by Marc Raabe
‘It means what I said. There’s no file any more. I got rid of that rubbish.’
Thrown away. Gabriel needs a moment before he comprehends what Sarkov just said. Thrown away. Sarkov had the key to his memory in his hand and with it the key to saving Liz – and he threw it away? He stares at him in disbelief. ‘You’re lying,’ he says softly.
Sarkov shakes his head. ‘Why would I?’
Gabriel’s eyes wander through the room and stop on a large matt silver safe to the left of Sarkov’s desk, directly beside the small key safe. ‘It’s in there, isn’t it?’
Sarkov shakes his head again.
‘It’s . . . my . . . file, damn it! It’s my life!’ Gabriel says heatedly.
‘Your life?’ Sarkov repeats mockingly. ‘Without me you wouldn’t have a life. And now you’re whining here about a few dusty papers? Enough about your goddamned file, get your things and piss off to Moscow before you make everything worse.’
Gabriel claws at the arms of the chair in a helpless rage.
‘Gabriel . . .’ Sarkov takes a long look at him and then sighs. ‘Honestly, I don’t have that crap anymore. Let me help you.’
Gabriel can’t take his eyes from the safe. Something in the back of his mind tells him that it’s a terrible mistake, but a mistake he has to make, because there is nothing he needs more than that damned file. When he stands up, he feels very heavy. He nods, just as he’s always nodded when Yuri seriously demands something of him. He turns to the door and takes half a step and then he jumps.
Sarkov’s reaction comes much too late.
Gabriel’s hands grab his head and throat. It feels wrong, but also right at the same time. The vertebrae crack under Yuri’s thin skin. A little more and. . .
‘A little more and you’re dead,’ Gabriel whispers in Sarkov’s ear. ‘And now open the safe for me.’
‘You’re a fucking idiot,’ Sarkov chokes out.
‘OPEN IT!’
Gabriel pushes Sarkov up to the bulky, almost man-sized safe. He stares at the thin fingers, Yuri’s fingers, which he trusts more than any other fingers, as they enter the combination on the keypad.
‘Faster,’ Gabriel hisses.
‘This won’t help you.’
He’s lying! repeats in Gabriel’s head.
Luke, what’re you doing there?
Shut up, this doesn’t concern you!
When the safe door swings open, he stares inside. A large stack of money laughs at him, several folders and a couple of envelopes. He skims over the writing. Nothing.
‘Take that stuff out. Show me,’ he snarls.
Sarkov groans under Gabriel’s grip, flips open the folder, takes out the envelopes, one by one.
Nothing.
This can’t be, booms in Gabriel’s head. His hands cling firmly to Sarkov’s throat. This can’t be true!
He stares into the open safe like an empty black pit. A pit with matt silver edges in which something shadowy is reflected behind him. Something that looks like a man with a raised hand.
He tries to turn his head away, but at that very moment something slams down on his head, slips and crashes down on his right shoulder. The pain is like an explosion. He lets go of Sarkov, stumbles, falls to his knees and cannot believe that he is not unconscious.
‘Fucking arsehole,’ he hears Cogan’s voice behind him. Cogan, Gabriel thinks, stunned. Cogan, who still owes me!
Sarkov gasps for air. ‘Is this the thanks I get?’ he asks, turning to Gabriel. ‘And all this because of your fucking file?’ His voice sounds strange and infinitely distant. ‘Do you really think that I would fill my safe with that shit?’
Gabriel looks up, dazed. Yuri is a giant, he thinks, confused.
The giant bends down to him and hisses, ‘I don’t have it, understood?’
Gabriel opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He is queasy, maybe with shame, because he thought that Yuri was lying to him and that the file was in the safe. Maybe also just because of the pain. For a moment he thinks about whether it would be good to ask for forgiveness, so that he doesn’t lose Yuri as well. But he looks at Yuri, who doesn’t seem ready to forgive. And Gabriel doesn’t actually know how it works, asking for forgiveness.
