by Aidan Truhen
Reception guy does not get that Olembert is a fucking structural imperative and a deep premise of our civilization, so he says:
“I will pass you to client care.”
“No you misunderstand I do not wish to be a client I wish to buy your company. Entirely.”
“We are not for sale.”
“Everything that is commercial is for sale the question is only whether the price is right and I am always right. Are you the primary stockholder?”
“No that is Mr. Eiger.”
(Like Eye-gher.)
“Then I need to speak to Mr. Eiger this is a time-limited offer.”
“I—”
“Eiger. I do not wish to be rude but you understand this is a serious offer and given that you answered the phone you cannot possibly also answer the question. This is not your problem you should kick it upstairs.”
“…Yes very well sir.”
Click bloop clicky bloop.
“I am Hans Eiger. Who are you?”
“This is Olembert Hecht I wish to buy you.”
“We are not—”
“Why does everyone always say that of course you are. The market value of your company is assessed at one hundred and seventy million euros. I will give you one hundred seventy-five million euros today consider the extra like a personal tip.”
“No this is absurd. Absolutely absurd. No one does business in this—”
“Two hundred and twenty-five million.”
What?
“I have increased my offer by fifty million euros I am in a hurry. Also I am a little freaked-out by how inexpensive banks are they should be way more expensive than this that is just common sense. But I looked on the Internet and everything there is true. Yes or no will be fine ideally yes everyone will be happier.”
“I do not—you are rude.”
“I am energetic.”
“You are rude.”
“I am just in a hurry I wish to spare you some upset and tribulation is all. Take the money it’ll be great.”
“I do not want it.”
“That is not relevant this is capitalism Mr. Eiger it is the apotheosis of the system of the world. It is the precise statement of your country’s ferocious ethos of independence and business. This is your moment sir you can do anything from here. Found a new company in competition with your old one if you wish there will be no prohibition on such behavior. Go white water rafting with a trio of exotic dancers and fall asleep under Mexican stars. Buy an island I know of a very nice one I was thinking it would be ideal for me but for you Mr. Eiger I will step back. The world is your oyster sir it is the overpriced delicacy of your choice. It is your foie gras your caviar your fermented snake.”
“Who eats—no that is not important—”
“Mexican stars Mr. Eiger.”
“This also I do not want I am nearly seventy I am respectable—”
“That in my experience is not a bar but you know—”
“Mr. Hecht!”
“Mr. Eiger—”
“MR. HECHT—”
“Mr. Eiger no. I am speaking now. I will listen in a moment.”
“…Very well. Proceed.”
“I am interested in your company for reasons. By this time in one month you will no longer have it. You can sell it to me or it will cease to exist as a functional entity, that is not a threat it is simply business. I have a priority the priority requires that I have control of your company, if I cannot have it as part of a willing trade for money I must take it that is all sir it is a matter between entities and you and I are just talking heads on sticks. You sound like nice people you got all kinds of upright and spine and so but that—that does not change things between us Mr. Eiger I reiterate just take the money and everyone will be happier.”
“You sound almost regretful Mr. Hecht. Why is that?”
“I’m a person getting along in the world Mr. Eiger and sometimes I feel the urge to do something nice for someone I have never met. I despise vandals Mr. Eiger and you have made something beautiful there. I do not wish to break it for no good reason that is the act of a barbarian sir.”
“That is helpful thank you.”
“Oh good so shall we do the deal and go eat?”
“Mr. Hecht I will speak clearly because I see this line is secure. You will not have my company and if you try to take it I will make you sorry you were born.”
“Oh okay.”
“I am glad that you understand.”
“It is the wrong answer.”
“It is not.”
“Have your people do a little research. My company is the AAA Aarhus Holding Company it is not the school of architecture it is a business registered in Panama but you would not believe how pissy those architects can be.”
“That is the Danish Mr. Hecht they have a strong sense of self and their own importance you do not want to deal with those people.”
“Indeed not Mr. Eiger I am dealing with you. I feel that we are right now bonding over the obduracy of Danes.”
“Mr. Hecht there will be no deal.”
“Look me up.”
“It would make no difference if I did.”
“I feel confident that it would.”
“Your confidence is as in other areas misplaced. I also despise vandals Mr. Hecht and I feel that you are one such.”
“Well now that is just personally hurtful sir I am a man in the system of the world is all.”
“Then let the wheels of that system carry you away from what is mine. That would be best.”
“I counsel you strongly to consider it Mr. Eiger. I will leave the offer on the table until tomorrow.”
“I advise you not to pursue this Mr. Hecht.”
“I was going to make you massively rich Mr. Eiger.”
“I am rich Mr. Hecht.”
“No sir. You are merely vested with money at this time and that is not the same. Your wealth is contingent on many factors.”
“Such as?”
“Such as me Mr. Eiger. Such as me.”
