by Kepler, Lars
Without the night-sight the old house is invisible in the darkness. From time to time the headlamps of trucks on the motorway shine through the bushes and trees.
Grey light is lying like a dome over the nearest village, Maarheeze, and in the distance the lights of Weert are caught by particles in the air, forming a colourless aurora in the night sky.
Lumi raises the night-sight again and moves closer to the workshop, scanning the overgrown piece of machinery in the ditch. She’s always thought it looked like a huge hair curler.
It’s actually the rotating cylinder from the front of a combine harvester.
Slowly she follows the pitted gravel track leading to the workshop, all the way round the meadow to the barrier where she said goodbye to her dad.
It had been dawn then, with mist hanging over the fields.
She thinks of how her self-confidence evaporated and she started to cry.
As she studies the narrow road leading to Rijksweg, she allows herself to think the horrible thought that she sent her dad off on a mission from which he might never return, straight to the person he had wanted to hide from.
That first day when she was alone in the workshop with Rinus had been tense and quiet.
They got on with their tasks, followed the routines, but even after completing a shift, grabbing a meal and a shower and a few hours’ sleep, there was still a lot of time left over.
They started to keep each other company, getting coffee for one another, sitting and making small-talk, and eventually started talking properly.
Rinus understood that she was sad after the row with her dad, and told her about the time, many years ago, when he first heard about Jurek Walter.
‘Joona called me on a secure line and I told him about this place. I know he wanted to come here, and hide away with you and your mum, but in the end he decided on a different option … You must have been, what, four years old when you left Sweden?’
‘Three,’ she replied.
‘But you’re alive, and you’ve got a life.’
She nodded in the darkness, then stared at the distant greenhouse through the binoculars.
‘I’ve got a life now … I grew up with my mum in Helsinki, I used to be very shy,’ she said. ‘And now I live in Paris and have got loads of friends, it’s ridiculous … I’ve got a really handsome boyfriend, I never thought that would happen, I mean, I always thought, you know, who’s going to want me?’
‘The young are very careless with their youth,’ Rinus muttered.
‘Maybe.’
‘Does Joona know you’ve got a boyfriend?’
‘I have mentioned it.’
‘Good,’ he nodded.
Lumi thinks about that first conversation with Rinus as she moves her chair and the night-sight to zone 3. Without any urgency she goes and gets her bottle of water, the blanket, and the sniper rifle, which she lays down on the floor in front of her by the wall.
She sits and looks out into the darkness. All she can see through the hatch is the red lights on the telecoms mast, and the distant glow of Eindhoven about twenty kilometres away.
Near the central station there’s a youth hostel where Joona has rented a room for her, in case she ever has to flee from the workshop.
She’s about to raise the night-sight again when Rinus comes in with two cans of cola and a bag of warm popcorn. His shift doesn’t start yet, but he usually shows up an hour or so early, so they have time to chat.
‘Were you able to get any sleep?’
‘One eye at a time,’ he jokes, handing her one of the cans.
‘Thanks.’
She puts it down on the floor next to the rifle, then starts to check the closest part of the zone, the patch of gravel and the tumbledown barbed-wire fence in front of the meadow.
Rinus eats his popcorn in front of the monitor showing the inside of the garage and the immediate vicinity of the workshop.
She follows her usual routine, scanning the sector in sections, moving from the meadow to the clump of trees where the secret tunnel emerges.
‘I was thinking about what you said this morning, about never having any really long conversations with your dad yet,’ Rinus says. ‘I never did with mine … His name was Sjra, have I told you that? You only find that name down here … he never even went north of the Waal. We were very Catholic and … I don’t know, Dad meant well, but the church was like a prison to me.’
‘What about your mum?’
‘She’s been to see me and Patrik in Amsterdam a couple of times, but I don’t think she’s really understood that he’s the love of my life, even though I’ve told her we’re getting married.’
Saga moves the night-sight to the large scoop lying at the edge of the trees.
‘Before I met Laurent, I was seeing an older man. He was married, ran a gallery,’ she tells him.
‘I tried that as well,’ Rinus says, putting the popcorn down on the floor. ‘Well, he didn’t run a gallery, but he was older …’
‘Father complex,’ she smiles.
‘I was really flattered at first, impressed by everything he said … but it didn’t work, he kept belittling me for my opinions the whole time.’
Lumi lets out a sympathetic sigh.
‘I broke up with gallery-owner because he wanted to set me up in a flat he rented … so I’d be available as his lover whenever it suited him.’
‘Laurent sounds much better,’ Rinus says.
‘Yes, he is … He’s got a few things he needs to work on, but he’s pretty OK.’
At two o’clock precisely Rinus takes over, and moves the chair to zone 5. She passes him the night-sight and rifle, then stands behind him with the can of Coke in her hand.
‘What’s happening with your college work while you’re away?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know. I’m supposed to be working on a graphics project on the theme of “dysfunctional integration”,’ she replies.
‘What’s that?’ Rinus asks.
‘No idea,’ she smiles. ‘That’s probably what I’m supposed to be finding out.’
