Sylvie ran through the plan with her small force. Santine offered a few suggestions that made sense. Hansel and Gretel held hands and just nodded. They had wanted to use crossbows on the two bodyguards and were not happy at the thought of an impersonal radio-activated kill. Sylvie reminded them that Vreni would be a different proposition and that Kadar had issued certain very explicit instructions. All this cheered up Hansel and Gretel, who began to look positively enthusiastic. Sylvie, who found them nauseating, almost missed the Lebanese. Santine, who looked as if he'd be quite happy to shoot his grandmother when he wasn't peddling cocaine to three-year-olds, was a breath of fresh air in comparison.
* * * * *
Vreni was alone in the farmhouse. She sat on the floor, her feet bare, her legs drawn up, her hands clasped around her knees. She had stopped crying. She was almost numb from fear and exhaustion. Sometimes she shook uncontrollably.
She was clinging to the notion that if she didn't cooperate with the authorities — and she included her father's security guards in that group — then she would be safe. They would leave her alone. He — Kadar — would leave her alone. The presence of bodyguards in their car only a couple of hundred meters up the track increased her terror because it might be taken to suggest that she had revealed things she had sworn to keep secret. She knew there were other watchers, other forces more deadly than anything officialdom could conceive.
She stared at the telephone. The Irishman represented her only hope. His visit had affected her deeply, and as the days passed, its impact in her mind grew ever greater. He was undaunted by this morass of corruption into which she had fallen. Perhaps she could, should talk to him. Her hand touched the gray plastic of the phone, then froze. What if they were listening and got to her first?
She keeled over onto her side and moaned.
* * * * *
The façade of Erika von Graffenlaub's apartment suggested nothing more than a conventional wooden door equipped with a good-quality security lock. The locksmith had little trouble with it but immediately was faced with a significantly more formidable barrier: the second door was of steel set into a matching steel frame embedded in the structure of the building. The door was secured by a code-activated electronic lock.
The locksmith looked at the discreetly engraved manufacturer's logo and shook his head. "Too rich for my blood," he said. "The only people who can help you are the manufacturers, Vaybon Security, and they are not too forthcoming unless they know you."
Beat von Graffenlaub smiled thinly. "You’ve done enough," he said to the locksmith, who had turned to admire the steel door.
The man whistled in admiration. "Great bit of work this," he said, "rarely seen in a private home. It's the kind of thing normally only banks can afford." He stretched out his hand to touch the flawless satin steel finish. There was a loud crack and a flash and a smell of burning, and the locksmith was flung across the hallway to collapse on the floor in a motionless heap.
Beat von Graffenlaub stared at the steel door. What terrible secrets was Erika concealing behind it? He knelt beside the fallen locksmith. His hand and arm were burned, but he was alive. Von Graffenlaub removed a mobile phone from his briefcase and phoned for medical assistance.
His second call was to the managing director of the Vaybon Corporation. His manner was peremptory; his instructions were specific. Yes, such a door could be opened by a special team. There were plans in the Vaybon Security plant in a suburb of Bern. Action would be taken immediately. Herr von Graffenlaub could expect the door to be opened within two hours. This would be exceptional service, of course, but in view of Herr von Graffenlaub's special position on the board of Vaybon...
"Quite so," said von Graffenlaub dryly. He terminated the call, made the locksmith comfortable, and sat down to wait. The elusive Erika might return first. He took the unconscious locksmith's pulse. It was strong. He, at least, would live to see the summer.
* * * * *
The Chief Kripo had been playing devil's advocate for more than five hours, and he wasn't scoring many points. The project team's approach was different in many ways from conventional police work, but to someone not used to working in an integrated way with an expert system, it was impressively comprehensive. Once instructed, the computer didn't forget things. It was hard to find a facet the team hadn't covered or at least considered. But there were some potential flaws.
"How do you people deal with data that aren't already computerized?" he asked. "How do you handle good old-fashioned typed or handwritten data?"
Faces turned to Henssen. He shrugged. "It's a problem. We can input some data by hand if only a few hundred records or so are involved, and in Wiesbaden we have scanning equipment that can covert typed records directly to computer format. But for all that, if data aren't computerized, we can only nibble at them."
"So how much of the data isn't computerized?" asked the Chief.
Henssen brightened. "Not a lot. Orwell's 1984 wasn't so far out."
"What about Babel?" said the Chief.
Henssen looked confused. He looked at the Bear, who shrugged.
"The Tower of Babel," explained the Chief. "How do you cope with records in different languages — English, French, German, Italian, whatever?"
"Ah," said Henssen. "Actually the Babel factor — as such — is not as much of a problem as you'd think. We do have computerized translation facilities that are over ninety percent accurate. On the other hand, that ten percent error factor leaves room for some elegant confusion that can be compounded by multiple meanings within any one language. Consider the word screw for example. That can mean ‘to rotate,’ as in inserting a wood screw; it can mean ‘to cheat or swindle,’ as in I was screwed on the deal’; it can mean the act of sex as in..." He went silent, embarrassed.
"Go on," said Kersdorf irritably. "We can perhaps work out some of the details ourselves."
"Well," continued Henssen, "fortunately most police information is held in a structured way, and so is the majority of commercial data. For example, an airline passenger list doesn’t take much translation, nor do airline schedules, or subscription lists, or lists of phone calls, and so on."
"Okay," said the Chief, "structured data are held on the computer version of what we old-fashioned bureaucrats would call a form — so translate the headings and the meaning of the contents is clear."
"Much simplified, that's about it," said Henssen. "And unstructured data, to give an example, might be a statement by a witness consisting of several pages of free-form text."
"And it's with the unstructured data that you have most of the problems," said the Chief.
"Precisely. But with some human involvement linked to our expert system there is nothing we can't resolve."
"But it takes time," said the Chief, "and that's my problem."
There was silence in the room. Henssen shrugged.
* * * * *