Scorpion Trail
Page 28
‘It’s the reason we got her out of Bosnia . . .’ Lorna gulped. ‘Because some guy wanted to kill her. And now this happens! I can’t believe it!’
‘Did he follow you here, or what? And who the hell is the guy?’ he asked angrily.
‘He’s called Milan Pravic. He’s the man who led the Tulici massacre,’ Alex answered flatly. ‘They call him the Scorpion.’
‘Scorpion?’
‘Yes. Apparently he got the nickname when he was a kid.’
‘But if it’s him, what’s he doing here in Germany?’ Lorna demanded. ‘And how did he know where to find Vildana?’
‘You tell me,’ Alex replied.
Milan Pravic told Gisela to take the airport turning. And to wipe her face. Her cheeks were streaked with mascara.
She pulled a fistful of tissues from the box on the parcel shelf.
It was his silence that terrified her. The calculating silence on the drive from Berlin, when he’d been planning the death of a child. The sullen silence when she’d demanded to know the reasons why. The cold silence now as he worked out what to do next. What to do with her.
‘Drive into the car park,’ he ordered as they crossed the airport perimeter.
He’d buried the gun under some clothes in his bag.
She pulled a ticket from the entry gate and the barrier lifted. He told her to drive to a floor where there were empty spaces and few people about.
She knew then that he was going to kill her. Knew it with a terror and a certainty that clenched her stomach into a ball and made her gag. She thought of stopping the car near some businessmen loading luggage into their sleek BMWs. She thought of getting out and running. But she knew it would be too late. Knew that at the first tiny sign of her doing something to cross him, that gun would be out of the bag and the bullets hammering into her back.
All she could do was grovel, beg him to spare her life.
‘Here,’ he pointed at a row of empty spaces. Nobody near. No witnesses.
She stopped the engine. He lifted the sports bag onto his knees.
‘Milanchen, sweetie . . .’ she began, desperately.
‘Listen! You . . . you don’t understand, Gisie . . .’ He fumbled for the words. ‘Nobody in Germany . . . nobody in world understand why I must kill! In my country we fight for life – Christian peoples fight Muslim peoples. Muslim men I must kill, because they think they can fuck arse of Croat peoples!’ He jerked his middle finger upwards. ‘Muslim women why kill? Because they make sons who fuck arse! They Turks!’
A mad ramble that made little sense to her, she let him bleed the poison from his soul.
‘And if they in Germany, I kill also.’
‘But that was only a girl?’ Gisela whined. ‘Couldn’t have been more than twelve. Why her?’
‘Tulici,’ he murmured. ‘Muslim girl. From Tulici.’ He fell silent, as if no other explanation were needed.
Tulici. Gisela knew well the significance of that name. Knew the crime she’d just helped him commit was nothing to what he’d already done. The nightmare was true; the man she’d almost loved was a monster, a practitioner of genocide.
He pulled open the zip of his bag and gripped the gun. Gisela gulped.
‘If you talk to police, I kill you too,’ he growled.
‘No, no,’ she babbled. ‘I’m your friend, you know that. I’m not talking to the police. I promise you, I don’t want to tell anyone about today. I wasn’t here, even.’
‘That’s right. You were not here.’
He nodded repeatedly to reinforce the point. The hammer clicked as he fingered the pistol.
‘Now I go. You make car clean again. Then you drive to Berlin and find friend who will say you were with him last night and today.’
‘But what if the police stop me?’
‘Take the Bundesstrasse. The police will look on the Autobahn.’
‘And you? Where are you going? Back to Bosnia?’
Silence again. Shouldn’t have asked. He still had his hand on that gun.
He pushed open the door and got out. Then, clutching his bag, he leaned back in.
‘Remember, Gisie. If you my enemy, I kill you.’
He’d stated it as a matter of fact. He closed the door and she watched him walk towards the exit.
The police sealed off the road and pavement around the house in Mühlweg with striped yellow tape to keep the press out. Both the newspapers and the local TV had been tipped off about the shooting.
