Safari begins

the novel becomes real spy thriller here

        










Chapter 3
The Safari Begins�"With a Corn Can

By the time the hour hand had completed its slow, stealthy, silent, and perhaps sinister hoop dance around the clock face in the hall of the bank, John had forgotten all his dealings with Carl. The week had kicked off quite hectically, and there had been no time to ponder whether he was happy, sincere, open-minded, paranoid, receptive, cosmopolitan, chauvinistic, or anything else. All he knew was that he was darn busy; the rest simply didn’t matter.
The world he knew, the one in which he whirled and danced through every uniform day like a pre-programmed doll, didn’t allow intense, colourful emotions�"or many emotions at all, for that matter. Information, not feelings, and statistics, not passion, were the bony, glassy-eyed horses that hauled his digitalised carriage, twinkling with cent-a-piece diodes rather than glittering diamonds. He was often made to feel that if he still craved old-fashioned feelings, it was perhaps because he’d been born out of his time.
Yet his brother�"deliberate, slow-to-start, but once-in-motion-unstoppable Carl, engineer by day and journalist at heart, a hunter for emaciated emotions in the skimpy forest of irksome, touchy, listless, and chronically impotent existence�"had a plan. His essays had to be soundly reasoned, well constructed, polished; they should tell the avid southern English public the�"or, at least, a�"decent truth, in such a smart way so as not to baffle or insult the reader. They must be based on sources as reliable, deep, sincere, open-hearted and pure as a baby’s tears�"a baby such as John, whom Carl still called a keendye�"a young child. And, when Carl had a plan, it was always carried out, with only three exceptions: the coming of the end of the world, the coming of his own end, or the appearance of a brighter plan of his own creation capable of eclipsing the first.

***

As the averagely built, modestly smiley, striped-collared Mr. Wednes, and his wobbly, pale-faced chum Day, appeared on the horizon of River Time, the scrupulous researcher of Dutchness also arrived in downtown Amsterdam.
He came, as all sensible visitors do, by train, in order to avoid the torture of the evening traffic jam that begins in the capital itself and creeps, like a stinking, phlegmatic python, to Utrecht or further, and sometimes even to the German border.
Carl had brought along a folded bike, an original English Brompton, which he had bought in the bicycle’s native country for a hundred pounds in the good old days when the sterling was still worth more than a bike’s wheel nut. The two-wheeler was laden down with his oversized briefcase�"what could be considered an undersized chest filled up with a dozen note pads, a dictaphone and a camera, and countless pens and markers.
There was also a special compartment for electronic parts and switches, complete with wiring diagrams and several mysterious gadget prototypes, which had lingered there for years�"ever since the time when Carl had given up his freelance gig with a military academy, for which he had also crafted two or three secret devices. What the appliances were for, exactly, no one knew; after delivering them to three nameless generals, the taciturn engineer was obliged to sign a ‘non-disclosure statement’, forcing himself to seven years of total silence about ‘the matters concerned’. He was urged, too, to destroy all the prototypes and diagrams�"a suggestion which he hadn’t taken up. By the time Carl had perfected some of his ideas about the enhancement of dictaphones and like devices, he was already using the hybrids for his never-forgotten love�"journalism.

