‘You know ’t Ponthuis?’ he asked.
38 Batte
It was raining, and I was on the ferry to the other side of the IJ. According to the weather reports this was the wettest June week in I don’t know how many years. Every day new storms swept across the land, supported by enormous, cocky atmospherics that had found a place to hang out above the North Sea.
The city looked quite different from the water—smaller, mainly, and lower-lying. The cyclists on the ferry and the water around it determined the proportions. Leaning on the railing of the afterdeck, I had the sense that Amsterdam had suddenly become a village, a city with a centre no more than four storeys high. It was a city built to human scale, and so unthreatening that I couldn’t understand where the danger was coming from. And yet it was there, undeniably. There, behind the beautiful façades of the endless monuments, were people who wanted to do me in. Today rather than tomorrow. Yesterday would have been even better.
The ferry was moving across the water with the wind. The gusts kept overtaking us and blowing warm, fat raindrops in my face. I shook my head and felt all the places where my skin had tightened up on account of the healing wounds. The crossing took no more than five minutes, but it was long enough to chase away my agitation.
Batte was about my age, but that’s where the similarities ended. He was tall and stylish, in a strange way. His dishevelled appearance was really a studied carelessness and was quite intentional, up to and including the last loose shirttail that stuck out in the back beneath his crooked black jacket. His glasses, with their heavy black frames, reinforced the impression of someone who attached no importance whatsoever to his appearance, except for the minuscule brand logo letting you know that his kind of nonchalance was not cheap. Batte was very cool and Batte was drenched. Just like me. Water was dripping from his head. There was little left of the gel composition he had created that morning. He stood beside the little table and hesitated.
‘HC&P?’ he asked finally.
I nodded.
‘Okay,’ he said and sat down.
‘Not good?’ I asked.
‘Well, I had expected something in a suit, recent shave and all that—you know the type, someone with concept-free hair and a red tie with yellow thingies on it. Not, uh …’ He made a gesture that scattered drops of water everywhere. ‘Whatever,’ he said. He leaned forward and looked at the scratches and scabs on my face.
‘How you doing with that?’ he asked.
‘Better than yesterday,’ I said, hoping he’d drop the subject. I didn’t feel like discussing my physical condition. It was bad enough as it was.
Batte was one hundred percent programmer, and it took a while before I realized that his head worked in a way totally different than mine. Batte thought in logical sequences, in mutually exclusive or mutually enhancing combinations, in ones and zeroes. He thought digitally. And he did it at a rate that I could scarcely keep up with.
Vince Batte could take on the computerized world. He understood how that world worked. He could build his own programs or dismantle them, whatever he wanted. He could use computers like a hammer or a pair of pliers. That was the difference. The people who are masters of technology are constantly increasing their skill set. The people who aren’t fall farther and farther behind. That’s the dichotomy between the makers and the users, and the disparity between them is getting bigger and bigger. In the past a journalist could still fix his own pen or typewriter if he had to, but not anymore. He can use the stuff and that’s it. I myself belonged to the class of people who couldn’t do anything. Communications advice had nothing to do with the way the world worked. It was the spice in a restaurant kitchen, one of the many little jars on the shelf that the chef had only occasional need for. What I did could improve the flavour, but no one could make an entire dish with it. Sitting across the table from Vince Batte made me feel small. Batte had the world at his fingertips. If he did this, then that happened. If he did that, then this happened. Logical consequences. He knew what was going to happen, and so it did. While I blundered my way through a minefield, jumping aside just in time to avoid the explosions that were going off all around me, Batte could decide where the mines were located. Up to a certain point.
‘But can you get the system to tell you all the people who were present in the HC&P building on a particular night?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Can you do it for Wednesday night a week and a half ago?’
‘The night that woman from financial administration was murdered.’
He said it without hesitation. Without judging. He was the first one to leave me out of the picture. Just the events, logical and simple. Liberating.
‘Her, yes,’ I said.
‘Already did it,’ he said. ‘At least, we did it.’
‘You did it? Yourselves?’
‘No, operations are in India. For the whole group.’
The consequences of what he said took a while to get through to me. ‘Is the security system for the whole group in one place?’ I asked.
Batte nodded.
‘HC&P has a hundred and twenty offices all over the world, and the records of who is present in what office are all kept in one place?’
He nodded again. ‘Doesn’t make any fucking difference,’ he said, ‘whether you do it centrally or decentrally. That’s all a load of crap. Words from a different era. Everything you do decentrally is linked together in a network, which makes it central, too. If you have the right codes. The only reason it’s all in India is because it’s much cheaper there. And those guys are amazingly good.’
‘Big Brother,’ I said.
‘HC&P,’ said Batte.
We looked at each other. ‘HC&P is Big Brother?’ I asked. I wasn’t altogether sure what I was asking, but Batte’s remark fit in too neatly with the hunted feeling I had and with the network the company maintained.