Then he takes a second blow in his throat. And again from behind. Again from Cogan. Gabriel’s blood pressure drops immediately. The world around him goes out like a light, his body switches to the emergency power supply for his most important organs. His muscles go slack and, even before his head hits the ground, everything is as black as a grave.
Chapter 26
Berlin – 4 September, 4.09 p.m.
Gabriel’s eyes twitch under the closed lids. Directly in front of his bare toes, a free-floating staircase leads into an abyss. The steps are like folded paper without supports or railings and they disappear into the depths. This is only a dream, he thinks, to rein in his anxiety.
He knows that he has to go down the stairs, into the darkness to get it – but he doesn’t know where it is.
Step by step he climbs downwards. His toes are cold because the steps are made of steel. The hands on his watch spin as he keeps going on and on to the bottom of the steps, where a thin red column grows endlessly. Passenger planes roar above his head like lorries. He would like to fly with them, but he can’t. He has to get the book. The book where someone wrote down his dreams, including those he can no longer remember.
He stops at the foot of the stairs in front of a pair of sky-high black curtains that are attached to the ceiling and run down to his feet. Between the curtains, a slit of light. Red and seductive and sinful. The book must be somewhere here.
When he moves the curtains, he has to summon all of his strength. He braces himself against the heavy fabric, which swallows every sound, even his own loud breathing. Between the curtains, he thinks he’s being crushed, a silent and agonising death as punishment for crossing over a forbidden threshold. Then he is suddenly through. The curtains swing behind him like a prison door – permanently closed for all time.
The walls down here are red and fibrous with veins as thick as arms. It’s like the inside of a giant womb where someone is holding up a lamp that radiates an immense amount of light from the outside.
Suddenly, he is overcome with panic that he will always be stuck down here. He knows that he’s found the book, but it has imprisoned him and he can’t read it. He gropes along the wall for an exit, but there’s only this red fleshy thing with glass balls grown into it as large as heads. There is something glowing in the balls that are each surrounded by a white halo. Black contours form and wriggle. There is his father and his mother; they are stuck in the balls and though he can see them, he doesn’t understand what they’re saying. He moves closer. His mother has green eyes, like Liz.
And then he sees that the woman beside his father looks exactly like Liz.
I have to get her out of this ball, he thinks, but the glass is too hard. Below the ball is a button and he extends his hand, a child’s hand, and presses the button.
An unbearable noise swells then roars and the walls shake like a huge membrane that’s threatening to burst because it can’t echo thousands of voices at the same time. The acrid smell of burning flesh rises into his nostrils.
The button in his hands is suddenly a telephone handset, the coiled cable is transparent and blood flows inside it. There is a trigger stuck to the mouthpiece like a revolver. He has to pull the trigger to dial, but whenever he dials, no one picks up. The line is dead and the only sound is the nerve-racking cawing of birds . . . and the roaring.
Consciousness crawls up on him like a reptile. He tries to hold on to the nightmare, knowing how important it is, but the images drift away with the pull of a heavy tide.
His head is howling in pain. A hideous stench lingers over everything; it smells like he feels.
The birds are still cawing.
Dazed, Gabriel blinks in the light. Around him are mountains of garbage with crows hoveri
ng above them, coal-coloured spots under a sky of grey, heavy rain clouds that are so low they echo the roar of the lorries back into the landfill.
Then he sees the bin lorry.
It’s several metres above him on the edge of a ramp. The hydraulics hiss and then the back of the vehicle tips, so that a wall of rubbish falls directly onto him.
The adrenalin rush wakes him suddenly. He tries to stand up, but it’s already too late. A ton of rubbish avalanches over him and pulls him down with it. The pressure takes his breath away. Then the avalanche comes to a crackling halt.
Everything around him is black. His arms and legs are being held down.
You have to burrow, he thinks. Burrow your way to the top. But his hands can’t manage it, the mountain of waste is too dense. Panicked, he tries to make space with his arms. The weight of the rubbish squeezes the last air out of his lungs and his head feels as if it’s going to explode. A syrupy mass runs across his chest and then up his neck and cheeks.
Up?
He realises that he is upside down in the rubbish. The blood rushes to his head and he doesn’t have much time until he is unconscious or, worse, the next bin lorry comes.