As arranged beforehand, John was waiting for him near the station, leaning against the hump-backed bridge. He was wearing a wide grin and had the overall air of a truant schoolboy. John’s big deal had been struck, and now, in accordance with his bank’s unofficial (but nonetheless real) rules, the hard-earned four free hours stood before the explorers like chunks of juicy watermelon laid out on a plate, ready to be grabbed and enjoyed.
And they did�"in a modest way that wouldn’t make them blush in the evening back home: they cycled, with a provincial innocence and clean-shaven sobriety, through the lavish city full of luxury, lust, and lustre.
“This street is Singel,” explained John with the acquired tone of a local sage who knows not only every lane, canal, and tree in the vicinity, but also every grey cat in every green gateway. “The older buildings are seventeenth-century. As you can see, they’re still looking great and a real draw for tourists.” He swerved, narrowly avoiding a direct hit with a gaping tourist tottering atop a yellow bicycle borrowed from his hotel.
“Sooor-ry!” squeaked the tourist, and pedalled effortfully on.
“Let’s stop for a moment.” Carl slowed down his pocket bike, whose miniature wheels shuddered and skipped over every bump. “I have to take a couple of photos.”
“Sure!” John agreed. They dismounted from their puny, hard metal beasts, locked them to a metal fence, and strolled across a stone bridge flung over the broad canal. “Charming view, isn’t it? The houses could be palaces! Look how their elegant facades are reflected in the shimmering silver mirror of water.”
“Eh?” asked Carl, unmoved by his brother’s poetic turn of phrase. “Do you think exposure ISO-800 is all right?”
“Yep,” answered John, deaf to purely technical stuff. His eyes widened and he pointed to a colourful house across the canal. “Look�"that one has a golden stag’s head at attic level!”
“Huh,” Carl noted distractedly and tried a different angle for his shot, attempting to catch the glitter of the water with his semi-professional camera. “The angle’s too narrow,” he sighed ruefully.
“Narrow? This bridge must be one of the widest,” John countered, always ready to correct, though much less ready to listen. “I bet it’s at least twenty metres wide!”
“Oh, really?” Carl glanced back, translating the profane metres into noble yards, which meant, however, roughly the same thing. “How could we measure it?”
“Very simply: by pacing it out. My stride is exactly forty-and-a-half inches long,” John said, eyes twinkling innocently. He turned around and jaywalked across the stone bridge’s humped back. In his wake, two bicyclists, travelling at a fair speed along the narrow lane, screeched their brakes to avoid his erratic movements and knocked against each other. As one tumbled to the ground, Carl’s finger automatically pressed the shutter. Sorry, guys, he thought, hiding his amusement under an expressionless pancake face. That’s not for the press. Unfortunately�"for it was so typically Dutch.
“Bull shhhhh�"!” yelled the fallen biker in English, struggling back to his feet and rubbing his bruised knee. He continued on in furious Dutch, hurling his thoughts at John’s receding back. “Have you forgotten your brain at home, or are you still learning to walk!?”
“Eleven, twelve, thirteen... Sorry, what?” John continued his march across the bridge without even turning his head towards the victims. “Fourteen, fifteen ...”
“He must have a few screws loose,” muttered one of the victims gloomily as he climbed back onto his bike and rode on, pedalling with his one undamaged leg. The other cyclist spat on the ground and followed suit. Time was too precious in the capital to waste it on trifles like a bruised knee or on getting even with a minor culprit.
 Carl, succumbing to the temptation to pretend to be an innocent tourist, clasped the camera. Would ISO-200 be better, perhaps? he wondered.
“It’s eighteen steps wide!” called John from the other side, lifting his hand and wearing a smile broader than the bridge itself. “And it’s more beautiful than any London bridge. What do you think?”
There came no answer. Carl grinned diplomatically, and John went on.
“Of course we mustn’t forget the Royal Palace,” John noted, back in tour-guide mode. He nodded toward the Dam over which the late-Classical palace loomed.
“That’s fine, Johnnie,” Carl agreed. “Maybe we should walk, though. What do you think about trying to talk to folks again?” He smiled, noticing a slight shadow cross John’s forehead. “No, not about happiness or equality this time. About something easier. I’d like to sandwich the tough bacon between more palatable pancakes.”
“Like?” John prompted, somewhat reluctantly.
“Today, I thought we could interview people on the subject of ... sincerity. What do you think?” Carl’s left eye twinkled.

 The clerk stopped, smiling like the rising sun. Finding, in Amsterdam, people to talk to would be as easy as hitting a cow’s rump with a fiddle. He was double sure that every Dutch person in their right mind would sincerely and cheerfully take part in an ad hoc discussion about any subject under the sun�"from the wretchedly moist weather to the tremendous Orange football team to the regular political stalemates. Of course there would be loads of vox pop material, and of course those cynical, reserved, phlegmatic Brits would blush and sweat and wriggle in their creaky armchairs as they read about how informal, easy, and pleasant a society can be here in the Northern Venice, which never sleeps, is never tired, and is always optimistic and modestly drunk.
But�"oh, that common and explosive word!�"the fate of the day, the fate of both brothers, and the fate of the still-sober capital, a few consuls, some diplomats, and a handful of spies, not to forget the fate of several countries, was about to be changed. For unexpectedly, stealthily, in the blink of an eye, an invisible finger�"the finger of an ancient, unageing, pre-computer Providence�"touched the unseen scales on which lives and destinies are weighed: heavyweights are toppled, pawns are made kings for a brief minute, and kings hurried like errand boys.

