Equality from top to broom

more adventurous

Chapter 2
Equality from the ground up�"and back down again

A couple of days later, as agreed, Carl phoned his brother for the next instalment of sincerity. John had just squeezed himself onto the morning Intercity train, and he settled himself in for some twenty minutes of talking.
“I haven’t talked to you in ages, old man,” John teased, reaching automatically for his agenda pad before getting serious. “What were we talking about last time? Happiness? Well, I can tell you right away that I’m happy every time I cycle to work and, hand on my heart, I also swear that ninety-nine per cent of the time I’m happy every minute at my office. What’s more, I’m sure I’m sitting in a train full of happy employees who enjoy every moment of their beautiful lives in our wonderful country�"”  
 “Can you shut up, please?” came an angry, half-asleep voice from his left. “This is not your own private car!”
“Sorry,” John muttered, and switched to a crooning tone instead of his usual marketing one. He re-perched himself on a lonely seat in the back of the train car. “Am I right?”
“Let’s move on to the next question, which is about equality,” replied Carl with his usual, unfathomable patience. “At work, in the streets, in society as you know it... without the ‘we’ against ‘they’; just speak your mind.”
“You know, in our land, equality is written in the genes�"not only on flimsy paper as like it is by those fickle Anglo-Saxons,” John said, already forgetting, of course, his interviewer’s only condition. “Well, I can tell you right away that in Holland, newcomers from every corner of the world have excellent opportunities to integrate themselves into every walk of society. You know, there are a couple of top Arabic-born politicians in our Parliament, and let’s not leave out the Surinamese teachers, Turkish restaurant-owners, and Belgian dentists. And there are, of course, students from every continent studying in our land, and they’re all tutored so brightly that each of them can become a professor, an attorney, a minister, or a bank director�"whatever their hearts desire.”
“John, how many foreign-born or minority folks work at your bank?” Carl poured, as usual, a bucket of cold reality on John’s head. “Do they hold any leading or well-paid positions, for example?”
“Ummm, hmm, let me think... I guess, well, I suppose... that, well, hmm,” John stuttered, trying to visualise not too numerous office divisions of his completely white institution, hoping to pinpoint a brown, a yellow, or a black face among them. But in a modestly long lineup of his colleagues, there was none who’d fit the criteria of being ‘diverse’. “Oh, yes! Yes, the postman! He’s from Indonesia, I think.”
Carl chuckled softly. He was diplomatic enough not to insult his ardent brother with outright laughter. Of course John also knew that postmen were employed by the post office, not by his bank.
The staunch patriot didn’t give up, however. “But, I guess if one would apply, he or she would be accepted at once,” John continued, albeit in a less decisive tone as though trying to persuade himself first. “I’m not part of the new applicants team, you know, and I’m not sure if we’d be taking on any new staff this time of year...” he trailed off.
“Fine, fine,” said Carl. Hoping to save their conversation from running ashore, he switched directions. “So, what’s your impression overall in terms of equality in our society�"m you know, in your neighbourhood, the city you live in, the places you know.”
“Oh, that’s excellent,” John said, happy to come to a less direct, much broader subject, for those were always his specialty. “First of all, there are, by contrast with England and France, no ghettos in Holland. Each and every social group, from every culture or custom in the world, is living happily together. I walk through my street safely, even in the dead of night, and can say hello to all my dear neighbours, never mind which walk of life or culture they are from.”
“You mean, you greet them all?” pressed Carl. He’d been trained during his journalism course to spring on cushiony answers, so he did.
“Well, I... well, so to say,” John suddenly slowed his express word-train down, not knowing exactly how to answer. The situation was made worse because he was talking to his only brother, who knew him through and through and whom he couldn’t simply put off with wispy words. He hemmed and hawed, then finally squeezed out, “Well, I do, at times, greet... some.”
“Right,” agreed the older brother. He cleared his throat and the sound reverberated over the mobile connection. He tried to figure out how to warm the overcooled talk and steer it onto a more fruitful and open course.

