Despite her precocious fascination with containers, Lærke knows almost nothing about her brother’s activities. It’s grown-up business, so necessarily abstract, inaccessible and mysterious. The world map obsesses Lærke, and she constantly returns to it, perhaps simply because she wonders about the red line that each day grows longer. By way of explanation, Éric confines himself to telling her it’s a board game, and no, she can’t play, it’s useless to insist, or, maybe, one day—he adds with a peculiar smile—when she’s old enough.
Old enough—talk about an old guy’s answer!
The map contrasts with the numerous screens and projectors in the loft. Like all primitive technology, it’s safe from hacking, network malfunctions and power outages, but Éric uses a paper map for a somewhat less utilitarian reason: it’s a way to remind himself that this whole undertaking is essentially poetic and outside his usual sphere of activity. Éric may have the technological expertise, but Lisa is the one who’s calling the shots.
Lærke has grown tired of studying the red line, and she scampers to the kitchen to see if she can find something to snack on. Éric takes the opportunity to station himself in front of the map with a red marker. He locates latitude 15.205584 and longitude 71.036897—not an easy task with such an atypical map—and marks the point, which he connects to the red line. Just four hundred tiny kilometres left before Mumbai.
He caps the marker, takes a sip of coffee and sighs. The voyage is in its sixty-fifth day, and an unforeseen problem has come into view: time—more specifically, the length of time.
At first, the tasks involved in navigating kept Lisa very busy. She had to familiarize herself with the thousand and one functions of He2, complete and send all sorts of forms, supervise the transfer of PZIU 127 002 7, doctor the databases. Lisa is a quick study, however, and all this work has become routine, especially since He2 automates many of the steps in the process. With each passing day, she finds she has more free time on her hands. The on-board library contains twelve thousand digital books, six hundred feature films and thousands of hours of music, from Johann Christoph Bach to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but ultimately, Lisa has no great talent for idleness and meditation. Following an intensive Thai cooking phase, she tried yoga, scoured every surface and inventoried the supplies ten times. Last week, she granted herself a glass of rum—yo-ho-ho—which, turning half green, she immediately puked up in the dry toilet. She is so utterly bored that she is now considering taking apart the bread machine to see how it works—clearly a symptom that should be taken seriously.
The expression to kill time, Éric thinks, is taking on a whole new meaning: it now denotes a mortal combat.
As he ponders the problem next to the map, he hears the buzz of the intercom. He looks at the clock in surprise. Who could be coming by at eight in the morning? He steps toward the monitor, but Lærke dashes past, overtakes him on the left and plants herself in front of the intercom on her tiptoes with her nose pressed against the screen.
“Who is it?”
“Let me see.”
Lærke steps aside. Éric doesn’t recognize the woman standing at the building’s front door—which in itself is unsurprising: the camera is fitted with a slightly spherical lens that makes people’s faces bulge like a globe. He presses the button.
“Ja?”
“Bonjour. Je peux parler à Éric Le Blanc?”
Éric starts. A francophone? With a Montreal accent? This is something he was not expecting. He looks carefully at the image. No, he really doesn’t recognize this woman. She looks around for the camera, obviously aware of being observed.
“Are you a journalist?”
“No.”
“Because journalists have to go through my administrative assistant, at T2T. I…And besides, who gave you my address?”
“I fished it out of the trash.”
“You’re sure you’re not a journalist?”
“I’m the exact opposite of a journalist.”
The statement gives Éric pause. The opposite of a journalist? Sounds more like a riddle than an answer. He turns toward Lærke, but the little girl has already gone off to engage in more interesting pursuits. The situation is beginning to annoy Éric.
“What is it you want to talk to me about?”
The woman doesn’t reply right away. She cocks her head to one side, as though looking for the right words.
“About Élisabeth.”
Éric feels the goosebumps running up both his arms. Almost in spite of himself, he presses the button to open the front door.
