‘I shouldn’t have thought that that would have offended Soviet sensibilities at the time,’ said Fabel.
The Ukrainian examined Fabel’s expression for signs of sarcasm. There was none.
‘No. You’re right. But by this stage in the war we were suffering from Vietnam syndrome: we were fighting an unequal battle where our superior numbers, resources and technology should have assured us an easy victory, but we were being solidly beaten and we desperately wanted a way out with the minimum of disgrace. That meant that by eighty-seven, eighty-eight, the Soviet authorities were becoming slightly more sensitive to world opinion. And Vitrenko’s actions were becoming more and more …’ he struggled for the word – ‘
unpleasant
. So the GRU sent me in with two Spetznaz detachments to track down and re-establish control of Vitrenko and his unit.’
‘And did you?’
The Ukrainian leaned against the wall and lit the cigarette. Then he signalled to the blonde-haired girl, who handed him a buff-coloured envelope.
‘Yes. Eventually. And Vitrenko and his men were commended for exceptional courage behind enemy lines.’ He tossed the envelope at Fabel, who made a fumbling catch. ‘But the things I encountered on the way … I tell you Fabel, I have seen some terrible things in my life, as you can imagine, but it was as if I were on the trail of the Devil himself …’
Friday 20 June, 9.40 p.m. Niederhafen, Hamburg
.
The two surveillance men could not get close enough to the boat to see what was happening. Paul ordered the two Mobiles Einsatz Kommando officers, clad in their dark body armour, coveralls and helmets, to move in closer. One managed to get into a position advanced enough to get the bead of his Heckler and Koch on MacSwain’s torso as he sat in the rear of the boat, handing a glass of Sekt wine to Anna Wolff.
In the command van, Maria received a return phone call from the Wasserschutzpolizei: they had a launch on its way and it would be positioned with a clear view of the exit of the Niederhafen onto the Elbe’s main water-traffic lanes. If MacSwain moved out into the river, they could pick him up and follow at a discreet distance. The Wasserschutzpolizei’s only concern was that MacSwain’s boat was clearly a fast vessel that could give their launch a run for its money. Maria had already placed a request for a helicopter to stand by. None of these precautions cleared the frown from Paul Lindemann’s brow. What had added to his concern was that Maria had not been able to raise Fabel on his cell phone, getting his voice mail instead: why had Fabel switched off his phone when he had promised he could be contacted all night?
The late evening air had developed a chilled edge and Anna gave another involuntary shiver as MacSwain handed her the glass of sparkling Sekt.
‘Just a moment …’ MacSwain slid open the two small doors that were sculpted to follow the smooth curve of the facing panel. They opened onto the steps that led to a small but brightly lit cabin area. While MacSwain had his back to her, Anna sniffed at the wine and took a tentative sip. She smelled and tasted nothing but the crispness of German champagne; but she knew that Rohypnol or GHB was almost impossible to detect in any beverage. She took a fuller mouthful and repeated her silent mantra in her head: I
don’t feel too well
.
MacSwain reappeared with a dark-blue woollen cardigan which he draped across her shoulders.
‘We can go below if you’re too cold,’ he said. Anna shook her head. MacSwain smiled and handed her a plate of pâté, bread and herring salad. ‘Relax for a minute,’ he said, ‘there’s something I want you to see. I know you’re not a good sailor, Sara, so I promise to take it slow.’ He looked at Anna as if asking permission. Anna, like MacSwain, had not seen the MEK men move into position, but she guessed – she hoped – that they would be there by now, somewhere in the shadows. What she had to gamble on now was whether or not Paul had arranged cover for her should MacSwain take the boat out.
She resisted the temptation to search the pontoons for her support and kept her eyes resolutely focused on MacSwain.
‘Okay …’ she said and nodded; for her invisible audience, she added, ‘I think that’ll be fine.’
Paul Lindemann instructed the MEK not to intervene. Maria warned the Wasserschutzpolizei launch, which was now in direct radio contact with the team, that MacSwain was on the move.