On the other end of the wireless line, John furrowed his brow, trying to figure out why his loving neighbours didn’t notice him, or vice versa. Well, he was tacitly friendly with a few, unaware of the existence of many others, and happy that those in the third�"the largest�"group were, for the most part, peacefully overlooking his bumbling white presence. He tried to ignore the dog slop just in front of his window, and he meekly replaced his broken windowpanes once a quarter. Besides that, nothing was bad on his street; and everything that wasn’t bad was good�"or better still, enough to make and keep you happy�"right?
 “Isn’t that right, Carl?” John thought aloud.
 “Hmmm? Maybe,” came the answer, “but what are you talking about?”
 “Oh, just that if your neighbours aren’t bad, that means they’re good, friendly, and... and a joy to look at. At least, don’t you think so?”
“Yeah, why not?” Carl spoke distractedly, his eyes on the legal pad in front of him as he tried to sum up the strikingly poor material he’d distilled from this word-rich interview. “So, you see that there’s a real, deep-seated, perennial equality in Dutch society, on every level?”
“Yes. Absolutely,” boomed John, without noticing that his voice was again hovering up around its advertising heights. As some faces turned long in his section of the train car, he continued, quieter, “Just walk along a street�"any street�"and talk to any average gent you bump up against, and he’d tell you a big yes, too!”
“Great,” Carl said, ready to close up their interview. “Just two last questions. First�"could we meet this week in Amsterdam? Wednesday afternoon? That is, the day after tomorrow? Fine ... And the very last question�"can you please do exactly what you’ve just said? To ask that equality question to the first guy you, so to say, bump up against? If you have a minute of time, of course.”
“Sure! No problem, Carl, absolutely no problem,” John sang out, smiling broadly. He even glanced around the train car, seeking a couple of faces he recognized from his morning commute. “I’m sure they’d tell me the same you’ve just heard. I’m absolutely sure, one-hundred-and-ten per cent.”

***
 
The train screeched, rumbled over the rusty metal bridge, and stopped. The spirited yet strained talk halted, too. John sighed with relief, then folded his flat plastic mate into his tweed vest pocket and dove into the drab, brownish-grey hall of Amsterdam Centraal. He tripped along amidst the swarm of other case-carriers, all suited up, shaven, and begrudgingly revved to flex their brains for their daily nine-hour battle with cheeky customers, weary bosses, and pushy colleagues.
As he traversed the side aisle of the station, a moustached brunette in a profoundly soiled, partially yellow safety vest suddenly stepped out in front of him, slamming his pushcart into a narrow hatchway in the wall. In so doing, he almost bumped his shoulder against the slender frame of the clerk.
“Abdullah, eh, Abdul, where’s the yellow broom?” the pushcarter called to an equally moustached, yellow-vested, and raven-haired colleague who was pushing a large rubbish bin on wheels a few steps away.
As bulky as the carts were, John nearly passed by the whole scene without paying any attention. Have these guys always been around Centraal? John wondered. This service must be new, he decided. Strange.
“De broom iz brok’n!” he heard the second carter reply in equally as broken Dutch, adding a spicy phrase in good Arabic. The two rubbish collectors trudged on, pushing their smeared, once-green carts brimming with squashed plastic cups and stinking cigarette butts towards the baggage lift. John, after a brief glance their way and still more confusion, concluded that the guys had perhaps been a bit lazy at school or had just arrived from a refugee camp somewhere. He sighed and went on, still arguing with his brother in his thoughts.
The garbage collectors went on, too, headed in the opposite direction, pushing their dirt-smeared vehicles. Their grandfathers and fathers had pushed similar carts in a mine or at a factory somewhere south and east of there, and now they were doing the same. It seemed inevitable that their kids would push one as well�"if they were lucky.

***

John sighed as he continued on to the next leg of his Monday morning commute. He didn’t dare to ask either Abdullah or his mate�"whose smelly vest he’d touched with his Hugo Boss jacket�"about Carl’s question. To distract his conscience, which was suddenly prickling like a budding cactus, he glanced at his Omega watch. Oh, sheeps, John thought. The train was almost three and a half minutes late. His busy day was already stretched for time.
He turned right and trotted alongside the taxi stand to the public bike garage at the right-hand side of the station. He soon located the run-down, rusty-spotted bike he kept there, squeezed between others like a sardine and chained to the holder like a galley slave. He wiped the cold dew from the creaky seat, mounted his undersized bottom on the silent mule and, in a moment, was riding along the Singel Canal to his office. The interview he’d promised his brother that he’d conduct soared out of his head ...

It was a usual, drab, slightly misty Dutch morning. The middling sun, as though unsure of its own existence, didn’t bestow the buzzing city beneath it with much warmth or passion; instead, it simply gave out some sparing pale light in small portions so as not to draw too much attention to itself. A legion of other suited, pale-faced, running-late bicycle riders struggled along the same route.
John pedalled in furious silence along the bumpy, slippery lane, trying to avoid being pushed over by the other tweedies or landing in a puddle. As he struggled to keep his precarious balance, last Friday’s conversation with his brother popped into his head and he resolved himself to feeling at least somewhat happy. He ground his teeth together, attempting to squeeze any pesky thoughts aside so that the essence of happiness could come to the surface like a rabbit leaping out of a conjurer’s hat.
Yet, for some reason unknown to applied psychology, clinical psychiatry, social science, or even to him, this proven method failed him that morning. The other bicyclists were too pushy, the way covered with too much discarded rubbish, the pearl-sized drop of dew under his collar was too discomforting, like a cold snail that made him shake from sheer and sincere disgust. He was determined that his happiness would surely surface by lunch.

