Cabal
A SHORT STORY
1
I will resign soon – before the end of this month. I’ll write a letter to Mr Cohn explaining that I can’t go on like this. I can’t stand it anymore: the insecurity, the boredom, the overtime. And I never get to see Erica.
She works nights. Well, I say ‘works’ – it’s a pretty peculiar form of employment. She’s Swiss, Erica, and very beautiful. But that’s neither here nor there. What is both here and there is that she speaks a lot of languages: French Swiss, German Swiss, Italian Swiss. Even, I think, Swiss Swiss. Apparently not many people can speak all those languages; few can do so fluently; and fewer still are in Brussels and willing to work for such poor wages. In all there are twenty-one of them, working in shifts around the clock.
Her employee is a large and very exclusive Swiss bank. For legal reasons I can’t tell you its name, but even if I did you’d be none the wiser. Nobody’s ever heard of it. It doesn’t have any branches, and its website consists of two paragraphs of grey print on a white screen. It’s a bank that owns lots of other banks, as well as a car manufacturer, an electronics conglomerate and part of a space station. So they have no need for anything as banal as a physical location where you go and speak to the manager about your overdraft. You don’t have an overdraft. People at this bank are seriously underdrafted.
Erica is smart – she went to the university in Geneva and has a PhD in computer design. I occasionally find pieces of paper around the flat with diagrams and footnotes and very long words in French and sometimes German.
Her parents live in Geneva, but Erica left as soon as her studies were completed. It’s a bad time in Switzerland right now. Something to do with terrorists, terrorising. It’s happening all over Europe. There are even terrorists here now, in little old Belgium – the bins in the métro are closed off because of a spate of bombs last month. Far right nationalists, they think, but as different groups have claimed responsibility the motive for the attacks remains unclear. The terrorists don’t seem to have any fixed idea what they’re doing. Perhaps that’s the idea; it’s more terrifying. At Schuman, where I catch the train every morning, Coke cans and chocolate bar wrappers lie in small heaps along the platform. It feels like London in the Eighties.
But life’s not bad here. Rent is cheap. Erica doesn’t want to go back to Geneva, she keeps telling me that. She’d rather stay here with me and work this shitty job. Things will get better, we keep telling each other, even though neither of us is really sure it will.
Erica is twenty-six. I’m twenty-three, soon to be twenty-four. We both moved to Brussels last year. I’d never been before, but my cousin Sammy was out here and said he might be able to get me an internship at his office, so I came out for a few weeks to see. That was in December.
I met her three months ago. It was odd – she picked me up. That had never happened to me before. I was out with Sammy and a couple of the guys from work, in this club near the office. It was a very small place and I wasn’t dancing, just standing under an air-conditioning unit sipping an over-priced Becks. Erica walked up and started dancing right in front of me, shaking her hips the way girls know how to.
I wasn’t sure she was interested at first. Perhaps she’d just found herself a decent spot in the club where she could let loose. I’m quite short-sighted, and with the lights and the smoke and everything I couldn’t make out her eyes, whether or not they were looking at me. I think this worked to my advantage, incidentally – she told me later that she thought I had played it very cool.
But soon her body was near enough to mine to make the message unequivocal, and I slowly started to dance with her. There was an immediate connection. Her beauty helped, of course, but her innocence also appealed to me, that someone who looked like that felt they had to impress me. She took the task of demonstrating her body’s appeal very seriously, and as she danced it seemed as if she was concentrating on remembering some ancient, complex code: step this way, then jerk your head that way...
Later, sitting down on a fashionably grotty sofa that hurt my back, I asked her what she did for a living. She laughed, and I felt I had made a mistake. I remembered dances at school, girls going to powder their noses halfway through a conversation and never coming back.
‘Let’s not talk about work,’ she said. But after a while we did, of course. Everyone talks about work eventually.
That’s when she told me about the bank. Her laughter hadn’t been directed at me, but herself. She was ashamed to being doing something so beneath her, but she’d had to leave Switzerland after university and finding work had been harder than she’d expected. She screamed at me over the music that she didn’t really know what she wanted to do with her life. Perhaps she would return to academia one day: she likes to read, and then write about what she has read. But in the meantime she had taken this job, using her languages.
That was three months ago, and now we live together. She’s still at the job, working for the people who work for the bank. Specifically, for the people who run the bank. Have you ever wondered where bankers keep their own money? I hadn’t, until I met Erica. But the way it works is that the people who own the bank keep their money there too, only in very special accounts. And they have special cards which they can use anywhere to access their accounts. These cards can be used in any machine in the world. When you’re rich enough, even the banks you don’t own are nice to you.