‘It makes me think of families, and the way they … I don’t know, but they never seem very well matched.’
‘Maybe that’s a bit too easy.’
‘Love … or sex,’ he suggests.
‘Good, Rinus,’ Lumi smiles.
‘A flash of creative genius,’ he laughs, and fans himself with his hand.
She laughs, looks at the time, and says she’ll bring him his meal once she’s done her exercise. She walks off towards the firing holes looking down on the garage. She brushes the curtain aside, walks round the stairs leading to the ground floor, opens the door and goes past the kitchen.
Her own room is warm and she turns the thermostat on the radiator down slightly. She finds a pair of clean underpants, then grabs the bag containing her gym clothes from the floor.
When she walks back she hears the floor in the corridor creak behind her. Thinking that she’s dropped something, she stops and turns round.
All she can see is the closed door to the last bedroom and the blocked emergency exit with the words Stairway to Heaven.
She walks past the kitchen again, through the door at the top of the stairs, and goes down to the ground floor.
When she passes the storeroom where they keep the food and weapons, she hears the electricity box ticking quietly beside the wardrobe.
On one of their first days there she tried pushing through the hanging clothes to check the escape route. She heaved the heavy steel beam aside, opened the door and felt the cool air from the tunnel rush up and hit her face.
She puts her bag down on the wooden bench in the changing room and slips her gym clothes on, hanging her cargo trousers, sweater, and vest on one of the hooks.
She lifts one foot onto the bench and ties her lace, sees a loose wooden bar lift up a few centimetres at the other end, and thinks out of sheer habit that she could pull it off and use it as a weapon if need be.
Lumi goes into the exercise room and cycles for an hour at a relatively fast pace, then does press-ups and sit-ups on the cold floor before returning to the changing room, pulling off her sweaty clothes and going into the bathroom.
She locks and checks the door. The wet-room is cold underfoot and her skin comes out in goosebumps all over her body.
Every time she showers she checks the bathroom cupboard, taking out the plastic bag containing the pistol and checking that it’s loaded. The sights on it are a little too close together for her liking: ideally the gap between them shouldn’t be that small when speed is more important than absolute accuracy.
She puts the gun back, closes the mirrored door, and looks at her tired face.
The light in the ceiling flickers.
There’s a thin layer of dust on top of its white glass dome. Its light spreads across the ceiling like a hazy circle.
Holding the white shower curtain back with one hand, Lumi turns the water on, then moves out of the way as it starts to fall from the showerhead in the ceiling.
Only a man would choose not to have an adjustable shower when they were installing a bathroom, she thinks.
The first drops form grey rings on the white polyester. The roaring sound fills the bathroom. She waits until the warmth of the water steams out towards her and the mirror starts to mist up.
88
Lumi steps into the shower, pulls the curtain behind her and shivers as the hot water washes over her.
She’s thinking about Laurent, the way he would sit on her bed naked, strumming his guitar with a cigarette between his lips.
The water cascades over her head, the walls of the shower and the curtain.
She starts to warm up, her muscles relax after being tense for so many hours.
Lumi hears a scraping sound through the walls and pushes the curtain aside to look at the lock on the door.
Cooler air hits her.
There are small pearls of condensation on the basin and toilet.
After the shower she’s going to cook some spaghetti, open a jar of pesto, and maybe have half a glass of wine before she goes to bed.
She soaps her armpits, breasts and thighs.
The lather runs down her stomach and legs and vanishes into the drain in the floor. The white shower curtain becomes slightly translucent when it’s wet.
The wooden unit beneath the basin looks like a dark shadow.
Like someone crouching down.
Lumi looks down at the floor and can’t help thinking about her dad. She’s worried that he hasn’t been in touch yet.
She tilts her head back, closes her eyes and lets the water wash over her face and run into her ears.
Through the gentle rumble of the water she imagines she can hear voices, men screaming in pain.
She wipes the water from her eyes, spits and looks at the trembling shower curtain again, at the shadow beneath the basin.
It’s the bathroom cabinet, that’s all.
As she’s reaching for the shampoo, the lamp suddenly flickers.
The light becomes weaker, before everything suddenly goes completely dark.
Her heart starts to pound.
She turns the shower off, pushes the curtain aside and listens.
All she can hear is the drops of water still hitting the floor.
She quickly dries herself in the darkness, gets the pistol out of the cupboard, releases the safety catch, manages to find the door, unlocks and cautiously opens it.
The hinges creak softly as the door swings open.
It’s pitch-dark out there.
She reaches for her bag, hurriedly gets dressed, then snatches up the pistol again.
She crosses the floor without a sound, crouches down, opens the door and looks out.
The entire ground floor is in darkness.
She listens, and thinks she can hear footsteps upstairs.
She puts one hand on the wall and follows it to the junction box, opens the metal hatch and feels for the switches and circuit-breakers.
They’re all set correctly.
In theory, it’s impossible to cut off the electricity unless you have a digger and manage to hit the cable by chance.
She turns round. Grey light is bouncing off the walls.