***

In less than ten minutes John reached his imposing office on the channel side. The bank folks were gearing up for the day, switching on their PCs or laptops, touching up their makeup or re-cleaning their glasses. At least three coffee experts stood next to their totem, where the first portion of their holy elixir was boiling, filling the otherwise profane institution with a sort of sacred incense.
Suddenly, Boss appeared on the scene from the narrow side door, bumping his square shoulder against the slender frame of a junior clerk. No excuses or apologies followed. Instead, Boss stared at the fair-headed man.
“John, eh, John, good that you are here,” Boss said, turning his bespectacled, bald head around without greeting anyone or even nodding. “Where’s my yellow pen?”
“The pen is on the third window in the hall,” John replied with the happy dignity of a savvy bank officer who knew how to talk to the authority. “Shall I fetch it?”
“Yes, if you’d be so kind.” The director nodded and looked in the direction of the coffee machine, meeting three pairs of servile eyes ready to bring him not just a ‘kopya’�"that is, a cuppa�"but the whole bulky apparatus as well. “And one cappuccino for me, okay?”
“Please!” John fetched the hot drink and brought the manager’s favourite pen with a smart, modestly smug smile. The long-awaited happiness was now in sight�"it was just one Boss’s grin away. The top manager took, first, the writing device, wriggled it in his plump hand, and tried to click the quill out.
The stupid pen squeaked and refused, not even caring in whose mighty hands it was misbehaving. The director tried once again, but the stubborn yellow thing creaked, cracked, and broke. Its small, severed head popped onto the carpet, jumping and skipping and flipping and whirling before the eyes of His Bank Majesty, whose face suddenly lost any trace of teddy bear-ness and gained, instead, some of the features of a crude Spartan officer.
“John, this pen is bro-oken,” Boss drawled, searing the poor clerk with two laser-rays from behind his glasses. “When will you finally take responsibility to learn that you aren’t employed to bring me the broken stuff?”
His Insulted Majesty turned about with a face more sour than forty green lemons and stormed off through a silence heavy enough to anchor a full-sized ocean cruiser in Amsterdam’s pocket-sized harbour. John, so obviously deflated, was peppered with a couple of poisonous giggles. He didn’t know what to do with the miserable parts of the yellow pen�"pick them up and try to restore it? Throw them in the basket? Or just walk away, pretending that nothing had happened?
Deciding on the third option, John passed by the scene of plasticky carnage, hoping Boss would forget it all in five minutes’ time.

***

... At the same moment, Joseph Mbangi, a vivacious fifty-two-year-old basic school student from the south Sudanese town of Yoe, was already sitting at his makeshift desk. With a broad smile, he gazed in sheer wonder at the mysterious black thing nestled beneath his gnarled, root-like hands, which until then had been used only for chiselling, pick axing, and holding an AK-47 machine gun.
The black, gleaming object was a real PC keyboard. Joseph had a tough job ahead of him�"to find the keys ‘j’ and ‘m’, and to press each of them once. He searched the rows of letters thrice, and, not being able to find either ‘j’ or the other, called the tutor.
“Don’t resign!” encouraged the radiant instructor, who, besides the keyboard layout, also knew how the fan and the mainboard worked, and could speak a sophisticated language he called Engly.
Joseph nodded and smiled, and promised to keep searching. He enjoyed the bright sunshine and this IT-knowledge class, the only one of its kind in the district, as well as the handful of yams he’d gotten earlier that morning from a church charity kitchen. He was happy to still have both legs, which some of his village neighbours didn’t possess anymore and which had walked him twelve miles to his class that morning.     
He was also glad to possess both eyes, so he could see the keyboard, and both hands, which had four fingers each�"more than enough to press the ‘On’ button on the PCs (when they finally arrived from an aid agency) and the keys on the practice keyboard. He was happy for both ears to hear the instructor, and for some teeth to chew the yam. And most of all, he was happy for this high-tech class, which one day would promote him to become a high school principal for the whole province of Juba�"if only he could manage to find those mischievous letters…