But occasionally, very occasionally, something goes wrong. One of the elite loses his card, or has it stolen, or perhaps just clean forgets his PIN. Crisis! Can you imagine how angry one of these bigwigs would get if he couldn’t withdraw money from his own bank?
So the bank set up a little nest, away from their administrative headquarters. The political landscape of Switzerland is bleak, so they found a discreet furnished office in downtown Brussels: the beating heart of Europe, a trusted hiding place. For this is a camouflaged nest – it would be bad for morale if the staff knew the lengths to which their company goes to protect its directors from the slightest chance of a mishap, all because they might forget their own damn PIN. How can these people run the bank if they can’t even remember that? Even the lowliest clerk who spends all day counting change knows his own card number. Stolen, you say? Why can’t they call the regular number, like everyone else?
So. A secret office: twenty-one people, working in shifts, all fluent in the necessary languages. Mr Freyer forgets his number in Capetown and calls the 24-hour hotline in Brussels – a young woman with an attractive voice and an efficient manner quickly establishes his identity through a series of pre-arranged questions and provides him with the correct code or, if necessary, a new card is immediately dispatched by the company courier to his hotel.
There are only ten people in the world who have these special cards.
Erica knows their names by heart – she dreams them and recites them to the ceiling in bed: Aik, Backer, Berger, Cassil-Grum, Ephs, Forget, Freyer, Martin, Vuighl, Yves.
In the six months she has been at the bank, not one person has received a call from any of the ten. Nor have any of the twenty-one worked with anyone who has ever received such a call. So while they wait for Mr Berger to drop his wallet down a drain in Cairo, they spend their hours watching television, surfing the Internet, listening to music at low volume, filling in crossword puzzles, planning their escapes. Occasionally, their supervisor will call and pretend to be a card-holder, but they always know it’s him. They have become inured to spending their hours on a blunted knife-edge. They are playing golf in a thunderstorm. They are floating in a zone midway between dreaming and consciousness, where every moment promises danger but never delivers it.
This is what my girlfriend does while I sleep. She’s on the night shift, as we need the money. I work as much overtime as I can, saving for the skiing trip in the Ardennes we’re always talking about. When I can, I ring her from work, if she has already left the flat, and half-heartedly pretend that I have had my card stolen by thieves in the night, I’m calling from Jakarta, this is urgent. But I do this less now, as her colleagues always know it’s me by my abysmal accent, and even Erica has tired of the joke.
2
I call her now to tell her I’m on my way home, and she whispers to me that she loves me. This always pleases me, and I imagine her holding the receiver away from her colleagues, looking out the window to my building across town, as I am to hers. I almost wave.
‘Any luck?’ I ask, meaning has anyone called.
‘I wish,’ she replies. ‘I’m the only one awake.’ They often let each other doze for half an hour at a time, setting up elaborate sequences of alarms and rotas within rotas. ‘You know, Danny, this is wearing me down.’
‘I know. I can feel it too.’
‘I just wish…’ her voice falters. ‘I’m sorry, but I just wish one of these bastards would get their wallet stolen. It’s driving me fucking mad!’
I laugh. But I also silently curse the men who have such sway over my girlfriend’s well-being, conferring brutal muggings on them each in the back alleys of my mind. Aik, Backer, Berger, Cassil-Grum, Ephs, Forget, Freyer, Martin, Vuighl, Yves.
‘Sorry,’ I say to Erica. ‘If I could, I’d steal one for you.’
‘I know you would, darling.’ She sighs. ‘It would just be great to feel I was here for a reason. I feel like I’m wasting my life away. But forgive me, let us not be depressive – how is everything with you, my pretty Englishman?’
‘Same as usual,’ I say, which is code for terrible but I can’t go into it because people are around.
‘I understand. Shall I wake you when I get home?’
‘Yes,’ I say. I like the way she wakes me.
3
I sleep badly. I’ve been having nightmares recently, about dogs chasing me through dark fields and men wearing caps calling my name, their voices jagged with rage.
But now Erica is there too, and I am strapped to some sort of a reclining chair. She is wearing a uniform, explaining something about the shape of my head to an audience of doctors. Braces are placed on my temples, and the chair starts to tilt further and further back, until I am sure my head will meet the ground. All the while Erica keeps talking in this very matter-of-fact way, and I can’t understand what she’s saying, but I know it’s not good news. Finally, she reaches over with a small metal ruler and begins to very carefully measure my nose, first the length and the sides and then the bridge, as she drones on to the soldiers in a voice I do not know.