He desperately tries to kick his legs and rotate his hips back and forth. Around his foot, the refuse gives way a bit and apparently the layer above him isn’t too thick.
Keep going!
He kicks until he can hardly breathe anymore. He eagerly tries to suck in what little air comes in through the narrow cracks between the rubbish bags. The stench of sour milk and rotten eggs makes his eyes water. A piece of cling film gets into his mouth. He has to gag and he is sure that he will soon suffocate on his own vomit, from the lack of air or the next load of rubbish. Somehow, he manages to cough up the cling film and pucker his lips so that he can breathe.
Keep going.
Keep breathing.
And keep kicking. That’s his only chance. Centimetre by centimetre he manages to compress the rubbish around him and make some space. Gradually, the pressure is released from his ribcage. Then with a last mighty effort, he manages to push through the top. Rustling, the rubbish beneath him gives way and fills the hole he’s left behind. He is now almost horizontal and can turn his head. There is now only a thin layer of waste above him and the light seeps through. Light and air!
He suddenly hears voices. Two voices, to be specific. He wants to call for help because something heavy is now pressing on his chest. At first he thinks it’s a second load of rubbish, but then it occurs to him that he can’t hear any bin lorries or hydraulics. Instead, it’s just the voices directly above him.
‘What a shit job, man!’ someone complains.
The pressure on Gabriel’s chest shifts and he gasps for air.
‘Sarkov is slowly going soft in the head,’ the second man growls.
Sarkov? Gabriel thinks, puzzled. All of a sudden he remembers what happened in Yuri’s office before he lost consciousness.
‘Watch what you say. Otherwise you’ll wind up in the tip, too.’
‘I’m just saying. First we’re supposed to dump him here, and then Sarkov decides that we have to get him back again?’
Gabriel can’t believe his ears.
‘He’ll have his reasons. Just because you’re too stupid to understand that doesn’t mean that it makes no sense.’
‘And what the hell kind of sense is that, man?’
‘In any case, he wants to have another go at him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have made such a fuss. Cogan said that Sarkov was out of his office and then suddenly hollered that we should immediately get that son of a whore back.’
‘Did he say son of a whore?’ the man laughs like a horse.
‘No idea. Cogan said it.’
‘Fuck. But the arsehole isn’t there any more. At least not where we left him. He’s gone.’
‘What if one of the bin lorries emptied its rubbish here? I mean onto him.’
For a moment, there is silence. Only the crunching of rubbish above Gabriel when one of the men shifts his weight. ‘Don’t know. I don’t see any lorries.’
‘Hang on,’ the other says. Then there is suddenly a sharp sound directly beside Gabriel, as if someone had drilled into a pumpkin.
Tschrk!
And then again a few centimetres away. Tschrk!
Gabriel freezes.
‘Hey, what’s that supposed to be? Rubbish on a spit?’
Tschrk!
A long rod pierces through just below Gabriel’s shoulder, only missing his chest by a few centimetres.
‘I’m just checking if something’s there.’
Tschrk!
This time, the rod pierces though the refuse right next to Gabriel’s left eye. So close that he can feel the metal on his skin.
‘You going to stab the whole tip or what?’
‘Oh, fuck it.’
The metal rod pushes through the rubbish again, right near the top of Gabriel’s head this time. He holds his breath, thinking feverishly. It’s only a question of time before it hits him. Is it better to just give up?
‘Maybe we shouldn’t have thrown him in. Because of the bin lorries, I mean, if he’s buried now. Shoulda just been a warning.’
‘Well, I don’t see any bin lorries,’ the other repeats.
‘Then did he run off?’
‘Shit, what do I know? What’s the difference? If he’s under here, he’s pretty much gone. And if he’s gone, then he’s gone.’
Silence.
‘And Sarkov?’
‘We’ll just tell him. That he’s gone. Run off. Gabriel was always a tough bastard.’
It’s quiet again for a moment. Then the muffled sound of a squawking crow through the rubbish.
‘Then let’s get out of here. Let him look himself if he wants to have another go at the arsehole.’
