‘How do you mean?’
‘Sascha shot the three Catalan policemen, but he made a mistake by letting one of them make an emergency call. Holm doesn’t forgive mistakes. He was the one behind his brother’s five-year sentence.’
Ashes fall on the table. Someone exhales.
‘But it’s mostly about me.’
‘Why you?’ Pavlik asks.
‘I don’t know.’
‘He could have killed you before.’
‘He wants to enjoy it. That was just the warm-up.’
Niko has never smoked before. Now he lights a cigarette.
‘Holm quoted something,’ Aaron says. ‘I think it’s from a Shakespeare play. “My life belongs to duty; but in spite of death dancing on my grave, you will not have my good name to cover it with dark disgrace.”’
‘What does that mean?’ Demirci asks.
‘Holm is using the lines in the extended sense. Inazo Nitobe cites them in a very important passage in his standard work about Bushidō. It expresses the idea that we must not make our conscience the slave of a sovereign.’
‘Your sovereign.’
‘Holm means my official oath.’
He doesn’t know my true sovereign.
‘He’s challenging you to a duel,’ Pavlik says roughly. ‘Does he think you’re a Samurai?’
‘No. It’s a reference.’
Demirci again: ‘What to?’
Aaron doesn’t reply.
After she killed for the first time, she wondered how she could justify it. The philosophy of karate led to Bushidō, the way of the warrior, the code of the Samurai. It contains the commandments of men she felt close to, because death was her brother. Whose highest good, however, was to sacrifice themselves for their sovereign. Aaron had to seek a substitute. The meaning of Bushidō lies in dying. What was worth giving their lives for?
She thought about that for a very long time, for years.
She found the answer in the underground car park of the Hotel Aralsk in Moscow. Today she can’t remember the death of the young woman hit by the ricochet from her pistol. But she remembers one thing: that Nikulin’s hitman was alive, and suffering from a shot to the belly, when she stood over him and fired a bullet into his head.
She has never told anyone that, not even Pavlik. And certainly not her father. No one doubted that it was self-defence. What was she supposed to say? That she didn’t want to save him? That she had been thinking about the incredibly expensive and incredibly brilliant lawyer to whom Ilya Nikulin would pay six hundred Euros an hour to get his hitman out of jail? That she wasn’t exactly dying to meet the next hitman that Nikulin would send because he thought she was weak and naïve?
She had done it out of fear. And she admitted it to herself. It was right and wrong at the same time. She could tell the difference.
Aaron swore never to forget that. Facing up to fear made death a friend that she embraced every day and every night, with every breath she took.
Until it never lets her go.
That friend stayed with her even after she was blinded. She wakes up with it and goes to bed with it. For a long time she didn’t understand it at all. Her old life was over. Why didn’t death go on waiting for her the way it waited for everyone else? Since finding the coffee bean in her coat pocket, she has known the reason. Aaron hopes that her destiny will be completed with her death, otherwise it would be pointless.
‘A reference to what?’ Demirci repeats.
‘To me.’
Pavlik takes Aaron’s hand under the table. She has talked to him about Bushidō. It isn’t his way. He refuses to be embraced by death for the sake of Sandra and the children.
Demirci’s practical tone conceals what she thinks. ‘Did you never see Holm before Barcelona?’
‘Not wittingly.’
Aaron hesitates.
They wanted facts from me. And I have no facts. Holm communicates with me about my fears and my dreams. I can’t prove any of it. But they need to know.
‘It was four weeks ago in Wiesbaden. I ran into him in the street. He didn’t say a word. But it was him.’
The air pressure in the room plummets.
‘Did you tell any of your superiors?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It was only a suspicion till now.’
What did I have? A coffee bean.
Demirci’s throat is tight. ‘If material things don’t mean anything to him, the three million that he lost because of you are unimportant. What about the woman you killed in Barcelona?’
‘She was his brother’s lover. It’s not about her.’
Niko says: ‘Maybe he wants to take revenge for Sascha.’
‘Not after five years.’ Aaron touches the ashtray. ‘Holm played back a song on his phone. “Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison. Boenisch listened to it when I was in his basement. It’s not in any file, and wasn’t mentioned in the trial either.’
‘Boenisch told Sascha,’ Niko says.
‘But how did Holm manage to get it to his brother?’ Pavlik asks.
‘Via Eva Askamp.’
‘There are worse possibilities.’
Demirci goes to the door. ‘Miss Helm, tell the prison to send you the personal files of all the enforcement officers who have dealt with the prisoner Sascha Holm over the past few weeks. They’ve got an hour. The prisoner is to be put in solitary confinement straight away.’
‘How are we going to explain that without legal authority?’
‘It’s a defensive measure.’
Niko has another cigarette. ‘Why did the Spaniards agree to him being transferred to Berlin in the first place? He murdered three Catalan policemen. And they just let him move?’