I wake in a sweat to feel Erica sitting naked astride me, her hands stroking my face. She sees my horrified expression and she looks very guilty and now she is hugging me and kissing my lips, my eyelids, the tip of my nose.
‘Oh my baby, I am sorry I scared you, it’s just me.’
I look over at the clock and see that it is seven. Erica starts to move her hips, and the room slowly rearranges itself, the light from the street hits her neck and her lovely gold hair, and the dream recedes, leaving just a small hole.
By eight, I’m in the shower and behind schedule. As I walk towards the dresser, I stop to kiss her again, a long lingering kiss, and she blinks at me.
‘Take care now, won’t you?’ she says, and I smile as I know what is coming.
‘Yesh Moneypenny,’ I reply in my best Sean Connery, ‘You know I alwaysh take care.’
‘You mad Englishman!’ she laughs, throwing a pillow at me. I pin her down. ‘It’s not just me,’ I object. ‘You should know that all Englishmen think they are Bond.’
‘Bond?’ she asks, mimicking me, raising one eyebrow.
‘James Bond.’ I throw the duvet to the floor, exposing her. ‘Now tell me who you really are. You’re not Moneypenny, are you?’
‘No, James,’ she says. ‘I am Erica.’
‘Who sent you? The Swiss government? Are you spying for the Swiss government?’
‘But James, everyone knows that Switzerland is neutral.’
I touch her and she squeals. ‘That didn’t sound neutral to me.’ I say.
‘Oh James…’ she sighs, closing her eyes and arching her back for me. But my eyes are not on her. I am distracted by a glimpse of something lying on the floor, poking out between the bed and the discarded duvet, something sharp and shiny. My glasses case lies on the bedside table, out of reach. Without altering the pressure of my touch, I squint at the object, slowly forcing it into focus. From here, it bears a remarkable resemblance to a small, metal ruler.
4
I walk into the Hilton at ten past nine and take the lift to the eighteenth floor, which we’re renting out for the month. I discovered on the way over that my glasses case, which I deposited in my pocket as I ran out of the flat, is empty. The prospect of an entire day squinting, coupled with yet another rainy morning, makes me suddenly feel very tired.
Mr Cohn looks up from his bowl of cereal and frowns at me. Fruit juice and a banana lie atop his writing bureau. He is wearing a napkin tucked into his collar, and droplets of milk are dripping from his beard.
‘You’re late, Danny,’ he says.
I have my excuse prepared. ‘There was a bomb in the métro, sir. I had to take the bus.’
He stares at me as if I had just announced I were the Pope.
‘Today?’ he says. ‘This morning?’ I nod, trying to look harried, which isn’t too hard. ‘Which station?’
I glance over at the windows, and the grey rain hitting the glass. ‘Arts-Loi,’ I say.
I turn to see Cohn grinning at me. He places a stub-like hand on my shoulder.
‘If I hadn’t overheard you use that one last week with Mr Shapiro, I might well have fallen for it.’ I start to protest but he shushes me affectionately. ‘Come, come, Danny, you’re among friends now.’
I think over my options and decide that honesty is looking favourable.
‘I do my best, sir,’ I smile ruefully, as if to say I can’t help being such a rogue.
‘Stop calling me sir,’ he smiles. ‘You know I prefer Ben.’ But before I can say anything he has called Sammy over from the fax machine. ‘He’s quite something, this cousin of yours,’ he says, and Sammy glares at me. He makes to apologise on my behalf, but just then Cohn gives him a hearty slap on his back. ‘Quite something.’ Seeing his mood, Sammy drops the glare and readily agrees.
‘We’re all quite something in our family, Ben,’ he says, and good-naturedly pokes me in the stomach.
‘Man, look at you!’ Cohn says to me. ‘Nothing but skin and bones! Here, have a bagel at least.’ He strides over to a coffee-table and brings over a tray, foisting it in my direction. ‘Eat, eat! We can’t have skeletons like you running around. What will people think?’ I take a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel from the tray.
‘Now Danny,’ Cohn continues, ‘today you’ll be working with Sammy in the Commercial Department. Something has come up, and we need as much help as we can get. Samuel will fill you in.’
