Silence again. The only sound was the murmur of the air conditioning, keeping the air in constant circulation.
‘If it’s all the same to you,’ he said, assuming from the silence that he must have fallen woefully short of their expectations, ‘I’d be grateful to hear the correct solution now.’
Connors cleared his throat. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t preposterous enough.’
William looked at him. Come again?
‘Your conclusion is by no means ridiculous. But it is wrong.’ Connors paused. ‘There is a virus. That part is entirely correct. But we are the ones who created it.’
‘We?’
‘Yes.’
‘Define we.’
‘Not us, not the people in this room, but colleagues of ours. Scientists who are no longer alive.’
William breathed in. It wasn’t too hard to guess why. Not after seeing the woman in the fish tank.
‘Something went wrong?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Something went wrong. The virus didn’t work as we’d hoped. Thirty years ago there were almost eight hundred people working here. Today we’re down to fifty. None of us here are survivors from back then. We had to start over from scratch.’
He waited for William to process what he’d said.
‘And so in this virus,’ William said slowly, measuring his words one by one, ‘in this virus, manufactured here, you placed an encoded text?’
Connors nodded, but it was a reluctant nod. ‘Yes, we did.’
William sensed there was a but coming: ‘And this text was written by you?’
‘Yes,’ said Connors. The same tone in his voice. But.
‘Then I don’t understand,’ said William. ‘If you came up with the code yourself, why do you need me to crack it?’
Connors cocked his head to one side. A friendly pantomime gesture to tell William he still wasn’t asking the right questions.
‘Because, Sandberg, we’re talking about two different things here. It’s not the code in the virus we need you to crack.’
‘You’re losing me,’ said William.
The silence returned. There was a palpable uneasiness in Connors’ eyes as he looked around the room, seeking clearance to take the next step. Nobody seemed to object, so he turned back to William.
‘That sequence of code we gave you to work on, the one we want you to find the key for?’
‘Yes?’
‘It doesn’t come from the virus.’
15
Christina’s phone conversation with Leo lasted for less than a minute. He was extremely anxious, telling her it was vital they meet as soon as possible, pretty much ordering her to take a cab back to the office right away.
Him. Ordering her. She should probably be annoyed, but instead she couldn’t help finding it amusing, and she hurried out of the café and hailed a cab. Not until she was sitting in the back seat, en route to the office, did Christina begin to worry that his findings wouldn’t be as important as he believed, and that their meeting would turn out to be awkward and embarrassing.
Leo was waiting for her by his desk. He was still wearing his down jacket, which meant he had just arrived, and the moment she saw him she realised he should in fact be having the day off. Whatever he was about to show her, at least there was nothing wrong with his commitment.
He hunched over his computer, fingers hammering across the keyboard while his eyes looked for the right words on the screen. He told her he’d been sitting at home, logged in to the news servers and reading agency newswires going back the last six months, convinced that there was something he’d seen but not registered at the time, something that could be critical for them now.
‘I wasn’t sure,’ he said. He was breathless, more from excitement than from exertion, and looked at her in brief glances as if he was afraid to take his eyes off the monitor. ‘I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it, or, see what I mean? You know how the mind works, when you combine things that weren’t really like that?’
Christina stood behind him, coat still on, and concentrated on Leo’s screen.
His fingers danced across the keyboard, browsing back to the date he was looking for. To that one newswire he knew would be waiting there.
‘I knew I was right.’ He looked at Christina. Turned the screen slightly, as if that would make it easier to read even though she was standing next to him. ‘There.’ He pointed at the screen.
He’d opened a newswire from Reuters, text in English, a short and to-the-point report of a meaningless event.
Amsterdam, 24 April. The headline: No Trace of Missing Student.
Christina scanned quickly through the article, jumping between keywords as years of practice had taught her, scanning it to get an overview and to tell if there was anything of value.
No trace – boyfriend worried – deliberate disappearance – police regard case as closed.
‘See what I mean?’ Leo said.
She didn’t know what to say. In fact, she didn’t have a clue what he meant.
She scanned the text a second time.
Okay, it was a disappearance. But how many people disappear every year? Plus the individuals involved were much younger, the story was seven months old and it had taken place in the Netherlands. Whatever parallels Leo had detected between this and William’s disappearance were lost on her. Aside from the missing woman’s partner being adamant that she hadn’t disappeared of her own free will, Christina could find no similarities between the two.
Leo seemed to be reading her mind: ‘Before you say anything, I did some googling.’
Oh? Christina looked at him.
‘The missing student. Name: Janine Charlotta Haynes. Moved to Amsterdam four years ago on a scholarship – quite a prestigious one, as far as I can tell. Before that she studied in Seattle and everyone raved about how good she was.’ He turned the monitor back towards himself. ‘And then,’ he said, ‘her Master’s thesis. Here.’
He closed the long list of newswires and switched over to his email client. At the top of his inbox was a message with himself as the sender. One attachment.
