Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,4

asked over the intercom.

She entered the room and handed Firner a piece of plastic the size of a credit card.

Firner came round the desk. ‘We took a colour photo of you as you entered the administration building and scanned it in straight away,’ he said proudly. ‘With this ID you can come and go in the complex as you please.’

He attached the card with its plastic clip to my lapel.

It was just like getting a medal. I almost felt obliged to click my heels.

4

Turbo catches a mouse

I spent the evening hunched over the dossier. A tough nut to crack. I tried to recognize a structure in the cases, a pattern to the incursions into the system. The culprit, or culprits, had managed to worm their way into payroll. For months they’d transferred 500 marks too much to the executive assistants, among them Frau Buchendorff, had doubled the vacation benefits of the low-wage groups, and deleted all salary account numbers beginning with a 13. They had meddled with intra-company communication, channelled confidential messages at the directors’ level to the press department, and suppressed the automatic reminders of employees’ anniversaries of service that were distributed to department heads at the beginning of the month. The programme for tennis court allocation and reservation confirmed all requests for the Friday most in demand so that one Friday in May, 108 players assembled on the sixteen courts. On top of that there was the rhesus monkey story. I could understand Firner’s pained smile. The damages, around five million, could be handled by an enterprise as large as the RCW. But whoever had done it was able to saunter through the company’s management and business information system at will.

It was getting dark. I turned on the light, switched it off and on a couple of times, but, although it was binary, no deeper revelation about electronic data processing came to me. I pondered whether any of my friends understood computers, and noticed how old I was. There was an ornithologist, a surgeon, a chess grandmaster, the odd legal eagle or two, all gentlemen of advanced years to whom the computer was, as for me, a terra incognita. I reflected on what sort of person it is who can work with, and likes, computers, and about the perpetrator of my case – that it was a single perpetrator was becoming pretty clear.

Belated schoolboy’s tricks? A gambler, a puzzle-lover, a joker, pulling the leg of the RCW in grand style? Or a blackmailer, a cool-headed type, effortlessly showing that he was capable of bigger coups? Or a political statement? The public would react negatively if this measure of chaos came to light with a business that handled highly toxic material. But no. The political activist would have thought out different incidents. And the blackmailer could long since have struck.

I shut the window. The wind had changed.

I wanted to talk to Danckelmann, the head of Works security first thing in the morning. Then on to the files of the hundred suspects in the personnel office. Although I was hardly hopeful that the trickster I had in mind would be recognizable from his personnel files. The thought of having to examine one hundred suspects by the book filled me with utter horror. I hoped that word of my hiring would get around and provoke some incidents through which the circle of suspects could be narrowed.

It wasn’t a great case. It only struck me now that Korten hadn’t even asked whether I wanted to take it on. And that I hadn’t told him I’d think it over first.

The cat was scratching at the balcony door. I opened up and Turbo laid a mouse at my feet. I thanked him, and went to bed.

5

With Aristotle, Schwarz, Mendeleyev, and Kekulé

With my special ID I easily found a parking place for my old Opel at the Works. A young security guard took me to his boss.

It was written all over Danckelmann’s face that he was unhappy about not being a real policeman, let alone a proper secret serviceman. It’s the same with all Works security people. Before I could even start asking my questions he told me that the reason he’d left the army was because it was too wishywashy for him.

‘I was impressed by your report,’ I said. ‘You imply there could be hassle from communists and ecologists?’

‘It’s hard to get your hands on the guys. But if you put two and two together, you know which way the wind is blowing. I