The Commercial Department? That was the hub of the whole organisation! I wonder why Cohn is suddenly so fond of me, and make a mental note to be late for work more often. I usually work in the Media Department, maintaining our contacts in Hollywood and elsewhere. It isn’t nearly as exciting as it sounds, as it’s pretty much a done deal. To all intents and purposes the media is ours, and it’s mainly a matter of executing relatively simple procedures honed over many years to ensure things remains that way.
Mr Cohn pokes me in the ribs and places a sweaty palm on the back of my neck for a meaningful moment, before heading back to his bowl of cereal and his copy of Fortune. I follow Sammy into the Commercial Department, which is usually the Honeymoon Suite.
Four mahogany dining-room tables are linked to form a square, around which everyone is working. Shirt sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, and four small electric fans sit on each corner of the carpet, moving their heads back and forth as though watching a very slow tennis match taking place on the ceiling. The air-conditioning broke down yesterday, and technicians are kneeling by one of the units trying to fix it. Mr Cohn has already negotiated a ten percent reduction on our rent as a result of this inconvenience.
I look out at the greyness of the morning: pigeons pecking in a damp gutter. By the door, two receptionists field calls. They are dressed identically, and I still find it hard to tell them apart. Both phones suddenly start ringing, and their hands reach out as though synchronised. A brief intake of breath, and then their adenoidal voices merge: ‘Bonjour, le Complot Juif Mondial, good morning, World Jewish Conspiracy, can I help?’
Sammy hands me a cup of coffee. ‘Everything has changed as of last night,’ he is saying. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen the news this morning?’
‘No,’ I admit, ‘I haven’t.’ I sip from my coffee and burn my tongue. ‘Just how I like it,’ I say, smiling weakly.
Sammy eyes me with utter contempt before continuing. ‘At four-thirty this morning, our head honchos in New York held a teleconference via satellite with the chairmen of various major Swiss banks. This is good news, Danny, very good news. They have increased their offer by one thousand percent.’
‘A thousand?’ I say, surprised. He grins at me.
‘It just goes to show you what a bit of pressure can do.’ He nudges me, dislodging some of my coffee. ‘You’re with the big boys now – this is where it all happens.’ And he gestures at the flurry around us. I find myself nodding, but then I stop as my head is throbbing.
He is talking about the money. You may have seen something about it. It has been in the news for years now: our efforts to get the Swiss banks to repay some of the money they stored in private accounts during the war. There have been endless protests, meetings, debates. But until now there had been no real progress. The figure the banks were offering was paltry, laughable. It hadn’t been anything I paid much attention to. It wasn’t my department, and anyway nobody expected it to be resolved any time soon. I had teased Erica a little about it, to be sure, being in the employ of possible Nazi collaborators, et cetera; but it was another stale joke, and a little too near the knuckle to be repeated often.
‘So, what do you want me to do?’ I ask Sammy.
‘Haven’t you been listening to me?’ I hadn’t. ‘This is it – action stations!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that in an hour we’re going to the airport to pick up the Swiss delegation, and at noon we are holding a press conference downstairs, where Mr Cohn and the Swiss will sign a joint document agreeing to the sum in question.’
‘What do you mean by ‘we’?’
‘I mean you and me, Sammy. Now get yourself to the Recovery Suite and shave, and give your shoes a polish while you’re at it – we can’t have you turning up to reclaim our money looking like you just walked out of Dachau, can we?’
5
As we step out of the limousine we are greeted by a crowd of protesters. Most are young men wearing black, waving banners which read ‘DON’T THE GOLDBERGS HAVE ENOUGH GOLD?’ and ‘LEAVE THE MONEY WHERE IT BELONGS’.
Neo-Nazis.
There is a line of police separating us from them, but I’m still close enough to hear their chants, to see the hatred spread across their faces. Walking into the Arrivals Terminal I am spat at by one of them. Shaved head, gaunt face, baggy trousers – he looks not dissimilar from a concentration camp inmate himself. His brilliant blue eyes burn into me as he screams his insults. I recognise him from countless news bulletins, and from files kept at work. He is Adolf von Schmidt, leader of the Racist Aryan Skinhead Alliance. They originally called themselves the Racist Aryan Nazi Skinhead Alliance, but the government banned any party from using the word ‘Nazi’ in their name shortly after.
Belatedly, I notice the camera crews circling the scene. Most of them are also thin, intense, and wearing black – some hold prompt cards above their heads for the interviewers to read from, which I had presumed were simply more fascistic banners. Von Schmidt turns to a camera and is suddenly very calm, smiling sweetly as he no doubt assures the Western world of our depravity and greed.
