The Abacus Equation

by Peter Stremus

  Chapter 12

  The flexible stems of the palm trees lulled softly the hammock in which Jackie had dozed off. She startled when her sub consciousness registered the swelling noise of an approaching plane. Through her lashes she squinted the sheer blue sky when suddenly a small cargo plane skimmed the treetops. In a reflex she pulled her head protectively between her shoulders. She jumped out of the hammock and walked to the beach where she waved with broad gestures to the plane that started to climb again. She wondered whether it would disappear, but it turned and made its way to the island.

  For a moment she wondered what the purpose could be, till she saw a small object drop with in its wake an unfolding parachute. It was obvious that the pilot was experienced since the package landed nicely on the wide beach, just meters away from Jackie.

  Quickly she approached the pack, the vivid red scarf fluttering between her legs. The package was wrapped in a thick dark-green coarse fabric that was tightly knot, as if it were a fishing net, with strong ropes. After some fiddling she was able to untie the parachute which immediately was blown into the shrubs. She fumbled at one of the loose seams and could see tins and cans, in plastic wrapped clothes, cardboard boxes and even some bottles. Curiously she wanted to open up the whole pack, but she could restrain herself. After all, it was meant for Pieter. Instead she decided to make herself useful and to drag the whole lot inside. Most likely it contained perishables that did not combine very well with the heat on the beach. She tried to lift the package as a whole, but that proved to be above her powers.

  She stepped through the warm sand to where the parachute was flapping in the bushes. She curled it up into a ball and dashed back to the package. She unfolded the parachute and rolled the pack onto it. To her own satisfaction she managed to drag it via the beach path to the front of the house and dropped it on the floor of the cool hall. In this moist climate it was not evident to conduct heavy work.

  “Ouch,” she thought, “now I understand why everyone in the tropics spends most of their time under a palm-tree. Let me contact Pieter and Jane to alert them that we are saved from starvation.”

  She entered Pieter's bedroom and sat at the table with all of the broadcasting equipment. Jackie quickly found the main transmission radio. On the digital clock she noticed that it was already well after mid day. Jackie typed on the wireless keyboard the frequency that Pieter had provided her earlier that morning. She pushed the send button and talked in the microphone: “Come in, Pieter. This is Jackie, can you hear me?”

  The headphones only returned the noise of the static discharges in the atmosphere. Vaguely she could distinguish Pieter's answer. She turned the large fine tune dial and called again: “hallo Pieter, can you hear me?”

  The clear answer came back immediately: “Hi Jackie, yes. I can hear you loud and clear. Is everything ok?”

  “Of course, no problems. I just wanted to inform you that a package has been dropped and I just dragged it inside. Is it ok for me to open it up and store the stuff? I assume there is fresh food included that is better off in the fridge. Not to speak of the bottles of white wine.”

  “Sure. Please go ahead. We are making good progress here. The good news is that we have not only saved the boat but also the world. The overall condition of the yacht is excellent but it will take weeks before the interior is dry. You will be sleeping in a wet bed, my dear. But anyway, you will be back on the sea in no time.”

  Jackie replied: “great, I just cannot wait to get going again.”

  “See you soon, over and out,” Pieter ended.

  Jackie pushed the off button and the soft buzzing of the electronics stopped. She turned around a couple of times on the revolving chair and looked, without a specific purpose, around the room.

  The room had all the signs that it used to be the master bedroom. She was notably larger than the rooms she and Jane had spent the night. The ceiling was masterly decorated and during the renovation much of the original woodwork had been restored. On the place where there undoubtedly used to hang a majestic chandelier, first with candles, than on gas and much later on electricity, Pieter had installed a modern fan that evenly stirred the cool air in the room with slow turning vanes. On one of the walls hung a large, discoloured poster with as caption Kuifje en Hergé aan Zee. Expositie Oostende, 7 juni – 30 september 2007.

  She stood up and walked to the antique ebony bookshelf and rubbed with her finger over the covers of the many books. At irregular intervals the row of books was interrupted with figurines of Tintin. Silently she read the titles: “Utopia, A History of Western Philosophy, Moriae encomium, sive Stultitiae laus, Songs of Experience, Mmmm, heavy stuff. You have a bit of a weird taste, haven't you Mister Pieter?”

