‘And what’s that?’ he asked, pointing to a fourth plastic bag that was leaning against the wall untouched.
‘That’s some stuff from the other woman,’ I said. ‘Radekker, the woman from the financial department, but it doesn’t amount to much, either. Bookkeeping, that’s all. And I have no idea whose.’
Karl picked up the bag and took out the few thin folders, paged through them and shook his head. ‘I’ll show it to Sacha, she’s good with figures.’ With the papers in his hand he left the room, and from one moment to the next all was silent. I was standing there alone in that big space, surrounded by heaps of clutter. I dropped to the floor and began gathering it all together again and stowing it away.
Kirsten came in. ‘Hi,’ she said, and she sat down on the floor next to me. We both worked on straightening up the mess. Silent hands. Sounds of rustling paper. Stretching plastic.
‘That woman?’ she asked.
‘Jessica?’
‘Her, yes. Was that a girlfriend of yours?’
I nodded. ‘I don’t have that many,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and threw her arms around me. She rocked me back and forth. Slowly. A movement of mercy. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said.
‘There’s so much we don’t know about each other.’
‘That’s true. But you never told me.’
I shrugged my shoulders. Pressed my lips together. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said. There was too much. Too much violence to clear the path for grief. I was still in too much of a hurry to allow it.
‘Here,’ said Kirsten. She pulled out my chapstick. ‘Is this yours?’
I looked at the little plastic cylinder with surprise. For years I hadn’t been able to do without it, and now I hadn’t missed it in days. I rolled my lips together. They were supple and soft. No cracks or flakes of skin anywhere. I took the stick from her and dropped it into my pocket. A reminder. Of something.
Not at all sure of what.
The night was a constantly interrupted attempt to get more than an hour of sleep. Work went on in shifts. At two-thirty Vince came to get me. He had organized the passes. The entire process, from application to completion, was automated. The only thing we still had to do was to get the passes in our hands.
‘Every day a courier goes out to deliver new passes. Not only for HC&P but for other companies, too. And that’s where it gets sticky,’ he said. ‘Because I can make and order just about anything, but I can’t get the courier to drive to a different address. The passes are for HC&P and they have to be delivered to HC&P. He’d never drop them off anywhere else. It’s all part of the security procedures.’
‘So?’ I asked. Sleep was still fighting for the right to take over my body.
‘So we have to think of something else.’
‘You’re kidding.’ I stared at the computer screen. If I had to look at many more of those little menus and programs I’d go nuts. ‘Then we have to intercept the courier somewhere,’ I said.
Vince looked at me. ‘How did you plan on doing that?’
‘You know, force the car off the road, pull the guy out, grab the passes. How should I know!’
‘Bad plan,’ said Vince.
‘Do you have a better one?’
He shook his head.
‘Can you use the computer to find out the courier’s route?’
In the middle of the night, Vince, Bernie, Kirsten and I were sitting at a table somewhere in the building. I was looking through the room’s big windows out over the IJ. With a mug of steaming coffee in my hand I sauntered from one window to the next. Then to the adjacent room, a big, empty space. The linoleum on the floor was worn, the walls were drab and filthy and the woodwork was half rotten. Overdue maintenance was putting it far too mildly, but the space was unique. On the water with a view of the station, the city and the opposite side. I took pleasure in the space and the distance.
Vince handed us print-outs of the courier’s route. Bernie explained the plan. Kirsten nodded and apparently knew what she was supposed to do.
Karl stuck his head in the door.
‘L.G.? Does that ring a bell?’ He was looking at me.
‘Low grade?’ I said.
‘I think it’s a company, but not any company you know?’
I shook my head. Karl was already gone.
So was I.
The next morning I found Kirsten in the kitchen with toast, fried eggs and more coffee. We ate in silence. Daytime, today in particular, was more important than I was willing to admit. This weekend all the parties concerned were meeting in Brussels. Not only the EU leaders but also everyone at HC&P who had anything to do with me. With Mr. Miller. If ever there was a chance to exonerate myself, to free myself from the madness that was hunting me down, it was there. This weekend. After Monday everyone would be leaving. Going back to America, to all the countries from which the firm obtained its people.
There was nothing else for me to do here in Amsterdam. Nor did it make any sense to wait any longer. If I couldn’t make a breakthrough now, with all the help I was getting here, then all I could do was throw up my hands.
Kirsten and I walked together to the workshop, the big room with all the hardware. The people there were working in groups of three, trying to find a way to disrupt the network. Paralyze it. But so far they had nothing.
‘The software is so elusive,’ said Vince. ‘No matter what we stick in, it gets isolated and defused. Just like that. Plop! As if we hadn’t even tried anything.’
The network was visible on a big screen. Its gently pulsing streams, the flocks. It looked stronger than ever. More focused.
‘Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the software,’ Kirsten said.
Karl reacted with irritation. ‘It’s always the software,’ he said. ‘Anybody who knows anything about it knows that it has to do with the software.’
