The Ukrainian paused and nodded towards the image that now lay on the floor between Fabel’s feet.
‘It was in some kind of barn or storage building for the village. If hell exists, then it must look pretty similar to what we found in that barn. The men had all been shot. There was a great cluster of them just inside the doors. They had been tied hand and foot and forced into a kneeling position before being shot. Then there were the women. All of the women of the village, probably. About twenty of them. All ages … from children to the grandmas. Every single one had been ripped apart with their lungs torn out – just like your victims here. A couple had been nailed to the wall of the barn, splayed out like some kind of exhibit …’ The Ukrainian paused. His eyes searched some invisible scene for details that would allow him to find the right description. ‘Like butterfly collectors display their butterflies.’
‘Vitrenko did all this?’ asked Fabel.
‘Not personally. That’s the thing: he made others do it for him. He has a talent for that. He created this obscene gallery of exhibits without getting blood on his own hands. It was like some kind of test … a proving. It was like a ritual that bound them to their leader.’
‘And it was just the women?’ Mahmoot, who had been silently listening to the Ukrainian’s account, asked.
The Ukrainian nodded his head. ‘I remember the head of the recon team said that at least the men had had an easier death. But then we realised that they hadn’t. Vitrenko had forced them to witness. He had made them watch the women die before they were killed.’
Fabel and Mahmoot exchanged a long look. There was silence in the small Portakabin. Again Fabel found himself drawn back to the images Marlies Menzel had displayed in her exhibition and imagined himself in an obscene gallery in a stifling, airless barn in some desolate landscape, staring at the devastated corpses of twenty women: the perverted artworks of a psychopathic creativity.
‘You caught up with him?’
‘Eventually, yes. My orders were to escort him and his men back to Soviet-controlled territory. And that’s what we did. But only after a lot of negotiation. When we caught up with them, Vitrenko’s men actually took up defensive positions. I had to order my men to take cover. They couldn’t understand why their comrades were keeping them in their sights. But these men were no longer Soviet soldiers. They were Vitrenko’s. Bandits. Highly trained, highly motivated and highly efficient … but bandits just the same. And their allegiance was exclusively to Vitrenko.
‘After Afghanistan he was a hero. The details of his atrocities were eclipsed by his popularity among the ordinary men. To be honest, there were few at any level who gave a damn about what happened to a bunch of foreign Muslims, so long as it bore results. Vitrenko soon became acknowledged as an expert on Islamic terrorists. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, he became a valuable member of the new Ukrainian counter-terrorist forces. He joined the
Berkut
, the “Golden Eagles”. Again, he had an exemplary record. Vitrenko is a highly intelligent and educated individual and he studied all forms of criminology, psychology and counter-terrorism. This, combined with his experience in the field, made him a highly respected expert. But then there was the series of brutal rapes and killings in Kiev.’ The Ukrainian indicated to the photographs again. ‘The first picture you looked at was one of the victims, a young journalist for an independent radio station in Ukraine. We got someone for the killings, a young man in his mid-twenties. He fitted all the criteria of a serial killer and confessed to the killings, but we were pretty certain that he was not acting alone. In fact, Herr Hauptkommissar, I’m not convinced he was the killer at all. There were rumours of some kind of cult behind them and Vitrenko’s name was mentioned. We also had our suspicions that a well-placed police or security officer was masterminding organised criminal activity, but Vitrenko was never directly connected to this. Then, about three years ago, he disappeared. Shortly after, one by one, twelve of his former subordinates dropped out of sight … or actually deserted their posts in the military of Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine.’
Fabel gave a bitter laugh. ‘And so they have moved to Hamburg, where the pickings are better. I suppose these are the people our Organised Crime Division call the “Top Team” …’
The Ukrainian shrugged. ‘Whatever you call them, Vitrenko’s unit has been systematically seizing control of the major underworld activities in your city. You see, to them, your precious Hamburg is no different from Afghanistan or Chechnya or any other theatre of operation. It is simply another landscape. Their loyalty to each other and to their leader, their commitment to achieving their mission objective … nothing else matters to them.’