  She took a couple of comic books from a pile located brotherly next to the world literature. She recognised the Tintin series, but the pile of Suske en Wiske and De Rode Ridder did not ring a bell. The last ones narrating the adventures of a wandering knight in red armour who had a preference for busty fays and noble ladies. She tried to decipher some of the text balloons but could understand very little of the language. Maybe that is why the man from the control tower called him The Red Knight. She could imagine Pieter with Jonathan hanging in the bar, drunk, making dirty jokes about busty women. She shook her head.

  It would not surprise her if he was actually reading all of these books. After all, what else did he have to do here? On a low coffee table more books and old newspapers were piled and also besides the leather couch there were books. On top of them lied a well-thumbed black jotter. Jackie sank away in the soft three-seater and picked up the booklet, carefully observing its original position so nobody would find out she had peeked inside. Some loose clippings fell out of the cover. Hastily she pushed them back, hoping that they had not been inserted in a certain order. Otherwise she would definitely be caught.

  She turned the first pages and started to read diagonally the small, even, but not very readable handwriting. The notebook mixed snippets of a journal, loose scribbles and thoughts, to-do lists, website addresses, drawings, sketches, diagrams and chapters of what appeared to be the beginning of a book. She thumbed through the pages but straightened when one name caught her attention: Ian Summerton. She started to read attentively.

  Jackie jumped up with a scream, dropping the notepad when she felt the hand in her neck.

  “I think that you must have been the one making a big fuss when someone had been sniffing around in your personal stuff,” said Peter harshly.

  Jackie flamed red and stammered some rambling excuses. Pieter picked up his notebook and put it back on the pile.

  She cringed with shame and cursed herself to have been so nosey. She could not believe that she had not heard Pieter and Jane arriving. With hanging shoulders she followed him downstairs where Jane gave her a questioning look. Jane was experienced in interpreting Jackie's body-language so she asked suspiciously: “Oooookay, what have you been up to?”

  “I am really sorry; it was not my intention to poke my nose in Pieter's business nor to read private things.”

  “Have you lost your marbles? You don't do that when you are a guest, you just never do that,” Jane snorted.

  Pieter answered in her place: “well, I hope you are fully convinced that I am not a psychopathic murderer. But frankly, I don't understand why you were so caught up in my notebook. I am flattered, but my collection of mistakes is not that interesting.”

  “I recognized the name of Ian Summerton so I continued reading.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “He is a close friend of our father. Over the past months we had him a couple of times in the house. Each time his presence guaranteed lively discussions.”

  “On what?”

  “Well, dad has been for years the Australian minister of foreign affairs. Recently he withdrew himself from the active politics to concentrate on his true passion: biology and biodiversity. He is a maritime biochemist and associated professor at the University o
f Adelaide. Next to that he also serves on the board of a number of companies active in biological sciences. When Ian Summerton came the discussions evolved around questions like what is the minimum bio diversity required in an environment, or how sea life could be genetically modified to breed in fresh water tanks. Apparently Ian was working on some project to increase the nutritious output from sea-life. So why are you interested in him?”

  Pieter sat down and started: “some years ago I literally bumped into Ian in Cambridge, England. He had just finished a reading on a development project that he wanted to set up. And huge it was as he made a case to channel half of the global foreign aid into his project. His argument was that this would pay for itself simply by streamlining the current money-swallowing inefficiencies in management and distribution, and the lack of focus over the thousands of projects. He expatiated convincingly to bundle all the efforts and funds into one large project that would serve the whole world, rather than the current trial and error that was only a drop on a hot plate. I was sent by my agency to interview Ian and I got to know him as a very intelligent man. However, one with a dark side. I don't know why but I thought it a bit suspicious that the CEO of one of the largest consulting companies put so much effort in arguing his case in a small, musty classroom. Of course there was a gigantic amount of money involved, but still. So, I started to dig deeper into Ian's business and personality.”

  “And what did you find out?” Jane asked.

  “That you cannot find out anything about Ian if Ian does not want it. That was my main conclusion. In itself alarming. I have never met in my life someone with so much power. And the most conspicuous is that he is completely inconspicuous. Ian hardly granted interviews and seldom came in the news. But wherever an important decision was taken in the world, you could rest assured that he or his company were involved. His impact on global decisions was amazing. It made me wonder who really pulls the strings. Trust me; he is more than an influencer. He is the ultimate decision maker. The official instances are merely puppet speaking tubes.”

  “So why did you call your little booklet a series of mistakes?” Jackie interrupted.

  “Firstly because I was transferred to this island and secondly because I was unable to discover Ian's real purposes nor could I penetrate into his organisation.”

