Chapter 1

..............Sweat is pouring down his hot, thumping temples. He feels the moisture running down from his toiling back, straight into his trousers and underpants. Although short of breath he still can keep up the pace, pedalling towards central station on a racing bicycle. How could he have known? Known, known... But shouldn’t he have realised that these security services were quite effective! After all they often reacted a lot faster than the police, being under contract safeguarding expensive private properties. Just after he had ignited the third Molotov cocktail he heard shrieking car tyres. This was immediately followed by a shrill, howling sound of a powerful engine. Yes, the driver of the vehicle was in a hurry, and, assessing the piercing headlights, in a hurry getting after him. This bloody joker tried to turn the corner on two wheels... With a powerful shot he flung the incendiary bomb upwards, creating the third crash of the night. Again that incredible blast and the fierce glow immediately after proved a bull’s eye once again.

There were mainly luxurious business premises along this stretch of the canal: this was the place where the rich and affluent hid their money. Then, everyone knew that mingling into other people’s affairs could be fatal. You could become a corpse, for almost nothing. For you shouting ‘Hey, idiot, what the hell are you doing, man…’ After that your corpse would be just another small article ‘Meaningless violence’ in the newspapers, as this modern lunacy stupidly had been labelled. Everyone had become meek, paralysed or simply scared. Hurry, hurry, the damned car sounded way closer. His instincts told him there was one way out: directly towards the assailant. Escape was no longer an option, only a surprise attack would work. Quickly he had spun the bicycle around and cycled down the sidewalk, thus slightly protected by the bollards, rows of purple-coloured two-foot tall metal posts with the three crossed symbol of the city. These were supposed to stop people from parking where they shouldn’t.

Then the passenger door was thrown open, grazing his left pedal. A cramp of fear had taken a nasty bite out of his stomach, but instinctively his foot was drawn inwards, whilst steering the handlebar backwards. For a brief moment they had eye contact. Then the engine produced the typical sound of a car backing up. Backing up fast! There is no time looking over his shoulder. Now chockfull of adrenaline his wildly milling legs burst with energy. Then a loud metal-like explosion hits his eardrums. He can not but giggle nervously: that must have been the sound of a passenger-door breaking out of its hinges. Now he dives into an alley, sprints alongside the next canal, hops over a footbridge, and turns to the left, followed by a corner to the right. In the maze of canals and alleys he was gone in no time. What a nice stroke of luck, he kept on thinking, that the security guy had been alone. One guy, in one car. Suppose it had been a police car. Or both, speeding over there with back-up. O man, the stunned look on that joker’s face had been bloody hilarious. His first opponent had the looks of an anaemic rat with a doggy hairdo. But one piece of paper was needed to get a job at those bloody security services: a driving licence.

Still there was no sign of the official peacekeepers to be heard. No police sirens, not even a fire siren. Wait a minute.... vaguely, far away...The sound of a far-off three-tone siren of the fire brigade filtered through, in spite of the noise of the wind and his thumping heart. Pure and unadulterated euphoria rushed through his body. A cocktail of serotonins and other stress hormones made him feel unassailable, invincible. No longer he needed to choose whether to flee or fight. It was possible to flee and fight at the same time.

Finally he dares to slow down. Only now he is able to dab his profusely sweating forehead, but he would have been better off not doing so. By removing this natural film the cold wind was like a slap in the face. An almost flawless recipe for a huge headache, you stupid idiot, he grumbles to himself, or even worse: a cold or the flu, even. And still no sirens, no accelerating cars with headlights focussed upon him. The only people he had spotted until now were a few drunken students and some Asian tourists who both seemed to be heading for the red light district. It seemed to be a very quiet night. And there it was, the Dam Monument, that rather strange, dildo-like Second World War monument which always seemed illuminated as if standing in some strange fog. On to his left he sees one of the Royal palaces, recently restored and now partly reopened to the public. The Dam square in front of the palace, the royal doorstep so to speak, had been completely repaved recently. With Portuguese stones, no less. As a result it presented a picturesque, authentic sight by daylight, but artificial lighting enhanced that look better still. Then the palace almost looked foreign, not at all Dutch. But then, it was not so hard to have a grand look in The Netherlands. Those with all the money didn’t want to display this to the ones without, all the more so because the rich and affluent had all their preachers preaching thriftiness from the pulpit for a number of consecutive centuries.