***

.. At the same moment half a world away, Vladimir and Sergiey, two inmates at the middle-security jail near the Russian city of Penza, were finishing a high-stakes card game. Vladimir was a greenhorn�"that is, someone who was just beginning his first five-year sentence. As such, he had to prove�"or to fight for�"his status and his safety over the next years in the cell. He chose to earn that through cards�"a smart, albeit risky, move.
His opponent, who had already spent some fifteen-odd years behind bars, was the grey-haired Thief-in-the-law Sergiey, nicknamed Malachite in mafia circles for smuggling diamonds and the like. Sergiey was in an easy, relaxed mood, and the game went off smoothly. The old master had played, and won, countless times with an endless number of other crooks, businessmen, and diplomats. His well-trained fingers, adorned with an elaborately tattooed signet ring, were nimble and precise, and his mind was as clear and deep as a fifty-carat emerald. The Thief’s tattooed hands warned that he had never lifted anything heavier than a gun, a caseful of bank notes, or a pack of cards. The new inmate knew well the possible consequences of the battle to come�"a crushing defeat would mean he’d lose all rights and become an untouchable ‘broom’ for the next three years.
The game was nearing its end. Vladimir, who had managed to keep four kings, placed them, side by side, on the table, then glimpsed up at Sergiey’s chin with a very modest, barely noticeable smile. Sergiey chuckled at the greenhorn, smiling only with his icy eyes, and flopped his four aces down in full view of the entire cell�"which, besides them, included another ‘chap’ who had the right to sit at the table, as well as a ‘broom’, who hadn’t.
The game was over. The two spectators buzzed approval for the master.
“Three months of making my bed, chap,” Sergiey announced, stretching his arms up along the wall and his legs out under the table, “and for now, a cup of tea.”
Vladimir, grateful that he was now also a ‘chap’, and, as such, could at least sleep through the night, nodded and stood up, crossing the small cell to put on the aluminium kettle. He knew the cell rules quite well for a greenhorn: no one could attempt to sit next to the Thief without his permission, even for a minute. It was his cell, his table, and, in many ways, his jail.
“Know what, chaps?” Sergiey said and smiled, this time a real one using his whole face. “You may both sit down here with me. I’m happy today!”
And he was�"even though there was no reason under the sun for him to be. Yes, he’d just won a status game against a smart opponent, but he’d never lost in the last two decades, either. Yes, the kettle was crooning its cosy, homey song, and a tin cup of tea would soon appear before his eyes, but so it had been for years, in any cell he’d ever set foot.
It wasn’t his pocket capital, either�"the dozen million dollars, kept in cash, gold, and diamonds, and in the offshore banks under his henchmen’s names�"that made him feel warm and sunny inside. Any Thief of his rank had just as much, and some guys he knew, and had even drunk tea with at that same table, possessed many times more. He regarded money with the professional contempt particular to a life gamer, a cheque-bouncer, a capital-launderer.
Nor was it the fact that he didn’t have too many enemies in the suspicious, dark, high-speed, and sinister world of the Russian mafia; in truth, most gun bosses needed his bank connections�"and him, alive and in person�"after their semi-automatic Makarovs had stopped barking and pillow-casefuls of dirty cash were yearning for a laundering. He was also generous to the kids of other Thieves who’d been killed in action, and there weren’t many gun folk who’d like to see his greying head holed.
Yet, it wasn’t even that. Today, he simply wore, like an unseen mantle, a sudden blanket of unearned happiness adorned with a sparkling pearl of inner peace that had descended upon him as though from the higher spheres, wrapping him in its warmth without giving account to anyone.