‘But Vitrenko is mad,’ protested Fabel, aware of the weakness of his own words.
‘That is neither here nor there. I, too, believe that he is insane. A psychopath. But his madness has become his greatest asset. He is so stripped of inhibition and, well, moral constraint, that he can use it to terrorise those he would subjugate and mesmerise those he would use as his instruments.’
‘Ivan the Terrible …’ Fabel muttered.
‘What?’
‘Just something someone said to me recently,’ Fabel said. ‘Why are you telling me all of this?’
Something seemed to dull the green eyes. Fabel could almost have defined it as sadness. The blonde girl once again interpreted the Ukrainian’s silent command and handed him a file from the same desk. He flipped open the file and slipped out another photograph and handed it to Fabel. It was a military-service portrait of a man in his forties. The Ukrainian laughed quietly at Fabel’s confusion as he looked from the photograph to the Ukrainian and back again. The face in the photograph had exactly the same architecture and the same green eyes as the old man, but the jaw was wider and stronger and the broad forehead was framed by thick butter-blond hair. For a moment, Fabel wondered if it was a photograph of the Ukrainian when he was younger; but despite the confusing similarities, there were too many fundamental, structural differences in the face. In the space of a couple of seconds, Fabel covered more ground than he had in the whole investigation to date. He leaned back in his chair and looked at the old man with a discernible sympathy.
‘Your name is Vitrenko?’
The Ukrainian nodded.
Fabel looked at the face in the photograph again. ‘Brother?’
The Ukrainian shook his head slowly as if it were made of lead. ‘Son. I am Vasyl Vitrenko’s father.’
Friday 20 June, 10.00 p.m. Niederhafen, Hamburg
.
The sliding panel door of the command-post Mercedes Van had been opened, now that there was no risk of being spotted by MacSwain. The MEK surveillance men stood outside smoking. Inside, the air was clearer but the atmosphere remained electric. Everyone was listening to the conversation taking place on a darkened boat, somewhere out on the black water. Anna’s voice sounded relaxed and confident. Paul Lindemann spread his hands on his knees, rubbing their heels along the material of his trousers and drawing a long slow breath before snapping himself upright in a gesture of decisiveness.
‘Tell the WSP launch to stand by. If Anna wanted us to pull her out, she would have given us the signal.’
Maria lifted the radio handset but did not transmit. ‘You sure about this, Paul?’
‘Tell them to stand by. But I want them to make sure they maintain visual contact, even if there’s a risk of being spotted. I don’t want Anna to be beyond our reach.’
‘I think you’re right to let it go, Paul. The boat was a nasty surprise, but now we’ve got the water police out there we’re back in control of the game.’ Maria paused for a moment. ‘If you wanted, we could get water-borne ourselves …’
Paul shook his head. ‘No. They’ll be coming back to land … one way or another. And it makes sense that he’ll come back to his berth here. I want to be on his back as soon as he does.’
MacSwain hit a button on the broad white dash next to the boat’s wheel. The navigational lights and the cockpit courtesy lights came back on. He held out the bottle of Sekt and raised an eyebrow. Anna held out her glass.
‘You not having any?’ she asked, checking, as far as she could without being obvious, that it was the same bottle that had been opened before the lights had been put out.
MacSwain smiled. ‘One glass only when I’m in charge of the vessel … but please, you go ahead.’
He filled her glass and replaced the bottle in its ice bucket. Anna took a sip of the wine. Was there something there that wasn’t there before? An aftertaste? She felt a cold sweat prickle on her brow and held the wine in her mouth, pushing the analytical capabilities of her palate to the limit. Anna swallowed the wine, bringing her panic-button phrase back again to the front of her mind, like a life preserver to be seized and clung to at the first suggestion of submersion. She smiled weakly at MacSwain, whose expression remained blank and unreadable. The moment passed. There was no dizziness, no foggy feeling.
‘How long have you been interested in boats?’ It was all Anna could think of to say.