In the road just metres from where Vildana had been gunned down, detectives recovered two 9mm cartridge cases.
Nancy Roche and Nataša had gone with Vildana in the ambulance. The paramedic had congratulated the colonel on his first aid. Probably saved her life, she said.
The Hessen State Police, who’d answered the 110 call that Nancy had put in, decided to call in help from the Bundeskriminalamt. The shooting of a Bosnian was political and needed the Federal specialists from Wiesbaden.
A Kommissar was on his way, but it would be an hour before he arrived. In the meantime, patrol cars were searching for a muddy, white, VW Polo, possibly driven by a woman, registration number unknown. Unfortunately, the police pointed out, the Polo was one of Germany’s most popular cars, and white one of the most popular colours.
While the police went from house to house, seeking witnesses, Irwin Roche despatched the twins to watch TV, then hustled Alex and Lorna indoors and sat them at the kitchen table, so they could tell him exactly what all this was about.
‘Oh God . . . what have we done?’ Lorna sighed, cupping her head in her hands. ‘I brought Vildana halfways across Europe, just so she could be shot at.’
Alex clasped and unclasped his fingers, kneading his knuckles. By now he was convinced the gunman must have been Pravic. So close, just metres from the man the world was hunting, the man he’d been hunting, and not known it.
In his mind he kept trying to improve on the meagre description he’d given the police – cropped fair hair, male, in his thirties, grim, grey-blue eyes – it wasn’t much.
‘I still don’t understand how Pravic knew where to find her,’ he murmured.
Suddenly Roche blushed scarlet.
‘O . . . h, oh boy,’ he said, getting up from the table and heading for his den.
‘The Internet,’ Lorna moaned. ‘Must’ve put his address on an open message on the bulletin board. You’re not supposed to do that. Anything confidential should go e-mail direct to CareNet.’
They followed Roche into the den. The modem bleeped as it made the connection. A few keystrokes and he was into
He kept typing ‘back’ until he came to the response he’d lodged to Lorna’s request for an ‘angel’ six days ago.
‘Oh my! Look at that,’ he sighed.
There at the top of his offer of help was his home address, street number and everything, instantly readable by any of the Net’s thirty million subscribers.
‘How could I be so stupid?’ He thumped the screen with his fist.
Alex led Lorna back to the kitchen, while Roche logged off.
‘I still don’t get it,’ he murmured, ‘I mean, how would Pravic know about the Internet?’
‘CNN. They filmed a report on us,’ Lorna answered, her voice heavy. ‘My God, Alex, what have we done? Not you, but me, Larry Machin, CareNet. So busy being clever, instead of saving Vildana’s life we may have lost it!’
Milan Pravic found a dank stairway which took him two levels down in the airport car park – the floor where the rental agencies kept their vehicles.
He walked past a small office and a line of sparkling automobiles. Must be a toilet here somewhere for the staff.
He found the door and pushed inside. It smelled of urine, as if drunks had given up their search for porcelai
n and used the walls. He tried the taps on the washbasin. They worked. Hot water too.
He unzipped the sports bag and pulled out a towel and a sachet of hair colourant shampoo. Dark chestnut.
He draped the towel round his shoulders to protect his clothes, then wet his hair. He rubbed in the shampoo and rinsed his hands. A quick look in the mirror, then he picked up his bag and retreated to one of the cubicles. The instructions said wait ten minutes before rinsing.
Two floors up, Gisela washed clean the number plates of her car, using water from a bottle she always carried in the boot. Then she re-parked it near the exit and behind a pillar, so that if Milan came back to check on her, he would think she had gone.
She walked as casually as she could down the long passage to the terminal and located a phone booth.
Her fingers hovered over the dial pad. 110 would get her the police. An anonymous message perhaps, to tell them he was at the airport?
She dismissed the thought. Not on. Not if she wanted to live a little longer.
She pulled an address book from her handbag. Time to find a friend she could trust. It wouldn’t be easy. Loyalty was a rare commodity in the circles she moved in.