A few minutes later, we are drinking beer in a cafe on the second floor. I can still see the skinheads protesting outside, and at one point von Schmidt breaks free from the police line and runs toward the revolving doors, yelling obscenities all the while. He is swiftly escorted back to the rope but continues his raving, flicking his left arm out repeatedly in a gesture of precarious legality. Sammy follows my gaze, has another swig of his Hoegaarden. Figures clatter on a board above us.
‘They’re here,’ he says, fishing a couple of notes from his pocket and placing them under his glass. I look up to see doors swinging open and a group of men in dark suits carrying briefcases march into the marble hall.
6
On the eighteenth floor of the Brussels Hilton, we are celebrating. The table is strewn with debris. Empty plates, bottles, bread baskets, corkscrews and napkins: an aerial view of a vanquished city. A treaty has been signed and we are celebrating with our new friends, the Swiss bankers. My right leg is shaking beneath the table, but otherwise there’s nothing to suggest I am anything but relaxed and contented after a long day of work.
Mr Cohn, resplendent in a pinstripe suit that shows off his belly to great advantage, sits at the head of the table drinking grappa. A black velvet skullcap clings to his balding head at an impossible angle. Mr Cohen, one of the finance directors, sits beside him. He wears a top hat and is smoking a fat little cigar. I contemplate excusing myself to make a phone call, but think better of it. Erica will be leaving the apartment soon.
‘Here, Danny, young man, have another glass of grappa,’ Mr Cohn calls from the other end of the room. ‘It’ll make you feel like a hero!’ He hands it to Cohen and it is gradually passed along the table until it reaches me. Now everyone is staring at me, waiting. I hate grappa.
‘Do I have to?’ I ask.
Cohn turns red. ‘Do you have to? Do you have to?’ he splutters. And then laughs very loudly, as is his way. Everyone joins in. ‘If you don’t down that in one, boy,’ he says, ‘you are fired.’ His face is serious again.
All thoughts of Erica, of the bankers, of anything, vanish. The room is silent, except for the distant sound of a tap dripping. I know better than to question Mr Cohn. ‘We are all heroes tonight,’ I say, lifting my glass and downing its contents.
‘That’s my boy!’ shouts Cohn, and before I know it everyone is cheering. My throat is on fire and I think I am going to be sick, but somehow I manage to keep it down.
It is later still, and the stars are going out. Most of the staff have left now. I estimate I have done over twenty hours of overtime this week. I watch as, far below, a solitary businessman walks out of the boutique next door and two men start to pull down the grille. The television flickers to itself in the corner. Large armchairs have been pulled up, brandy is sipped, chocolate liqueurs are sucked on.
Sammy is deep in conversation with one of the interpreters, a Flemish woman wearing a red trouser-suit and too much make-up. I wonder what his mother in Golder’s Green would think if she could see him now, laughing as he pulls a cocktail stick from the olive in his mouth.
I am talking with Gil, Mr Cohn’s bodyguard. He came here from Mossad, and has on previous occasions drawn me diagrams showing how to kill three men with a single bullet. But tonight we are discussing literature. He is a Doris Lessing enthusiast, and is promising to lend me a copy of The Good Terrorist.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. Mr Cohn is eyeing me importantly. There is a tall man with round glasses I recognise from the airport by his side. Gil slips away with a soft smile, and takes up his position by the lift.
‘Danny, I’d like you to meet Monsieur Forget, who is with...’ and he mentions the name of Erica’s bank, which for legal reasons I cannot disclose at the present time. ‘Danny here has been with us since the start of the year. He has proven a great asset to us so far, and I expect big things of him in the future. Very big things.’
‘Indeed?’ says Mr Forget. One would never guess from looking at him how much he is worth. Of course, the moment I catch his name and bank I know for certain what I have both prayed for and dreaded all evening: one of them is here.
Forget is one of the ten.
‘What brings you to Brussels, Mr Levi?’ he is asking me. ‘It surely can’t be whatever Ben is paying you.’ The two men start laughing.
‘No,’ I say, ‘It certainly isn’t that. It’s the grappa.’ The two redouble their efforts and Forget glances at Cohn approvingly. I see my opportunity and run with it. ‘Monsieur Forget, if I may be so bold, may I ask you something?’
He stands back for a moment to show me that he is a serious man willing to listen to any question from a keen young mind. ‘Of course,’ he says grandly. Fire away.’ I note his faultless English and Windsor knot.
‘Where do you bank?’
There is a long pause, and I think I have made a terrible blunder. Finally Forget tilts his long frame towards me confidentially. ‘I must confess, Danny – I have a Swiss bank account.’