            ***

Just then, Norman Davis, an MI-6 major who had been summoned to duty by a phone call at dawn, ambled through the familiar lobbies at the Vauxhall Cross. He had spent almost a quarter of a century spying abroad and he knew (or at least felt, by some sixth sense), even before being called, what sort of service�"a job, a chore, a cinch, or a trick�"was up the sleeves of his direct bosses. He hadn’t himself advanced to a boss’s cushy leather chair, perhaps because he’d been too honest. But this deep-seated thought he kept to himself.  
As a long-time insider, Norman knew that there were no more ‘ambitious’ jobs to be done. Some of his comrades believed, after the suspicious Litvinenko poisoning case on British soil, that every job was fixed at one point or another on some invisible plutocrat’s order form. While that might be a smart way to mend one’s skimpy purse, it was a poor way for British Intelligence to keep up a reputation. Anyway, a job was job, and he was summoned that day to do one.
“Papers,” he heard at Chamber 17, the stall from which he normally began his identity shift. Norman accepted what was being handed to him and nodded, glancing at the new passport. He stood as Norbert Douglas. The passport cover carried a unicorn and a lion, and he noted with vague amusement that he was suddenly some two years younger.
A cinch, concluded the major, without even smiling. For a tougher task, he’d get at least two passports�"one of them diplomatic�"and would have to visit the adjacent room to see or at least hear his liaisons. He signed the now genuine (that is, false, or rather, necessarily adapted) document, read his new birth date another time to commit it to memory, nodded goodbye, and left.
“Luggage,” he heard at Chamber 21 (which was next to Chamber 17; Vauxhall Cross had own laws and rules). He accepted a small leather suitcase to be taken along as carry-on for the flight, as usual. The slightly worn, medium-grade leather was as dull and forgettable as possible�"and, in this respect, was a copy of Major Davis himself: middle-height, middle-aged, never discernable in a crowd. But, unlike the invisible military agents that were neither poor nor rich, the case itself was quite well off.
“Open?” asked Norman, now Norbert, just to keep up the procedure that dated to the times of Sir Roger Hollis or earlier. The officer at the desk confirmed (for at the Office, you can’t ‘agree’, you must ‘confirm’). The major did what he was asked and opened up his forgettable case. Three rows of bank notes�"dozens of little bundles with crisp paper belts�"spread before his eyes like a Chinese paper fan.
“Amount?” asked Norman, also in accordance with instructions.
“Three hundred thousand,” came the answer, as dry and staid as the lobbies and the department itself. Norbert nodded, coolly and indifferently, without raising a brow or adding a single heartbeat to his well-regulated pulse.  
Norman was used to asking no questions before a job, yet he sensed that it was that bloated seventh department�"the one that dealt with East European “Block” issues�"that was serving him the job. He’d probably be in for some economy and industry information gathering, or some classic espionage and double-agent rewarding, but nothing as exciting as coup preparations. That sort of job was done elsewhere these days.
No one (besides the Office itself) could count how many consuls or top officials in all corners of the planet were imposed, deposed, lobbied, or ‘inclined’ with his invisible help. His job was to promote something that would be ‘within the British scope of interest’, or dissuade that which would be against it.
Looking down at the dull leather case, a thought crossed Norman’s mind: How much money had he carried in his life in briefcases just like this one? Be it sterlings, dollars, deutschmarks (or recently, annoying Euros), Swiss franks, yen, or even Thai bhats�"if he summed up all the capital he had lugged around with him, he could perhaps buy a villa on each continent, including Antarctica, and leave a very memorable legacy for his descendents for up to six generations. But he never once attempted to even touch the cash; what counted for him was his officer’s honour, his honesty, and his mission.
“Task and route,” came next, in Chamber 75C. As usual, he couldn’t make any notes about his task in his notebook or write down any names in his assigned mobile. He had to memorise it all: Place, date, liaison or proxy, hotel, meeting spot, backup meeting spot, emergency meeting spot, exit, emergency exit, and Plan X for abandoning the mission. All was usual.  
The major stood between two table lamps as he examined the thin folder of briefing notes that had been presented to him. He ‘photographed’ the necessary data into his trained mind.
“Confirmed,” said he into the dark stall that was Chamber 75C. Since 1973, the outgoing agents could no longer see his department tutor; they had to concentrate not on the face in front of them, but on memorising the facts�"their lives depended on it.
“Repeat, please,” came the immediate reply.
He recited the content of the entire folder from memory. There was silence. Five minutes passed.
“Repeat, please,” came the same request, this time from another person.
He did.
The procedure was running to its end. The date confirmation took place in the next chamber. The major was almost certain that the mission would begin in no fewer than three days. He was wrong.
“Tickets and reservations,” came from Chamber 34, the last (and at times most intriguing) chamber. “Amsterdam,” read the agent aloud. “Economy class, March 20. 9:54.”  
That meant he was departing in a couple of hours �"quite unusual. Yet the major didn’t even raise his brow. He’d travelled all around the globe at the drop of a hat. Yet, as the years rolled on, the youthful excitement that the job once raised had cooled down like a barbecue left in the cold wind.
There were few countries he’d never visited, under one name or another. The next day or the next week, he could be off to Sidney, Barcelona, or Timbuktu, or Vladivostok or Port-Moresby�"it didn’t matter. The Crown entrusted him with a service, and he always fulfilled it, no matter what it might be. This made him feel useful, at times exceptionally so, and often content�"maybe even happy. After all his years of tough service, sleepless nights, crossing borders in the dark, and a couple of incidents that had almost sent him home in a metal casket, he still liked being a secret agent.
The more the major thought about the half-hour hop over the Channel, the more it seemed to be proof that the Office was beginning to respect his age. Pension time isn’t too far away, he reminded himself, then quickly drove the thought away�"it wasn’t the time or the place. He was on a mission, and he’d have enough time to think about retirement when he was back at his Sussex cottage.

