A few of the mystery envelopes had the same characteristics. They were square, made of a manila paper almost as strong as cardboard and lined with a protective plastic permeated with tiny bubbles. One of them had been torn open by the explosion. It contained a digital video disk. The DVD itself was neither damaged nor labeled. There was nothing else inside the envelope.

Jeroen Velder, the only sorter on the team who was still young enough to be taken for a student, gathered the envelopes containing DVDs, put them into one of the plastic sorting boxes, and deposited the box on the desk of Inspector Gans.

“What’s this?” Gans said.

“Unreadables, mijneer. Fourteen of them, all alike. All DVDs, I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

“One of the envelopes is torn, mijneer. I didn’t want to open the others without permission.”

“Quite right. No return address either, eh?”

“ Nee, mijneer.”

Always “mijneer,” never “Marnix.” Unlike most youngsters of his generation, Velder expressed proper respect for his superiors. As long as Marnix Gans was in charge, Velder’s future prospects were bright.

Gans stared at the contents of the box. What he obviously needed was a DVD player. But if his superiors drew the conclusion that Gans wanted the player as a permanent addition to the employee’s lunchroom, with the attendant risk that Gans and his buddies might fritter away their time in there watching American movies, the authorities would feel compelled to look into the matter. Approval of the requisition, if it came at all, could take weeks.

Gans was a proponent of order, a man who took deeply to heart his mandate to rapidly dispatch the queen’s mail. The thought of having those DVDs hanging around for weeks, maybe months, was anathema to him. Yet it was strictly against the rules to take anything home. If a piece of mail not his own was found on his person when he was leaving the building, he’d be in trouble.