‘I bet that was decided in Madrid,’ Pavlik said. ‘We know what they think about the Catalans. And presumably the whole joint was terrified of him in Barcelona. They’ll have been glad to get rid of him.’
Demirci goes back to the door. ‘And please call the Senate Justice Department. I want the correspondence about his transfer. Statements, documents, everything to and from Eva Askamp.’
She discusses the next few steps with Niko and Pavlik.
Token-Eyes is to be interrogated, Niko will do that.
Aaron hears it as if there’s a television on somewhere. Because her head is filled with a single thought: Receive, when my life is over, my all-consuming love for you.
15
In front of the Holocaust Memorial Magnus Sørensen watches his colleague Lena rounding up the schoolchildren and ordering them on to the bus.
It’s wrong.
He said that to himself two weeks ago when he and Lena were the only people in the staff room and he only wanted to give her a book, but they were suddenly kissing and he walked away with his head in the air. He said it to himself again a day later in the store room after games, arranging medicine balls that didn’t need arranging, and she came in and took his hand and put it under her skirt. Since then he’s been saying it to himself every time he’s lied to his wife about holiday replacements, teachers’ meetings, group runs, and found himself thinking about the sweat on Lena’s skin.
In his car by the edge of the forest, where he was just expecting a pupil’s parents to knock on the misted window and ask him if he’d gone mad. In Lena’s house when her husband was in Copenhagen.
Always, always, always.
In the café in Skanderborg, thirty kilometres from Aarhus, he tried to call it off. But as soon as she crossed her legs it was all over. He came home with lipstick on his collar and only noticed when he looked in the hall mirror and saw a coward. His wife hugged him. She whispered excitedly that their eldest daughter was in love for the first time, but for God’s sake to keep it to himself. He held her tight, panicking that she might look at his collar.
And slept with her and thought of Lena.
And lay next to her and thought of Lena.
It’s wrong.
He said it to himself when th
e colleague who was to go on the Berlin trip with Lena got flu, and the question hung in the air about who could go instead. Lena presented Sørensen with a fait accompli at the staff meeting, announcing that he would step in, they’d already discussed it. He was about to correct her, but saw himself nodding.
It’s wrong.
He’s been saying it to himself since yesterday at Schönefeld airport, where Lena, when they were loading the luggage on to the bus, touched his hand among the chatter of the children, and he already found himself calculating how many times they could be together.
It’s wrong.
He said it to himself when he saw the beautiful woman and the man there, the man with the little suitcase, the woman on his arm and still a stranger. She was smoking a cigarette. The man looked at her constantly, but she gazed past him and he went off to fetch the car. Perhaps she had come to see her lover one last time in Berlin. And he had lied one last time to his wife, so that he could be unhappy this one last time.
When Sørensen, with Lena’s knee pressed against his, waited for the bus to set off and became so sad that he knew he would burst into tears if anyone asked him a question, the man with the car came back.
She took two steps in the wrong direction. The man took her arm. He pointed out her mistake and protected her head with his hand as she got in.
It was then that Sørensen could tell that she was blind.
And a nameless fear crept over him. The fear remained there the whole day. In the Reichstag, by the Wall memorial, in the Zoo. They were near the monkeys, and afterwards Lena wanted to go to the nocturnal animal house, but only to grab him in a pitch-dark corner, to own him.
At six in the morning he peered out of her room at their little hotel and prayed that none of the pupils would see him. She kissed him. She smelled of bed, of his desire to close the door again, for them to tumble into each other again, so that for the hour left till waking they would not be alone, they would gasp for air.
Sørensen teaches sport and physics. He believes that the world is held together by measurable quantities, and that that balance is unshakeable.
But he is still thinking about that blind woman.
The children are in the bus. Lena waves to him, he starts walking and barely feels like taking those ridiculous few steps. When he’s about to get in, someone behind him says in English:
‘Why don’t we take a little tour of the city?’
Sørensen turns around.
*
She is standing on the roof terrace. The wind wails. She is shivering, because the suitcase that Helmchen brought from the hotel didn’t contain a second pair of jeans, just the thin dress that she had brought for dinner in Paris and then worn at Pavlik’s birthday party. Where she cried, laughed, danced. Before three men died because of her. Aaron’s thoughts are icicles falling from the edge of the roof and shattering in the street far below her. No one had ordered her to sacrifice herself for them. Two of them she hadn’t even known.
The lift door opens. Pavlik joins her. She feels his gaze. ‘Don’t stare at me as if I owed you money.’
‘You just owe me the truth. What are you keeping quiet?’
Sirens wail.
‘This isn’t a day to keep things quiet,’ he says.
Tears come to her eyes. ‘Holm quoted something else. “Receive/When my life is over/my all-consuming love for you/from the smoke/that rises from my burning body.”’