‘Power of the Internets,’ he said to fill the silence. And then he clicked to open the file.
Christina pulled out a chair, sat down in front of the computer.
She felt Leo’s eyes on her, sensed his pride, and couldn’t help thinking he was perfectly entitled to be pleased with himself. Every doubt she’d had was gone; his lack of social skills had nothing to do with his capacity as a journalist, and it annoyed her she hadn’t been able to separate one from the other.
In front of her on the screen was a scanned document. Almost a hundred pages long according to the thumbnails on the side. And Leo scrolled until the front page filled the middle of the screen. The title in English, centred on the monitor. The Eternal Search for Meaning: A Study of Codes And Hidden Messages in Prehistoric Manuscripts.
‘What was it he used to do, your husband?’ Leo said. ‘I mean, or, ex?’
She turned her head towards him. His gaze was steady, as if he and his job had become one and the same, as if suddenly he was forgetting to doubt himself. He was no longer an insecure young man, simply because he was too busy thinking of something else.
He hadn’t asked the question to get an answer. He’d asked it to reinforce the fact that he was right. And she nodded: it was too similar for it to be a coincidence.
‘You think we can find the boyfriend?’ she said.
And Leo looked at her. His eyes confident, proud, as he nodded his yes. And passed her a note with a name and telephone number.
‘I’ve already left him a message.’
The pale yellow square of paper with the phone number of a Swedish newspaper scribbled on it was one of many that disappeared under the heavy file that Albert Van Dijk dropped on to his desk.
He was tired.
No, he wasn’t tired, he was shattered.
He sank down into his hard office chair, slid out on to the edge of the seat, collapsing u
ntil he could feel the armrests under his armpits. Rubbed his eyes and forehead with hands covered in smudges from whiteboard pens.
It drained him completely to give lectures. But he knew he had to do it, knew that the energy and the adrenalin he got from standing there, energising the room and balancing what he’d planned to say with his students’ questions or his own improvisations, were the only things that kept him going. It drained him, but paradoxically it was also what spurred him on. Sometimes it even made him happy, or at least as close as he could get.
The problem was, his pain had doubled. It had been more than seven months now, and her memory was slowly starting to fade. That created a second layer of sorrow, on top of the loss.
She was out there somewhere. He knew she was. Somewhere Janine was waiting for him, and he didn’t want to forget her, didn’t want to get over it, not as long as there was anything he could do to be reunited with her.
As if he hadn’t already exhausted every possibility.
He tried to bring himself back to the moment. Outside his window he could hear life carrying on, today as every day, students talking or making phone calls or hurrying across the echoing yard to places they should have been ten minutes ago. He used to love sitting here, listening to the sounds and letting his eyes wander across his bookshelves, pausing every now and then to settle on some book that had been left behind by one of his predecessors.
But the joy had gone. Life had retreated from him, everything took place through a colourless filter, and even if he saw that life around him was carrying on the way it always had done, at the same time it wasn’t the same, not really. He wasn’t present. No matter where he was.
That was probably one of the reasons he failed to notice the chubby young man in his doorway.
Albert drew himself up in his chair before realising that he had. Sat straight, as if he were the one to show respect for his secretary and not the other way around. And the result was a silence that was uncomfortable for both of them.
‘I just thought I’d let you know I took a few calls while you were out,’ the young man said when the silence had lasted long enough.
He pointed at Albert’s desk, the heavy file on top of the Post-it notes. He was a little over twenty but looked like a teenager. And if it hadn’t been for his job, he’d probably never have seen the inside of a university.
‘I saw,’ said Albert. ‘I’ll deal with them later.’
‘I just wanted to be sure you’d seen.’
‘Thank you. Was there anything else?’
There was. But the assistant hesitated, still uncomfortable, and decided that it could probably wait. He shook his head and left the room.
Albert closed his eyes again.
‘Actually, there was one thing.’
The voice was just as close as before, and Albert looked up to find the irritating little man back in the same spot as ten seconds ago.
‘Have we stopped knocking altogether now?’
‘It was open,’ said the assistant.
‘Because you didn’t close it.’
‘I mean, not now. But before. You usually close it if you don’t want to be disturbed.’
Albert searched for a response, but could find none. Waved his hand for the secretary to tell him whatever was on his mind.
‘Do you know the people who worked in this office before you?’ he asked.
What the hell kind of question was that?
The secretary held out a padded envelope, embarrassed now at having raised the subject, realising too late that this wasn’t a matter for the head of the faculty. But he was still learning the routines and he had to ask someone, didn’t he? And it wasn’t his fault they’d given him a boss who was moody and depressed and refused to accept he’d been left by his girlfriend.
‘It’s just that it must’ve ended up in the wrong place,’ he said. ‘It’s addressed to someone who doesn’t work here. I didn’t know what to do with it.’
‘Okay,’ said Albert. ‘Take it to the porter’s office. They’ll either forward it to the right person or return it to whoever sent it. It’s not our job to go looking for people who don’t work here.’