MacSwain untethered the boat fore and aft and started the engine. Its deep, throaty rumble disturbed Anna, whose instincts told her that a lot of power and a great deal of speed lay in that rumble. MacSwain, as good as his word, took the boat out from its mooring slowly and gently. Anna noticed the relaxed, almost careless ease with which he manoeuvred the craft. She looked back at the receding mooring and just made out the merest hint of a shadow, moving low and fast towards the land end of the pontoons.
The Elbe stretched out before them, obsidian black and unfathomable, fringed on the far shore by the lights of the shipyard. MacSwain turned the boat so it was parallel to the shore and cut the engine. He hit a button on the console and Anna heard the rapid rattle of a heavy chain as the anchor slipped deep into the dark river. With the engine dead, Anna could hear the sounds of the water around them: she felt as if she were on the back of some vast, living thing whose breath and skin sleeked against the hull of the boat as its endless body rippled past beneath them. MacSwain killed the lights.
‘Isn’t it magnificent?’ he said, a gesture with his champagne flute sweeping along the distant shore.
In any other situation Anna would have been captivated by it: Hamburg glittered in the night and the Elbe held up a mirror to her beauty, animating the city’s sparkling reflection.
‘Beautiful …’ said Anna. ‘Really. I’m glad you brought me out here …’
‘I love this city,’ said MacSwain. ‘This is where I belong. This is where I will always want to be.’
‘But you’re British, didn’t you say? Don’t you miss …’ Anna tried to think of something British to miss – ‘the
rain
?’ she said with a laugh.
MacSwain laughed too. ‘Trust me, Hamburg supplies more than enough rain to quell any homesickness for a damp climate. But no, there’s nothing I miss about Britain. Any Britishness I need Hamburg supplies … sometimes it really is like living in London’s most easterly suburb. There is no other city in the world like Hamburg. I wouldn’t leave it for the world.’
Anna shrugged. ‘Me … I can take it or leave it.’
MacSwain’s face became animated. ‘I can’t understand that. You only have one life. The time we have is too precious to waste. Why would you want to spend it in a place you feel indifferent about?’
‘Inertia, I guess. It takes less effort to stay put. I suppose I can’t be bothered building up the energy to achieve escape velocity.’
‘Well I’m glad you haven’t, Sara. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.’ He sat down next to her. ‘I would love to show you your own city … with the eyes of an outsider. I’m sure I could change the way you feel about it. And anyway, it would give me a chance to get to know you better …’
He drew closer. Anna could smell the most subtle hint of an expensive cologne. She looked into the sparkling green eyes and scanned the perfectly sculpted features. Anna found herself doubting very seriously that he could have anything to do with the murders they were investigating or even the doping of girls for ritualised sex. MacSwain was classically handsome; through his clothes it was clear that his body was perfectly proportioned and muscular; he was urbane, intelligent and confident. Everything about MacSwain should have pushed Anna’s buttons. Yet, when he drew his face close to Anna’s and closed his mouth around hers, she had to fight the nausea that churned in her chest.
The fifteen-metre long, Barthel-built WS25 was the Hamburg harbour police’s newest launch, but not its fastest. Kommissar Franz Kassel had ordered all the lights to be dimmed in contravention of the very harbour regulations he enforced daily. Kassel lifted his binoculars and scanned MacSwain’s powerboat as it slipped from the quays. He muttered something to himself as he recognised the boat as a Chris Craft 308 or 328 Express Cruiser. Ideal for cruising. Also fast. Much faster, if its owner decided to run for it, than the WS25’s 22 kilometres per hour. But not faster than radio waves or radar. If the cruiser made a break for it, Kassel could summon up support from any of the WSP Kommissariats along the river from there to Cuxhaven. All the same, he knew there was a female police officer aboard that cruiser. And, from what Oberkommissarin Klee had told him on the radio, if there was a call for help, the speed of response could be the difference between life and death. Kassel was a wraith of a man: unfeasibly thin and tall, with reddish hair and freckles that seemed to have merged after twenty years’ exposure to brackish harbour air, sun and spray. He let the binoculars hang around his neck and took the WSP peaked cap from his head, running bony fingers through his thinning thatch of dry sandy hair.
‘Naughty boy …’ he muttered and reached for the radio.
Anna pulled away from MacSwain, placing her hand on his chest and pushing: not hard, but firmly enough for him to get the message. As their faces parted, Anna made sure she was smiling.