Kommissar Günther Linz had intended to spend the afternoon watching athletics on television with his wife who was a gymnastics teacher, but the weekend duty man at the Wiesbaden HQ had gone sick, so when the alert came from the Hessische Landeskriminalamt they’d telephoned Linz at home.
The word ‘Bosnia’ linked with crime in Germany made him shudder. With hundreds of thousands of refugees here from all the Yugoslav ethnic groups it wouldn’t take much to spark civil war on German streets.
And now the attempted murder of a child. Bad news. Very bad.
As he took the Pfefferheim turning off the Autobahn, he jabbed at the radio button to catch the six o’clock bulletin. Wanted to see what the media had dug up on that Leipzig can of worms.
The way he’d heard it from the police rumour network, the suicide note left by the microbiologist had been dynamite. The Leipzig police had passed it straight to the intelligence agencies who’d slapped a national security classification on it and demanded sealed lips. Now the BND were claiming they’d ‘lost’ the letter.
The ‘pips’ of the time signal. He turned up the volume.
‘. . . Frau Erika Schmidt, the daughter of the dead scientist, claims in an interview in tomorrow’s Bild Zeitung that her father told her some of the old Stasi security police were still functioning, and that he’d been ordered against his will to produce dangerous bacteria for them. . . .’
The Stasi still functioning? No chance. Impossible after the way it had been taken apart after unification. A judicial Commission was still sifting the files looking for people to prosecute on human rights charges.
If there were Stasi men still operating, they were freelancers. But freelancers using anthrax? He shuddered again. And working for whom? The BND? Not their style . . . On the other hand, they had gone out on a limb with that plutonium business.
He pushed the ‘off’ button.
A uniformed officer stopped him at the turning into Mühlweg. He showed his pass and was waved through. Locals clustered in groups of two or three on the pavements, watching the comings and goings. Must have shaken up a dull Sunday, Linz thought.
Relieved to see him, his opposite number from the Hessen police shook him warmly by the hand.
‘The hospital say the girl will live. The bullet missed her heart by this much.’ The Inspector held his finger and thumb so they almost touched. ‘By the way, they’re all foreigners here. Americans and British. Not much German between them.’
‘Then I can practise my English a little,’ Linz replied.
Alex stood up to greet the tall, limping newcomer with the pepper-coloured hair. The wariness in the policeman’s close-set eyes told him this was a man who preferred facts and certainties to supposition.
Irwin Roche had summoned the help of an interpreter from the Rhine-Main Air Base, a bespectacled schoolteacher.
Helped by a large pot of fresh-brewed coffee, they explained the background to the shooting that afternoon. Linz listened, interjecting sometimes in English, sometimes in German.
Lorna spelled out how CareNet used the Internet as an adoption agency, then Roche took Linz into his den to demonstrate.
‘So, any person who has a computer can connect to this?’ he asked, intrigued.
‘All you need is a modem and a subscription to an Internet server.’
‘So, anyone who saw the report on the news could have had the idea to connect to this Internet and could find out that Vildana was staying in your house?’ he pressed.
Roche blushed again.
‘It was incredibly stupid to put my address, I know that. . . .’
‘Ja, but my point is that anybody could do this. Any crazy person with a computer . . .’
‘And a gun,’ Alex added. Linz seemed to be questioning Pravic’s involvement.
‘Of course. But I must look at all possibilities,’ he said dismissively. ‘Tell me, does the computer make a record of the people who have connected up and read these messages?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ Roche replied. ‘There’s no control over the “net”.’
‘That is a pity.’
Back in the kitchen, Linz began to make notes.
‘It was you who brought the girl into Germany illegally, Frau Sorensen?’ he asked without looking up.
Lorna glanced in alarm at Alex. He shook his head.
‘I’m not prepared to comment on that.’
Linz took her answer as an admission.
‘Vildana’s a persecuted person and could apply for asylum here,’ she added simply.
Linz didn’t react. It wasn’t a point worth pursuing. Any foreigner entering Germany legally or illegally, had a right to stay while an asylum application was processed.