A gentle curve later the central station pops up. The big clock there shows the same time, the same margin, as his purplish Swatch. Ten minutes left before his train departs. It all seemed unreal, surreal: had he really played the role of arsonist... And still no blue uniform in sight. The strong arm of the law was not on his tail. But what an impressive building, the Amsterdam central station, dating from the 19th century. It just lay there, bathing in a sea of orange light. The coloured stones, the set brickwork: a beautiful, vast and brightly lit public building.

Clearly this calling card for the tourist masses had the right to cost a little more in electricity and maintenance bills. The arsonist feels surprised that something as futile as architecture is able to catch his attention. Warm red, glowing orange, radiating pink, this dead building seemed to be alive. With this perfect lighting these dead stones seemed more like warm flesh. This optical illusion worked even better in the cold. Although more snow had been predicted he had not let that dissuade him: with all the satellites and computers at hand the weatherman still did a fair amount of guessing... Of course he had done some research for escape options. At home he had spent a few hours staring at the city map. Well, the measuring, guessing and timing added up nicely: most likely the very last 0:42 night train was already waiting for its final passengers. A full round sneer converts his face into a peony. It gives him a crumpled look, pulsing like an electric heater. The discomfort of sticky sweat is sinking in and makes him feel itchy. His poor mouth feels bone dry, his fiery throat aches big time. As if he had eaten a mouthful of sand, gargled it and then swallowed it down. The decisiveness, the fear of getting caught, the euphoria of getting away and the flat out bicycle ride had demanded all his attention, all his energy. Till now: that itch really needed a good scratch!

Fuck, he had outrun and outsmarted everyone! An escape on a fucking bike, mind you! After dismounting he places it against one of the Damrak railings by shoving it between dozens of others already there. Most of these looked like wrecks. Why park an expensive one when even the cheapest two-wheeler wasn’t theft proof. Stealing a bicycle was endemically easy. First you had to select one, after that you take it for a walk. For a run, actually, whilst holding up the back tyre. Next thing was to smack that backend on the street. If the lock refused to pop open, well, you just had to try again. The station hall was no longer that busy beehive. Along the cold sidelines of a hurried society a lot of human wreckage had washed ashore. They just sat, lay or hung there, dead to the world, the lunatics, tramps, alcoholics and junkies. Many nationalities were present, but the darker non-natives predominated, but it seemed they had amalgamated into one single colour, drab grey. But no, hell no, you shouldn’t look too obviously at them. This was their mutual livingroom, so you’d better mind their ‘privacy’. Just keep on looking forward, straight ahead. And with a quick, determined pace he walks towards the vending machine. Two cans of ‘Freddy’, his pet name for the famous beer of the huge breweries. Although the green logo was a worldwide export hit it too was only really tasty and thirst-quenching when cold.

Up the escalator towards platform 2 A, and there he sees his train, looking like a long, yellow and blue striped iron snake, shining ever so brightly. Quickly he steps into the nearest entrance door and his priorities change yet again. Now he is on the lookout for an empty compartment. Time seems to be flowing, flowing like an endless river. A little over an hour from now he probably would lie in his own, warm bed. He feels as in a state of wakeful dreaming. Almost everything seems unreal tonight. A large number of details jump forward and disappear, just to be replaced by other, scaringly clear details.

As if he had dipped in an ocean full of faces, body’s, trees, books, colours, streetcars, boats, buildings, logo’s, bicycles, lamps, trains, traffic lights, bollocks, odours, streets and canals. While walking he stares at the icy cans of beer in his hands: everything seems so tangible! This train, the seats, windowpanes and sliding doors, the wheels, rails, engine, everything had been made, somewhere... Screwed, bolted and welded together, but it the beginning all of it was made up of super tiny atoms. He himself was but a cloud of those minuscule building blocks. With one major difference; this train had been dead from the start. A human, on the other hand, was made out of an intricate complex of proteins, minerals, electricity, inhaled and exhaled gasses oxygen and carbon dioxide, which somehow had come to life. Then there was that other mystery: practically all humans named themselves Me, Myself or I.