‘Oh … since I was a kid. My father used to take me out sailing in Scotland. I’ve always been around boats and the water. I love it.’
‘Are you close to your father?’
MacSwain laughed. ‘No one is close to my father. He is a cold fish. We never really got on. I was sent away to boarding school and only saw my parents during the holidays. Even then, apart from taking me along with him when he went sailing, or tagging along on holidays abroad, my father didn’t have much time for me.’ He gave a philosophical shrug. ‘My mother’s German and I have always had more to do with her side of the family. Would you like something more to eat?’
‘No thanks … It must be tough … for a guy, that is, when you don’t have a good relationship with your father.’
MacSwain frosted slightly. ‘I’m not a little boy any more.’ He forced a smile. ‘It’s getting chilly out here … would you like to come into the cabin for some coffee?’
Anna laughed. ‘Is that the best you can do? Or do you have some etchings for me to look at?’
MacSwain held up his hands. ‘If coffee is all you want, coffee is all you’ll get.’
Anna strained the muscles of her cheeks to maintain her smile. Coffee. Another hiding place for something less innocuous. ‘Okay …’
The cabin was small but bright and sleek, crafted from white moulded polymer with wood features. There were two oval portholes on either side and three in the ceiling to the deck. To the right there was a small couch moulded into a recess; a compact galley and a cubicle which Anna guessed was the ‘head’ pressed themselves into the available space on the left. A double bed spanned the bow end. The cabin was filled with a rich aroma from the coffee maker set into the galley wall. MacSwain motioned for Anna to sit on the couch. She watched him pour both coffees from the same pot and was relieved when MacSwain sat on the edge of the bed, instead of forcing intimacy by squeezing into the small space next to her on the couch.
‘You say you work for a travel agency?’ he asked.
Anna felt a chill in her chest. It was an area of her cover which she did not want to fall too much under MacSwain’s scrutiny. She dredged her memory for true emotions that her short spell in Meier Reisen had evoked.
‘Yes. It’s the most boring job on the planet. Sending the average German family on its two weeks in Tenerife or Gran Canaria and then listening to their complaints that Bratwurst wasn’t on the hotel menu … Why?’
‘Have you never sent someone to a place that they didn’t want to return from … a place that awoke an instinctive feeling within them. Somewhere they felt they truly belonged?’
Anna shrugged. ‘No … I can’t say I have …’
‘That’s the way I felt the first time I saw Hamburg. And sometimes it’s like that with people too.’ A fire ignited in MacSwain’s eyes. ‘Sometimes you meet someone for the first time and it’s like you have known each other for an eternity. Like this is just the latest variation on a theme that has been playing for a thousand years.’
‘Sounds romantic … is this a line you use on women?’
MacSwain’s expression darkened. ‘This has nothing to do with women or sex. I’m talking about something a thousand times more significant than … well … love. I’m talking about a true bond between a person and a place … between an individual and others.’ MacSwain frowned as if searching for a point of reference, a landmark, that he could indicate to Anna. ‘There’s a word in German that doesn’t translate into English …’
‘There are quite a few of those …’
MacSwain brushed away Anna’s comment with a sweep of his hand. ‘
Heimat
. The concept of a place, a time and a people to which you belong. It lies somewhere between the concepts of home and homeland.’
Anna nodded vaguely. It was a word she associated with parochialism and narrow-mindedness; with the bland, politically bleached and mannered films that had been made in Germany in the period after the Second World War: a time when any sense of Germanness seemed inappropriate or even in bad taste.
‘There are relationships that you find and forge in life that give you that inner feeling of
Heimat
, of belonging. Except it is not necessarily anchored in one place. Whenever you meet – wherever in the world you meet again – you are at home.’ The intensity melted from MacSwain’s eyes. He shrugged and took another sip of his coffee. ‘That’s why my father is no longer a figure in my landscape, other than as an incidental character. I have learned that there are much more significant bonds between people than mere genetics. Anyway … enough about me …’