***

In one hour and thirty-four minutes (he didn’t need to look at his watch to know the amount of time that had elapsed), the major’s unassuming shoes slid over the grey marble floor of Schiphol Airport. He beelined straight to the taxi stand, where a lean moustachioed chap loitered by a dark BMW at the front of the cab line.
“Sur, a druyv?” asked the cabbie eagerly, opening the rear door and not waiting for an answer.
Norman nodded, even though the cabbie seemed to be talkative, a trait that the major genuinely disliked. Still, a refusal would make him conspicuous, and that was the cardinal no-no in his line of work.
“Bristol, please,” he said plainly, as the driver closed the door.
“Gudd,” came the answer. The vehicle bounced off the curb and onto the crammed highway which led to buzzing North Venice.
“Tuurrist?” asked the chauffeur in his broken English, seeking the major’s small eyes in the oversized rear view mirror.
“Business,” returned the major shortly. It was his normal way of speaking with taxi folks, from Cape Town to Shanghai. Tourists seldom come alone; executives often do.
“Oh, Amsterdam iz gudd fur buznes,” agreed the semi-bald guy at the steering wheel. “So menny bunks...  so-o much munny... oh!” He lifted his finger up, then winked and continued, in a low voice “Sum guys even com with koffers full of munny heer.”
 “Really?” Norman, as Norbert, lifted his left brow in a very well-practised look of amusement and surprise. Luckily his own suitcase couldn’t speak...
“Yep, sur, I give my hand to bee chopped off eef eetz not so!” The driver spread his hands, leaving his grip on the steering wheel for a good while. The car began to lose its lane, though this didn’t cause Norman to even blink. He knew how to steer a car from the back seat, as well as how to escape when being shot at and how to drive in the moonless dark with the headlights turned off.
Soon, the wordy chauffeur and the silent passenger began manoeuvring between the endless lanes and alleys of downtown Amsterdam. Norman, whose photographic memory had learned a different route to the hotel, turned his eyes two or three times to the side, watching better routes recede behind them. This didn’t escape the experienced cabbie’s notice -the chauffeur of course knew that Keisergracht had been closed to traffic that day for a water main break that happened last night. How on earth could the newly arrived visitor know that?  the driver  pondered.
“No prublem, sur!” He lifted his, a bit crooked finger up in the air. “I’ll breng you deerec to de dawr! De same munny! I no cheat!”
Norman nodded, smiling modestly. That was why he didn’t like babbling cabbies...


***

Just a couple of miles away, still dejected by the morning’s plastic pen debacle, John was relieved when his office mate, Matt, who was equally as glib as himself, thundered into the office. He was showing his usual bravado, and began to shower on John the latest news he’d just heard on the radio.
“Know wha?” Matt prodded. As a typical Amsterdamer, he ate up most of the words’ ends, making his speech nonchalant and ‘hip’. “Th’ capital is abuzz with a new affair!”
“What’s that?” John asked and smiled weakly. “Has the government fallen again?”
“No,” Matt said, frowning with both brows instead of his usual one. “Nope, not such a trifle. A ship chock-a-block full of submarine and combat airplane parts has stopped in Delfzyl, and they wanna haul t’thing to Rott’rdam if the repair won’t succeed in th’ province. Wher’ has our intelligence been keeping its eyes?”
“Sounds like a cheap tabloid duck,” John chuckled. His own ‘newspaperman’ brother was the only one he trusted not to breed news ducks.
“So I also thought, man.” Matt sat on his desk and turned his laptop on, and in so doing launched a thick civil law volume onto the floor with a thump and a little dust cloud. “That is, until I read a couple of internet articles, an’ then fel’ goose-skin, y’ know? My aunt lives in Rott’dam. Jus’ imagine if the darn thing exploded into thin air? An’ th’ people, eh? Who’d pay?”
John chuckled again. The last words were very much Dutch and very much Matt’s, who was busy in marine insurance. Rotterdam, some forty miles away, wasn’t in his portfolio, yet an irresistible fear had already begun to grip him like a pair of gigantic tongs.
“Look at t’ news, man, jus’ look!” Matt landed, finally, in his chair and turned around four times, like a fighter pilot in training. “Real messy stuff!”
John opened a tabloid’s web page, which he normally didn’t read, and then brought up a couple of its more serious, less sexy, more boring, and more indebted competitors. Indeed, a photo of a freighter’s rusty hull filled every front page, dwarfing the peppy daily trifles and gossip designed to hook the reader.
“See ’t, man?” he drummed his stumpy fingers against the computer screen. “I bet you two hundred to one that this is going to be the buzz of the year.”  
John remembered his talk with Carl a few days ago and grinned. He wouldn’t bet a dime against Matt, who would accept money from anyone, including his ninety-five-year-old granny, the King of Tonga (where seashells are used for coins), or a mendicant friar. In the last case, Matt would take the last pennies together with the monk’s only frock.  
“My goat, every day sha’ make us richer, by hook o’ crook, by truth o’ bluff,” Matt chuckled after repeating his favourite motto, which he himself had hammered together from tabloids clichés. “But, mate, I’d bet my nose tha’ this is gonna be messy stuff, and it will jus’ mean trouble.”
John closed the news sites and opened up the boring client database. Oh, let the bread-winning begin, he thought. But his mind wasn’t yet ready to still. Where was that written, ‘give us this day our daily bread’? he pondered.

Matt was noticeably quiet across the desk. “But, ugh, imagine if they”�"he set his palm beneath his tie’s knot and made a long face�"“the long-bearded, started a war?”
“A war?” John wasn’t listening too closely, for between thoughts about daily bread he was glancing through the datasheet. The red ‘overdue’ fields had begun to crowd and multiply like pesky rabbits on the Australian continent. He’d better react before he was called and lambasted by Boss�"or, worse yet, the contemptuous secretary. “Hmmm... a war?” He lifted his head and giggled. “I’d take a holiday and fly to the Bahamas until it was over!”
Matt neighed so loudly that the paper calendar on his desk toppled over. “Book me a room at your resort, too,” he said and giggled like a schoolboy who’d just stolen a kiss or peeped at the answer sheet. Both sales clerks grinned and prepared to face their screens. Now the usual work could finally begin.