John and Carl didn’t see that finger, of course; John’s sky-blue eyes were wandering over the green trees’ first leaves, which he loved, and the white birds fluttering over the surface of the canal. Carl, meanwhile, reached for his first notepad he kept in his breast pocket; he pulled it out and wrote ‘questions’ on the right of a fresh piece of paper, and ‘answers’ on the left. Then, he squatted to fetch a marker from his bottomless briefcase, which stood, with all the inborn dignity of a secretive object, upon the trivial cobblestones, eyeing them with the same condescending air that the Eiffel Tower assumed when peering down at the lowly Parisian ants.  And then...
Carl froze as though scared by a ghost. His eyes fell on a little rectangle tucked between a tree and a bulky metal ring on the pavement. On it he read something... weird. No, really weird. But real. No, too strange to be real. Wasn’t it? He shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and cautiously picked the card up to read the text again. There, in Dutch and English, frighteningly clear, were the words:

Kingdom of the Netherlands. AIVD General Intelligence Service. Officer IPNL94O30085. The holder of this card has the right to question, search, and/or arrest any person in the territory of the Netherlands and its sovereign waters.

Carl opened his mouth, then closed it. He took off his glasses and wiped them with a clean hanky. He placed them back on his face and adjusted them vigorously. Again looked down at the card, which was still nestled in his hands. It hadn’t disappeared or turned into a harmless tram ticket. This was a real intelligence card, of that he was sure.
There was a picture in the top right-hand corner. He studied it closely, blinking a few times. The photo was a very copy of him: a middle-aged, dark haired man with a strong chin and a farmer-like, slightly bulging, oversized nose. His head snapped up in surprise. What the...? He glanced at the card again, his eyes stopping at the warning:

 Government property. Unauthorized use will be punished, in acc. with Art. 45a of the penal code.

The miniature text was so ghastly that it almost prompted him to throw the card in the water, before this tiny thing had the chance to get him into serious trouble. But his hand stopped as a brave, incredible, wild thought came into his head. Now he could... Now... Now...
“It just can’t be true!” he exclaimed in a whisper, turning the card around and scrutinizing it like a bomb disposal expert examining an unexploded shell�"one blunder and you’re in the next world. His eyes, the trained eyes of a skilled electronic engineer, noticed a rounded, thick area at the left-hand side of the card, and a miniscule metal band, covered with plastic, at one end.
“Uh oh. A USW or GPS antenna, charged by a tiny solar cell,” he muttered to himself. His mind began to whirl, to heat up, to buzz like a rising helicopter. The metal ring must have covered the antenna and kept the sunlight off of it... that’s why it hasn’t been found yet, he figured, remembering, in a twinkling of an eye, his own wireless devices. I must get it into a metal box�"the sooner the better!
He opened his briefcase with a violent jerk, as a bank robber might open his bag of swag�"every millisecond mattered. There were numerous metal transistor covers and thyristor cooling plates�"but none of the size needed. Oh... moaned Carl silently. The card could be sending out a ‘lost’ or ‘alert’ signal at that very moment, and... the real spies could be closing in on him!
“Excuse me, sir.” A serious, quiet, deep baritone voice sounded behind him, and a stiff finger touched his shoulder. Stunned with fear, Carl jumped up, biting his tongue. Slowly, guiltily, he turned around. Two stumpy, mousy men who could have been twins in their grey raincoats and mirrored sunglasses stood behind him. The first kept his right hand in his pocket. They didn’t smile. Their faces were deadpan�"too deadpan, threateningly blank.
I’m a goner, thought Carl. He gulped, feeling cold fear creeping down his spine. His hands trembled like an aspen tree in the breeze. They’re already here! But I would always say I just found it...that I was just curious...that I was going to take it to the poli...
“Sorry, sir,” the man said again, tougher this time. “Do you have a minute?”
“Ye-yes,” hiccupped Carl. The card was clamped in his right hand. What’s next? Will they use handcuffs, or just arrest me? And how many years in jail did it say on the card? His heart thumped, the sweat breaking out on his forehead. His eyes searched for John’s, but his brother was busily chatting with a sincere passer-by on the other side of the bridge, an oblivious eighteen paces away.
The first man slowly began to take his hand out of his pocket.
“Can you please show us the way to the Royal Palace?” An innocent map was suddenly in his narrow, tanned hand.
Carl starting shaking again, this time with relief. He was ready to spit on the ground despite the good manners he had acquired in England, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. Words failed him. He nodded slowly, the card still clenched in his hand, and silently pointed to his left, towards the throngs of people on the far side of the bridge. He hiccupped loudly as his stomach ceased hovering between his sweaty, cold back and his overheated head and returned to its normal place.
“Tank you!” replied the other gent, with a noticeable Latino accent. The first crammed the map back into his pocket. Together they sauntered off in the direction Carl had pointed, gesticulating and chatting in a southern tongue. A melodic whisper of vowels and superlatives reached his ears as they receded.
“Crazy,” mumbled Carl, barely regaining his composure before remembering that the smart card was still spying on him, sending coded signals. Where’s a metal box? Any metal box? A box! His mind was racing in overdrive. What’s floating there, in the middle of the canal? No, it’s an empty plastic cup...  just some plastic crap... I need a metal box!

