could not find any dedicated hacking software. The M drive mainly contained the advanced program for running the network, but even that was based on the assumption that everyone could slip past security undetected.

  ‘Try to get your hands on that laptop,’ Huib wrote in the chat line.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because there has to be something in it, software or hardware, something that makes all the rest possible. If necessary someone will have to unscrew the thing and take a look inside.’

  I could just see myself attacking the laptop with a screwdriver. I’d probably be able to open it—I could still turn screws—but then what? I was a technical dunce. I wouldn’t be able to tell one part from another. I had seen a photo of a chip once in a magazine, but inside a computer it looked very different.

  ‘You still there?’ Strila’s voice pulled me back to earth.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Strila was angry. This was an infringement of all kinds of rules. It was burgling, hacking, robbery, spying, you name it. Trying his best to control the tone of his voice, he told me he’d have to take this up with HC&P and that I’d be hearing a lot about it, even if I was no longer working for the firm.

  ‘Erik,’ I said, ‘this is why I no longer work there.’

  ‘Because you’ve been pulling these kinds of stunts?’

  ‘No, because they have.’

  ‘Oh, right. And I’m supposed to believe that?’

  I explained it wasn’t just a matter of pulling stunts, but that it was an entire network, worldwide, and that inside the Ministry of Justice alone there were more than forty computers connected to it. ‘And you think I’m capable of doing something complicated like this?’ I asked. ‘Do you believe it yourself?’

  ‘No,’ Strila said, ‘I believe that even less.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  It was quiet for a moment. A new message from Huib appeared in the chat line at the bottom of my screen.

  ‘This is taking too long. We have to get off the network.’

  ‘Okay,’ I answered, ‘I’ll be back this evening.’

  ‘So you discovered this, and that’s why you were fired from HC&P?’ Strila asked.

  ‘Almost,’ I said. ‘Someone else discovered it and she was murdered. And because I know that, I can’t show my face at HC&P again.’

  Strila didn’t respond.

  ‘You get it?’

  ‘I don’t want to get it,’ he said.

  ‘Good. That means you do.’

  I racked my brain trying to come up with a way to get hold of his computer. I couldn’t get into his office, I couldn’t get into his house, and I could hardly ambush him somewhere on the street and take the thing from him.

  ‘Erik,’ I finally asked, ‘do you take your laptop home every day?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Can I come over tonight and steal your computer?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Strila. ‘How do you expect to do that?’

  ‘Just ring the bell. About ten o’clock? Will that work for you?’

  Clothes. I had to get some new clothes. Jessica’s tracksuit was the latest thing in sportswear, but not something I could feel entirely relaxed in on the street. Light blue, pants tight around the butt and crotch, wide legs, sweatshirt emblazoned with the text Be daring.

  It was an exhortation that actually meant something when Jessica walked around in it, but in my case it invited unwelcome attention. Now I had no choice. My own clothes were so battered that they were even more conspicuous. I put everything back in my backpack and went out the door. At Beethovenstraat I took tram 5 to the end of the line, to a shopping centre in Amstelveen. Music thundered around me at full blast while the salesman gave me a look of total amazement. His eyes moved up and down over my outfit, not once but three times. I wanted to say something but he raised his hand to silence me. He shook his head, pursed his lips and rolled his eyes.

  ‘Hopeless,’ he said finally.

  ‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ I said.

  ‘Afraid?’ He shook his head again. ‘What’s that on your chest? The least you can do is set a good example.’

  The man took me to a couple of racks all the way in the back of the shop, to the serious leisure clothing. Outdoor survival stuff. One hour later I was back outside, fully done up in the world’s leading labels. I had two pairs of pants made from the same fabric that parachutes were made from, light and supple yet incredibly strong, and a Sympatex jacket that was both open weave and water-resistant, and with an endless number of pockets. I had shoes that incorporated the very latest discoveries in the science of walking, indestructible, with total traction on every conceivable surface. Not a bit of natural material was used in their manufacture.