THE ELEVATOR IS DISCREETLY LUXURIOUS: wood panelling, brushed steel, scientifically calculated lighting. The buttons are made of hand-carved black marble, and, starting on the eighth floor, each one is fitted with a lock. Éric Le Blanc occupies the last of these private floors.
While Jay is examining the tiny locks, the doors close and the elevator starts to go up automatically. The takeoff is so abrupt that she feels her eardrums pop and her blood pressure fall. The doors open on the tenth floor—not at a landing, but directly onto the entrance hall of the apartment.
Standing in front of Jay, Éric looks calm and self-possessed.
Out of mutual curiosity, they study each other for an instant without saying a word. The most promising Danish businessman of his generation is barefoot and wears a plain T-shirt and karategi pants. He looks even younger than Jay had imagined him, and all at once she feels old. She was his age not too long ago, and here she is suddenly forty. What does she look like from Éric’s point of view? An unknown, tired woman with messy hair, wearing a simple pair of jeans and a leather jacket. Hardly stunning.
“Coffee?”
Jay says yes, and the young man immediately goes off toward the kitchen. After a moment of hesitation, she decides to do in Rome as the Romans do, and removes her shoes. Holding her computer under her arm, she quietly steps into the enormous loft.
The place is surprisingly bright. Two whole walls consist of picture windows that create the impression of standing in a control tower. The bedroom is perched on a large mezzanine at the top of a glass staircase. The walls are bare and spotless except for a long, neatly arranged bookcase.
Jay hears a noise. She ducks her head just in time to dodge a budgie, then two more, which fly past in tight formation and land on the bookcase. A minuscule bluish feather spins in the air.
Somewhere to the left, there’s the sound of the coffee machine’s pump.
Jay continues to explore. She walks along an endless dark-coloured conference table fashioned out of a single slab of Douglas fir, which is encircled by ergonomic mesh-back chairs. A bowl of Cheerios and a comic book have been left in the middle of the table, confirming the ambiguous character of the place, midway between the professional and the domestic.
Right in the centre of the living room floor, hundreds of Lego pieces radiate out from a container ship under construction. Jay immediately recognizes the Maersk Triple E that made Mahesh drool last summer. The 1,500-piece set was not yet available in Canada, and her poor colleague contemplated buying it overseas for a small fortune. If only he could see this.
Stepping toward the picture windows, Jay comes upon a panoramic view of the port, three hundred metres away. What a surprise! On the ground floor, there was no way of knowing the waterfront was so close. As far as she can tell, it’s a small terminal. She watches for a second as the gantry cranes off-load containers.
“Hej!”
Jay starts and swings around. A little girl (Lærke, she gathers) is scrutinizing her. In the background, a huge map of the world hangs on the wall. Jay’s heart races as she immediately spots the line that starts in Montreal and ends in the Indian Ocean near Mumbai.
Lærke tilts her head to one side, unable to make up her mind about this woman who has come out of nowhere.
“Hvad hedder du?”
Jay tries to remember the only Danish phrase she learned, and especially its pronunciation.
“Jeg taler…ikke dansk?”<
br />
Lærke looks Jay up and down. A woman who pops up out of nowhere and doesn’t speak Danish. The mystery deepens.
“You’re a friend of my brother?”
Momentary silence. Jay mulls over the question.
“Yes, you might say that.”
The reply seems to satisfy Lærke. She turns away without a word, takes hold of the huge binoculars and stations herself in front of the picture windows. Jay watches her confidently adjust the focusing wheels, not like a child at play but like a veteran lookout.
Éric comes back carrying a tray with two steaming macchiatos.
“Sorry about the mess. I’m usually told forty-eight hours in advance when guests are expected.”
They sit down at the big conference table, on either side of the Douglas fir. Between them are centuries of growth rings, thousands of seasons compressed into a few centimetres, where an expert could pinpoint Columbus’s arrival in America, the colonization of Africa and the Second World War. Éric pushes aside the cereal bowl and the comic book.
