On the video chat, Éric simply shrugs his shoulders. “A side effect of the financial crisis, comrade. There are still half a million containers sleeping in terminals in Western Europe. Hong Kong gets thousands of empty boxes every day. Shipping companies have a whole fleet anchored off the coast of Malaysia. Hundreds of container ships, bulk carriers, tankers. No one on board for months. The industry has stalled.”
“I feel an urgent need to shop for a refrigerated container.”
“Don’t succumb to impulse buying.”
THE NEWS WENT OUT AT NOON, Beijing time, when everyone in Montreal was asleep: the Shenzhen port authority had agreed to divulge some strategic information.
When Laura came in to work at around 8 a.m., she found a summary of the situation among her messages: Papa Zulu had indeed arrived in Shenzhen on November 24 with a transshipping code. According to official records, it supposedly was loaded three hours later onto the Sea Master Evergreen, but the captain claimed he had never taken this box on board (a claim yet to be verified). The Shenzhen port authority having “physically ascertained” that PZIU 127 002 7 was no longer to be found in its terminal, the bothersome container had necessarily departed again aboard one of the seven ships docked during those few hours.
Jay is almost disappointed. “Is that it?”
“Well, it’s not bad. It narrows the search. The port of Shenzhen processes about fifteen container ships a day. With every passing twenty-four-hour period, the search area grows by 40 percent, with about a 5 percent overlap.” She opens an Excel file filled with names and calculations. “I tracked each of the seven ships. In total, they stopped in nineteen ports of call since November 24. The CIA should be able to obtain data on each of those ports, though that may not even be necessary. If we can determine the specific ship the container was on, that would be enough to limit the search to three or four ports.”
“So the investigation is progressing.”
“That’s quite a radical verb. Let’s just say it’s not regressing.”
On the opposite side of the Enclave, Mahesh is quietly busy on Google Earth, where he has traced Papa Zulu’s course over the past fifty-eight days, from Montreal to Caucedo and from there on to Panama, then across the Western Hemisphere to the waters off the Aleutians and Japan. From Shenzhen, the line splits into a multitude of possible paths, which, without too much of a stretch of the imagination, looks like a bouquet of tentacles moving among the region’s ports, stretching toward Manila, Singapore and Jakarta.
Mahesh, with an air of exasperation, twists the planet in every direction. “It doesn’t work!”
“What doesn’t work?”
He swivels 180 degrees and briefly loses his composure. “Are those Whippets?”
Jay holds out the box to him. Never stand between a programmer and his prey. She points at the screen with her chin. “What doesn’t work?”
Mahesh chomps on a Whippet, obviously wondering where to begin. “We’ve been following Papa Zulu for three weeks?”
“Twenty-two days.”
“Twenty-two days…”
Another Whippet disappears.
“At first it was a piddling little Montreal investigation. Not even Maurice took it seriously. Twenty-two days on, and Homeland Security and the CIA are on the case. Why do you think that is?”
“A lot of people think the next 9/11 will be industrial.”
“The dirty bomb scenario.”
“A classic.”
Mahesh spears another Whippet and dreamily inspects it from every angle.
“Homeland Security would love to vet all the containers entering US territory, but that’s impossible. Laura, how many container movements are there each day in NAFTA territory?”
“About a hundred and fifty thousand.”
“A hundred and fifty thousand. And that’s just ordinary business. The normal flow of trade, with the occasional load of cocaine or Cubans. Homeland is quite simply swamped. They can’t keep up. So just imagine what they might think of a mutant box capable of erasing itself from the databases…The Americans don’t want to find Papa Zulu; they want to catch the bearded guys holding the joystick. They see Rokov Export as the Canadian al Qaeda.”
“They don’t know Canada very well.”
“If that were true, wouldn’t Papa Zulu have entered the United States at Newark–Elizabeth?” Knitting his eyebrows, Mahesh gingerly removes the top of the Whippet’s skull.