‘Milan Pravic lived in Germany for several years,’ Alex said. ‘His brother told me it was Berlin. Wouldn’t there be some record of him there? A photograph maybe?’
‘It’s possible. The Landeskriminalpolizei in Berlin can check that. Today of course is Sunday, so they cannot get at the Municipal register until tomorrow. We have access to the Bundesverwaltungsamt computer in Köln – where the records of “black sheep” are kept, guest workers who will not get their visa renewed because they’ve broken the law. But they have nothing on Milan Pravic. I have already checked.’
He frowned.
‘What do you know about this person?’ Linz asked.
‘He’s a mass murderer and maybe a rapist, Herr Kommissar,’ Alex snapped. ‘Comes from a small village in Bosnia. His brother’s a priest. Not much love between him and Milan. The man’s a psychopath.’
‘But perhaps has not used computers much . . .’ said Linz frostily. He suspected the Englishman was something of an amateur psychologist, a species he disliked.
Alex ground his teeth.
‘You understand, Herr Crawford, that there is not much evidence yet,’ Linz continued. ‘Maybe the ballistics department will get some information from the bullets. Or maybe the girl saw the face of the man who shot her.’
‘All Vildana saw was the front wheel of her bike,’ Lorna replied. ‘I was watching her.’
‘I don’t think you’ve quite understood about Pravic, Herr Kommissar,’ Alex continued. ‘Let me tell you what his own brother said about him. He said killing’s like a drug to Milan. Particularly when his victims are Muslim. He’ll kill anybody who gets in his way. And given the means, he’ll commit murder on a scale that’ll make the Tulici massacre look like a minor road accident!’
Linz blinked at the intensity of Alex’s words.
‘Then we must pray for some luck in finding him,’ he added calmly. ‘I would like to know where to contact you if I need to talk to you again.’
Alex gave him the number of the Hotel Sommer.
‘And you, Frau Sorensen? Where will I find you?’
/> Alex’s and Lorna’s eyes met for no more than a second, but it was long enough.
‘I’ll be with him,’ she said.
They spoke little on the drive into Frankfurt, Lorna’s hands gripping the wheel for support as much as to steer the car. Personal decisions were beyond her now. The puppet-master Fate had taken control again.
Her mind gyrated, sifting and sorting the words and happenings of this long day, but they were as hard to hold onto as leaves in the wind. The baring of souls in the bistro had opened old wounds then seared them. Now, the sharp crack of the gunshots, the clatter of handlebars on concrete, the sight of the blood-soaked rag pressed to Vildana’s chest – all snapshot images clicking round in an endless loop in her brain.
Alex took in little as they drove into town, his mind filled by the eyes at the window of the white Polo. The cold, blue-grey eyes of a man who’d assigned himself the right to snuff out the life of another human being.
Any man who had such arrogance over life and death would try again, once he learned Vildana was still alive. They’d need a new hiding place for the girl when she was released from hospital. Above all, Pravic had to be found. He had to be stopped.
They would need a new hiding place? Who? Whose responsibility was Vildana now? The Roches’, Germany’s – or Lorna’s?
He turned his head to look at her. Lorna’s chin jutted in concentration as she drove, her blonde hair short and wavy like a Pharaoh’s. Now that he knew what she’d been through in those lost years, he could read it in the hollowness of her cheeks, in the lines round her mouth.
She sensed him looking at her and flashed a smile that peeked from her face as nervously as a kitten sniffing the air.
Their eyes locked for little more than a second, just long enough to confirm agreement as to what would happen next.
Words weren’t needed. They’d be superfluous, dangerous even. Words analysed things too much. If the two of them were to talk about the pact their eyes had just made they’d find a reason for setting it aside. They’d have to conclude that on a day of such shocking, murderous events, it would be wrong to pursue pleasure.
She parked the Land Cruiser in a multi-storey. He took Lorna’s small suitcase from the back seat and carried it two blocks to the Hotel Sommer.