“Sugar?”
“Sugar.”
Jay can’t remember ever having had a better cup of coffee. The appliance that produced this beverage must be worth as much as her quarterly salary.
Éric drains his cup in three gulps. Despite appearances, he’s nervous, and Jay decides to cut to the chase.
“I know everything.”
There is a slight hint of doubt in Éric’s gaze. “Everything?”
“Nearly everything. I know Élisabeth Routier-Savoie is travelling in a container bearing the number PZIU 127 002 7. I know she left Montreal on October 13 and crossed the Pacific on a ship bound for Singapore. When I arrived here this morning, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain that you were somehow involved, but now that I’ve seen the map on the wall, you might say that, yes, I know nearly everything.”
Éric’s face betrays no emotion. The kid would do well at a poker table.
“Are you with the police?”
“Not really. I’m a civilian employee of the RCMP. I do data analysis. My area of expertise is credit card fraud.”
Éric looks disconcerted. “I was expecting them to send an officer, actually.”
“No one sent me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I carried out my own parallel investigation. In my spare time.”
“Parallel?”
“I didn’t follow the same trail as them. The RCMP and the CIA are also looking for the container, but they’re not yet aware that Élisabeth is inside—that anybody is inside. They’re expecting some explosive device remotely operated by a bunch of good old terrorists, bearded guys in tunics.”
Éric rubs his temples while examining the milk rings on the sides of his cup. “I was sure the container would be invisible. What did I forget?”
“The accounts.”
“The accounts?”
“There was an unpaid bill. Harbour dues or electricity, I think. Starting there, the investigators tracked down the delivery voucher, then they searched through the databases’ backup copies—the servers record an image of the system every night. Using the successive copies, they were able to reconstruct the sequence.”
Éric shakes his head in disbelief. “But…wait a minute. So you—how did you figure out there was someone on board?”
“Does it matter?”
“Humour me.”
“The distributed trucking was what drew my attention. Using various companies to muddy the waters. That stuck out for me. The kind of idea a computer specialist would come up with.”
“It was my idea.”
“There are thirty-nine trucking companies in the Montreal area that handle containers. I visited all of them.”
“Every one?”
“Let’s say most of them. It led me to the garage where Élisabeth worked. That’s where I collected some clues. The old Hansel and Gretel trick.”
“I had no idea I’d left so many breadcrumbs.”
“There are still a lot of grey areas left. For instance, no one understands exactly how you operate. You modify various database formats. You hack into wi-fi networks and extranets. You emulate all kinds of sorting software. You combine brute force and social engineering. A colleague of mine believes you farm the work out to Belarusian hackers…”
Éric bursts out laughing.
“…but, personally, I think you just automated the process. With a program or a software suite. A sort of Swiss Army knife.”
Éric nods. “It takes a big Swiss Army knife.”
“How big?”
“Very big.”
Silence. Jay pieces the puzzle together in her head.
“An operating system? Right?”
He nods, staring into space—but after a few seconds, Jay realizes he’s watching Lærke. In a tiny voice, the little girl is singing “simsaladim bamba saladu saladim” under her breath—a strange contrast to Éric’s industrial spying activities.
“There are already dozens of Linux distributions designed to perform specialized tasks. Controlling particle accelerators, piloting drones. Currently, home automation is the trend. Controlling fridges and coffee makers, lighting or heating systems.” He turns toward Jay. “So designing a semi-automated navigation system was naturally the next step.”
“It’s even better than what I’d imagined. So there’s power on board?”
“Lisa modified the refrigeration system.”
“Of course!”
“She thought of everything. Kitchenette, freezer, ventilation, heating, air conditioning, trash compactor, dry toilet. She has enough drinking water and food to be self-sufficient for six months at sea.”
“Fantastic…Fantastic…”
Jay is in a daze, as if she’s forgotten her purpose in coming to this place. Éric clears his throat.