‘In our world you can’t get around them,’ Batte said in a matter-of-fact tone as if it were common knowledge. ‘At least WorldWare can’t. If we weren’t working for HC&P, we wouldn’t be half as big as we are. And the same is true for Datwell. Maybe even more so.’
Datwell had experienced a boom in recent years. PCs, laptops, servers, entire automation systems, all of it high quality and at a price no one thought possible. Datwell had launched a price war, and so far they seemed to be winning that war on all fronts. WorldWare and Datwell had a lot in common in that regard. Apparently they had both emerged from nowhere to secure a dominant position in an extremely competitive market. HC&P worked with Datwell products and WorldWare programs. Thousands of companies all over the world did the same.
‘Whatever,’ said Batte again. The subject wasn’t part of the discussion he was having so he set it aside. ‘We worked it out the same day, zippity-zip. No big deal. Code goes in, authorization, you’re done in ten minutes. Really. You and that Radekker were the only ones. And security. Nobody else.’
‘Yeah, I know all about it,’ I said. All these people who were certain I was the only one in the building were driving me nuts. ‘Can you also find people in the system who were in the building but weren’t registered? As I would be with this pass?’ I held up my new plastic card.
‘Of course not,’ said Batte.
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’re not registered. And you can’t call up what you haven’t registered. Right? Are you still with me?’
I was playing with the pass and staring at the drinks on the table. Batte was drinking a Bacardi and Coke, I had a mineral water. I had a long evening ahead of me and I wanted to hold onto whatever meagre view I had. Batte’s words were spinning around in my head. What he said was logical yet I didn’t feel comfortable with it. Earlier he had said that the HC&P system could do anything, yet the first thing I asked about was something it couldn’t do.
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ I said.
‘No, not when you put it that way,’ he said, ‘but you can’t take out what you don
’t put in.’
‘If I were to enter with this pass, I wouldn’t be registered. Okay, I understand that. But doesn’t the system have another place for registering the entrance of a non-registered person? In other words, isn’t there something else in the system that you can take out as long as you know it’s in there?’
Batte fell silent and began thinking. He drank his Bacardi and put the glass down, very slowly and with great control.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘I was there and Radekker was there. The two of us are known quantities and we come rolling out of the system as neat as you please. But I know there were at least two and probably three other people in the building. They don’t show up in the system. At least not when you ask the standard question: who were the registered individuals present? But they were there! I know it, and if I know it, then the system knows it, too.’
‘You better believe it,’ said Batte. ‘What that system doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Except the system only gives you an answer if you ask the right question.’
‘That’s the basic principle of every system.’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘so the question is: what is the question?’
‘Very good,’ said Batte. He smiled. ‘And are you asking me?’
‘Am I asking you? I have no idea what I can and cannot ask.’
‘You have an unregistered VIP pass. I think you can ask a whole lot of questions.’
‘Just don’t send me a bill,’ I said.
‘I’ll jiggle the hours in between some other shit,’ he said, and I thought I sort of understood what he meant. I figured that anyone who used that kind of language would never let himself be taken in by Huib Breger. ‘Where can I reach you?’ he asked.
‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t exist and I’m not here. And I’d like to keep it that way.’
I wrote down his home address, somewhere on one of the islands east of the station. Java Island. ‘I’ll find you,’ I said. ‘How are you with hardware, by the way?’
‘Hardware is peanuts,’ he said. ‘Even you can do it.’
With that misunderstanding fresh in mind I took the train to The Hague. Erik Strila lived on a lovely, spacious street, the two sides divided by a wide green strip running down the middle. Big trees gave the avenue the character of a park. The bus stopped on the corner of the street, and as darkness approached I searched for the house number. There was silence all around me. In this neighbourhood there were no cafes or restaurants, no snack bars or discos. The bus was the most exciting thing around, and it was only passing through. The whole area was pervaded by the deep security that came with permanent appointments and Swedish cars amidst a generous use of Dutch bricks. It felt strange, almost unseemly.
Strila opened the door and let me in. He was curt. There was no trace of his usual easy manner. Without a word or a question he led me to the dining room. His laptop was on the table. He stood in the doorway and pointed at it.
‘There,’ he said.
I walked over to the laptop and picked it up, held it in my hands, turned it over and over, looked at the top and the bottom and put it back down. It was indeed a Datwell. Very similar to my own laptop.
‘Have you spoken to anyone about this yet?’ I asked?
Strila shook his head.
‘You sure?’
‘What’s sure?’ he said, in an attempt to inject his own insecurity into the conversation. I understood why he would want to do that, but this wasn’t the right moment.
‘Yes is sure and no is sure,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I have not spoken to anyone about this.’ It was as if this forced pronouncement served to free him from his self-imposed silence. ‘And what if I had spoken to someone about it? Because that’s what I should have done, you know. You know I should have reported it immediately. This is a serious violation of our …’
I raised my hand in the air as a sign of surrender and to let him know that he didn’t have to continue.
‘I know,’ I said.
