Peter Terrin
The Guard
For V. and R.
One
1
“We have to see this through to the end.”
Resupplying makes Harry nervous. Even though we know our way blindfold, he folds the basement floor plan out on the table: one hundred and twenty parking spaces spread over forty secure garages, one for each of the thousand-square-meter luxury apartments. It would have been smarter to make the basement a simple rectangle. Perhaps that wasn’t possible because of the building’s construction and foundations. I’m no engineer. Still, a rectangular design with the parking spaces arranged neatly down the long sides would have made security a lot simpler. Harry suspects that the irregular layout was designed to meet the clients’ requirements. With comfort and privacy taking priority. You know how these things go, he says.
I catch a whiff of his agitation. The smell of walnut, fresh walnuts that have just fallen from the tree, with hard, green hulls. We study the floor plan together. I lay a hand on his shoulder, realize that’s not a good idea and pull it back. It’s quiet. Out of habit, I touch the weapon at my hip; there’s no direct danger. I take a step to one side so that the bare bulb can light every corner of the plan.
“So he comes in here.”
He points at the entrance, which is four meters wide and designed to withstand a missile impact. It’s the building’s only entrance. Apparently the ground floor is hermetically sealed: no windows or doors. For security reasons, we have neither a digital pass nor an infrared key, and the scanners don’t recognize our fingerprints. We have to remain in the basement and guard the entrance at all times. Outside, on the other side of the gate, our authorization no longer applies.
“He’ll open the gate and drive the van into the basement. You take up position at Garage 3. In clear view. Keeping him covered at all times. Okay?”
I nod. “Okay.”
“I’ll ask for his ID and a confirmation. At my signal, you walk to the rear of the van. This is where it gets tricky. We have to be on our toes. When he swings open the doors, we have a fraction of a second to assess the situation.”
“No time to talk,” I add. “Each of us, separately, decides whether or not to open fire. But if one of us opens fire, the other joins in unconditionally.”
Harry puts his hands in the small of his back and leans back with his head and shoulders to ease the tension in his spine. “Dead right,” he says. When he bends forward again I see a loose thread in the seam of his uniform, a cheerful little curl poking out of the sharp line of his jacket, about twenty centimeters below his armpit. I don’t mention it for now. I can do that later when we’ve gone through the plan in full detail. The rest of the plan comes first. Resupplying is just two days away.
2
I’m lying on the bunk bed, the bottom one, my pillowcase giving off the fresh smell of liquid soap. I will probably fall asleep soon. Our room is next to the first elevator. There are only three elevators for forty floors: an extremely fast elevator for the residents, an extremely fast service elevator and a reasonably fast elevator for visitors. Our room is small, but that is seldom, if ever, a problem. After all, we’re always working. We sleep one after the other for five hours each. That’s enough, we’re trained for it. If one of us gets too tired, he can lie down for quarter of an hour. I can’t recall it ever happening, but it’s reassuring that the organization has taken the eventuality into account.
The door is half open, the glow of the emergency lighting, which starts five meters away, is visible on the bunkroom floor. Outside, far beyond this building’s thick walls, it is quiet and peaceful. At least, I can’t hear anything: no rumbling, no explosions, no uproar. Nothing at all. I can’t feel any vibrations in the ground either. We don’t have an overview of the situation from in here. It is impossible for us to imagine what the conditions outside are really like. They’re actually irrelevant. Our task is here in the basement, at the entrance.
Harry is on watch, sitting on the chair next to the door. Now and then he stands up and walks around in a small circle. When he passes the doorway his shadow darkens the room. He checks the cartridge clip of his weapon, then slides it back into the magazine with a loud click. Although I can’t see him, I know that he is extending his arm, holding the pistol out in front of him. Possibly supporting one hand with the other. His right eye trained on the bead and the sights, his index finger cradling the trigger.
3
I lay the steaming loaf on a tea towel on a plate to let it cool down. I use the bread maker almost every day; it’s dead easy and the bread is delicious, well worth it. The machine is a cast-off from the Olano family apartment and was meant to go out with the garbage.
I tell Harry he’ll have to be patient.
Reluctantly, he walks out of the room to resume his position on the chair next to the door. A little later he pokes his head around the corner.
“You can smell it past Garage 4,” he says.
Garage 4 is furthest away from our room.
“The smell of concrete’s gone from the whole basement. It’s like walking around in a giant loaf of bread.”
I think about when I was little and dreamt about a bath that was filled to overflowing with chocolate milk. I didn’t get out until I’d drunk it all. At school I kept sucking my fingers to get the faint, residual taste of chocolate from under my nails.
I notice that I’m hesitant about telling Harry about my dream, but can’t immediately say why. Perhaps it’s just because here, obviously, we have no access to chocolate.
4
The shiny toe of one of my shoes pops into the bottom of my field of vision every time I take a step. The blue trouser leg slides easily over the leather and falls back into its crease. I count us very lucky that we found liquid soap and a good supply of shoe polish in the staff general storage area, an improvised cubicle on our floor. The products weren’t intended for the residents’ clothes and shoes, but for the personal use of the staff; that’s why we thought it, given the circumstances, completely acceptable for us to use them too. Ordinary shoe polish and barrels of bleaching liquid soap without any particular perfume, unless it’s the neutral smell of cleanliness.
Harry and I are walking alongside each other. We are following the perimeter of the open space in the middle of the basement, hardly cutting any corners, keeping our hands behind our backs. It’s not strolling; the pace we maintain is slow but steady. We keep silent so that we can judge each noise correctly, quickly locating its source. Our caps, blue with the organization’s emblem embroidered on the front, are perched on our heads at the prescribed angle. The length of our steps differs but now and then, involuntarily, we march in time for a couple of meters. The effect reminds me of pealing bells that disentangle more and more until all of the clappers strike the bronze together: just once, twice at most.
There was a time I counted my footsteps during every round of inspection, over and over again. I counted them in my head and then added the result, in my head, to the previous total. I never wrote anything down. I think it was the dedication that appealed to me, the concentration. I thought it would hone my attention. I no longer count because the reverse was true: it distracted me from my work. All things considered, counting footsteps was an exercise in futility.
5
We complete three inspection rounds then take a break. Harry sits on the chair, I sit on the stool. We sit either side of the bunkroom door, which is ajar. Harry hasn’t slept well; I heard him tossing and turning. The slight bags under his eyes won’t go away. Last night I cut off the loose thread in the seam of his jacket. His uniform is back in tip-top condition, the way it should be.