* * *
—
I wait and I wait and in the meantime I go online and read Mr. Eiger’s website and his brochure. I am just full of respect for everything he has achieved I mean this guy. French Foreign Legion in all kinds of hot situations such as the DijonAir hijacking before I was even out of school, comes home and you can see right off he believes more than anything in stability. He believes in stability so much that he builds himself a business that is all about making a hard foundation in the world. He literally carves out a place for himself I mean that is fucking poetic. There are pictures of him looking patrician and hard-ass in the brochure with all the big doors of his bank like big round space doors in big round door frames set into the rock. He has on a blue suit with a little blue flower in the lapel and he is hella good-looking for a guy his age. The Kircheisen Festung is a statement of permanence and I can completely see how he would not want to give it up but but BUT sentiment has no place in business. Business is not your identity anymore, that is some twentieth century you are carrying around right there. Business is process now and who you are is a whole other thing that you do.
Even so I give him the full twenty-four hours because of the respect. Eiger does not call. On the one hand you got to respect that kind of stubborn. On the other, stubborn in the end is just a way of saying you don’t take the world the way it really is.
Some people I guess just do not like it when they touch the real.
I go to tell everyone the good news and Volodya says: “No.”
TWO
SOME DAYS YOU JUST DON’T KNOW WHERE TO LOOK I mean you just don’t. Here is this guy Volodya whom I love like a—I guess a real scary uncle who lives much of the time in a log cabin at an undisclosed location above the Arctic
Circle and who may or may not eat ham made of people and we do not discuss it because he’s sensitive. He’s big and bristle-faced and he has hard hands from the moose wrestling and such and he smells of turpentine and old cotton. He does not wear a ridiculous merchant seaman’s hat but you know he kind of should. I lay it all out for them like BAM here is this classic job and we will do it. The world’s most unrobabble bank and here it is—
Identification Information Access Execution Departure. IIAED. These are the components of any bank robbery project. I call them The Vowels despite that there is one consonant and Doc calls them Homer because of The Iliad, which is a Greek poem in dactylic hexameter about sneaking into a heavily guarded fortress and killing the shit out of it.
Yeah Doc’s name is better I guess.
So you first got to identify your target; then you do your homework about it; then you get into it; then you rob it; and then you leave. All parts are coequally important like there is no point doing a crime if you are then still standing in it when the Bolivian Army arrives, but it all begins with the information. If your information is not good you will drill through the wall of a barbershop looking for the hydraulic closure on the vault and you will instead hit a gas main and you and your oxyacetylene and your so many millions that you will now not spend will be the first bank robbery ever to go to space.
We have the fucking plans to the vault. We were given them. But of course we do not trust those plans at all at all because as Mr. Client said security people are like hoarders like weekend engineers they cannot leave it the fuck alone and so now Charlie and Rex build Die Festung all over again. They get hold of every architectural prospectus every brochure every tourist shot and publicity release and they go through them by hand and—
No I’m kidding seriously of course not there’s an app for that.
A Poltergeist app made by anarchy ice kobolds and it’s not actually an app it’s a sophisticated machine-learning-space-management-and-allocation algo intended for reconstructing cities wrecked by civil wars because Mr. Friday does not like civil wars at all.
But it turns out it’s just great for planning a bank robbery too.
* * *
—
So now we have archive footage. Something for the Murnau set, all grainy silver nitrate Bolex joy. This must have been some old-school archivist because even back then they had goddamn color they had Betamax.
On the screen, a giant-ass metal spider on the side of a mountain that is THAT mountain, fast motion and slow motion and scratches on celluloid…a crane and huge counterweights. Fucking—I swear—fucking COWS and they are pulling ropes alongside the diesels. Fucking indomitable Swiss know-how. You can see a Japanese guy here in the foreground and on his shirt there’s sumitomo-gertsch ag because there is shared mining history there that is the world. Japanese guy grins and his Swiss partner nods and gives a thumbs-up and they—
Mother. Fuck.
Seriously you have not seen insane until you have seen this.
They put the whole inner vault into the castle in a single piece, like force-feeding a PEZ dispenser. And they lock it in place with a set of giant evil doors made of battleship steel.
Like a whole battleship. Like meters thick.
And that is just the start. Inside of the big evil doors on the front at just about every junction that matters there are baby evil doors that see you and do not like that you are there trying to open them. The Kircheisen X8 fully autonomous secure closure is like if a common or garden steel plate door such as you would see in contemporary crime drama fucked the Hulk and they had evil spawn.
To be clear: you do not come at an X8 with your damn tiny plasma cutter. No indeed you do not. Other vaults may have a victim mentality. If you get all up in the grille of a Rubicon 3 or a Holdfast AH1, then sure enough they will phone a friend and wait for rescue. That is not the X8’s jam. The X8 cannot even and it will not phone a friend because it does not need a friend to tell it that you can go screw yourself. The X8 is insulted by the very idea that you would think a plasma cutter or a diamond drill or old-fashioned C-4 are even relevant to this conversation and it will straight-out autonomously fuck your shit up.
