The Capital

by Robert Menasse

  When Brunfaut got to the café there was no sign of Philippe. He was a good quarter of an hour early, so it didn’t necessarily mean anything, but all the same he had a queasy feeling that Philippe was playing some sort of a game and was going to stand him up again.

  Stand him up? Well, it was better than sitting down – Émile Brunfaut could barely sit at all. The pain in his coccyx was excruciating. Sitting was only bearable if he shifted his weight onto one half of his pelvis. But how long could he do that for? He stood up and went to the bar. In agony he kept shifting his weight from one leg to the other, drank his beer down in one, ordered another and a jenever to go with it. He checked the time. He certainly wasn’t going to wait half or three-quarters of an hour for Philippe, who might not turn up anyway. He’d wait ten minutes at most. He knocked back the schnapps, picked up his beer glass and went outside. How hot it was. He couldn’t recall a spring or early summer in Brussels ever having been so hot, so oppressive, so brutal. The tarmac, the cobblestones, the walls of buildings stored the heat and radiated it. Not even the occasional gust of wind brought relief; it merely slammed the heat into your face like a crushing blow. And right now there was a most peculiar, unnatural-looking light, it was just before sunset, but here in the depths of the street you couldn’t see the sun itself, only yellowish-pink shafts of light that – Brunfaut looked up – appeared to coat the sky with a toxic varnish.

  Émile Brunfaut was a poetic soul. He just didn’t know it because he read few books. And no poetry at all. Of all the poems he had learned at school – and there weren’t many – only one had stayed in his memory: “À une passante”, because at the time the line “Un éclair . . . puis la nuit! – Fugitive beauté” had strangely moved him. Later, when he was a police inspector, he used to pep up his team when they were groping around in the dark with his own version of the line: La nuit . . . puis l’éclair! – Le fugitive est visible. As far as he was concerned, this had been the only poetic success of his life. But he underestimated himself. Now he was painfully moved by this light and he sensed it as a metaphor – unquestionably a poetic act. The bad light. All of a sudden everything appeared in a bad light. The familiar assumed a toxic coating and – he was looking at the building on the corner opposite the street sign: “Poissonniers” – there was a fishy shimmer.

  He would have liked to hang around longer in this light, in this atmosphere – not that he found it pleasant, but . . . actually, yes, he did. He found it atmospheric. Atmosphere, atmospheric, yes, that was it. It was the light of his mental pain, but he could not bear the physical pain. He finished his beer and was about to go back inside and pay when all of a sudden there was Philippe, embracing him – why so cheerfully, and why was he squeezing him so tightly?

  Brunfaut groaned briefly and withdrew from the embrace. What’s wrong? Philippe said. Are you in pain?

  Why did Brunfaut find the expression of concern in his friend’s face so exaggerated? How could Philippe think that he would fall for this charade? But if it weren’t a charade, then how could he believe that his best friend might be capable of engineering one?

  He was so furious he was on the verge of stamping his foot to check that the ground wasn’t shifting and wouldn’t fall from under him. Yes, he was in pain, he said, he fell at the cemetery. At the cemetery. Did that ring a bell? He took a deep breath. We had an appointment, didn’t we? You weren’t there. I’m sure you’ve got an explanation.

  My God, what made you fall? Did you injure yourself?

  What if I say it was because I didn’t see you, but I did see a ghost?

  Philippe was about to say something, but instead shook his head, then pointed at Brunfaut’s empty glass and said, Let’s go inside, we need a drink.

  It was the time of day when the café filled up quickly. Now there was no table free, but Émile Brunfaut said that he couldn’t down sit anyway.

  I went arse over tit. At our meeting point in the cemetery. My coccyx, it’s sheer agony.

  He made a sign to the man behind the bar: two beers!

  I won’t be able to stand for much longer either, so let’s not beat about the bush. What happened? Why weren’t you there? What’s the deal with this mysterious friend we were supposed to meet? Is he the old boy who asked me if I was talking to the dead? Are you going to tell me that this was some kind of code for me to identify him? And why couldn’t I get you on the phone? Please, Philippe, give me some explanation. And I beg you, explain it in a way that I can understand.