We stood side by side, staring at his computer. It held our attention captive, like a strange, half-dead beast. It seemed to have a life of its own. The outside looked familiar, but there were things happening inside that were not supposed to be happening. There had to be something in there, something that could be found. I didn’t know what it was, but I hoped Vince Batte could succeed in finding it with a couple of different kinds of screwdrivers.
‘And you say there are more computers in our department that you can just break into from the outside?’ Strila asked.
‘About forty, yes,’ I said, ‘but you can’t just break into them. First you have to have access to a certain network.’
‘And you do?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but that was not my intention.’
I quickly explained to Strila what was going on. I had to tell him something, but at the same time I was eager to leave. The sooner I could get his laptop out of the house, the better I’d like it. I wanted to get out, get moving. As long as I was in motion I felt safe. In a bus or in the train. Fine. The longer I sat still anywhere, the more nervous I became.
39 Fucking eyes
The tram began its ride across the Damrak with a shriek. I was almost alone in the carriage, staring blankly out the window at the passing city, happy that for a moment there wasn’t anything I had to think about. I got out at Beethovenstraat and walked the last few hundred metres to Jessica’s upstairs apartment. Lights were on. That meant she was home, and that made me feel good. Jess and I were too important for each other. Any doubt I had felt yesterday had more to do with me than with her. I was the one being hunted, not her. And no matter what she said, when I was with her I no longer felt threatened. I went inside and bounded up the steep stairway to the second floor, taking two steps at a time.
Just before I reached the top I saw Jessica’s long blond hair hanging down from the uppermost step. She was lying on her side, her head half turned, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling and seeing nothing. Her mouth hung open as if she were still gasping for air. Too late, much too late.
‘JESSICA!’ I screamed, and jumped up the last steps.
‘Fuck, he’s in!’ someone shouted from the kitchen, and just then a man came storming into the hallway. He grabbed me and tore me away from Jessica. With his arms clamped around my chest he beat on my back with his head. I heard bumping in one of the other rooms. This man wasn’t alone, and if I didn’t do something fast I’d soon be lying next to Jessica. I had to get out, as fast as I could. All my senses were concentrated on the next moment. All my thoughts, all my reflections, all my interests merged here. I saw and heard everything just before it happened. I thrust my foot backwards and kicked the man hard in the shin. At the same time I rammed my elbow back into his chest. He loosened his grip somewhat and I dropped down. I rolled over and tried to get to the stairs, but he was faster. He slid around me and took a swing. I ducked down, away from his fist, and kicked his knee. He cursed and dove onto me. Then he grabbed me from the front, his arms locked around my chest, but before he could immobilize me I jumped up, grabbed the wide ornamental frame at the top of the stairwell and pulled my legs upward, ramming my knees into his stomach with all my might. The man groaned and let me go, just for a moment. He gasped for air, and in that half second I planted my feet on his chest and shoved him down—two feet at once, suspended from my arms, all my muscle power free to let him have it. And I did.
He went down the steep stairway in an arc head first, crashing onto his back. Two other men came into the hall behind me. I looked around and in a flash I saw Breger’s face, grinning behind the monolithic head of a massive, well-trained figure.
‘GRAB HIM!’ shrieked Breger. The man dove onto me, fists flying like a battering ram, and he hit me right under my backpack in the middle of my back.
The pain spread from my spine to every part of my body. For a minute I thought it was all over. Fini
shed. End of story. The punch sent me sailing. I let go of the frame and jumped, right behind the first man. Free from the wall, free from the floor, I glided at top speed down the steps in a perfect line to where the first man was trying to right himself.
I landed in the middle of his chest, ramming him back down with my falling weight, and under my feet I heard his ribs crack. The big body sprang up in a spastic response, and the next moment he went even further down the stairs, shrieking with pain. I jerked the front door open, flew outside and slammed the door behind me. Then I groped around in my pocket for the keys, and as I listened to the men racing down the stairs behind the door, I stuck the key into the deadbolt and turned it. My body trembling, I stood at the door and waited, but no matter how hard the two men on the other side tugged and pounded, the door would not open. The only way they could get out was by opening the deadbolt from the inside. Cursing and shouting, they stamped back upstairs. I leaned forward, stuck the key back in the lock and left it there. Then I turned around and walked to the end of the street, where it ran into Olympia Square. Every step I took was a misstep. I walked as if my feet were no longer mine. Every time I put my feet down, it wasn’t the hard paving stones I felt but the man’s chest cracking beneath my soles.
Pain was shooting from my back to my legs and neck. I kept on walking, unsteadily, stone by stone. In those silent, wide streets I was suddenly further from home than ever. In all that time I had thought that sooner or later, somewhere, I would find the evidence I needed to prove that I wasn’t the only one in the HC&P building and that the problems would disappear one by one. Just prove that I wasn’t the murderer and that would be that. Not too ridiculous a hope, right?
But now it would scarcely solve anything. I had sunk so low that I figured I might as well give myself up to the police. At least there I’d be safer and there was little chance that I’d be making my situation worse.
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