  Jane sighed: “maybe there is nothing bigger going on and you have been chasing like many others the path of a non existing conspiracy. For instance, what happened with that big development project? As far as I am concerned, development aid is still a big mendacity without tangible results, surrounded by the suspicion of fraud because for some people it is free money. Luckily there are still volunteers who devote themselves to their good cause, as small as that cause or project might be. But I guess that is just proving Ian's point about the lack of focus. A lot of good-will but no results.”

  While listening, Pieter had lit the large stainless steel gas barbeque. The steaks hissed on the grill while he cut a large iceberg salad in long snippets.

  “Thanks again for putting the frozen meat promptly in the freezer like you told us over the radio.” He pondered on Jane's question. She might be right that it was nothing but a conspiracy that only existed in his mind.

  Jackie looked guiltily because she had forgotten completely about the package and all frozen foodstuffs had been defrosted. They had tried to rescue what could be rescued. But apart from the sizzling ostrich steak they had to throw away most of it. Specifically the loss of the straciatella-ice had made Pieter sad. He arranged the meat on the plates and they started to eat.

  They all looked dreamingly to the afternoon sun that had slowly started its descent. A trail of clouds high up in the sky predicted more bad weather for the coming days. All of a sudden Pieter continued, as if he had been continuing the conversation in his head the whole time while they were eating and happily chitchatting.

  “So, I am keeping up with this life for three years now, while the original idea was to be here for a couple of months. Not that I regret it. A man gets used to everything. I am not even sure whether I would still fit in the so called civilisation. At a given moment you really become a recluse who just happens to run the most distant and least visited bed and breakfast. Of course; one that has the largest pool in the world. The trick to survive is not to become eccentric. Am I eccentric?”

  Jackie and Jane smiled pitying and tactically changed the subject: “talking about swimming pools. Do you realize that we have not even bathed in the lagoon? And Pieter, you had all the fun earlier today swimming in the ocean playing with the sail.”

  He agreed: “Not a bad idea. Let's snorkel to the wreck. As Jane has seen it from the Zodiac, it promises to be a unique show.”

  Pieter had not exaggerated. The hydroplane, as he loved to call it, had sunk almost vertically and stood on its two floats on the reef. Different kind of corals had found a nourishing berth on the steel and coiled like stalagmites along the supports to the wings. The many holes and niches in the former instrument panel were populated by families of flashy fish. Anemones swayed gently in the slow current. The lagoon was not very deep so they could leisurely snorkel in the crystal clear water to enjoy the colourful scene. Lack of natural predators had boosted the sea life in the lagoon to an unseen abundance. Two small lobsters were fighting over a hole and started to box on their hind legs. Jane took her underwater camera to take a picture of this comic tableau. Even the flashlight could not scare the two small bantams away.

  The sky painted crimson when they climbed onto the pier. It was pleasantly warm outside which made them shiver when they went into their climatized rooms to take a shower and change.

  Jane showed up first and sat opposite Pieter in the broad light-grey couch in the large living room. He had prepared some finger food and placed the bowl on the glass table. He poured her a glass of red wine. She lifted her legs comfortably and tasted with closed eyes the cooled wine.

  “It is the first time that I drink cold red wine. I wouldn't mind repeating the experience.”

  It was almost midnight when they finally went to bed. Pieter decided to unwrap the rest of the package that was still lying in the middle of the hall. He placed the cans and tins tidily on the shelves. He noticed the brown envelope on which his name was written in large letters. It contained the iPod of the deceased soldier. The iPod was also wrapped in a note containing a message of Jonathan. It was a short message.

  Pieter. Urgently check the content of this iPod. There is evidence that Votilio wanted to steal information from Diego Garcia's computers. Most of the documents are cosmic secret. The highest level. And when you read the content, you will know why. Call me ASAP. Jonathan.

  In fact he did not feel at all to follow this inflated military secrecy. Pieter searched for his mobile phone to call Jonathan that he would take a look at it sometime tomorrow. Now he had too much to drink. He remembered that he had left the phone in his room. With the iPod in his hand he ran upstairs where he saw on the display of the phone 24 missed calls. It was a long time ago that he had seen something like that. He pushed the inbox button and noticed that all calls and messages had come from Jonathan. Apparently there was a sense of urgency after all. He took a closer look at the iPod and connected the device to his computer. He started to browse into the hidden sectors of the hard drive and clicked, more or less at random, on one of the many icons that had appeared.

  Increasingly amazed, he started to read the content of the files.

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