“So, you came here on your own?”
“Correct.”
“The RCMP isn’t aware that you’re here?”
“Negative.”
“The Danish police?”
“No.”
“Then why exactly are you here?”
Jay toys with her cup, searching for the right words.
“Så kom en hæslig jæger.” Lærke sings with her little voice, “simsaladim bamba saladu.”
“Because I’ve always had an issue with geography.” She smiles. “I grew up in a tiny village on the Lower North Shore. Ever hear of Tête-à-la-Baleine?”
“Nope.”
“I’m not surprised. Even Route 138 doesn’t go that far. To leave the village, you have to take a boat or a plane, or a snowmobile in winter. The last I heard, the local population was in a nosedive.”
Brief silence, sip of coffee.
“As a child, I suffered from claustrophobia. I was suffocating. When I went off to high school in Sept-Îles, things got a little better. But not much. I ended up running away to Montreal and…long story short, let’s just say I led a double life. Ten years on, I had to leave the country in a hurry. Use a fake passport. That was still relatively easy at the time.”
“Before September 2001.”
“Precisely. But if I’d had this…” She punctuates her statements by rapping her knuckles on the table. “…a container that can go through walls…It’s better than a road. Better than a passport. With this, geography no longer exists.”
Long silence. Simsaladim bamba saladu saladim. Jay checks her watch, as if time has just resumed after a twenty-minute break. She finishes her coffee.
“But, to give you a more straightforward answer, I came to help Élisabeth. So here’s the situation. The RCMP is running the investigation in Canada. They searched the garage on Gibson Street ten days ago. Lots of material, but no leads. No reason to lose any sleep. The CIA, on the other hand, is a whole other matter. They have access to the databases of every port in Asia, and pretty soon they’ll get their hands on the container.”
“Pretty soon?”
“When I left Montreal thirty-six
hours ago, they were still analyzing the Singapore databases. This morning, on the train, I learned they had tracked the container as far as Sri Lanka. They’re probably combing through the servers of the port of Colombo at this very moment.”
Éric’s fingers dance on the table as if it were a keyboard. “Which leaves us…three days.”
“That’s all? I’m really sorry. I wish I’d come sooner. Everything started to speed up.”
Éric doesn’t respond. He’s here and elsewhere at the same time, staring blankly, already busy calculating parameters and working out a plan. He comes back down to earth momentarily, looking composed and focused, but distant. For the most part, his faculties are still tied up at altitude.
“Thanks for coming to warn me.”
Jay gets the message. She stands up, and Éric mechanically shows her to the elevator. They shake hands without speaking. The young man appears unafraid.
As the elevator doors glide shut, Jay glimpses Lærke at the far end of the loft, backlit against the picture windows, still concentrating on her binoculars. Simsaladim bamba saladu saladim.
A TRAIN RUNS THROUGH THE night, bound for Spain with Jay on board. Weary of playing the spartan voyager, she booked a berth in a sleeping car at great expense: the perfect place for a bout of insomnia.
Stretched out on her back, she listens to the regular hiss of the rails. She tries to remember the last station they went through. A city with a name like a wine. Tourillon-sur-Rhône or something like that. They are approaching Valencia, and through the curtains she can make out the suburban houses piercing the semi-darkness.
Jay curls up in the fetal position. She can’t stop thinking about her meeting with Éric Le Blanc, some fifteen hours earlier. She recalls every second spent in that huge loft, the slightest bits of conversation, and yet she’s unable to dispel the disturbing sensation the episode never took place. The past forty-eight hours feel like a waking dream—an impression resulting no doubt from the pace of the trip in general and the lack of sleep in particular.
She constantly harks back to the large map of the world hanging on the wall and the red line running through it. The more she thinks about it, the more convinced she becomes of remembering exactly—fairly exactly, at any rate—where the line ended: on the west coast of India, not too far from Mumbai.
Six Degrees of Freedom Page 23