“Carl!” A familiar voice whipped his taut nerves again. He was so shaken that he jumped again, the card almost slipping from his sweaty fingers. “Are you talking to a fish?”
The older brother didn’t get the question at first, then frowned as though from a sudden toothache. John wasn’t known as a joker; he took his energized, whimsical ideas much too seriously for jokes. And when he did make a conventional joke, it was usually too obvious, too deep, or too childish.
“Uh, hmm, well,” Carl mumbled, turning the card in his hands, not knowing what to say. He was too preoccupied by what to do with the card. He must find a metal box, and soon. “Um, Johnnie, have you got a metal box?” he asked suddenly, loudly, and without warning.
John’s brows rose rapidly, like two halves of a folding bridge.
“A metal box?” he repeated, blinking twice. “Wh... what for?”
“Er, I need one. I really need one right now.” Carl’s thoughts began to whirl again. He had very little time; he could be caught on the spot at any moment. The card had that GPS chip, and it was spying on him. He felt as though he was standing there almost naked.
“Yes, er, it’s because I’m standing almost naked,” Carl repeated his last thought aloud, so distracted was he.
John shook his head, a hint of real concern appearing in his aquamarine eyes. Had his cool-headed brother got sunstroke? He glanced up at the drab, pale yellow sky. But it’s too early in the spring to get sunstroke, isn’t it? John wondered..
“A can, a can, my kingdom for a can!” muttered Carl loudly. The fragment of Shakespeare (with ‘horse’ substituted with ‘can’, of course) suddenly floated up from the English half of his mind, like a forlorn rabbit drawn too late from a hat in an already empty, darkened circus tent.
This last phrase baffled John beyond all comprehension. What had happened to his brother? A sudden virus? A mental breakdown? “Um, Carl, what’s up?” he asked carefully, trying to recall whether such a spring syndrome had ever been known in their family. “Are you all right? Do you need some... water?”
“I’m completely, absolutely all right!” declared Carl, again too loudly. He followed up with an almost maniacal assurance that everything was fine, everything was perfect, everything was great, and that he was in perfect shape. “We need a shop. I need to buy a tin can. A tin of corn, okay?”
“All right,” said John slowly.
“Can you take me to one? Right now?”
John nodded with some hesitation. Of course he knew of a nearby supermarket�"the mom-and-pop corner stores had become defunct generations ago. “We have to go up here, turn left, then right, and there’s a big supermarket there. But ... what’s up?”
“All right, a shop, a shop,” mumbled Carl as he tucked the card into his inside jacket pocket and started to run. John shook his head and followed, for what else could he do? His reserved Carl didn’t usually display such eccentricities; the last time had been twenty-two years ago. Or maybe twenty-five.
“Where?” roared Carl, gasping, crossing the bridge and overtaking the two grey-clad men who had scared him out of his wits just minutes ago. The back of the Royal Palace beckoned him from behind the curtain of sweat that dimmed his eyes. Look, there are some metal boxes on the gates! he realized with joy. Oh, hang on, it’s the Royal Palace. I can’t just rip a box off a national treasure. Or ...?
“Turn right here!” John cried, following his brother, racing, he thought, like a hare chasing a wolf. The sudden comparison, nutty as the whole situation, didn’t make him laugh.
Carl obeyed the directive, and within moments the tall, blue-and-white facade of a large supermarket loomed in front of them.
“Carl, what on earth’s happened?” The puffing junior clerk finally caught up with sweating chief engineer as the two made their way along the spacious, crowded aisles of an Albert Hein supermarket. “Why a tin can? Why corn? What’s going on?”
“Just a moment. I’ll tell you, of course I will. But first we need a tin of corn, quick.”