Acting as if she hadn’t even heard his sarcastic tone, Kirsten pointed to the monitor. ‘The network,’ she said. Her fingers slid across the screen. ‘Why is it so elusive?’
‘Because we don’t know where it is. It’s everywhere. In parts. And all those parts form a whole, not according to a fixed structure but according to a need that’s determined second by second. It’s as if you had a wound on your arm or your leg, and your body responds in different ways. First there’s the stuff that gets sent through your blood vessels to the wound in order to close it. At the same time, the functions and tasks are redistributed so you don’t have to use the wounded arm any more than necessary. Where does all this take place? In your brains, in your spinal column, in your nerves, your muscles, your heart. Everywhere.’
‘Exactly,’ said Kirsten. ‘It’s everywhere. So what is it then, that “everywhere”?’
‘Computers,’ said Karl. ‘Millions of computers.’
‘Hardware, you mean.’ Kirsten turned around and walked to the table with the two dismantled laptops on it. ‘That elusive software will only work on a network containing millions of computers. If you want to get at the software, you have to cripple the computers. Look.’ She pointed to the parts on the table. ‘All those computers have an extra drive. How they got it is something we haven’t even talked about yet, but the extra drive is there. The network works because all the computers sign in as soon as they go on line. That signing in is automatic. It’s in the software of the extra hard drive. What you need is a program that will sign the computer back out and clear the extra drive. And that’s it. Done. Down they go. One by one.’
‘Times who knows how many million,’ said Vince.
‘Ah, what’s a few million these days?’ said Kirsten. ‘You know the story of the Egyptian chess player? He had saved the country, and the pharaoh asked him to choose his reward. The chess player pointed to the chessboard and said, “Sire, this is the reward I choose. Put one grain of wheat on the first square of my chessboard. Put two grains on the second. Four on the third, and so on. On every square put double the amount from the
previous square, until you’ve covered all the squares on the chessboard.” “Is that all?” asked the pharaoh, who couldn’t imagine he’d be losing more than one bag of grain. “That’s all,” said the chess player. Well, we all know what happened.’
Karl looked at her, eyebrows raised. ‘By the twentieth square you’re over a million,’ he said.
‘In twenty-four steps you’d have hit more than ten million computers. And the only thing you need to do is to instruct every computer to find two other computers that have signed onto the same network before that computer knocks itself out. Two. No more than that. That’s nothing for a bit of virus.’
‘That’s right,’ said Karl. ‘But how do we get such a virus into the first computer?’
Kirsten pointed to the two laptops. ‘You’ve got two right here,’ she said. ‘You can experiment with one until you get it right. Then you inject the virus into the other computer and reconnect it to the network.’
‘That means we only have one chance,’ said Vince.
‘One chance, yeah.’ Kirsten laid a finger in the middle of his chest and tapped it a few times. Long fingernail, light blue on his black T-shirt. ‘But that’s always the way it is, right, Vince?’
He laughed. ‘I only get one chance,’ he asked. ‘That’s all?’
She shook her head slowly.
‘I wasn’t talking about you,’ she said. She fluttered her eyelashes and walked away. ‘In an hour and a half we have to be out of here,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget.’
Vince and I watched her go.
‘How many squares does a chessboard have, anyway?’
‘Sixty-four,’ I said.
Vince closed his eyes and tried to work out the answer. After a couple of minutes he gave up.
‘So tell me,’ he said. ‘How many grains of wheat did this guy get?’
‘The entire national harvest for one year.’
52 The interests of the Lord
Kirsten walked down the sidewalk. Tight knit top, bare midriff, gleaming, supple sweatpants, small bag over her shoulder, orange Pumas. Every step she took was a good one. Beautiful morning. Sun on the canal. Not a breath of wind. June at its best. Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. Lots of people on the street. Lots of traffic. The courier’s car was parked in front of a large building. A bank. The courier himself had just gone inside. Small package in his hand. Car in the middle of the streets, hazard lights flashing. He’d be gone for a couple of minutes. Kirsten walked slowly up to the car.
Vince groaned. The camper was standing in a parking spot a little further on. We followed Kirsten’s movements through one of the windows in the back. Vince couldn’t help himself.
‘Boy, that sister of yours.’
‘Some other time, Vince.’
The courier came back out, quickly, taking the entrance steps two at a time. He looked down the canal to the right, to the left, to the row of cars that were backed up behind his. He gestured his apologies. Laughed. Fantastic day. And ran straight into Kirsten, who with two well-timed strides had manoeuvered herself right onto his path.
Vince groaned. ‘If I don’t get her soon, bad things are going to happen.’
‘Vince.’
‘You’re no help.’
Kirsten scrambled up and looked around, dazed. Grabbed onto the courier for a moment and laughed.
The courier laughed, too. Concerned, afraid she’d broken or bruised something. Kirsten felt her head, moved her neck back and forth a couple of times, swung her hips left and right, to see if everything still worked.
Vince closed his eyes.
‘It was your idea,’ I said.
‘I know. I’m a genius.’
