Malcolm James Thomson - TheodoraLand

FRIDAY 1 JUNE 2012

Before leaving for the station to catch the Zurich express which I would leave in Weinfelden I checked a local Munich news blog to see if there was anything more about the fire at the Bookshop. The theory now was something of a compromise; less innocent than a mere accident caused by faulty gas heating but not quite as laden with menace as a wilfully introduced explosive device. A large number of cardboard cartons had been delivered to the Bookshop by a removals firm which would have the job of clearing the shelves and allocating contingents of the English books to other Manduvel branches in the city and elsewhere in Germany. The crates were not, it was stressed, flameproof. There was also mention of very inflammable items stored recklessly in the basement below the antiquarian section. A spokesman for Manduvel (I wondered if it might have been Rudiger Reiß) had confirmed this.

Those items, I was pretty sure, were the colour spray aerosol bombs and markers used when we organized a Bookshop event to promote a coffee table volume dedicated to urban art. ProZax was the tag of a trio of graffiti artists and indeed it had been the founding member, Zachary, who had embellished the wall of my flat to such good effect. He would have removed his stuff from the basement had he not been detained by the police. The biggest piece Zack had scribed was deemed politically sensitive, drawing attention as it did to the cover-up of the activities of clerical paedophiles by prominent Bavarian church leaders.

I could, I suppose, have removed the ProZax gear myself.

But was this not a moot point? However flammable the cached aerosols might have been it could hardly have been a matter of spontaneous combustion.

“It’s not a cellphone number, in my opinion. ‘39’ at the beginning is probably not the Italian international calling code… that system is relatively recent. What we have here is more likely an indication of the year.”

Okay, I thought as I concentrated on entering the sixteen digits into the Google search window while listening to Bea on a Skype connection.

“Also… and this is a bit spooky… the suffix ‘Gs5’… may be slightly ominous.”

Almost as she spoke I finished my entry, ‘…Gs5’.

Google failed to return a single hit. I told Bea of the result.

“Fuck!” said Bea, out of character. Her expletives tended to be less vehement and not often vulgar.

The train entered a long tunnel and for a while there was no reception.

“Tunnel!” I explained to Bea who sounded impatient. When the connection was restored she announced that she had been using a very different search engine, one which delivered useful metadata.

“That’s information concerning the search term itself, before showing any list of files found. And your entry gets a ‘ping’… triggers a red flag and the warning that this precise search term is on somebody’s watch list! Whose… I don’t know.”

“Fuck!” I agreed.

“Funny, that ‘Gs’ extension… quite archaic. Geheimstufe… ‘secrecy level’… some of us still use it when we want an old-fashioned cloak-and-dagger frisson.”

Bea confirmed that the confidentiality scale ran from one to five.

I sighed. A top secret Swiss file, not where it belonged in the Confederation, although it could be said to be on its way home. The train was now moving out of the station at Bregenz, the single stop in Austria.

My sixteen-digit, case-sensitive, alpha-numeric search string had alerted someone to my interest in something which was not only not my fucking business, not only highly confidential but something which was not where it should be, conceivably in a vault protected by formidable Swiss security. There was still time to toss my laptop (perhaps geo-tagged or otherwise device-identified) out of the train before it crossed the Swiss frontier at Sankt-Margrethen.

Modern air conditioned trains do not have windows which can be opened.

I was in possession of an electronic device which had been used to ask a question which should not have been rightfully posed! Not good. I was also carrying with me the item of apparent interest, with a number on the cover which was not that of a telephone somewhere in bella Italia. And that. I suspected, was a lot worse.

Sankt-Margrethen. It was worth a try. I wondered where my laptop’s journey would end. When the doors of the train hissed open it wasn’t too hard to hurl the lightweight notebook towards a freight train heading in the opposite direction on the track across the platform. A pity that there was nobody with who I could exchange a fist-bump or a high-five when the computer landed on an open waggon. It caught the light for a moment when it came to rest on the green netting covering the whatever loose cargo was being exported from Switzerland. Garbage, refuse, trash, I speculated unfairly, on its journey to some accommodating Eastern European destination.

A next-generation MacBook had been on my shopping list anyway.

At Weinfelden I left the Zurich express feeling safe. Bea had called and found a complicated way of informing me that my Google indiscretion had not set the Swiss authorities in hot pursuit. Although how on earth could she know that? No, it was Italians who were the interested party. ‘39’ was pure coincidence.

Well, Fortezza did sound Italian after all. I had jumped to the conclusion that the reference might be to the Italian-speaking Swiss canton Ticino.

Bea said that she and Dirk would be on their way in a few days, not to Tessin, but to Weinfelden. I needed their help, she said. Dirk Seehof typically found the whole book mystery compelling. While he saw it immediately from a Dan Brown perspective, Bea claimed she was due some leave. I found wouldn’t mind their company. Aunt Ursel would be the fourth at table.

My great-aunt had not shown surprise, although I had never before invited anyone to join me in Weinfelden. Ursel Lange insisted that not only she but also her housekeeper, Frau Steinemann, would be happy to welcome my guests to the big house, Säntisblick, on top of the hill overlooking the vineyard slopes. Although many homes with a view of the majestic mountain had the same name, the Lange residence was very grand, slightly forbidding behind high walls ensuring total privacy. Although it had the steeply pitched roof to deal with winter snows there were round towers at each end. The sloping site meant that below the main entrance floor there was one more, and three storeys above. For one elderly lady it had been for a long time far too big. It would be until the day she died.

I assured Frau Steinemann that Dirk and Bea were engaged to marry and that they might well find the Arvenholz pine panelled turret bedroom to their liking. It was as far removed from my own room as the house allowed. Dirk tended to shout encouragement with the vociferous enthusiasm of a football fan supporting his team when engaged in sexual congress. This Ursel would find most amusing, given that I had told her last summer that Dirk was also markedly well endowed. The term ‘porn star dimensions’ (fully warranted, I promise) had not crossed my lips, but I left my great-aunt in no doubt whatsoever. I never thought she would meet him, did I?

Why did I not prolong my affair with Dirk?

Why did Ursula Lange break off her liaison with Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger when she was in her mid-forties?

At this point in my story (for it is one of intrigue, criminality and peril, the sort that Dirk loves to read) there should already be a corpse lying somewhere. That of Herr Lessinger doesn’t count, does it? But, no, I feel I must digress and get a couple of things clear about my family.