Carl grabbed at a tin in the middle of a looming pyramid-shaped display and pulled it out, causing a small tinny avalanche. He glanced at the small cylinder in his hand then tossed it aside with a frustrated groan. A security guard looked sideways at the two rumpled men but said nothing. Carl, his hands trembling and heart thumping, grabbed at another can one display over. D****t! He needed a can with a ring pull! Where were they? He briskly headed to the end of the aisle.
“Yes!” Carl triumphantly grasped the all-important can as though it were a diamond, or at least a winning lottery ticket.
“Good?” said John, rose-faced from running and shame. There were two security guards standing behind them by now.
“Of course! Of course it’s okay!” thundered Carl. “See? Ring pull!” At least six other shoppers turned their heads, and John knew why�"when Carl was excited�"really excited�"he lost control of his voice and started to speak like a deaf old man: hoarse, fast, and very loud. And he gesticulated like a drunk mime.
Carl ripped open the can, tucked the curled lid into his jacket pocket, and stared at John. His eyes were misty, glowing, and slightly insane. “Do you have a spoon?” He fired the question hot and loud like a shot from a double-barrelled shotgun. John looked about them. Except for the security guards, the canned vegetable aisle had emptied.
“A spoon?” He frowned and shook his head again. “What do you need it for?”
“To eat it, what else!” boomed Carl. “I need a tin container�"an empty tin container!” He didn’t wait for John’s reply; with the open can in his hand, he marched straight up to the security guards and grabbed one by the sleeve.
“Where are the plastic spoons? I need one. I really need one now, please!” He shouted in the guard’s ear like a heroin addict desperate for a fix.
The guard pulled his balding head into his shoulders, glared at the insane customer, and took his walky-talky from his belt. But, not quite sure what to say into the CB radio, he ambled along the aisles and pointed to the plastic cutlery. “Here, sir,” he said, still uncertain of whether he should call the police, an ambulance, or a psychiatrist, or to just wait.
“A spoon, a spoon!” yelled Carl with the air of a Robinson Crusoe who had spent twenty years eating with his hands and had finally seen a real spoon again. “Hallelujah!”
Putting the open can on the shelf, he ripped the pathetically thin plastic bag so hurriedly that it tore, sending the flimsy plastic utensils rattling in all directions�"over the freshly cleaned marble floor, over the guard’s shiny shoes, and under the shelves. Carl didn’t care; he knelt down and grasped the spoon from between a mop bucket and a bag of ultra-sized cat food. The guard, ragingly confused but showing no temper, took care of the rest.
“Thank you, friend!” shouted the pink-faced, red-necked customer, patting the guard’s shoulder. He picked up the precious can from the shelf and hurried to the cash desk. The evening rush hadn’t yet started, and the queues to the tills weren’t yet as long as an adult giraffe’s neck; they were still only at the youthful alligator stage, each maybe two yards (or, for you squire, metres) long.
Carl chose the shortest line and got to work with the plastic spoon, gulping down the corn almost without chewing. John skulked behind his brother’s broad back, pretending to be just another empty-headed shopper, trying to make his expression bored and vacant. For the first time in his life, he was happy that he didn’t look like his brother.

Carl’s gobbling up of the tinned product didn’t escape the keen eyes of a four-year-old seated in a large shopping trolley that was half full of cans, meat, dairy, and fruits. His eyes grew wide, pointing at the yellow-labelled cans in his own shopping cart. “Mama, can I, too?”
But he received only a strict, forbidding head movement, as well as a couple of quiet, soothing words to say that the big guy in the massive tortoise-shell glasses and brown tweed suit was sick.
“But, ma, sick people don’t eat corn!” protested the youngster, too sincere for adult pretensions and dissembling. “They eat medicines! And lie in hospitals!”
“That’s right!” agreed Carl, between spoonfuls of the watery, yellowish pulp. “I’m eating this to be healthy! Would you like some, too?” It sounded ludicrous, but his sheer enthusiasm made up for the overt lack of common sense.
“Yes! Yes, please!” The boy was almost ready to jump out of his plastic seat in the boring trolley that had screeched its way through the boring supermarket. He even stretched his hand out to�"
“No, Jaap! Treasure, no, no!” his mom protested, grabbing her son from the trolley and whisking him from the culinary danger zone. Mumbling and cussing in a low tone, she pulled her trolley to another cash desk.
“All right, next time!” Carl finished the pocket-sized can himself. After licking the spoon, he stuck it, like a bridegroom’s jaunty buttonhole, in the breast pocket of his jacket.
John heard himself groan. Carl was obviously the centre of attention, but he hadn’t the slightest clue that he was. The queue moved on and the brothers�"one smiley and talkative, the other as shy and silent as a lamb�"were suddenly standing in front of the checkout girl.
 “Just the corn, and a pack of utensils!” Carl’s voice was brave and broad enough to fill the whole hall. “Yep, the can’s empty, but that’s no problem, I’ll still pay!” he pranked, willing to confirm his honesty with word and deed.
The young cashier, clad in a neat headscarf, had worked only three months at the market and hadn’t yet come across many such ‘loony shoppers’. She despondently scanned the empty can and the broken bag, then said in a voice as hollow and flat as a robot’s, “Two euro fifty-four cents, please.”
Carl rummaged through his pants’ pockets. There was only a stray one-euro coin. Oh, ducks, he thought. He was not used to doing the shopping. Where was his debit card?
“One moment,” he said, and, with a hint less panache, set his massive briefcase onto the conveyor belt and lifted it open. Where on earth was his debit card? No, not in here, he concluded after riffling through dozens of pages of loose notepaper. Could be in his jacket? Yes!
He grasped the plastic rectangle from his inside pocket and vigorously swiped it through the pin-machine. Unreadable. He tried another time. To no avail. The cashier, with a weary face and beginning to seethe inside, asked, “Would you like me to try to swipe it for you, sir?”
 “Yes,” consented Carl, still quieter, now almost at the noise level of a sleepy autumn fly. He placed the card into the cashier’s hands. Two pale, agile hands took the credit-card sized object and prepared to slide it through the reader once again.