But the day had other plans for them. The glassy brown door suddenly opened and Boss peered through it. He looked abnormally small, pale, and rather un-Boss-like, as though some of the majestic air had been deflated from him. Which pin on earth could prick his unsinkable boat? John wondered.
“Matt,” Boss called to the older clerk, who half-rose from his chair with eyes as large as saucers. “I’m going for a special meeting; Gary will answer my calls.”
Matt nodded, still silent.
“Listen,” Boss continued, “you do the marine insurance files, right?”
“Ye-es,” stuttered Matt, his face beginning to assume the same tinge as his light grey suit.
“Prepare an offer, in English. Three hundred million, fully anonymous, dangerous and special goods. Make it short term, state guaranteed, high rent,” muttered the Boss in an unusually colourless tone, as though repeating someone’s instruction. “Forget all your other work until it’s done. Understood?”
“Sur’.” Matt nodded and reached for a hanky to wipe a streak of sweat that had suddenly formed on his forehead.
“So long!” The director’s shivering palm rose and fell in an awkward, outdated gesture. His raincoat pressed against the glass for a mere moment, and then he was gone.
Matt fell into his chair and gasped. Then, he glanced at John. “Eh, man, am I asleep or wha’?” he asked, even pinching his left hand. Irregular pink and scarlet splotches began to appear all over his cheeks and neck, and his ears turned red like two overripe tomatoes.
“I’m afraid not,” replied his stunned colleague, unsure of what he should say or do. Should he try to comfort? “Man, listen,” he said. “First, the arms-stuffed ship hasn’t yet reached Rotterdam, and second, it’s not certain that you’re to underwrite that vessel. Why chicken out before the wolf has even yipped?”
Matt sat still for a while, not listening closely, visibly scared to his wit’s end. He knew all too well that for any marine insurance offer, the adviser should see the object to be covered; in this case, he was almost certain that he’d be needing to make a trip to Rotterdam to visit the ship�"the highly explosive, mysterious vessel featured in that morning’s papers..
“No, no, nope, that simply can’t be,” Matt muttered, holding his now-purplish face between his hands. “Maybe the Boss ... would change his mind? d’ you think, Jo?”

John shook his head gently. Boss might overlook a lot, true�"he often lost his favourite pen, his wallet, and his hat�"but he wouldn’t skimp over a deal that could double his bank’s yearly profit.
“But, Matt, why do you believe all the stuff that those silly tabloids write?” John tried at least to stem his friend’s mood, to set it onto a smoother course. “Maybe it’s not that bad. Maybe that ship is really carrying... bananas?” He produced the most impossible cargo type that came to mind, trying to distract his frightened colleague. “Why don’t you find out  more; you don’t have to go until at least the day after tomorrow, right?”
Matt nodded his head slowly in the affirmative. “But... in a couple of days ... in a couple of days I could just blown up... and I still haven’t seen a half of my life!”
“There, there,” John soothed, even leaving his chair and putting his hand on a listless light grey shoulder. He pulled out his last comfort card. “Well, how can you be so sure that it’s that ship? At least give it a chance of forty per cent” “Forty?” Matt snatched the flimsy hope like a thin straw, as if it were a piece of delicate chiffon soaring over the fierce and bottomless ocean of life. “No, too much ... How about four per cent? Four p’cent, yeah. It’s ju’ more realistic. Yeah.” He was noticeably four per cent brighter at the thought. Suddenly he raised his head, snapped his fingers, picked up the receiver, and dialled an internal number. The spark of hope, kindled by John, had obviously ignited a flame.
“I’ll call the Ma’am!” he winked at John. The Madame was, of course, Boss’s secretary�"the right hand of the director, his back-office safe where a good deal of his memory, most paper matters, and all agendas had been relocated years ago. Unlike his junior pre-sales clerk office mate, Matt was on a very friendly footing with her (and that was why, some rumoured, he was being eyed as the future department manager).
    After a brief talk with the second most important bank figure, Matt hadn’t calmed down much�"but at least he hadn’t got wound up any more, either.
    “And?” John asked, feeling strangely grateful to nosy secretary who’d unwittingly lifted a part of the comforter’s load off his shoulders.
    “Hazy,” Matt returned, “but rath’r not tragic. Th’ goods are, at least in part, German-made derrick parts. The vessel has anonymous owners, and is bound for an undisclosed route. What they do know�"and this is unofficial�"” he winked at John “�"is that the ship’s engine has run into major trouble, an’ every day b’hind schedule costs a fortune. In tha’ case, for an emergency repair in Europe, an add-on policy sh’ be filed. The Jerries ’re paying the whole hog.”
    “Where does she anchor, at the moment?” John asked, himself curious. “It sounds like the goods are worth a Mass!”
    “It’s a secret.” Matt knit his brow, switching to a whisper. “Boss himself has just heard about that possible deal from his men at the Transport Ministry... but all is up in the air, y’know?”
    “Unofficial, but real!” John grinned cunningly. “As usual.”
    “There’s more, old man.” Matt bent over the table, his whisper turning stiller yet. “Th’ director’s now at th’ Ministry to lobby ‘em so that I can buy a new Lotus this year!”
    “And himself a villa in France,” John muttered, tilting back in his chair. He glanced at Matt, then at the Formula 1 racing model on his desk, and asked, a bit teasingly, “Hey, man, you’re already raking in a hundred or so in speeding tickets every month, and now you want a sports car?”
    “I’ve just bought a device that pinpoints all the flash and radar spots in Ams’dam,” the speed freak boomed, “so it’s all under control!”
    John shook his head, wondering at how strange men can be. After all, Matt was scared beyond measure by a mystery ship that might blow up miles away, yet he risked his hide every week by driving recklessly through the crowded downtown streets.
    Matt was peering again at his computer screen. “Yep, yep,” he muttered, opening a new insurance folder. “But should I read th’ news anyway, man? You know, to keep abreast of all th’ dangerous stuff? I mean, what ’f there’s a nuclear bomb on board?”