The two men’s steps rustle away. Gabriel’s heart races and the only thing he can do is lie there.
A while later, all he can hear is the crows and he finally dares burrow up to the surface. As he squints into the heavy grey sky, he is dizzy with relief. He looks over to the ramp to make sure that there are no other bin lorries. The two men are gone.
Gabriel stares down at the desert of waste. Disposed of like a sack of rubbish, he thinks. Yuri’s warning couldn’t be clearer. It’s just a question of why he sent the two men back to get him.
An overwhelming feeling of loneliness comes over him, spreading through every last fibre of his body. David didn’t believe him, the police are on his tail and Liz is at the mercy of a psychopath who wants to take revenge on Gabriel, and he hasn’t the slightest idea why. Everything seems to be slipping away from him.
Now don’t start crying here, Luke. Please pull yourself together.
But he can’t hold it in. It’s like a break in the dam. Tears suddenly just run out of him as if he were still eleven and trapped in a nightmare. The stench of rubbish makes him nauseous again. The image of his bare toes and vomit on the cold stone floor flashes into his head. He trembles, then gags and pukes. As he wipes his mouth, a desperate rage flares up in him. How could Liz just happen to get pulled into his story? How sick does a person have to be to hurt her, even though it’s about him?
October 13th.
He knows that he just needs to open this one door in his head – the door to this one night. Behind the door, Liz is waiting to be saved. It’s that simple. And that complicated.
He thinks about the dream he had a few minutes earlier, about how he stood at the foot of the stairs. He tries to make his way backwards in his memory, to put the fragments together. His parents had argued that night. David had been asleep when he crawled out of his bed barefoot in his pyjamas and snuck past the kitchen to the cellar door. His memory doesn’t go any further than that. In the dream, he had gone down into the cellar. And the red room with the fleshy walls that drew him in like magic must be the lab.
Father’s lab.
Forget it, Luke, you can’t remember.
I
t must have something to do with the lab. Only, what?
Listen, it was just a dream!
Gabriel presses his lips together. It’s useless. The door is closed.
He stares into the sky and wonders what day it actually is. September 3rd? Or is it already the 4th? There are still just under six weeks until October 13th. A muscle under his eye twitches uncontrollably. He tries to get up. The rubbish beneath him gives way, he stumbles and falls back into the soft filth.
Pull yourself together, he thinks.
He puts his hands in his jacket pockets and rummages through them feverishly. Nothing. Entirely empty. No keys, no ID, no money. Even the money that he took from Dressler is gone. His pockets are empty except for the one on the inside of his jacket. His fingers feel for the object. The mobile, he thinks. Liz’s mobile. He fishes it out with two fingers. The plastic casing is split, the display has turned green and blue and the electronic plate inside is broken. His heart skips a beat. The mobile is his only connection to Liz, or rather, her abductor.
With trembling fingers, he removes the battery and pulls out the heart of the mobile: the SIM card. He looks over the fingernail-sized chip on both sides and breathes a sigh of relief. The card seems undamaged and it will work in a new phone. The abductor will ring him again. If that’s what he had planned.
Suddenly, he wonders if it wouldn’t be better to go to the police and tell them the entire story. Liz would have gone to the police. David, too. David has always believed in justice, like a child grabbing at straws.
Justice? Forget it, Luke. There’s no such thing. What do you think the pigs will do with you if you go to them? Justice! Look around. God and the devil are both just rolling the dice. The only thing you can count on is yourself.
A raindrop bursts on his forehead. He looks up. The sky is a mountain of slate and individual raindrops fall like spears. The cries of the crows and the roaring of the bin lorries are swallowed up by the swelling patter of rain.
Gabriel grits his teeth, ignores the headache and gets up, staggers, stands.
And now?
A shower, a new mobile and a hiding place. And all of it will cost a pile of money.
Gabriel takes a deep breath and ignores the stench. His heart beats faster and the cold rain forces him awake. He stalks slowly through the mountain of refuse towards the sound of the lorries. The rubbish shines in the rain like it was freshly painted.