Suddenly the pale, agile hands turned stiff, then sweaty. The stiffness and sweat travelled higher and appeared on the face and forehead of the checkout girl.
‘Kingdom of the Netherlands,’ read her stunned eyes. ‘AIVD General Intelligence Service. The holder of this card...’ She lifted her head sharply. Was this a hoax? “It must be the wrong card,” muttered the cashier, wiping her wet face with her polyester uniform sleeve. “Sir?”
“No, it’s the right card,” Carl responded, sure that his respected Bank wouldn’t have issued him an outdated debit card. He spoke with a loose, soft assurance that sounded almost sinister to the trembling girl’s ears.
The eyes of the real cashier and the fake spy met for a long second. He stood, radiating quiet confidence, perfectly sure that he’d handed her his debit card over the counter, and waited. Half a minute passed before the young market worker broke into loud tears. The six other cashiers stopped scanning and gazed up at her. First a corn can clean-up in aisle two, then a crazy man at the plastic cutlery station, and now a crying cashier... What was going on?
John was just as curious as everyone else in the store. What on earth had gotten into his brother? He pinched his own arm, hard. Maybe it’s me who has sunstroke, he thought.
“You,” the cashier whimpered, hiding her face in her hands, “you can’t arrest me right now... I... don’t steal... more than anyone else here! Truly, I don’t steal at all! ... And you can’t arrest my man... yes, he’s wearing ... a beard but... we have no machine guns at home, I promise! And no shoe bombs!” A minute of unstoppable sobbing followed. The card fell from her shaking hands onto the checkout desk.
A security guard who’d been looming nearby approached the scene and glanced at the card, too. He scratched his chin and nodded to his colleague. The other guard approached and set up the ‘Closed, please join another desk’ sign. He, too, stretched his hand out for the card�"only to pull it back as though there was a live scorpion on the counter.
The sobbing cashier and the two concerned guards stood in awkward silence, while Carl’s shoulders were held proudly and John’s face was hidden behind an occasional magazine. Finally, the senior guard muttered, “I’ll call the manager,” and disappeared.