    “Matt, boyo,” John chuckled, seeing how easily his office mate could plunge into groundless panic. He himself had just too much common sense, like his rural Veluwe ancestors, to follow suit. “Nukes on board a merchantman? They’d never admit such stuff into our harbour.”
    “Hmmm, maybe you’re right. Who knows,” mumbled Matt, calmly now, glancing up at his screen again. “Yep, the tub’s looking like a pigsty, not a Teutonic vessel,” he said, uncertainly returning to his drummed-up mood. “By the looks of it, the only place one could eat a lunch aboard would be in the fresh air,” he said with the knack of an expert.
    “You mean, their deck is cleaner than your desk?” John snorted from the vicious thought, but didn’t say it aloud. He wasn’t that mean.
He cracked his knuckles and turned to face his computer screen. Another day in the bank was about to begin, another day of invisible battles and indescribable passions.
            ***

After the whole scene of dread, near-hysteria, and partial solace, John needed comforting himself�"but there was no other John to offer him what he offered to others. He shuffled to the window and looked far off into the sky. Any flicker of sun over there? he thought, still hoping that his unknown, unpredictable, and joyful friend from the other evening would again open a door in the floor of the sky and smile down at him.

The lonesome grey sky reflected its misty, ever-frowning face in the concrete-coloured waters that were squeezed between the drab mossy banks of the four-hundred-year-old canal. A grey wind swept through the lonesome streets, chasing the lopsided, homeless thoughts lost among the dry, half-gnawed leaves, driving away the short-sighted, decrepit feelings of those who could still feel anything. John heard its cruel, listless, chilly whisper and sighed. It wasn’t at all what his troubled mind sought. He felt tired, empty, lonely. He shivered.
John looked briefly up into the sky one last time, ready to go back and squeeze into his chair. But at that moment, however, he noticed something�"and quite a something it was. He shook his head, but the object didn’t disappear. It wasn’t a UFO, or an angel with a brass trumpet, or a witch on a broom. Such silly notions are reserved for fairy tales, he thought as he stood, in his right mind, with his eyes open, in his sterile, boringly sober, mundane office.
But there in the sky was a small, round silver cloud, quite different from the sombre-coloured clouds surrounding it. This cloud was finer, and livelier, than the others, and it even oozed some light. The cloud hovered above the drab, lead-coloured water, then whirled around three times.
“Hi!” John heard at once. It wasn’t an audible word, yet he was sure he’d heard it, clear as a sudden doorbell on a silent Sunday morning, crisp as a mountain waterfall thundering over an alpine plateau, loud as the cry of a newborn baby.  
Who are you? he thought, still too baffled to smile. Are you the same cloud I saw last Friday?
“I’m the friend of lonely hearts, the rain for overheated minds, the oil for screeching souls,” the silver cloud replied plainly and surely. “You’re not alone.”
The round, lively object spun around again and suddenly launched itself heavenward like a rocket. As it moved higher and higher, it remained visible to John, vanquishing the distance, challenging time and perception. It seems... alive, John thought. Or even more than that.
“Fine,” John uttered, struggling to believe that something so clearly ethereal, irresistible, indestructible, and indefinable could materialize again before his eyes. If I had a camera, would it show up? But this thought, too profane in itself, was soon crumpled up and tossed into the rubbish bin of John’s mind, where odds and ends of his ideas spent their last days waiting for the ocean of subconsciousness to overcome them, only to reappear later as dreams and nightmares, fears and wild desires.
         “Fine,” John breathed again, happier this time. He grinned and returned to his desk. The day could finally begin.

Author's Note

please consider structure and pace