“Not necessarily. Papa Zulu goes unnoticed because security for transshipping is not very tight. It’s not worth vetting a container that will be gone again in forty-eight hours. But moving a container into the hinterland—that is a different kettle of fish.”
“Maybe the United States doesn’t really interest them.”
“So what does interest them?”
“Very good question!”
Mahesh swings around toward the screen and points his semi-trepanned Whippet at Google Earth. “Papa Zulu went through Panama.”
“So?”
“It would have been quicker to go through Suez and Malacca. I just did the math: the route via Panama is four thousand kilometres longer.”
Laura shakes her head. “The shortest route isn’t always optimal in shipping. You have to consider schedules, fees and…”
“For a container travelling under normal conditions, that’s true. But Rokov Export does not have to concern itself with schedules and fees. Anyway, even with some leeway, going through Panama is a valid option provided the final destination is in Southeast Asia…say, in China, or Indonesia…”
He bites into a shard of chocolate.
“But if the CIA finds that Papa Zulu continued on to Singapore…what would that tell us?”
“That it’s going around the world.”
“A sort of test flight.”
Laura, decidedly skeptical, raises her hand. “Maybe they had their reasons for avoiding Suez. Regional issues, for instance.”
“You’re thinking Yemen?”
“Or possibly Sudan. That could explain the CIA’s persistence. I’ll see what I can find out about that.”
So Laura goes back to her keyboard to compose elegant inquiries. Silence falls over the Enclave once again. With an earnest expression, Mahesh sucks out the Whippet’s brain.
—
Jay spends a seemingly endless morning mining credit cards and chomping at the bit. In her mind, she tries to organize the events of the past twenty-four hours, to no avail; the clues have been piling up so quickly that she finds it hard to draw any conclusions, and she is afraid she won’t succeed before being run down by the lab results.
Standing by the windows, a handful of managers drink coffee and watch the cold front slowly bear down on Montreal.
At lunchtime, while everyone else is momentarily distracted, Jay slips on her coat and steals outside. She parked the car at a safe distance from the office. A providential layer of snow has already covered the windows. Jay takes the recycling bin out of the trunk and installs herself in the back. It’s cold and dark, but private.
What is immediately obvious is that the recycling bin paints a more intimate portrait than the trash from 230 Gibson. Élisabeth Routier-Savoie eats margarine, bagels and blueberry jam. She cancelled her Internet package during the month of July. She ignores the Publisacs, full of flyers and circulars. She has recently suffered from migraines or menstrual cramps. She has dry skin.
As she rummages, Jay wonders what people might think of her own garbage. Trash has always been a significant marker of social class. In bygone days, piles of manure attested to a farm’s prosperity. Today, everybody is secretly afraid of producing boring garbage, which would be evidence of a dull life. The trash can is the height of personal expression, and Mark Zuckerberg should take note: say goodbye to statuses of food and music; the posts of tomorrow will show the contents of our trash cans.
Jay makes a mental note of the idea. She should get it patented. It will give her something to keep herself busy,
after they lock her away.
Right now, she still has to sort out Élisabeth Routier-Savoie’s recycling bin. Some finds are disconcerting, such as the receipt for a pair of imitation sheepskin slippers, three pairs of men’s XL underwear and twelve toothbrushes. And what about the dozen or so UPS envelopes, all sent by Éric Le Blanc and bearing a customs invoice marked “gift—value $20”?
But strangest of all are, without a doubt, the innumerable medication packages. It’s as if the young woman had robbed a drugstore: analgesics, antihistamines, antibiotic and anti-hemorrhoid ointments, multivitamins, vitamin D, omega-3, eye drops, proton pump inhibitors, antifungal creams. Jay is starting to suspect she is dealing with a hypochondriac. No one buys this much medication all at the same time. There are even some obscure products that Jay has never heard of, like this collyrium wash, or these scopolamine patches.
Holding the scopolamine package, Jay suddenly goes rigid. A hair’s breadth from going into shock, she reads and rereads the words printed in red on the box: ScopoMax—fast and efficient treatment for seasickness.