‘What’s wrong, Sara?’ MacSwain’s voice suggested a concern that did not show in the cold, green eyes.
‘Nothing …’ said Anna. Then, almost coquettishly, ‘I just don’t want to rush anything. I hardly know you. I don’t know you.’
‘What’s to know?’ He made to kiss her again. Anna pulled back. This time the shunt of her hand’s heel into his chest was more businesslike.
Maria Klee turned to Paul Lindemann, still holding the radio handset halfway to her mouth. ‘The WSP launch commander says we have a way of ending this now, if we want, without alerting MacSwain to our surveillance.’
Paul’s eyes lit up. ‘How?’
‘MacSwain is doing a little “Hamburg by night” sightseeing. According to the launch commander, he’s switched his nav lights off. That’s against the law … he’s near enough to a main shipping lane to represent a hazard. Fortunately, our WSP guy has done the same. He reckons he can be on MacSwain before he knows it and escort him back to his berth and fine him. Let’s say it’ll ruin MacSwain’s evening … and it’ll get Anna back on dry land.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Anna hasn’t indicated that she wants out. And we’ve not picked up any information of any use. I think we should stick with it. But, on the other hand, once he’s switched on his navigational lights again our excuse becomes weaker. It’s your call, Paul.’
Friday 20 June, 9.40 p.m. Speicherstadt, Hamburg
.
The untipped cigarette now burned perilously close to the Ukrainian’s lips, and he pinched them tight as he took a final draw. He made a pincer with his forefinger and thumb, retrieved the tiny stub and dropped it onto the floor, crushing it with his heel.
Fabel removed about a dozen photographs from the buff envelope. The first images kick-started a hammering in his chest. Three colour photographs, from different angles, showed the same woman, her abdomen split and ripped open and her lungs cast out from her body. A taste of bile rose in the rear of Fabel’s mouth. More horror. Fabel noticed the gold-haired girl turn her head to look out through the small window and into the empty whale belly of the warehouse, as if she were preventing her eyes from falling onto the pictures. The Ukrainian dismissed the images with a wave of his hand.
‘I’ll come to that case shortly …’ The Ukrainian indicated that Fabel should move on to the next set of images. The girl turned back from the window. The next images had been taken without extra lighting, instead relying on a camera flash to bleach a pool of intense light and vividity. Strangely, the amateurish flash photography gave each scene an immediacy and a reality lacking in the clinical objectivity of forensic photography. Fabel found himself looking, with each shuffle of horror, at a new image of women, some only girls, ripped apart in the same manner. But in each picture, lurking in the dark fringes of the camera flashes, Fabel could see there were other victims. He turned to the final image.
‘Sweet Jesus …’ Fabel gazed at the image uncomprehendingly, as if the awfulness of what lay before him defied belief. A girl, no older than sixteen or seventeen, had been nailed to the wooden wall. Nails, more like crude iron spikes, had been driven into her hands and the flesh and muscle of her upper arms. She had been sliced open and Blood-Eagled in the same manner as the others, except that the dark and bloody masses of her lungs, too, had been nailed to the wall. Somehow, through the gut-wrenching disgust, some deep, analytical part of Fabel’s brain processed the similarity between the photograph in his hands and the canvases he had seen at Marlies Menzel’s exhibition. Fabel let the photograph drop from his hands. As it fell, image upwards, onto the floor, he could see the steamed marks where his thumbs had held it. He looked up, almost pleadingly, at the Ukrainian, as if looking for some explanation that would, somehow, make what he had seen less terrible.
‘It was the last village we came to before we caught up with Vitrenko. It was well within rebel territory and we’d had a hell of a fight to get as far as we did. We weren’t sure if Vitrenko’s unit had hit the place or if it was held by rebels. As it turns out, it was just an ordinary non-combatant village. But we had to make sure: so we spent half a day under a relentless sun, continuously scoured by wind-blown dust and sand. Then, just after midday, the wind changed direction and brought with it the stench of death from the village. We knew then that Vitrenko had been there. I sent in a recon squad who signalled for us to come in. When I joined up with the leader, I knew from his face it was bad.’