Again much merriment, and Cohn is delighted. Frustrated that Forget has answered my question so feebly, and unable to look at him for any longer, I excuse myself to make a phone call.
Downstairs, and Erica is crying into my ear. ‘I’m going to kill myself, Danny. I mean it.’
‘Don’t say that.’ I pause, gathering strength. ‘Let’s talk about this. You can talk, can’t you?’
She stops crying to laugh, or at least to make a sound a little like laughter. ‘You mean am I worried that some fat businessman is going to get their wallet stolen in the next five minutes? I think we can take our chances, don’t you?’
‘Baby, calm down, please, calm down.’ I don’t tell her that Forget is actually quite slim. I don’t tell her anything.
‘No, I won’t calm down. I’ve been stewing here all night. They’ve all gone to sleep, the lot of them. And I’m the stupid fool sitting here rotting away as usual.’ I stare at the pattern on the carpet, trying to find the symmetry but failing.
‘Erica,’ I begin, ‘I have some good news.’
The line could be dead, for all I know.
‘What?’ she asks finally in a very small voice.
‘It’s Mr Cohn,’ I say, stumbling a little, but then I right myself. ‘I was talking to him over dinner, and I told him about our plan to go skiing for a few days, and he said not only could I have the time off, but he would take us to Zosterbach, all expenses paid! He has a spare chalet up there, apparently, and we can stay in it. Isn’t that fantastic?’
Silence.
‘What’s wrong, my love?’ I ask her. ‘I thought you wanted to. You can get the time off, can’t you?’
‘Yes, I suppose.’
My mind is moving, but far too slowly. ‘You don’t like Mr Cohn, do you?’
‘What?’ she explodes. ‘How can I not like Mr Cohen when I have never met him?’
‘It’s Cohn,’ I say, ‘not Cohen.’ I must have told her about the two of them a hundred times.
‘Whichever.’ But then: ‘Oh Danny, I am so sorry. Of course that’s great news, it’s just I feel like I am being sucked in here, like time has frozen or something. I can’t think with all this nothingness!’
‘I know,’ I tell her. ‘I know.’
Back on the eighteenth floor, I nod to Gil and make my way to the Recovery Suite.
There is someone buried under the blankets in the bedroom, I think Mandelbaum from Technology. An alarm clock sits beside him – he must be taking a quick nap. Probably done in from all the drinking. Those Tech guys are a notoriously ascetic bunch.
A wide-screen television shows a football game on mute, the European Cup live. One half of the field is in shadow, the other in sunlight. England are down a goal to Germany. I suddenly long to be there, on the pitch, in the sun, worrying about equalising. I think of school, how we used to play three-and-in on a Sunday afternoon. I watch the game for a few minutes, and then tip-toe away from the television and Mandelbaum. The Germans always win, anyway.
After a quick shower, I slap on some cologne and rummage around for a fresh shirt. I have my own shelf now, and tend to keep a couple of changes of clothing here for really late nights. Feeling somewhat invigorated, I step across the hall to the bathroom.
The urinals gurgle loudly as I walk in, and the sudden combination of strip lighting reflecting off white tiles nearly blinds me. It takes a few seconds for the spots to go away, and then I am aiming for the blue ring.
Someone flushes behind me, and shoes click to the sink.
‘Danny,’ I hear. ‘Liberating your bladder of some of that grappa, are we?’ His voice is very even, but clipped as a brigadier’s. I look over my shoulder at Forget adjusting his belt.
‘That’s right,’ I say, zipping up. I join him at the sink. We both turn taps.
‘Danny, Ben has been telling me about what a good job you’ve been doing here.’
I keep cool. ‘That’s very nice of him.’
‘He also tells me you have a Swiss girlfriend – is this true?’
Cohn! ‘Yes,’ I admit. ‘She studied at Geneva University.’
‘Really?’ says Mr Forget, but he doesn’t ask me what subject, or what she is doing in Brussels. He doesn’t care, is merely making chit-chat with a peasant while he washes his tanned, manicured hands. I have never seen such brown hands. He looks like he has dipped them in something. Gstaad, I think, the bastard probably got so brown skiing. I never get a tan skiing. My nose just goes red and I end up with large lines under my eyes from my goggles, which are always far too tight.
Without taking his eyes off me, Forget places his hands under the dryer and begins to slowly turn them, first this side, now that side. I think of the place Erica took me to downtown, where you can see the chickens rotating on a spit from the street.