LISA EMERGES FROM HER RETREAT in late May, pallid and shaky, but with that unmistakable gleam in her eye. Here she is, pacing back and forth in front of Autocars Mondiaux, beneath a broken sign representing a Greyhound Scenicruiser circling the globe. She parked the Dodge by the side of the cracked asphalt road, and from time to time she looks down the street and at her watch. She is waiting for something to happen or for someone to arrive, or both. She once again steps up to the garage and peeks through the windows, grimy almost to the point of opacity. Some abstract shapes can barely be made out in the half-light. And that’s good.
Renting this place turned out to be amazingly simple, although she did have to track it down first. Garages large enough to accommodate a forty-foot container are not all that common on the Montreal rental market. As soon as she saw the pictures of the garage on the MVGR Global Rental website, she rented it without even paying a visit. The pictures were flattering. The lease was signed via fax, and Lisa paid six months in advance.
There is just one detail left to take care of…and there it is just now appearing on the horizon, racing down Gibson Street and screeching into the Autocars Mondiaux parking lot. The tiny car makes an elegant turn and comes to a halt near Lisa. The courier rolls down the window, smiling, Rastafarian-ish.
“Isabelle Boucher-Boivin?”
“Present.”
The girl reaches toward the back seat and lifts out an envelope that she hands to Lisa. “Your signature. Right here.”
She holds out the terminal and a plastic stylus. Lisa puts a random mark on the screen, and the squiggle is instantly propelled to a server in Bangkok or Tucson.
“I need to see some ID.”
Lisa feels a stab of anxiety; she of course does not have any ID in the name of Isabelle Boucher-Boivin. It’s something she came up with on the spur of the moment, for the sake of the lease. And to think she laughed at Éric and his Rokov Global Import Export. Isabelle Boucher-Boivin. Pathetic. She taps her pockets with a grin, but the courier gestures for her to stop. No problem, comrade, forget it. Lisa draws the money clip out of her hip pocket and pulls out a tired twenty-dollar bill. The girl pockets the tip, gives Lisa a vaguely lascivious wink and immediately speeds off toward new adventures.
As she watches the car drive away, Lisa wonders what exactly that wink meant. She unseals the envelope, lets a set of keys drop into the palm of her hand and opens the glass door of what was once the reception area of the glorious Autocars Mondiaux. The lock could use some oil.
It’s like walking into an archaeological museum. Come see the wonders of the twentieth century, with its peanut vending machines, its waiting rooms, its management culture! Admire the gloss of linoleum and vinyl!
Lisa tries the light switch. No electricity.
She crosses the workshop, preceded by the echo of her steps. The place is empty. A vehicle lift once occupied the centre of the workshop, right where eight large rusted screws jut out now, and a hoist, whose track is all that remains, ran along the ceiling. All the implements of the mechanic’s profession were sold off, but there is still some robust steel shelving left, as well as a huge garbage drum, a steel workbench sturdy enough to support a tank turret, and a big sink with a petrified cake of soap resting on the rim. Lisa opens the tap, which sputters and spits brownish water. She lets it run.
The ring-shaped stains on the floor suggest leakage during heavy storms, and the cracks between the cinder blocks point to structural problems, probably irreparable. In a word, the building is just about ripe for demolition. It’s perfect.
Lisa presses the button that controls the garage door. Nothing happens. That’s right: no electricity. She’ll definitely have to take care of that. She opens the door manually, using the chains, and then she backs the Dodge up to the threshold to unload her equipment. She has brought only the bare essentials. Five tool boxes, extension cords, a drill, a mitre saw, several kilos of various screws, a portable light, her computer, clamps. She makes a tentative list of what’s missing. Work lamps. Radio. Trestles. Anvil. Vise. Coffee maker.
She takes a cardboard tube out of the van and pulls out ten large-format blueprints, which she proceeds to tack up on one of the walls. She arranges them in chronological order, like the storyboard of a film, to properly represent the project timeline.