  At the Bijenkorf department store I bought a suit, ready-to-wear, no fuss, fit like a glove, brown with a yellow pin-stripe, very modern and just what I needed to keep from standing out among my former colleagues and clients. White shirt, a stack of T-shirts and some underpants. Everything disappeared into the backpack, as did Jessica’s tracksuit. I bought new band-aids, a dark baseball cap, a pocket knife and cigarettes. I didn’t care anymore. I wanted to smoke.

  ‘You want a lighter with that?’ asked the man behind the counter. He held up a plastic object, bright green. There were a couple of Zippos glistening in the halogen lighting one shelf higher. Accessories. I still didn’t know why, but nice things often give you a certain sense of pleasure that you don’t get from the cheap disposable models. I bought a Zippo, with flints and a little container of lighter fluid. There was plenty of room in the backpack, and pleasure was something I hadn’t had nearly enough of lately.

  I went to a sandwich shop in the middle of the shopping centre and sat down at an outdoor table off in a corner. I filled the lighter and waited for the wick to absorb the fluid. With a cigarette between my lips I flipped the little lid open and spun the wheel with my thumb. The soft yellow flame smoked for a few seconds, then calmed down. I held the end of the cigarette in the flame and inhaled. Smoke in my lungs, wonderful. I ordered coffee and called the number I’d been given by Johan Wolfsen.

  ‘Batte,’ said a rushed voice. ‘Be right with you, just a minute …’

  The phone was put down and I tried to imagine what I could expect of Vince Batte. If Wolfsen was being shadowed, then theoretically any contact I had with Batte could be discovered, too. If I had the slightest suspicion that Batte was being approached by Breger and his men, in whatever way, I’d cut off the call without any explanation. The fact that he was having me wait felt wrong from the start. Yet I didn’t hang up. No one knew my cell phone number so no one could know that it was me.

  ‘I’m back,’ said Batte. ‘What can I do for you?’

  I introduced myself, and that’s all Batte needed. Wolfsen had indeed reached him and had filled him in as well. Batte talked fast, as thought he might forget his words if he spoke too slowly.

  ‘Okay, great, your stuff is ready, so, uh, when are you coming?’

  Now I hesitated. This was too easy. I couldn’t tell whether he was just busy or whether someone else had told him to bring me in. ‘Are you in a hurry?’

  ‘Not me,’ he laugh
ed. ‘Except for the fact that I’m always in a hurry. With software you’re always on the wrong side of the time line. But Wolfsen said you had precedence, so … whatever you want …’

  ‘Who else knows about this?’ I asked.

  ‘About what?’

  There wasn’t a bit of hesitation in his voice. None. He answered every question in the same rapid way. I asked him all kinds of questions at random to hear whether his reaction changed, got faster or slower, or whether he had to think longer about any one question.

  ‘About the stuff?’

  ‘Oh, that. Wolfsen and I know. And you. And Wolfsen doesn’t even know what the number of your new pass is. I’m the only one who knows that.’

  ‘What was your name again?’

  ‘Batte. Vince Batte.’

  ‘And exactly what kind of stuff have you got for me?’ Every now and then in the background I could hear the gentle rattling sound of fingers racing across a keyboard.

  ‘Well, one stuff, to be exact. Pass, complete with number, name (not yours, of course), and a code that can be recognized by the system but not registered. That kind of stuff. What we make for visiting senior officials, you know, people who are everywhere but never anywhere.’

  ‘Are you working now?’ I asked.

  ‘Always. There’s always something with that system of yours. Nice system, don’t get me wrong, you can do anything with it, really, whatever you want, but it’s so incredibly complex. Really, bizarre. Advanced tinkering. So what’s it going to be?’

  His rhythm and his entire way of doing things never varied. No matter what I asked him, he was always himself, cheerful, hurried, completely unhesitating.

  ‘I’ll come and get it,’ I said. ‘Where are you?’

  I couldn’t pick it up until the end of the afternoon, when he was back in Amsterdam. The company was somewhere on the outskirts of Amersfoort, and he was tied up for the rest of the day with meetings and testing new program components. We agreed to meet at a cafe near Central Station.