As in trance Walter walks through the nearly empty train. Finally he finds a somewhat old-fashioned wagon, the ones with separate compartments. How he wants, how he needs to be alone! He flops heavily down into the seat, as if the pumped up legs were emptied of there structural content. All of his energy had been just enough to bring him up here. At home he would take a long hot shower, which was likely to revitalise him somewhat... ‘Phssst’, the first can of beer hisses sharply, and a bit of foam spews out. Only a few sips later his sandblasted throat is gone. ‘Oh’, he sighs in relief, ‘oh, miraculous booze!’

On his way over his first stop had been in Utrecht, a charming old university-city. Its roots dated back before Roman Antiquity, and was like a stony spider placed right in the middle. Its steel threads had encapsulated a minute green web. Minute indeed: on the globe it took more than one look to find Western Europe in total! Within Western Europe you had to know what you are looking for if you wanted to find the web formally known as The Netherlands. It fitted about 600 times in the former USSR, give or take 300 times in current USA, Canada or Australia, well over 900 times in Africa. Louis XIV, the Sun King of Versailles, was altogether right when he called this soaking wet country no more then the alluvial deposit of German and French rivers. Only after crossing some of these German and French rivers, the Maas, Waal and Lek, had he dared to mail the three letters. A simple postal item could betray more than one would suspect: what if the cops linked them back to this town? First he had placed a plastic bag with all the terrorist material in a train station locker. After that he had made a tour around the old city, the compulsory stroll into a few large bookshops. Only to be overwhelmed once more with the feeling of simply missing too much. Non-cloned humans only lived for a very, very short while, after which they were very, very dead for all eternity…

In a rather smelly fast-food restaurant he had felt as imprisoned at a crossroads, and could have sworn to hear a clicking inside his head. Click, click, click: yes, no, maybe; yes, no, maybe; yes, no, maybe. It was one thing to plan something outrageous, executing that idea was a different matter altogether. Yes, no, maybe; yes, no, maybe; yes, no, maybe... So now he had past that well-known point of no return. This ‘yes, I will’ had not changed into a ‘well, maybe’, after which inevitably came a ‘hell, no, idiot, forget about it...’ This ‘yes’ had become a reality, with a raging fire and all! He takes another swig of Freddy. It was truly delicious, delicious industrial rubbish, so another few swigs followed. How he hoped the third letter would end at the chief editor’s desk of the largest morning newspaper of the country. An incendiary letter: confession of crimes and declaration of war in one. The historic bread and games, ‘panem et circenses’, they still satisfy today’s urges. The law of averages demonstrate that John Average does not care whether printed information is accurate. A lot of blood and malicious delight, some more crime and punishment, and a nice war not to near, that was all John Average required.

The intercity pulls away and it seems a fair conclusion that no-one is on his tail. He feels like a modern version of Don Quijote. Just as confused, desperate and fanatical as the old geezer, only a lot younger. They somehow shared the same objective: the windmills had to be stopped! At the same time he fought the images in his mind’s eye, images which were just a little too graphic. His mind was nothing less then an infected bunch of nerves. Yes, news was like a cancer: in retrospect the roots of evil always ran deeper than one expected. It all began with one single damned cell. By the time the first diagnosis was made usually many, many more contaminated cells were found. It had been just that way with him. At first it seemed the cause of all this was a single small news article. With hindsight he realised that hundreds of just as significant articles had made him mad. That little article was only the proverbial straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. After that his confounded brain kept on repeating: it is my turn now, my turn, it is my turn... On and on, like some scratch on a record: it is my turn now, my turn, it is my turn... A large grin reappears, joyously proud to have taken action at last.