A sudden hush of sheepish silence fell over the supermarket, which was as large as a half a football field. Even the most pompous customers suddenly felt petty, like the change tinkling onto the till. They all knew from their Pampers years that in small, staid Holland, nothing big happens. And if something big does happen, then it’s wrong and you’d better chicken out, look down, never notice, never get noticed...
John didn’t feel either petty or grand. He was puzzled, confused, baffled, and stressed. He had no clue what Carl had left at the counter, or why the girl had started to sob. Neither could he any longer assume the air of an innocent bystander. It was time to step up to his second role, but the script was unread and the stage crowded with motionless characters. He had no idea where to start...
Just then a meek, narrow-faced department manager in a shoestring tie hurried onto the scene. Having been briefed by the security guard, he focused his attentive grey eyes onto the card on the counter. He, too, stretched his hand out to it, then quickly pulled it back. He gulped. He tidied up his slim tie. He hemmed. “Hmmm,” he began, looking Carl in the chin and darting his eyes over to John. “Um, good afternoon, sirs!” The greeting sounded silly in the tense silence surrounding the counter.
Carl nodded slowly. He had finally begun to sense, with his gut rather than his mind, that he’d given the other card to the cashier. He gulped, willing to cut this useless circus short as soon as he could. In a half-minute or so, the manager had regained his ability to breathe, turn his head, and speak.
“Ughgh,” he went on, licking his dry lips. “I see, I see ... hmmm, I see.” He began to bob his head like a Chinese doll. “Sirs ... hmmm ... do you plan any action ... here?” he almost whispered the last words.
“No, our action had just been finished,” Carl returned, also in a low tone. He suddenly began to feel the chilling, killing, thrilling power of James Bond’s lifestyle. “Thank you, sir. You are free to leave now.”
The retail boss’ cheeks blushed slightly from hidden shame and anger, yet he’d been too well drilled in management school to ask too many questions from those who never answer any. He nodded dryly, turned to the cashier to whisper a last instruction, and sauntered away.
Carl, knowing that a couple of hundred eyes in the whole stunned, frozen, dumbfound supermarket were fixed on him, felt that he was beginning to blush as well. He felt like a kid caught cheating on a spelling test. They had to go�"within seconds, not minutes.
“Michael!” he barked to John, pronouncing the ‘ch’ in the French way, as ‘sh.’
John glared at him, grinding his teeth to avoid sudden laughter or raised brows. What now? After this whole crazy time, complete with corn gobbling, a spoon chase, and scaring a throng of Amsterdamers with God knows what, he had only one thought left: What now?
Carl discretely touched his right pocket. Someone had to pay�"after all, a secret agent should be doubly honest (just as a double agent should be secretly honest). The sentiment whirled, like an uninvited eddy, in his mind.
Luckily, John dug his meaning. The money-wise junior bank clerk knew exactly where his change was. He snatched his wallet from his inner pocket, and (making the already scared guards turn a limey shade of pale), he silently counted two Euros and forty-five cents onto the desk.
“Merci,” Carl said curtly. He grabbed the card and both men marched out, followed by several hundred scary, wary, sheepish eyes.
    
***

Outside, both went silent for a good two minutes�"Carl resisting the temptation to run, and John resisting the growing desire to snatch his older mate by the tie and make him stop. After a minute, Carl pulled the corn can from his pocket, placed the card inside it, and sealed the lid on the can.
“Carl!” John stopped and clamped his fist around Carl’s elbow until his knuckles turned white. “Either you tell me what on earth this is all about, or I go back. You get it?”
The engineer nodded. Sighed. Scratched his head.
“Ugh,” he muttered, turning his head around to study the cobblestones.
“What do you mean, ‘ugh’?” John demanded, suddenly fiercely mad. “Did you get an electric shock from your power plant? Or have you been watching too many horror movies? Or what? Speak up!”
Carl put his finger to his lips, which were reddish coloured from all the biting and confusion.
“I’ll let you know,” he whispered, “but first, let’s go... now!”
“But... where?” John roared, as fiercely as a hungry lion in the Namibian desert. “You’re already here!”
Carl jerked, then turned around. Almost bumping into a postman who was coming out of a grand doorway, Carl lurched through the still-open door of an old, marble-faced building.
“Darn.” John spat on the ground, then reluctantly followed his brother. This time he really was ready to take his phone and call an ambulance.
Inside the completely unknown building, in what seemed to be the common entrance area to three costly flats, Carl sailed down a narrow, steep staircase, crouching low as though hiding from invisible pursuers. John followed him with heavy feet. Coming to a dead end at the bottom of the steps, they stood by a closed door that seemed to lead to someone’s basement store room.
Carl examined the walls and the ceiling, and then said, very quickly, “Forty seconds!” He began to root around in his pocket.
“Forty?” John asked, having heard only the first word. “What’s forty?” It was already too much for today. He was so exhausted he couldn’t even remain angry.
“Look!” Carl took the mysterious object from the corn can, holding it out for John to see. “Forty seconds, then we have to hide it before the antenna has a chance to contact the satellite!”
John looked closely, reading the text on the spy card. He whistled. And then he shook his head.
“You’re crazy, man!” he exclaimed, but with less anger now. “What do you plan to do with it? It says ‘up to five years’ incarceration for abuse’! Bring it to the police, or post it to them. That’s what any normal person would do, anyways.”
Carl tucked the card back into the can, then hid the can in his briefcase and sighed.
“I am normal,” he drawled, as though searching for words. “But... but the philistine normality isn’t at all normal!” he said, suddenly curt. “For a journalist, it’s... it’s...” he shook his head and trailed off.
“What do you mean?” John frowned. He’d never known his brother from that side before. The man he knew was careful, scrupulous, sedate. But suddenly, here was the other Carl�"dare-devilish, adventurous, even reckless. Why? John had gone on a safari once, but Carl had never shown the slightest inclination for danger. Until now, it seemed. What was going on?
“They’d nab you in three days, I’d bet you two hundred to one!”  
“And I bet a thousand to one per cent they won’t,” Carl reminded him, grinning with sparks of boyish joy in his brown eyes. “Don’t forget which one of us has written a Ph.D. thesis on wireless and satellite security.” His grin grew even larger.
“Phew,” sighed John again, recalling all those tricks with the corn can in a new light. Could his brother actually have known what he was doing in those few, maniacal minutes? “All right�"not in three days, true. But then you’d really be asking for five years behind bars! And you’ve got two kids, don’t forget, and Helen... stop kidding yourself, old man!”
“John, this is the only chance I’ll ever have to do something like this. The only one�"you get it?” He bent close to his younger brother’s face. “And this is the only way to get people to give me their core dump for the essays! I’m sick of all the platitudes, the clichés, and all that shallow stuff I get in my interviews. I’m sick!”
“I see,” John said sarcastically.
“Good.” Carl took a step back on the tiny basement landing, but he didn’t stop speaking. “What did you want to be as a kid? When you grew up, I mean.”
“A merchant captain,” John said, smiling at the buried thought. He laughed softly, knowing the next question.
“And me?” Carl was grinning now, too, with a victorious and slightly moonstruck air.
“A military spy.” They both laughed, but John’s good humour was cut short. He was concerned�"again.
“But Carl, what’s going on?” he asked. “Where would you use it, and what then?”
“What then? A set of brilliant essays on the Dutch people, that’s what!” returned the engineer. The look on his face as he spoke was saying, Life is so simple, man!
“And ... the card?”

