Peter Nils was an export manager, responsible for deliveries to Russia by the Frozen French Fries (or FFF) company. People who know their way around frozen food call the company “Triple F.” Triple F is the industry leader for the production and sale of frozen French fries in the Netherlands. According to its own official history, the company traces its roots to the distant, glorious past, to a time even before the Norman Conquest, when pirates invaded and occupied the British Isles. A furore Normannorum libera nos Domine![15]
As the venerable Bede writes in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People: “IN the year of our Lord 449, Martian being made emperor with Valentinian, and the forty-sixth from Augustus, ruled the empire seven years. Then the nation of the Angles, or Saxons, being invited by the aforesaid king, arrived in Britain with three long ships, and had a place assigned them to reside in by the same king, in the eastern part of the island, that they might thus appear to be fighting for their country, whilst their real intentions were to enslave it. Accordingly they engaged with the enemy, who were come from the north to give battle, and obtained the victory; which, being known at home in their own country, as also the fertility of the country, and the cowardice of the Britons, a more considerable fleet was quickly sent over, bringing a still greater number of men, which, being added to the former, made up an invincible army. The newcomers received of the Britons a place to inhabit, upon condition that they should wage war against their enemies for the peace and security of the country, whilst the Britons agreed to furnish them with pay. Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany: Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. The two first commanders are said to have been Hengist and Horsa. Of whom Horsa, being afterwards slain in battle by the Britons, was buried in the eastern parts of Kent, where a monument, bearing his name, is still in existence. They were the sons of Victgilsus, whose father was Vecta, son of Woden; from whose stock the royal race of many provinces deduce their original.”
The founders of the Triple F Company traced their genealogy either from Hengist or from Horsa, one of them, anyway, thus their start-up capital originated in British war booty.
The Bede continues his account of the feats of the continental invaders on the isles:
“…In a short time, swarms of the aforesaid nations came over into the island, and they began to increase so much, that they became terrible to the natives themselves who had invited them. Then, having on a sudden entered into league with the Picts, whom they had by this time repelled by the force of their arms, they began to turn their weapons against their confederates. At first, they obliged them to furnish a greater quantity of provisions; and, seeking an occasion to quarrel, protested, that unless more plentiful supplies were brought them, they would break the confederacy, and ravage all the island; nor were they backward in putting their threats in execution. In short, the fire kindled by the hands of these pagans proved God’s just revenge for the crimes of the people; not unlike that which, being once lighted by the Chaldeans, consumed the walls and city of Jerusalem. For the barbarous conquerors acting here in the same manner, or rather the just Judge ordaining that they should so act, they plundered all the neighbouring cities and country, spread the conflagration from the eastern to the western sea, without any opposition, and covered almost every part of the devoted island. Public as well as private structures were overturned; the priests were everywhere slain before the altars; the prelates and the people, without any respect of persons, were destroyed with fire and sword; nor was there any to bury those who had been thus cruelly slaughtered.
WHEN the victorious army, having destroyed and dispersed the natives, had returned home to their own settlements…”
According to Triple F’s official version, it was from these victorious warriors, who returned to the continent with their rich booty, that the Frieslander family who founded the frozen potato company in the twentieth century traced their genealogy.
Historians working on contract for the company left unmentioned the fact that the Vergistus branch of the family on the continent had fallen into decline as early as the twelfth century. The last daughter, heiress to the blood of the noble plunderers, was taken to wife by a fugitive merchant from Khazaria entirely without dowry, like the lowest peasant. For a sack of silver, which made its way into the pocket of the suzerain, the merchant acquired his wife’s family name and established himself in Europe as a nobleman. Soon thereafter his wife died from a sudden infectious illness, and the newly ennobled merchant married a woman of his own tribe, and in the veins of their offspring there flowed not a single drop of English blood.
In Russian translation, Triple F could very well come across as analogous to “Triple H,” conveying both a Russian expletive and the names the company’s founding fathers: Hengist, Horsa, and Hazars.
The management of Triple F, as in many other corporations, had long understood that it was not at all necessary to maintain a headquarters in the capital city with its crowding and high real-estate prices. No, you didn’t need to be in a capital in order to stay connected to businesses the world over. Doesn’t the Internet work just as well out in the country, not to mention the telephone? Triple F chose the sleepy little town of Drachten as the site for their central office, 140 kilometers northeast of Amsterdam.
In Drachten, medieval brick buildings stand side by side with modern glass and concrete structures, and the population (not counting immigrant workers) is under 50,000. In the early 2000s Drachten became world famous when the town government took down all its traffic signals and street signs. From then on, the town’s 20,000 automobiles, along with bicycles and pedestrian traffic, were regulated exclusively by mutual courtesy and deference. And from that time on there hasn’t been a single traffic jam or serious accident with human casualties.
Peter Nils, himself a pureblood Frieslander with an MBA, easily got a job in the central office of Triple F and had been with the same employer for several years.
That morning, which was utterly ordinary in all respects, he went into the kitchen, kissed his wife—a somewhat angular and dry lady, who was getting ready to leave for her own job at a telecommunications company—tousled his pudgy son’s hair as the boy headed out the door on his way to school, and, after a breakfast of vitamin-enriched corn flakes with skim milk, backed his blue Toyota out of the garage and headed for the office.
The trip along the anarchical streets took no more than fifteen minutes, even factoring in the long interval that Peter spent waiting as a little old lady with a white cane crossed the roadway. Nils left his car in the convenient parking lot and proceeded up to the company’s floor, where he entered his tiny but private cubicle, which was partitioned off by a translucent, soundproof glass wall from the rest of the office, where the lower-level employees worked.
Nils quickly sorted through his e-mail and sent a few notes to each of the company’s business partners, including a short message to Maximus, his Russian colleague at Cold Plus. Nils indulged in a moment’s silence, recalling his adventures in St. Petersburg. He’d probably told Maximus a little too much about the pills. But no matter, that was better than letting him know the real truth about what Triple F was selling.
Nils went through his e-mail, signed some shipping documents and held a five-minute briefing for his staff. Having dispensed with his regular morning routine, Peter closed his office door, sank down on the chair in front of his monitor and entered a web address into his browser: www.i-xxx.com.