“Shall we run through the resupplying again?” he asks.
“Seems like a good idea to me,” I say.
We stay sitting there in the silence of the basement.
The emergency lighting is made up of sixteen light fittings on the ceiling and they all work, as dim as the tubes may be, which is nothing short of a miracle. With the exception of Number 22, all of the garages are closed. Remote controls are reserved for the apartment owners’ personal assistants. It wasn’t the first time Mrs. Privalova’s assistant forgot to close the garage after fetching the Bentley.
“The organization sometimes tests its own guards,” Harry says.
“What do you mean?”
“You can count on it,” he says. “It couldn’t be any other way, if you think about it. Random checks, you know the kind of thing.” He rubs his forehead with his right hand, thumb and fingers pushing the skin back and forth. “All businesses practice quality control. It’s normal. Every business sets its own standards that have to be reached or maintained under all circumstances. Quality control is achieved through random checks. What is the organization, if not a business with a product?”
During my entire period of training I didn’t hear a word about random checks. No one ever mentioned it. That’s why, after a few seconds, their existence seems very plausible.
Harry slides his cap back, then forward again. “If the organization wants to secretly carry out random checks, I can only think of one possibility: standard situations.”
He means resupplying, the only standard situation we deal with. He says, “We have to be twice as alert. In a way we have two enemies to fear.”
I go into our room to get a piece of bread. Although I know that no one can see me, I am very aware of my movements. Back on the stool, I chew the bread slowly. I look out over a bare concrete surface, extending approximately one hundred meters. I avoid looking into the darkness beyond it.
“The nice bit,” Harry says suddenly, “what’s clever of the organization, is that it’s impossible for the random checks to ever come out. Either it ends well and everything’s okay and no situation results, or it ends badly and, in that case, the incompetent guards were simply ambushed. You follow? Who in their right mind would accuse the organization of attacking its own men? Especially if there’s casualties. Nobody, right!”
He smiles at his own conclusion.
At the same time his smile says it’s an organization we can be proud to be a part of.
I ask about the elite, if they get tested too.
“You bet, Michel. I suspect they have even more random checks to deal with than we do… Of course they do, that goes without saying. The elite are the organization’s calling card. The apex in security. That calling card has to be irreproachable. It can’t have the slightest blemish. It has to be dazzling white.”
He stands up and walks into the bunkroom, where he unfurls the basement floor plan. He’s stopped smiling. “I can assure you that we will not miss out on promotion because of laxness during a standard situation.” His voice sounds cold, as if I’ve insulted him. “That would be really stupid, don’t you think, after all this time?”
6
I stick the key in the lock and turn it twice. The storeroom adjoins the bunkroom; this is my second inspection today. On the left, on three shelves attached to the wall with metal brackets, the boxes are arranged in battle order. Placed at right angles to the shelves, they are all marked Winchester. The caliber is printed on the short side: 9mm Luger (Parabellum). Above that, a cowboy gallops to the edge of the white box, his upper body leaving an orange trail, his horse, a red one. The brand name is printed in the red stripe, the letters sloping to the right as if caught in the horse’s slipstream.
I see at a single glance that all of the boxes are present. I recognize the total picture, the complete array of ammunition. To be on the safe side, I count them, per shelf, my index finger brushing over the boxes. Three times fifteen makes forty-five.
I pick up the first box. Its weight in my hand feels right, familiar. It opens easily. After all this time, the box is loose around the flap. Gleaming cartridges, upright and neatly aligned, showing me multiple reflections of my silhouette. My index finger counts one row of five, then ten rows. Ten fives are fifty. I close the box, put it on the shelf and slide the second box out of the row. The weight feels right. The flap slips out with virtually no resistance.
After the inspection, I check the supplies on the shelves on the other wall. Our rationing is going according to plan. We still have one bottle of water left for the next twelve hours; we haven’t touched the purification tablets. Shoe polish, liquid soap, toilet paper. Two kilos of powdered milk. We’ve used up the yeast and flour, but there’s half a loaf of bread in our room.
I turn off the light and lock the door.
I inform Harry of the results of the count. We remove our Flock 28s from our hip holsters and take turns to push in the magazine catch and let the cartridge clip slide out of the pistol, counting the bullets in silence. After I’ve nodded to Harry, he repeats the result of my inspection out loud and says, “Plus two times fifteen.”
7
I do the first part of the night, sitting on the chair and keeping still. After a while I detect a noise that is only just audible over the hum of the lights. When I turn my head toward my left shoulder, it fades. The acoustics in the basement are strange. I don’t find it necessary to wake up Harry. It’s a blessing he’s been able to fall asleep.
I decide to do a round to keep my head clear and set off in the reverse direction; my footsteps echo back from the basement’s furthest corners. When I stop, it takes a moment for the last echoes to die out. Surrounded by bare walls and with sounds bouncing back at me from all sides, would I be able to distinguish the steps of other feet if they were hitting the ground at the same time as mine?
As uncertain as my answer may be, the question doesn’t disturb me: having asked it means I’m still thinking. I have a strong suspicion that bad guards eventually stop thinking about their situation. Habituation is a stealthy foe.
I put one eye to the narrow crack to the right of the entrance gate and peer through it. The missing sliver of concrete probably broke off while the steel groove for the gate was being mounted. As it’s dark outside, I can hardly see a thing. What I think I can see is a product of my imagination; the view is imprinted on my memory. A section of wall tapering up to street level. Above it, a round treetop silhouetted against a patch of sky. The treetop reminds us of the seasons.
I press my nose against the gap, sniffing the cool breeze. The weather conditions are neutral. Smells carry better when it’s hot or raining. I turn around and lean back on the wall. Again I get the creeping feeling that what I see from here would be the very first image of the basement to confront an intruder. I try to imagine the situation. His brain will most likely soak up the visual information like a sponge, immediately comparing it to the floor plan he has studied in advance. Or just trying to work out the direction of his next step if he’s seized the opportunity unprepared. He mustn’t get much farther. The instant following the intruder’s first observation of the basement should see him flat on the ground. Preferably dead with a bullet to the head.
I continue my round slowly, feeling confident. It’s foolish, but rather pleasant. I could just as easily be walking in a park with my hands in my pockets. Enjoying the trees and bushes, sitting down on a bench. Closing my eyes for a moment.