Frame by frame Charlie and Rex break down the corridors by the direction of the light fittings and the numbers on the fire control stations. They know each door by location. They give them names. Doc watches. I can see her remembering everything. By the time we land Doc will not need the map.
My people. They are perfect for this. Doc because she is a genius, Charlie because computers, and Rex because construction. Rex is actually in demolition technically but he knows also how things go up. That is where he got his start.
With his brother—now deceased—long story very sad there was shooting not by me. But it was kind of about me, all the same.
Rex puts his finger on the screen.
“These fucking doors,” Rex says.
Doc says, “Amen,” and everyone looks at her because Doc does not do religious language even for effect but yeah she is right. Amen.
In the shop floor model the X8 is electrified and the frame features nozzles for aerosolized drug dispersal and six asymmetrically mounted recessed shotguns, but the brochure is keen to emphasize that clients often like to commission their own modular accessories and the Kircheisen company is real happy to accommodate such requests. Bioweapons are of course illegal and so Kircheisen cannot supply such things and advises against them but will on the other hand make deployment modules to your confidential design and leave you to introduce your ammunition so long as you assure the company that you will not equip any for example not that you would of course pathogens.
No no, no no no.
There is a social contract in all bank robberies since Dillinger and it is very simple: the robber is stealing from the insurance company, not the account holders and not the bank. There is therefore a tacit understanding between robber and cashier that while this is not a normal transaction it is also not really that objectionable. So long as everyone is calm and professional, there need be no downside.
The X8 is the face of actuarial disapproval at this cozy little alliance and it bears a message for the would-be thief: if you mess with us, the only question for the police when they arrive will be how to get that thin layer of criminal sludge off their shoes.
Every single one of the rooms in Die Festung is secured with an X8.
Except the last, which is something called an X9 and requires Eiger’s personal presence. If he dies or is compromised, some wearable tech on or possibly in his body will send a signal, the entire mountain will lock down until the designated alternate arrives. No one knows who that is or how they are contacted that is Eiger’s personal secret.
This vault man. This is why we came this vault is PERFECT.
A castle.
On a mountain.
Battleship steel.
Water.
Magnets.
Biological weapons.
And hyperviolent armored robot doors.
That is so entirely my jam.
I want to do things to this vault. Things that it will not like except that it absolutely will. They are what it was made for. They are things that it has always dreamed about and feels guilty about and—
“Price for fuck’s sake—”
“Sorry Doc did I—”
“Yes out loud yes.”
“I want to have sex with this vault is what I’m saying.”
“Yes thank you for making the metaphor quite clear.”
“Wait metaphor?”
And then Volodya—this guy—my business partner, my friend—today of all days—he is just not coming from yes.
Volodya says no.
I say: “Kircheisen!”
Volodya says: “Price we should not go to Switzerland.”
“But why not?”
“Is bad idea.”
“The nature of this badness being unclear is what I’m saying.”
“Were you ever at Swiss party on National Day?”
“I don’t even know what that is man.”
“Is what it sounds like.”
“Okay.”
“On National Day one time I am in little place called Grindelwald yes Price like in fucking Harry Potter is real place. And opposite like a hundred meters away is big chalet filled with people from the Swiss postal service. They are nice like what my mother calls Borrow Milk people. So Federal Day round six my place we are drunk and we are bored and we figure to invade Swiss postal service for fun. Is diplomatic mission from before I am in Demons. We go round there, leave ultimatum. We give them until nine then we figure to go over and ravish their gingerbread houses and eat their women. Consensually because we are serious diplomats now. Then we sit on balcony, drink schnapps made from fruit, pee in snow from great height. At eight fifty-nine we are on this balcony still peeing in snow from great height and the Swiss explode the world.”
“They—”
“Here is what these fucking postal clerks have done okay? They have gone down to basement where there is nuclear bunker—”
“There is what?”
“Is Swiss thing. They go to bunker, get alpine camo suits. They sneak up to our house and when they are like five feet away they fire about ten thousand bottle rockets from empty schnapps bottles right at our diplomatic residence. And they are so drunk they completely miss our fucking house and they blow up house next door, which is fucking fortunate because of the peeing in the snow and otherwise I personally would have my dick on fire. When they realize this all these postal workers men and women they are laughing so hard they cannot walk, but also they are very concerned they have maybe exploded neutral third party so they go over there to apologize. Guy comes out and he is local magistrate and so we think: aha now we will get some diplomatic! They explain shit to the magistrate and he looks at us on our balcony and you can see that he totally grasps the situation and he goes inside and he comes out with his own fucking rockets! And now they surround our house with rockets and demand that we surrender our Russian bear asses and let them ravish our gingerbreads all night long.”
