‘Like I say, you wouldn’t dare …’ said Volker, but his voice betrayed a shadow of uncertainty.
‘Oberst Volker, I would be obliged if you could fulfil our original agreement and share all the information available to you that is relevant to this investigation. Let’s start with the Eitels’ involvement with a Kiev-based cartel that is somehow profiting illegally from property-redevelopment initiatives in Hamburg. The Corporate and Financial Crime Division is questioning both Eitels as we speak. When I go downstairs after this meeting, Herr Oberst, I intend to hand them a lead substantial enough to allow the Staatsanwaltschaft to grant a search-and-seizure warrant. In addition I want to know where to find former Comrade Vitrenko and his principal officers. Now … if this were all to happen, these leaked documents and the press conference I mentioned may not be necessary.’
Volker gave Fabel a long, dark stare. ‘I could make life very, very difficult for you, Fabel, you know that, don’t you?’
‘It’s kind of you to remind me, Volker. Particularly in front of two witnesses.’
‘Just what do you think we do, Fabel? Do you think we’re just some kind of dirty-tricks department?’
Fabel shrugged. ‘I’m a policeman. I like to let the facts do the talking. And so far those facts tell me not only that you have been concealing evidence from me, but also that you obviously have your own agenda as far as Vitrenko is concerned.’
Volker gave a bitter laugh. ‘For a senior officer investigating serious crimes you seem to have a habit of making the facts fit
your
particular agenda of prejudices.’
‘You’re denying that you are trying to tie up a deal with Vitrenko?’
‘No. I am not denying that. But not to the extent of ignoring these bloody murders, if that’s what you mean. And I’m not denying that our American friends are perhaps less squeamish about doing deals with the Devil, if it brings them the heads they’re after. But no. If –’ Volker emphasised the word and repeated it – ‘
if
Vitrenko is indeed your killer, then of course we would not consider dealing with him, although we would want to talk to him. And as for us not being forthcoming with information … you never thought to ask yourself if there was another possible reason for our reticence?’
‘Like what?’
Volker stood up and leaned on his desk. ‘Like maybe you can’t be trusted. Like maybe one of your precious Polizei Hamburg is on the take. And maybe because of that, Klugmann – someone I recruited personally and a bloody good man – was killed.’
‘This is all a smokescreen, Volker.’ Fabel also rose to his feet.
‘Is it? Klugmann was onto the
real
leak of information from within the Polizei Hamburg. He found out that someone, someone at a high level – perhaps even a Kriminalhauptkommissar – has been selling high-level information to the Ukrainians.’
Fabel took a second before responding. In that second he hastily constructed a web of cables and threw it over the anger that surged within him. ‘Are you telling me that that is why you have been withholding information on Vitrenko? I don’t believe it.’
‘Ask Van Heiden. He knows all about it. Someone either within this Präsidium or in a major city-centre Polizeidirektion is selling Vitrenko information that is helping him to hit his main rivals and take over their operations and hijack their deals – like the Colombian deal where Ulugbay was wiped out.’
‘But you said Klugmann gave the Ukrainians the information …’
‘He did. And that’s why we think he’s dead. Klugmann sensed his contact, Vadim, was pulling back from him. Of course, deep-cover work makes you hyper-paranoid, but Klugmann was very concerned that the Ukrainians were becoming suspicious of him.’
Fabel said nothing, but recalled Sonja’s fear when Fabel’s team had raided the flat in search of Klugmann. And how Klugmann himself had sought deeper refuge somewhere, only to end up lying at the bottom of a filth-strewn swimming pool. Volker could see that Fabel was considering his words, and he eased back into his seat. Fabel did the same. When Volker continued, his tone was markedly less aggressive.
‘You may remember, Herr Hauptkommissar, that you were more than critical of the way we supplied information to the Ukrainians, through Klugmann, about the deal where Ulugbay ended up being murdered. Well, we’re not as stupid or ruthless as you seem to think we are. We made damned sure that there were crucial gaps in the details Klugmann supplied about Ulugbay’s deal with the Colombians. The hit on Ulugbay took more – a lot more – than Klugmann gave them. And whoever really supplied the information must have sussed that Klugmann’s mole in the drugs MEK was a fiction.’
