35
“A hundred times bigger,” Harry says. His eyes seek out the perimeter of the basement as if to verify that he has the correct proportion. He almost always uses a factor of one hundred, occasionally resorting to “more than a hundred times.”
In half an hour I’ll go to bed. Harry’s voice sounds softer than in the daytime. We drank a thin stock and ate some bread and now tiredness has struck. My biorhythm is getting too regular. We would be wise to reverse the sleeping order to break the pattern.
“There’s really no comparison to our situation,” Harry continues. “Here we only have a single entrance to the building. One of those big country estates can be attacked on all sides and that makes it a lot more vulnerable. The kind of fencing plays a major role, true, but fencing never comes with a guarantee that nobody’s going to get over the top or tunnel under it.”
He sticks out his chin and gives the hair on his throat a good scratch. I point my rifle almost straight up and pull the trigger without hesitating. My shoulder jolts and the masked figure on top of the fence is lifted a couple of meters. The now motionless body falls as a dead weight. The thud on the ground is followed a couple of seconds later by a soft rustling as the mist of blood and pulp that was blown high into the sky rains down on the grass.
“A property like that is in the middle of a rolling landscape with magnificent trees, so you don’t always have a clear view. Sometimes the boundaries of the property run straight through thick vegetation. But it still makes sense for the residents to withdraw to their villas and mansions and stay there for so long; they’re protected by the elite. Some units are fifteen men strong. Together they’re a well-oiled machine that never falters. They don’t hire ordinary guards, you have to be at the very peak of the profession to even get considered. The owners want value for money and that’s understandable. Even the simplest tasks aren’t entrusted to just anyone. The chain is as strong as its weakest link.”
Harry’s account is enthusiastic. He tells me about it as if it’s the first time I’ve asked him about the elite. His words fascinate me more than ever. They are old and slightly the worse for wear, but the story they tell could soon be our reality.
36
Harry says that they are exceptional guards, every last one of them. That’s why positions almost never come up. He asks if I understand that properly. They almost never lose anyone. He shrugs. They’re simply very difficult to eliminate. What’s more, we mustn’t forget there’s virtually nobody who feels up to confronting them. You’d have to be pretty crazy, says Harry. But if it does happen, some commando or other trying to intrude upon the defenses, our colleagues have the very best weapons and equipment at their disposal, including, obviously, a lot of high-tech gear. Lasers and thermographic cameras, for instance. Night-vision goggles are part of their standard kit. He tells me to stop and picture it. From an objective point of view their lives are more dangerous, true, their minefield is more densely sown as it were, but compared to the elite, we, Harry and I, are crossing ours blindfold. He grips the lapel of his blue jacket and shows it to me. Stressing his words, he asks me if I know what kind of suits the elite wear. He tells me the story about the suits that are made in three layers. It’s a kind of diving suit, skin tight. The top layer is waterproof, the bottom layer registers body functions. The middle layer contains STF, a fluid that immediately changes into an impenetrable shield when pierced by a bullet or sharp object.
37
“But that doesn’t mean we don’t stand a chance. Don’t worry, okay?”
The door is ajar. I start to undress, slipping a coat hanger into my jacket and hanging it up on one of the three hooks on the wall. My shirt follows on the same hook. I hold my pants up by the folded legs and lay them and my tie neatly under my mattress. I wonder how you hang up one of the elite’s liquid suits.
“Our chances are actually very good. The organization has shown its trust. Our efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. You and me, Michel, we’re a good team. We don’t shirk our responsibilities. In all this time, the organization hasn’t heard from us once. That still means something. That’s quite an achievement. And considering the dangerous conditions outside, the demand for the elite will only increase. The demand always goes up.”
I wash my face and rub my teeth with my index finger, scratching at the plaque near my gums in an attempt to remove it. Some of the plaque is calcified, I can never get the surface properly smooth. I hope the elite are provided with toothbrushes. It seems highly unlikely that they wouldn’t be regularly kitted out with new brushes. With hard bristles, hopefully, the hardest bristles you can get, ones that scrape and polish. And toothpaste. I try to summon up a memory of the taste of toothpaste. It helps if I look at my old toothbrush, a fossil on the side of the washbasin. The nylon bristles have been pushed out in all directions, unraveling into bunches of fine pointy threads. It helps, even though this object cannot possibly be called a toothbrush anymore. Without prior knowledge, no one would guess its purpose.
38
“It’s possible that one of them eventually decides to call it a day. I admit, it rarely happens, but that’s not the same as never. We have to pin our hopes on something like that, Michel, a coward pulling out and making room for a real guard. That’s our chance of being liberated from this basement.”
Although I dozed off the moment my head touched the pillow, my sinking consciousness crashes into his words, boulders of the here and now. They block the passage, forcing me back. I open my eyes but lie there motionless, pretending I’m still asleep.
Harry is keeping watch on the chair. “The way we keep the situation here under control,” he says after a long pause, “is actually our training for the elite. You couldn’t come up with better training. It’s impossible to simulate. How could any training situation simulate what we have to achieve day after day, completely independently, with a minimum of facilities and equipment? Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if our replacements, three of them that is, are ready and waiting right now to take over from us. Lying on their bunks and twiddling their thumbs. Like us, they’re nervously awaiting orders. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to pack our gear during the next resupply and get taken straight to headquarters. Instructor Perec will be there to meet us. The old blowhard won’t have changed a bit. Maybe he’s died in the meantime, who knows? Who cares?”
I hear him scratching his beard — on his neck — because he’s stopped talking. He stretches the skin and uses all of his fingers. The ends of the curls grow back into his skin, irritating and itching. The hairs lie flat and escape my attempts to trim them with the paring knife. If I tried to cut them off shorter I’d nick his throat. Shaving him wet doesn’t work either. The knife is blunt and slides over his beard. Sometimes I pick at a loop with the point of the knife, but it’s not sharp enough either; I need a needle. Very occasionally I do hook one and then I can very carefully pull back the ingrown hair. They’re always centimeters long and watching them slowly appear is repulsive and fascinating at once. I don’t tell Harry about my idea that one of those hairs might finally reach his oral cavity and poke into the bottom of his tongue or find a crack in his larynx and cause a constant tickle in his throat he can’t get rid of no matter how much he coughs.