“It would go into the sea, I guess.” Carl shrugged as though he was speaking about an orange peel. “I’d toss it over a bridge or something in the same can it’s in now.”
“And you don’t plan on using it for more than a few months?” John dug. He felt that the weight of Everest was being lifted off his shoulders.
“What do you mean, a few months? Man, a week or two and that’s it!” Carl seemed to be returning to his common sense sooner than expected.
“All right,” sighed the junior clerk quietly. “All right.”

... The two were still standing by the closed basement door, in some unknown entry hall, with someone else’s intelligence card in an empty corn can. Suddenly, John lifted his head. He had an idea, which happened to him from time to time.
“Hey, Carl,” he said, poking his brother with his elbow, “you’re telling me that all you wanna do is just force men on the street to sincerity with that card? That would be like... like shooting sparrows with an anti-aircraft gun!”
“What do you mean?” Carl asked, his mind stirring from its technical thoughts.
“I mean that you can ... catch a real spy!” fired John quickly. After a short hesitation, he went on, “It’s a counter-intelligence officer’s ID, right?”
“Really?” the brown-headed chap lifted his brows. He only remembered ‘five years’ incarceration’, and he still couldn’t figure out whether his essays (even if they were so bright that the grateful English would hail him as another Chesterton and erect a marble monument of Charles de Cheesekop in the Westminster’s Hall of Fame) were worth that risk. In five years I’ll be forty-seven, he calculated. Would they take me back at work? And who’d pay off the mortgage? His mind suddenly calmed to its default engineering mode. What if I soldered the battery off? The card would likely become untraceable... but would that additional offense add a couple of years to a sentence?
“Haven’t you read what’s written on it yet?” John pressed on. Carl took off his glasses and wiped them again.
“Well, more or less,” replied the engineer. He slowly scratched his ear with great thought.
John sighed, exasperated. He meant something else. “But listen. If you do catch a spy, then they’d pardon you for the card abuse,” John smiled both sincerely and cunningly, as only he could.
Carl’s lips slowly pulled up into a smile too. My little brother’s got me there, he thought. “John, you’re a treasure!” he exclaimed, borrowing the grocery store mother’s expression. The essays will have to wait a week, but the big game is worth a big risk, right? the thought flashed through his mind like a fork of lightning. In his excitement Carl nearly dropped his glasses to the floor, but he caught them halfway to the crash. “Know what?” he asked with a growing twinkle in his eye. “If they’d forgive one, they’d just as easily forgive two!”
“What do you mean?” The smile began to wane off John’s smart face.
“Surely one person can’t catch an agent alone,” Carl said, suddenly sounding like a seasoned spy guru. “Right?”
“Right,” echoed the younger brother, without much enthusiasm. “But... just for one week, okay?”
“Fine!”
The brothers shook hands and made their way back up to the front door of the marble-clad building. The secret agreement had been made, and the chase was about to begin�"two brave hunters going after big game in a safari of their own making.