It’s coming from the upper floor.
She hears footsteps on the stairs.
A flickering light reaches the ground floor.
She quickly moves back, presses up against the wall and raises the pistol, seeing as there’s no way she can get into the clothes closet without being seen.
Her sweater is damp and cold against her back from her wet hair.
It’s Rinus, with a torch in one hand and his pistol in the other.
‘I’m here,’ she says in the darkness, lowering the barrel of the pistol towards the floor.
‘Lumi?’
His voice is wary, but he doesn’t sound alarmed.
‘I checked the fuse-box,’ she says. ‘None of the fuses have blown, nothing.’
They go back upstairs, past the curtain, and into the surveillance room. The monitor showing pictures from the security cameras has died.
As Rinus moves between the various zones, Lumi opens a wooden crate and swaps her pistol for a G36 Kurz, a good, short-barrelled assault rifle that’s easy to handle in confined spaces. She quickly inserts a magazine, then tucks two more in the pockets of her trousers.
‘OK, there’s a total power cut south of here,’ Rinus says, lowering the binoculars. ‘Maarheeze and Weert are both dark.’
‘I actually got a bit scared,’ Lumi confesses, going over to him. ‘I was in the shower when everything went out.’
‘I want us to remain on high alert until further notice,’ he says.
‘OK,’ she says, and goes over to zone 5.
Through the night-sight she looks at the neighbouring farm and the old bus. There are no lights in any of the windows, everything is dark.
She checks the zone’s meadows, ditches, and fences faster than usual before she moves on.
Angling the night-sight lower, she slowly follows the gravel track from the workshop, round the meadow and up to the closed barrier.
Suddenly she stops, almost instinctively.
She’s seen a movement.
Her eyes registered it and she reacted before her brain had processed the information. She scans back along the empty track and starts again.
A couple of hundred metres from the barrier she slows down.
There’s something in the ditch.
The weeds are moving.
She breathes out when a black cat jumps up and runs across the track.
‘The power should be back on soon,’ Rinus says behind her.
‘Let’s hope so,’ she replies.
The alarm system has switched automatically to back-up batteries that will last about forty-eight hours, but the security cameras have been knocked out, and the hydraulic door can’t function without mains electricity.
Lumi raises the night-sight again and looks at the abandoned house, the bushes and old garden furniture, the door and boarded-up windows, the collapsed drainpipe and the barrel of rainwater.
Dry leaves are blowing across the yard.
She’s about to check the main road when she notices that the barrier has been opened.
‘Rinus,’ she says, and a shiver runs down her spine.
‘A car,’ she goes on. ‘A car’s come through the barrier with its lights off.’
She can’t make out the driver’s face. Rinus rushes over and takes the night-sight from her.
‘Jurek Walter,’ he says curtly.
‘We can’t be sure of that.’
‘Lumi, it’s happening. Make sure you’ve got your bag,’ he says, quickly pulling on a protective vest.
89
They both hear the sound of the car approaching the workshop with its lights switched off. Somehow Jurek Walter has found their hiding place and sabotaged the substation on the outskirts of Weert to cut
off their electricity.
Lumi blackens her face and wipes her hands on a cloth, pulls on her watertight camouflage jackets and changes into a pair of sturdy fluoro-plastic trainers.
Rinus is busy over by the ammunition boxes, lit up by the masked beam of the torch. Its weak light plays across an open box of 5.56 x 45mm Nato bullets. Their pointed copper tips glint in the light.
They’ve rehearsed tactics for a wide variety of scenarios countless times. Lumi knows she can just grab her rucksack and escape through the tunnel, but for some reason Jurek wants them to see him coming. It isn’t certain that he’s in the car. Maybe he’s out there somewhere, keeping watch with a thermal camera, waiting for her to run from her hiding place like a frightened rabbit.
Rinus picks up a plastic container full of magazines containing different combinations of tracer, armour-piercing, and live ammunition, and carries them over to one of the windows.
The magazines are transparent, so you can see what sort of ammunition they contain, but Rinus has his own system so he can identify them with his fingertips in total darkness.
The car is slowly approaching across the yard, at an angle that requires Lumi or Rinus to open the hatch completely and lean out to be able to fire at it.
‘How many people do you think are inside?’ Lumi asks.
‘I’m guessing two,’ he says.
‘But we can deal with eight, that’s what we’ve said.’
Rinus folds a sheet of plastic back and drags a wooden crate across the floor.
‘The only thing that would be hard to handle is if he tries to burn the building,’ he says, opening the crate. ‘But your dad didn’t think that was likely, seeing as Jurek wants to take you alive.’
Rinus takes out three packs of explosive putty, puts two in his green canvas bag, then cuts the third in two, through the wrapper, and wipes the knife on his trousers.
The explosive gives off a faint smell of ammonia.
He pulls four Russian fuses with sturdy detonators from a smaller box and drops the box on the floor.
‘I don’t think he’ll try to force the door downstairs, it would take him too long to get hold of explosives or antitank rifles in the Netherlands.’
‘You think he’s brought a ladder?’