‘You’re saying that it was a police officer who killed Klugmann?’ It was Maria Klee who beat Fabel to the question.
Volker shrugged. ‘Directly? Perhaps, I don’t know. Indirectly? Probably. Whoever has been selling information has been demanding a high price, and I’m pretty sure they would go to great lengths to protect themselves. But they wouldn’t necessarily have to get their own hands dirty. If they tipped off Vitrenko’s mob that Klugmann was undercover, then the Ukrainians would gladly take on the burden of removing him.’
‘
Chef
…’ Werner, who had been standing behind Fabel, spoke in a low, tight voice.
‘Shit … of course. We brought our witness into the Präsidium. Damn it, Volker, if we had known all of this before, we wouldn’t have exposed him to danger. We never, for a moment, thought that bringing him here would mark him out.’ Fabel turned back to Werner. ‘Get Hansi into protective custody now.’
‘I’m on it,
Chef
,’ said Werner and left the office. Maria sat down in the vacant chair next to Fabel.
A look of disbelief invaded Fabel’s expression. ‘So that, you claim, is why you have been withholding evidence from this investigation?’ asked Fabel.
Volker sighed. ‘I haven’t been withholding anything. If you really believe that Vitrenko is behind these killings, then I’ll do all I can to help. In fact, our willingness to deal with Vitrenko died with Klugmann.’ Volker considered his next words carefully. ‘You don’t like me much do you, Fabel?’
‘I don’t know you. I neither like nor dislike you.’
There was acid in Volker’s small laugh. ‘Well, let’s put it this way, you don’t like what I
represent
.’
‘I can’t say that I do, much.’
‘You’ve made it very clear that in your eyes I’m one step away from the Gestapo while your Polizei Hamburg represents all that’s good and pure. Well let me tell you something, Fabel, I’m lucky to be sitting here. If the Polizei Hamburg had had its way my family tree would have been axed in Hamburg Police Prison Fuhlsbüttel.’
Fabel’s eyes widened.
‘Surprised? My father was a social democrat and trade unionist. A nineteen-year-old idealist. And so, inevitably, there was the knock on the door in the middle of the night. But it wasn’t SS or Gestapo who came knocking. It was your precious Polizei Hamburg who took my father off to the police prison at Fuhlsbüttel. It was reclassified soon after, wasn’t it Fabel? Konzentrationslager Fuhlsbüttel … the Polizei Hamburg’s own little concentration camp. Of course you’d like to forget all about that.’
Fabel knew the history well: Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp, known as
Kola-Fu
. It was the darkest, most despicable chapter in the history of the Polizei Hamburg. After the Nazis came to power in Hamburg in March 1933, the Polizei Hamburg had been responsible for rounding up Communists and Social Democrat activists. It had been taken over by the SS in September of the same year, but those six months of police control had been enough to tarnish the Polizei Hamburg’s history indelibly.
‘Okay,’ said Fabel at last, ‘I take your point. But I don’t see its relevance.’
Volker’s reply snapped at the tail of Fabel’s statement. ‘The relevance is that you have a whole lot of theories about why I joined the BND. Well let me tell you the truth. I joined because I wanted to defend the only things that stand between Germany and history repeating itself: democracy and the Grundgesetz. You see yourself as a defender of the law. Well I see myself as a defender of the Basic Law … the constitution. I do it because I believe that the only just way to govern is a true liberal democracy.’ He leaned back into his leather chair. ‘Do you know what I really am, Fabel? I’m a fireman.’ He jerked his head towards the window. ‘Out there, Fabel … out there are all kinds of losers and sad wankers who are playing with matches. Extreme right, extreme left, fundamentalist religious nuts … they’re all out there playing with fire in the dark. And my job is to kill the sparks before they become flames.’
‘Okay, I guess I owe you an apology,’ said Fabel. ‘But the fact remains that you withheld evidence from us.’
‘We owe each other nothing, Fabel, other than a little mutual respect and not to make each other’s job more difficult than it is.’ Volker picked up his desk phone, stabbed a button and gave an order that the Vitrenko file was to be brought in.