Then, very slowly and deliberately, he reaches into his jacket pocket, his left jacket pocket, and removes a small wallet, the leather a dull greenish-black. From it, he produces a small creamy business card, which he slowly caresses between his thumb and forefinger. The dryer suddenly turns itself off and the room goes very quiet.
‘If you are ever in Zurich,’ he says, handing it to me, ‘please give my assistant a call.’
I stare at the card and mutter my thanks. Forget smiles as he places his wallet back in the confines of his jacket.
‘Not at all,’ he says, adjusting his little spectacles, ‘not at all.’
Cohn is showing the Swiss round his lair, pointing out the security precautions, the video cameras, the satellite hook-up facility. I find myself sitting alone, drinking coffee and eating chocolate mints. It’s now nearly one o’clock in the morning.
Hanging on the back of my chair is a jacket. The fans have been still for hours now, and in the quiet of the early morning nobody thought to switch them on again. Throughout the course of the night, people have removed their jackets absent-mindedly and flung them on chairs around the room, myself included.
But this is not my jacket. My jacket is lying in a pile on the armchair opposite me.
Without thinking, I feel behind me and reach for what I somehow know is there. A dull, slightly tatty, greenish-black wallet. For a moment, I am transfixed by the texture of the leather, and then I wake up.
It is a simple black card. The name of the bank is printed in grey, and underneath that: ‘C. FORGET’.
I look up. Nobody. Cohn’s voice in the distance. I place the card in my pocket, and return the wallet to its home.
I reach for another After Eight.
7
It is nearly two now, and the nightmares have come to life. I am standing in the lobby of the Hilton shaking hands with Mr Forget and his compatriots. The limousine is waiting to take them to the airport – they have a flight back to Zurich to catch. Forget will buy a sandwich in the departure lounge and, opening his wallet, will notice that the card is not in its usual place. Or perhaps on the plane he will be seized with a sudden urge to glance at the photograph of his wife. A stewardess will be called, a satellite phone will be fetched.
I am screaming inside. Will he suspect a theft? Will they search me? But they can’t prove anything, I have thrown the card in a skip down the street, there is no evidence. Video cameras, I think. Cohn’s fucking video cameras.
The limousine is finally off, and I try to calm myself. He will think he has dropped it. He might not even notice for a couple of days. Erica, my love, I did it for you. And the rich shit deserved it, your honour! I can call his assistant? As the Americans might say: ‘I don’t think so’. I think of how my girlfriend will laugh when I tell her I was responsible. I imagine the two of us on the bed in Mr Cohn’s chalet, hysterical as we re-enact Forget’s panic.
Now Cohn is suggesting a drink. I hate these situations, as I never know what is expected of me. I tell Cohn I will see him next week, and make as if to hail a taxi, but he is having none of it. ‘What, are you crazy in the head?’ His voice suddenly has an eastern-European tinge and I wonder where he is from, originally. ‘Of course you are coming. We need to test how much you can drink!’ Cackling, he punches me in the stomach.
‘One for the road,’ says Sammy as we walk back through reception, ruffling my hair in a cousinly manner.
The suites are deserted and quiet without the Swiss. All the lights are off, and it gives me the creeps, seeing the desks unmanned in the moonlight. ‘This way,’ says Cohn, grinning, and Sammy and I pad down the corridor after him, our footsteps in synch.
In the Recovery Suite, someone is sitting on the bed. Mandelbaum has slept through his alarm! Static plays over the television. Cohn switches the lights on, and I feel my head start to pulse.
The man is not Mandelbaum. He has the organisation’s badge on the lapel of his jacket, and is wearing a red kippah like Mandelbaum’s, but he is not Mandelbaum. His face is gaunt and his eyes are a brilliant blue.
‘I’ll have a schnapps please, Adolf,’ says Cohn, sinking into an armchair. Von Schmidt walks over to the mini-bar and over his shoulder asks what Sammy and I would like. Without thinking, I say ‘Grappa’.
The three of them are explaining to me how it works, taking turns. Adolf is actually fairly amenable, making jokes and helping out the other two when I lose the gist.
Cohn is addressing me now, drawing a simple diagram on a napkin to show the flow through the departments. But why, I ask, why? And so Sammy tells me why we are paying the Nazis – and through the fog of a thousand grappas, it gradually becomes clear.