Plans A, B and C are the most technical; they show the modification of the refrigeration unit to provide electricity, and the installation of the central electrical panel, the wiring, the breakers and power outlets, the lighting.
Plan D tackles the problem specific to the Faraday cage: how to communicate with the outside world from inside a corrugated steel box. The solution is a complicated diagram of unobtrusive antennas installed on the six sides of the container, so that every need as to wi-fi, radio and GPS is fulfilled.
Plan E deals with flow-through ventilation: carbon filters at both ends of the system, air cooling and heating, dehumidification.
Plans F and G delineate the main living areas: living room, kitchenette, storage room, drinking water and waste water tanks, trash and toilet space, and a wall of phony Empire apple crates to serve as a screen. The design also involves building an emergency hatch through the refrigeration unit.
Plans H and I represent the fine details of the design. Lisa drew her inspiration from the cabins of sailing yachts; everything is compact and convertible. The bunk transforms into a bench. The chart table is tiny but functional. In the kitchenette, each cubic centimetre was calculated and then recalculated. The extremity of the container, near the doors and just before the wall of apple crates, will be taken up by the dry toilet (concealed in an elegant wooden closet) and a trash compactor that can crush garbage into nice high-density cubes.
Finally, Plan J is more in the way of a perspective drawing. It represents what the finished container would look like if its sides were removed. There is a computer on the chart table, a VHF radio, an abundance of full-spectrum lighting, the library, the unfolded bunk, a trunk for clothes. Some peanut sauce is simmering on the electric stove. The bread maker and rice cooker are discreetly doing their jobs, and the germination machines are luxuriant under the ultraviolet lamps. The plan does not show everything; it leaves much to the imagination, with which Lisa gladly conjures up mellow, baroque details, cushions edged with pompoms, a samovar, a polar bear skin, even one of those padded armchairs in which the great explorers of the Victorian age, bushy-bearded and sharp-eyed, struck a pose before sailing away to perish Britannically in the heart of the Arctic icefields.
Once Plan J has been tacked to the wall, Lisa takes a few steps back and, hands on hips, contemplates the general effect. These plans represent seven months of intensive work: the past three months and the four months to come.
Speaking of the future, she looks at her watch. No time to daydream—she has an appointment with Piotr.
DESPITE HER NORDIQUES TOQUE, THREE layers of sweaters and
rubber boots, Jay is shaking. It’s 1 a.m., and there’s a bitter wind sweeping over the Canadian Shield.
The little girl has just turned ten and still lives a thousand kilometres downstream from Montreal in the village where she was born. It’s mid-October and, as is true every mid-October, she accompanies her father to watch the last sailing of the Nordik Express. The ship won’t be back before March, when the river thaws. Until then, there’s always the Ski-Doo.
Jay has never set foot on board the Nordik Express, and she looks enviously at the crew, the captain and even the three or four late-season tourists half asleep in their fuchsia windbreakers, who clutch the guardrail to keep from being carried off by a gust of wind.
The gangway is still resting on the wharf, and Jay wonders if it would be hard to steal aboard. Stowaway—now there’s an interesting idea.
She follows the operations, shivering. The dockers are loading an old container.
All of a sudden, Jay feels sad. She goes back to sit in the pickup, out of the wind. Long before the Nordik Express leaves port, she is already asleep.
LISA IS IN THE MIDDLE of the Jacques Cartier Bridge when her phone rings on the passenger seat. Her hands grip the wheel a little more tightly. She has learned to dread this sound. Since December, the only incoming calls have been to inform her that her father:
1) has tried to cross the US border;
2) cannot return home;
3) will be transferred to a faraway transitional facility;
4) has lost his partial dentures and damaged his TV. It won’t be long before he:
5) runs away;
6) has a stroke;
7) breaks his hip.
Lisa darts a sideways glance at the phone and sees the name Josée Savoie. With her finger on the button, she briefly considers not answering.
“Mom?”
“Glad to see you still remember me.”
Six Degrees of Freedom Page 18