After the file was handed to Volker he flipped it open and removed a single sheet of paper. He handed the sheet to Fabel. It contained several rows of initials and numbers. He scanned it a couple of times before giving it to Maria.
‘It doesn’t mean anything to me,’ said Fabel. He looked at Maria who shrugged.
‘But it will mean a great deal to your Corporate Crime colleagues.’ Volker tilted his leather chair back and interlocked his fingers before him. ‘These are transaction trackings. They detail movements of funds between accounts – times, dates and amounts.’ He let the chair snap forward again and handed Fabel two more sheets from the file. ‘This is the key to the accounts. It details who holds each account. There is also a federal court warrant –’ Volker smiled, almost maliciously – ‘just to prove we obtained the information legally.’
The list of account holders included Galicia Trading, Klimenko International, Eitel Importing and several others Fabel didn’t recognise.
‘There’s enough there for you to get a seizure warrant. If your fraud people prise open the cracks in some of these phoney accounts they’ll find a trail that leads straight back to the Eitels. And I mean personally. Not to their businesses. There may be some other surprises for you in there as well.’
Fabel raised an eyebrow.
‘Just get your experts to look into it all.’ Volker leaned forward, resting the weight of his broad shoulders on his elbows. ‘As for Vitrenko … I honestly cannot give you any clue about where to find him. It’s like he’s a phantom. We do, however, have locations for a couple of his lieutenants.’ Again he dipped into the file and pulled out a couple of photographs. He placed them both on the desk, turned round for Fabel and Maria to see. They were typical close-surveillance images: taken from a distance through telephoto lenses. Both men were in their late forties; one was lean and wiry; the other heavy set. Both had the dangerous look of seasoned soldiers. Volker tapped the image of the lean man.
‘This is Stanislav Solovey. It was he who pointed out the advantages of retirement to Yari Varasouv. The other is Vadim Redchenko.’
‘Klugmann’s contact?’ asked Maria.
‘And possible executioner,’ added Volker.
Fabel shook his head. ‘Hansi Kraus said the killers spoke unaccented German. And they deliberately left a Ukrainian security-services handgun to be found. I think they were trying to point us in the wrong direction.’
‘Well, Redchenko is a killer through and through, whether he took out Klugmann or not. He was based in Reinbek, running a drugs factory and network from a disused mill. We launched a raid in conjunction with the drugs MEK unit a month back.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Maria, ‘no one was home?’
‘Exactly. In fact the place burst into flames just as we took up position. Some kind of Soviet mine and strategically placed vats of flammable chemicals did the job. Very professional and very thorough. It destroyed any evidence we might have picked up. Since then we’ve been unable to track Redchenko to any particular address, although we do have a couple of operations he visits regularly. Every time he does, we put a tail on him, and every time he loses us. These people could not be better trained. Take Vitrenko himself – it’s not been easy getting information out of the Ukrainians, but from what we have uncovered he served not just with MDV Kondor and Alpha brigades, but also the
Vysotniki
brigade, as did some of his current group.
Vysotniki
was – and still is – based on the British Special Air Service model, made up of small operational units of eleven men. From what we have been able to squeeze out of our contacts, Vitrenko set up such a unit in Afghanistan and revived it in Chechnya. But instead of eleven it had thirteen men. We think that’s how many he has with him here.’
‘That fits with our information,’ said Maria.
Volker placed his hands behind his head. ‘Our operation with Klugmann and Tina Kramer was intended to gather intelligence on Vitrenko. I never misled you on that count, Fabel. I do admit that our ultimate objective was to offer him some kind of deal – immunity from prosecution for his organised-crime activity on the condition that he cooperate with the
Amis
and, of course, that he give up all illegal activities. But it is difficult to make immunity from prosecution sound very inviting when there seems to be almost no chance of you ever being found, far less arrested and enough evidence scraped together to prosecute you. And, of course, if Vitrenko really is behind these killings, then all bets are off.’ He lowered his arms and leaned forward in the chair. ‘You do believe that, don’t you, Fabel?’