The courier said something. Kirsten pointed. The courier said something else and Kirsten nodded. She opened the door on the passenger’s side and got in. The courier ran around his car and got in on the driver’s side. In a few seconds the hazard lights went off.
‘Pay attention,’ I said. ‘Now!’
Bernie steered the camper onto the road. Behind him the courier was able to break just in time. ‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘Go!’ said Vince.
Bernie shifted the camper into reverse and backed the thing up with agonizing slowness. The courier began honking his horn, but Bernie paid no attention and backed the camper up further and further until it hit the courier’s car with a clear jolt. Nothing dramatic. Not hard enough to make any dents or cause any damage, but an unmistakable hit nonetheless. Just to make sure, Bernie gave the camper a little more gas, effortlessly pushing the courier’s car one metre backward. The courier leaned on his horn, threw open his door and came running up to Bernie. At the same time, Vince and I opened the side door of the camper and painstakingly began to unload a bookcase. While the courier shouted at Bernie and demanded that he get out of the camper, we put the bookcase down in such a way that Kirsten was blocked from his view.
Kirsten worked with breakneck speed. She pulled the key out of the car’s ignition, went through the rest of the keys on the ring and found the one to the courier’s valise, opened it and took out the order list and the pack of passes. She pulled a new order list from her bag, scribbled an initial in one of the boxes, put the new list in the valise, locked it back up, put the key back in the ignition and got out of the car. In less than a minute she was lying on the floor of the camper under the table, Vince and I on the benches on either side. Bookcase back in. Side door shut.
The damage to the car proved to be no more than a scratch on the bumper. After a couple of minutes the tension turned to relief and Bernie calmed the courier down.
‘I just didn’t see you,’ he said. ‘You have such a tiny little car, man, I didn’t even feel it.’ He laughed. ‘Here.’ He gave the man a card. ‘If it turns out we missed something, just give me a call. You can always reach me here.’
They shook hands, patted each other on the shoulder. What’s a little scratch between two men? Bernie turned around once more. ‘And make sure you call, okay? If anything’s wrong. You make sure now!’ Laughing, he got into the camper and started it up.
‘And if he does call, who’s going to answer the phone?’ Vince asked.
‘Kitchen supply wholesaler, I think. Oven gloves and coasters. Nice stuff. I got that card last year from a guy at the automation show.’ He shifted gears and drove away. ‘And?’ he asked without looking back.
Vince peeked out of the little curtain running across the back window. The courier was about to get in his car. He bent down and looked inside, straightened up again and looked around.
‘He’s looking for Kirsten,’ said Vince.
‘Who isn’t?’ Kirsten said from under the table. It sounded tough, but only she knew whether she meant it that way or not.
Bernie drove down the Rozengracht and the Nieuwe Zijdsvoorburgwal in the direction of the train station. In front of the station he turned onto the Prins Hendrikkade and took the IJ Tunnel back to the shed in Amsterdam North, with twenty unregistered passes to the HC&P building. Vince had cleared all the information concerning the passes from the system. After the courier had picked them up and left, Vince had altered the order list in the computer. The passes for HC&P were no longer there. He had then erased the old list from the computer of the courier company. Kirsten had put the print-out of the new list in the courier’s valise and taken the old list with her. The courier wouldn’t miss it because he had been given the whole valise, passes and all, at the beginning of the day. WorldWare had no record of the passes in its archive: no record that they were made and no record that they were delivered. These twenty passes didn’t exist. But they worked.
Karl was waiting for us in the shed and took us to the workshop, to a table where a woman was sitting behind a computer in total concentration.
‘This is Sacha,’ he said. ‘Sacha is working on L.G.’ She reached out her hand and glanced at me. Not too long. She was focused on her work.
‘L.G., from Radekker’s records,’ I said.
Kar
l nodded. ‘What those records actually are is still unclear,’ he said. ‘But at least now we know where they come from.’
‘L.G.?’
‘Larkowl Group.’ It took Sacha some time to extricate herself from her work. Her eyes kept drifting back to the screen, and her right hand to the mouse. She felt more at ease with the computer than with people she didn’t know. She was the kind of woman who’s ashamed of her intelligence and of being interested in systems instead of fashion. She wore black pants and a black sweater. Her dark hair kept falling down over her eyes, and every other sentence she turned her back to us to point to something on the screen or to click to another field. She spoke in short sentences, and each sentence was meant to convey information. Sacha was not one for descriptive prose.
‘The Larkowl Group is a foundation,’ she said. ‘An organization of pious Christians. Mainly in North America. Set up to …’ she turned around and read from the screen, ‘… “defend the interests of our Lord Jesus Christ and to safeguard them in a world that is turning further and further from holiness and that no longer accepts holiness as a guiding principle.” Their words.’
‘A church, you mean?’ I asked. ‘A sect?’
‘No. Just the opposite, actually. They have no form of liturgy or service of any kind. No buildings, no centres. Nothing. As far as I can tell, the foundation is an alliance of rich businessmen, politicians and military officers. That’s less unusual there than it is here.’
‘Larkowl Group,’ I said.
Mr. Miller Page 27