The leaders of the organisation realised a few years ago that it makes us look good on television and in the press to have raving lunatics objecting to us. It puts people on our side. But it was always hard to find a group of lunatics who would say the right things – you could never rely on them being consistently rabid. So we simply created our own group, and then set up a team to write their speeches, design logos, the whole bit. This was a branch of the Media Department I hadn’t been aware existed. As a humble stagiaire, I was too low down the ladder to be trusted. Until now.
Adolf pushes a small saucer of olives in my direction, and lights a cigarette. ‘Welcome to the club,’ he says, inhaling.
8
I am running through the park, past a group of homeless people loudly playing cards. I am running down empty streets, past the former Commission building in its luminous white wrapper, an imitation Christo. I am running past vacant shops, Irish pubs, building sites. There is sand beneath my boots, and holes in the walls, and I could be in Jerusalem. I am running towards a gang of boys drinking from giant bottles of Jupiler that hang by their sides. There is a force-field of tension fizzing around them. I see one of them catch a fly in his fist and let it go. They are waiting for something to materialise from the dregs of their wasted night, something to wake them up and show them what life is all about: violence, or perhaps love. They are waiting.
But I am running, up the stairs to our apartment, taking the steps three at a time. I am fiddling with my key ring, and jamming the key in the lock.
I am standing in the bedroom, reading her note.
‘Dear Danny,’ it reads, ‘I have gone back to Geneva to stay with my parents for a while. I think it is for the best.
‘Monsieur Forget called at about five-thirty this morning, from somewhere over France. The line was not altogether clear, but someone had stolen his card and he needed a new one sent to him immediately, along with emergency funds. I was the only one awake, but I was struggling to keep my eyelids open. For the first few minutes I refused to believe it was him, as he spoke English. He sounded just like you. Perhaps I had been hoping you would call again. But I accused him of being you, and that made him even more furious. By the time I finally realised that it was him I was a mess, and my training deserted me. It all went out of the window, and I just panicked.
‘I know what you did. He said he had come from Brussels, and now I understand why you sounded so strange on the phone earlier. You stole his wallet, Danny. I can’t believe you did that. I know you must have thought you were doing a good thing, but I just can’t be with someone this irresponsible right now. What were you thinking?
‘They would have fired me today anyway, so it’s probably for the best that I am leaving now. I don’t think I could cope with the humiliation. The first genuine call the helpline receives and I completely fuck it up.
‘I will always remember the times we had together, Danny. You will always be my sweet little English boy in Brussels. I know it’s your birthday on Saturday, and I got you a little something, for the trip we were going to go on. Maybe you can still use them, I don’t know. I hope you have a happy birthday without me, and a happy life too. Please don’t try to call me. It is over. Erica.’
I am staring at the table, at my glasses and Erica’s gift lying next to them, and tears are running down my stupid English face.
9
The snow is good this year. Crisp and crunchy, the way it should be. As the chair-lift carries us up to the black run, Cohn, wearing purple salopettes a couple of sizes too small for him, is explaining to me once again how everything works.
I understand it all, I tell him. I understood it in the middle of the night in the Recovery Suite on the eighteenth floor of the Brussels Hilton. But Cohn is hushing me, is patting me on the back and calling me old boy. Because it seems that things may be more complicated than he originally let on.
Now he is telling me that they are not satisfied with Sammy, and that perhaps I would like to take his position. They had never really trusted him, so they hadn’t quite told him the whole deal. And though they were a little hasty in promoting Sammy, Cohn has seen something in me, a spark he says, and he has now procured the necessary consent from his superiors: it is time for me to learn the truth.
It appears that, in fact, the Nazis are paying us. You see, it looks good for them to have a readily identifiable enemy. And, of course, it’s difficult to find enemies who will say the right thing – you can never rely on them being consistently rabid. So they created us, and paid a team to write speeches, design logos and all the rest.
The chair-lift lets us off at the top of the slope. Cohn is laughing about something beside me and rubbing his gloves together boyishly. I turn away from him and look down at the slope through my new prescription ski-goggles. Through the carbonflex lenses I can make out every mogul and patch of ice from here to the red tape at the foot of the mountain. Erica always did get me perfect gifts, and these are no exception. Attached to the front of them is a special visor, of her own design, which fits over my nose to protect it from the sun. A nose visor, made from expensive plastic, like tinted car windows, or computer disk boxes. Who would have thought of such a thing? It’s a perfect fit too, snug across the bridge. A bright girl, Erica. She’ll go far.
The snow is good this year, crisp and crunchy. It’s a glorious day. Before Cohn realises it, I have jabbed my sticks in the snow and jumped over the ridge, the Bond theme racing through my head at top volume.