switched to the police frequency, and sometimes one snatched another’s mission away. Jacques Beaume sat with Ilse and Ulla, first at the police station and then in the café, until they could imagine everything.
Jan leans against the car and waits until the tank is empty. The night is dark. The clouds shroud moon and stars and reflect no light—there is no town for miles around. In the distance Jan makes out the light of a lighthouse, no brighter than a bright star, with a little beam of light regularly flashing and vanishing
.
A vicar’s son, interested in theology as a schoolboy and philosophy as a student, dedicated throughout his life to doing what is right—Jan’s thoughts pass from the starry sky that he can’t see, to the moral law that he can’t feel, to the step that he will take: leaving wife and children. And as in the past weeks when he thought about it, he again consoles himself with the thought that they will never learn about what he is doing. That he will be dead to them. That anyone who is dead can only be mourned. That anyone who kills himself cannot be reproached, only pitied. That he gives those left behind not the pain of abandonment but the pain of having someone torn from them, a pain caused not by people but by death, not a pain that we resist but one that we have learned to accept. And he goes on thinking about his new life
and the power he will have in it, the power of the phantom whose identity no one knows and whose trail leads nowhere. His deeds can be all the bolder. He will become part of the story, first as someone anonymous, and later perhaps with his true identity when he reveals who has forced the system to its knees and wrested justice from it. From the murky business whose mandate his firm imposed upon him, and whose documents he destroyed, he has already leeched a million
.
Jan shivers, even though the softly ticking, gently vibrating car gives off warmth. He knows that he will soon feel much colder
.
The engine coughs and dies. But the night isn’t quiet. The sea’s waves come rushing in, break crashing against the cliffs and, where they take sand and gravel with them, run hissing back to the sea. Sometimes a gull cries. Jan looks at his watch. It’s three o’clock; the others will be here any minute. Or what if only one comes?
Then Jan hears the car. He hears it getting louder as it drives over the brow of a hill, then he sometimes sees the headlights, switched to parking, and then it’s quieter, when it goes into a dip. Where the path leads off the country road and toward the cliffs, it stops. Jan hears a car door slam. So only one of them has come
.
The French comrades have sent a woman. She’s friendly, matter-of-fact, succinct. “You know if you’re unlucky you’ll die?”
“Yes.” Jan won’t die. He knows it
.
“You have to show me the vein in your arm.”
Jan takes off his jacket and lays it on the car roof, then unbuttons his shirtsleeve and pushes it up. With an encouraging gesture she gives him a flashlight. He grits his teeth and catches her in the beam. She takes out a syringe. “Valium first.” He looks away as she pricks his vein. Even before she’s finished, he looks. She doesn’t take very long; the syringe is unusually large. Then the woman is finished and presses cotton wool to the prick. “Now the Cardiogreen.” No one had mentioned that. But the second injection happens quickly
.
Jan buttons up his sleeve, puts on his jacket and sits down in the car. She runs the beam of the flashlight across the ground and makes sure that no cotton wool, none of the packaging of the syringe or the ampoule has fallen. She stands in the open door and tells him what he is to do next. “In fifteen minutes you’ll be asleep. At six you will be so cold, your breathing so shallow, that the police, if they aren’t very accurate, will think you’re dead. In fact you’ll hardly be breathing. Why should the police be very precise? They’ll call the
Jan leans against the car and waits until the tank is empty. The night is dark. The clouds shroud moon and stars and reflect no light—there is no town for miles around. In the distance Jan makes out the light of a lighthouse, no brighter than a bright star, with a little beam of light regularly flashing and vanishing
.
A vicar’s son, interested in theology as a schoolboy and philosophy as a student, dedicated throughout his life to doing what is right—Jan’s thoughts pass from the starry sky that he can’t see, to the moral law that he can’t feel, to the step that he will take: leaving wife and children. And as in the past weeks when he thought about it, he again consoles himself with the thought that they will never learn about what he is doing. That he will be dead to them. That anyone who is dead can only be mourned. That anyone who kills himself cannot be reproached, only pitied. That he gives those left behind not the pain of abandonment but the pain of having someone torn from them, a pain caused not by people but by death, not a pain that we resist but one that we have learned to accept. And he goes on thinking about his new life
and the power he will have in it, the power of the phantom whose identity no one knows and whose trail leads nowhere. His deeds can be all the bolder. He will become part of the story, first as someone anonymous, and later perhaps with his true identity when he reveals who has forced the system to its knees and wrested justice from it. From the murky business whose mandate his firm imposed upon him, and whose documents he destroyed, he has already leeched a million
.
Jan shivers, even though the softly ticking, gently vibrating car gives off warmth. He knows that he will soon feel much colder
.
The engine coughs and dies. But the night isn’t quiet. The sea’s waves come rushing in, break crashing against the cliffs and, where they take sand and gravel with them, run hissing back to the sea. Sometimes a gull cries. Jan looks at his watch. It’s three o’clock; the others will be here any minute. Or what if only one comes?
Then Jan hears the car. He hears it getting louder as it drives over the brow of a hill, then he sometimes sees the headlights, switched to parking, and then it’s quieter, when it goes into a dip. Where the path leads off the country road and toward the cliffs, it stops. Jan hears a car door slam. So only one of them has come
.
The French comrades have sent a woman. She’s friendly, matter-of-fact, succinct. “You know if you’re unlucky you’ll die?”
“Yes.” Jan won’t die. He knows it
.
“You have to show me the vein in your arm.”
Jan takes off his jacket and lays it on the car roof, then unbuttons his shirtsleeve and pushes it up. With an encouraging gesture she gives him a flashlight. He grits his teeth and catches her in the beam. She takes out a syringe. “Valium first.” He looks away as she pricks his vein. Even before she’s finished, he looks. She doesn’t take very long; the syringe is unusually large. Then the woman is finished and presses cotton wool to the prick. “Now the Cardiogreen.” No one had mentioned that. But the second injection happens quickly
.
Jan buttons up his sleeve, puts on his jacket and sits down in the car. She runs the beam of the flashlight across the ground and makes sure that no cotton wool, none of the packaging of the syringe or the ampoule has fallen. She stands in the open door and tells him what he is to do next. “In fifteen minutes you’ll be asleep. At six you will be so cold, your breathing so shallow, that the police, if they aren’t very accurate, will think you’re dead. In fact you’ll hardly be breathing. Why should the police be very precise? They’ll call the
Similar Books