  You’re not going to believe this, Philippe said, but —

  Their beer arrived.

  Émile Brunfaut raised his glass and said, Santé! So, I’m not going to believe it? Go on.

  Listen, Philippe said. There’s a very simple explanation. The problem is, even though it’s very logical, it’s not very believable.

  You’ll manage to make me believe you.

  I don’t believe I will. I’ve never seen you so mistrustful, you’re turning into your grandfather, you’ve got to be careful, it’s this mistrust that destroys trust. Anyway, I’ll tell you the story as quickly as I can so you can get straight back to bed. By the way, Joëlle says hi and asks when you’re going to come and see us again. I’ll tell her she’s got be patient because you’re poorly. Right, the whole thing began when I got a letter. We’d already drawn a line under the matter, hadn’t we? You know what I mean. And then this letter arrived. I’ll say it again: a letter. Not an e-mail, not some electronic message. I almost missed it because all I ever do with the contents of my mailbox is tip them straight into the bin. Nothing but flyers, right? Anyway, the author of this letter, who called themselves “Nobody”, said that they’d traced me back.

  Traced you back?

  Yes. When I was trying to make some headway in finding out how the Atlas case could have been wiped from your computer, I must have found my way at least into the periphery of a system that was – let’s word it carefully – involved. I just don’t know exactly. Anyway, someone there noticed that I was trying to hack in. And if this really is a big deal, then “Nobody” will have worked out pretty quickly that it was me. What my name is, where I live, everything. They can do all this. So Nobody wrote me a letter and explained why they’d chosen this medium to establish contact: a good old letter sent by snail-mail is the only form of communication that can’t be stored somewhere, read by others, analysed and used against you. What used to be called a “dead drop”, a safe place for secret messages is now your everyday mailbox. Well, you know Léo Aubry from the laboratory. A good guy. Always helpful. And absolutely trustworthy, wouldn’t you agree? Exactly. I gave him the letter. The paper: bog-standard, the top-selling brand, you can get 500 sheets of it for four euros in every discount store. The printer: so far as he could conclude from the ink, a simple Canon, the best-selling printer in Belgium. And not the slightest trace of D.N.A. on the paper, nor anything else that might provide a clue to the sender.

  O.K. But what did the letter say?

  That I’d really stuck my neck out. That there was no way this could have been agreed with my superiors at work. I must be a lone warrior working outside my job. He was too.

  He? What made you think that Nobody is a man?

  Good question. I assumed it.

  I see. What else?

  He – I’m convinced it’s a man – wrote that he wasn’t the type of whistleblower who was prepared to wreck his own life, but he sympathised with everyone who looked for cracks for the truth to seep through.

  Those were his words?

  Yes. And he offered me his help. If I was interested in corresponding with him I should avoid making any further attempts to penetrate into the system, because he could no longer guarantee that the alert I had triggered could be kept hidden. He would supply me with the information I needed. If I agreed to this I should enter the following search into Google at a specific time the next day: “Hopi Indians rain dance”.

  Hopi what? What on earth are you talking about? That’s craz
y!

  No, it’s not crazy. Obviously this Nobody is able to see what I do at my computer. If I entered his search and then then clicked on one of the websites that came up, he’d know I was accepting his proposal without it showing up in the system at all.

  And so you did it?

  Yes.

  I need another beer.

  Me too. And do you know what happened next? I entered the words “Hopi Indian rain dance” and Google immediately came up with “System theory and new social movements. Identity problems in the risk society.”

  I don’t understand.

  There is nothing to understand. It’s the title of a book and in this book there’s obviously a chapter about Hopi Indians and rain dances. For whatever reason. And I clicked it.

  And?

  Two days later came the next letter.

  How did you reply?

  By means of Google searches at specific times. The keywords were my answer or my questions. He was obviously somewhere where he could monitor who was searching what on Google.

  How often did you . . . I mean, how long did this go on?

  Three weeks? Maybe four.