The boy mumbled his thanks. Turned to leave for the second time.
Albert stayed in his chair, watching him as he went back outside. As he put the envelope on his desk. And kept existing. Shuffling around. Tending to things. Distracting him. Albert looked at his watch. It was too early for lunch, but it didn’t matter. He needed to be alone. Where didn’t make any difference, so long as it was somewhere nobody would bother him. And that letter was as good an excuse as any.
He got up and went out into the reception area.
‘Tell you what, give it to me and I’ll take it there myself.’
He saw the surprise in his secretary’s face but didn’t stop to explain himself. Just grabbed the letter from the boy’s desk, dead set on finding a quiet corner in the cafeteria or one of the libraries or perhaps even outside if it wasn’t too cold. And he walked out of the room and continued towards the stairs.
It wasn’t until then that he saw the name of the addressee.
Seconds later, Albert sprinted past the porters’ office. He still had the envelope in his hand, focusing only on getting through the large wooden doors and out into the cool winter air and the clear, bright sunlight to be able to see.
He stopped at the foot of the stairs. Ran his finger down the fold to open the envelope. He trembled from the tension, didn’t even notice when the stiff, yellow paper cut into his skin and made him bleed.
The letter was stamped with a franking machine. No logo, no name, no return address. But the edge of the print had the word BERN on it. And it was dated the day before.
Addressed to the University of Amsterdam.
Attention: Emmanuel Sphynx.
Albert fought back the tears, tried to keep his voice from shaking as he punched the number to the police, waited for someone to answer.
‘I need to speak to the Missing Persons Division.’
16
The conversation in the parliament carried on for another half hour without anything new being said. It ran down one dead end after another, and every question was met with evasive answers or new questions about what William and Ms Haynes had seen or talked about. Around him the dozen stone-faced men had remained silent aside from occasional brief contributions.
Eventually William lost his patience. The situation wasn’t going anywhere, and there wasn’t much to lose. Plus, he was getting hungry.
‘You know what?’ William said, loudly and with bite in his voice. It came from nowhere, butting in while someone was still talking. The room fell silent. He had everyone’s attention.
‘Here’s how it is,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you everything I know. Which, I might add, isn’t much. You don’t have to believe it if you don’t want to, you can keep asking me questions until I fall asleep or die or god knows what it is you’re after. But we’re not going to get much further than this. This is all I’ve got. And right now you’re the ones who choose what we’re going to waste our time on.’
‘So what do you suggest?’ It was Franquin. ‘What do you think we should be wasting our time on?’
‘I’d like to make a deal. Can we do that?’
No answer. Not that William expected one.
‘I’ll offer you my services. I’ll promise to do my best. I can’t promise you results, because you can’t guarantee anything in this line of work, but I promise to do my utmost to find the cipher key you need. But I want one thing in return.’ Again, the only sound was the whirring of the air conditioning. ‘I want to know exactly what it is I’m working on.’
The silence held. But there was something else. Glances were being exchanged across the table, as if a collective decision was being made.
‘Sandberg?’
The voice came from behind him, and he had to turn around to see.
Connors was standing up now, face and voice a notch lower
, the entire tone frighteningly serious. He took a breath, held it to underline the significance of what he was about to say.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d told someone. There had been at least twenty people before William, many of them present in the room right now, and they all stared at him, all of them knowing that in a couple of minutes he would be having thoughts he’d never previously had, that this moment would for ever mark the end of before, and that the rest of his life would be after.
Before and after the moment he got to know.
‘You’re a programmer,’ Connors began.
William shrugged. ‘Passably.’
Connors gave him a sympathetic glance. It hadn’t been intended as a question, only as a conversation opener; everyone in the room knew exactly what William’s role had been in the Swedish military. No one doubted that William was a skilled programmer.
‘So you know what a comment line is.’
William shrugged again. Of course he did. In common with anyone who’d ever tried to write a computer program. Comments were bits of the program code that were meant to be ignored by the computer. They had no significance to the functions the program actually performed, inserted merely as plaintext notes to be read by people rather than a computer. Sometimes they were there as reminders of what a certain part of the program was doing, sometimes to tell other programmers how a certain sequence was written. Or, not uncommonly, they were little in-jokes for fellow programmers to find. Quite simply, they were lines in the computer code that didn’t add any value to the actual program. Incidental messages from the ones who wrote it.
‘So?’ he said.
Connors looked at him. ‘What do you know about human genes?’
‘Significantly less.’
Connors expected as much. He cleared his throat.
‘In every single piece of scientific writing you can find today – every article or paper published in the modern era – there’ll be one thing you’ll read over and over again. So far, we have mapped out the purpose of slightly less than two per cent of the human genome.’ He held up his thumb and forefinger, close enough to touch each other, to show just how small a percentage he was talking about. ‘Two minuscule per cent, that’s all we can point to and say this, this part we know what it’s good for. But as for the remaining ninety-eight? Today, we simply don’t know what it does.’
Chain of Events Page 15