  And you didn’t say a word about it to me? We went to see Anderlecht against Mechelen, we wept into our scarves, how could they have beaten us 2:0? Then we had at least five beers and talked about everything under the sun, but you didn’t say a thing about this Nobody. It must have . . . it must have been at that time.

  It was, but first I wanted to be sure it was for real. It could just as easily have been a nutter.

  But it wasn’t a nutter.

  No, or, I don’t know. He gave me interesting and credible information. Like the dossier on the cooperation between the Vatican and the Western intelligence services. I read it, it was bewildering, fantastical even, but at the same time entirely logical and understandable too. They were pieces of a puzzle that fitted together perfectly. Look, no secret service in the world has the resources – neither the financial means nor the personnel – to develop a network of agents stretching across the globe in a way which can keep up with the current state of globalisation. Nowadays they have their agents in the hotspots. But who trusts them, who gives them information? Only those who are already cooperating with the governments of these intelligence services. Which means that what these agents report back doesn’t really differ from what the ambassador reports back home. And anyway, where will the next hotspot be? What will catch fire tomorrow while millions are invested in the work of perhaps thirty agents sitting in the spas of the few hotels still up and running in crisis zones? And twenty of those thirty are with the C.I.A., all in the same place treading on each other’s toes, whereas elsewhere they’ve got nobody. And that’s supposed to be the most powerful intelligence service in the world. Right then, here’s a simple question: Who, on the other hand, has got an agent in every backwater? The Vatican. Why? In every backwater there’s a priest. Who gets wind of the most secret of secrets in every corner of the planet? The priest, not least via the confessional. And even if they don’t have everything covered, their information yield is many times greater than the best-equipped secret service could ever muster. And that, my friend, is why the intelligence services compete for the Vatican’s favour, for cooperation and information exchange with the Church. It was like that during the Cold War and now it’s not even a secret any more. Now there’s a different enemy. These days it’s no longer godless communism, these days the enemy is called Islam.

  But . . . hang on! A Muslim isn’t going to go to a priest and confess that he’s carried out a terror attack or is planning one. That’s crazy.

  No, of course not. But good Christians might tell their priest if they notice anything suspicious about the new tenants who’ve moved into the neighbouring apartment, for example, or the block next door or opposite. They might sit at their windows with binoculars and peer into the buildings on the other side of the street. Is inquisitiveness a sin? Surely not our kind of inquisitiveness. But just as we usually file reports on what we’ve been investigating, the Christian confesses. And that’s why the partnerships established between the intelligence services and the Vatican during the Cold War still exist.

  Do you really believe that? Brunfaut said.

  Philippe hesitated, then laughed. I’m not a religious man. I don’t believe. And you can believe what you want now. I’ll give you the facts. How’s the coccyx coping, by the way?

  Another beer and another jenever and it’ll be fine.

  Good. I’ll try to keep up. So this Nobody has now hinted that with the sanction of the intelligence services the Church operates some kind of death squad that simply bumps off suspected terrorists or so-called hate preachers. That is to say, people who are suspected of planning an act of terror, but who the democratic state has insufficient evidence against to detain legally. And so we come to the Atlas case. Holy warriors carry out the job and the secret services support them by making the case disappear into thin air. Nobody sent me a list of fourteen murder cases in Europe from the past year, none of which made it into the newspapers.

  Did you check them out?

  Yes. I couldn’t find even the slightest hint of any of the cases on his list. Which means either they didn’t happen, or the cover-up was so immaculate that it left no clues whatsoever.

  We’re getting into conspiracy-theory territory here.

  No, we’re not. Because if you were to look for clues relating to the Atlas case you wouldn’t find a scrap of evidence either. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But we know it happened. And what we need isn’t proof of the fourteen murders on the list, but an explanation for the murder in Hotel Atlas. I must say, Nobody’s explanation sounds damned logical to me! Santé!

  Something was troubling Brunfaut. And his experience as a policeman told him that if something about a cover story troubled you, then in all likelihood there really was something fishy about it.

  I don’t understand why you didn’t let me know and keep me posted, he said.

  But I did, Philippe said. I mean, I know you. I knew I had to offer you more than a story like that. You need facts. I wanted to meet Nobody. And so the only search entries I made at the time agreed were variations on the word “meeting”. Three days later came another letter: Meet at the cemetery, I’ll let you know the details.

  So finally you get your meeting with this ghost, and then you don’t turn up?

  What do you mean? I was there. Of course I was. I have no idea where you were. Maybe by the wrong memorial, maybe at the wrong time, I don’t know. At any rate, I was there. And I sat on a bench, waiting for Nobody and you. Then my mobile rang. I picked up and a voice said, Monsieur Philippe Gaultier? Yes, I said. Are you sitting on the bench we agreed as our meeting point? he said. Realising who it was, I said, Yes. Stand up, please, he said. What? Why? I said. Please stand up, he said. I stood up and he said, Please turn around and tell me what you can see. I thought that was ludicrous and said, Listen, I don’t want to play games. No games, he said. What can you see? A tree, I said, then thought how ridiculous that was, what sort of an answer was that? And behind it? he said. Graves, I said. Soldiers’ graves. White crosses. Very good, he said. And behind those? Nothing, I said, just a vast field of white crosses. Look up, then, he said. What do you see now? Nothing, I said, I don’t know what you want me to say. I want you to tell me what you see, he said. Nothing, I said, trees, sky. And between the trees and sky? Beyond the cemetery? he said. Yes, two large buildings, I said, like two giant blocks of Emmental. Exactly, he said, do you know what that is? N.A.T.O., I said. Correct, he said. And now you have all the information I’m able to give you. Work with it or give up! Ciao!

  You were at the cemetery when you got this telephone call?

  Yes. I waited another three-quarters of an hour for you, and then I left.

  But why did you switch off your phone? I called you several times because I couldn’t find you, and —

  After that there was a problem with my mobile – I couldn�
��t receive or make calls. And as soon as it started working again I rang you. Which is why we’re sitting here now.

  What a marvellous story this was, Brunfaut thought. So exciting. He wouldn’t have thought Philippe capable of it. But he didn’t believe a single word. And he felt dreadfully hurt.

  The pain’s getting worse, he said. Forgive me, I’ve got to go home. He saw that Philippe hadn’t touched his schnapps. Émile picked up the glass, downed its contents and said, À bientôt, mon ami! Then he hobbled out. He realised he was limping, he didn’t want that, so he tried to walk upright, without any visible injury, but without success. He hobbled out of Café Kafka with the violent urge to scream.

  They had known that same day that Matek had flown to KrakÓw rather than Istanbul. And three days later they knew that all the clues leading to Warsaw the following day were a false trail he had laid deliberately. Matek had no confirmation of this, but he assumed it was the case. And he also knew that if he didn’t leave after three days he would put Pater Szymon, his close friend from his seminary days, in a moral dilemma. Szymon had given him refuge in the Augustinian monastery in the belief that Matek needed a period of retreat and contemplation. Szymon was absolutely loyal, Matek knew that he could rely on him, but he also knew Szymon would never be able to understand that Matek was in fact hiding in the monastery from the Church authorities. They knew his contacts, so Szymon would certainly appear in their sights from day four. And it was equally clear which side Szymon would come down on in the conflict between loyal friendship and the vow of obedience he had taken as a priest. Matek had used the three days for meditation, to ponder his situation and recharge his batteries. But now he had to leave. He had two options. First, he could keep on the move, staying in cheap hotels that weren’t so fussy about registration and I.D. papers. He wouldn’t use bank cards or credit cards, and wherever he could he’d avoid C.C.T.V. cameras in public places. He was a submarine, invisible and un- locatable. On the other hand, he had no possibility of finding out what had gone wrong in Brussels, in Hotel Atlas, and what they were now planning for him. And his cash would last another week at most. A week as a submarine would not improve his situation, nor would he be any the wiser at the end of it. His second option was to enter the lion’s den! He had to find out what had happened and what was in store for him. And there was only one place he could do that: Poznań. If he went to ground, they wouldn’t expect that he would turn up at H.Q. It was dangerous. But if it went badly he could show humility and argue that he had in fact come home of his own accord.