‘What’s that?’
‘The most famous Bushidō poem.’ She pauses. The sirens fall silent. ‘It was written centuries ago, and describes the highest form of love on the part of a Samurai. It is accomplished only when one reveals oneself in death.’
The wind blows Pavlik’s voice away from her. ‘How does he know about you and Kvist?’
‘He saw us in Barcelona.’
‘Too long ago. And I’m sure you wouldn’t have shown your feelings. You’re too much of a professional for that.’
‘He could have watched us yesterday morning in Schönefeld. I smoked a cigarette in the car. Niko looked at me the whole time. I tried to ignore it and felt awkward. Holm is good at reading people.’
The lift door opens.
‘The name is familiar to me,’ Pavlik says.
‘Which one?’
‘Askamp. I can’t get it out of my head.’
‘Have you heard it before somewhere?’
‘As sure as I’ve got ten fingers.’
‘Pavlik?’ Niko calls.
‘What is it?’
‘I need you.’
Pavlik wants to go, but she holds on to him. ‘Today isn’t the day to keep something to yourself.’
He puts his arm around Aaron’s shoulder and calls to Niko: ‘I’m here.’
She thinks for a minute that Niko’s going to leave them alone. But suddenly he’s standing beside them.
‘You put me and Jenny under surveillance yesterday. Did you think I didn’t notice?’
‘Demirci’s orders, not mine.’
‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘Ask her.’
‘I asked Peschel.’
‘Pavlik wanted to protect you,’ Aaron says.
‘Stay out of it.’
‘No, I won’t. Perhaps you should have a think about how long he’s been your friend.’
Pavlik puts his arm more tightly around her. ‘Leave it.’
‘Or did they have a watch on me?’ Niko says. ‘Between ourselves, we’re friends after all.’
What’s he going on about?
Pavlik says: ‘I wanted to go to Tegel with Aaron. You asked me to let you do it.’
‘And?’
‘It had been decided a long time ago. Ask Peschel.’
Pavlik is exchanging his thoughts with Aaron.
He’s got to find out.
I know.
‘Be careful,’ he murmurs. ‘It’s possible that Holm has his eye on me too.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘He dropped a hint,’ Aaron says.
‘What kind of hint?’
‘A vague one. More of a feeling.’ Pavlik’s phone vibrates. ‘Yes?’ He just listens. Asks no questions.
A thousand icicles ring out below.
Pavlik’s voice slips away. ‘We need to get down there.’
*
At operation headquarters the hubbub of voices dies away. Demirci says: ‘The call came through six minutes ago. Mr Krampe, please.’
The tape starts. ‘We have thirty hostages.’
‘Who’s speaking?’
‘I’ll pass you to someone.’
A man shouts: ‘It’s true. Thirty.’
Headquarters again: ‘Who are you?’
A child cries loudly into the telephone.
‘The little girl is afraid that they’re all going to die. With reason. Put my next call straight through to the Department.’
The conversation ends.
The space begins to rotate, centrifugal forces sling the other people’s voices away from Aaron.
Her feet are bare.
She is wearing dark glasses.
Her father’s face is blackened.
A dream.
The centrifuge stops abruptly. The men and women surround her again, talking across each other. Aaron catches the first question that fires back at her. ‘Was that all? Did Holm make any demands?’
‘No,’ Demirci says.
‘It’s not him,’ Niko says. ‘I know his voice.’
‘That’s wrong,’ Aaron insists. ‘It was him.’
Words like ashes.
‘Could he be bluffing?’ Demirci asks.
‘No. The man and the child were terrified.’
‘Holm says: “We”. So he has at least one accomplice.’
‘Or else it’s a smokescreen,’ Niko suggests.
‘Wrong approach,’ Aaron says. ‘If we believe him and assume he’s got thirty hostages, he needs one accomplice or several; it would be impossible to control that many people
otherwise. If we don’t believe him, we’re starting with a lie and we can’t work that way.’
‘Thirty,’ Demirci says firmly. ‘Let’s stick to that.’
‘Claus, play it again,’ Aaron says to Krampe.
She listens with great concentration. ‘They’re driving – slowly – it could be a lorry – no, a bus.’
Pavlik says: ‘Holm will demand the release of his brother. He wants to make sure we don’t know his location too soon, so that we don’t attack. A moving bus is perfect.’
‘Can you tell whether it’s a bus or a coach?’ Demirci asks Aaron.
‘No.’
Pavlik again: ‘It’s not a bus. If it didn’t stop where it was supposed to, the people waiting would complain. The bus would soon be identified.’
‘Yes, on a normal day there are more than a thousand coaches in the city,’ Peschel says. ‘Who’s going to check them all?’
‘Miss Aaron, what about the man who confirmed Holm’s information – a trace of dialect?’
‘Claus,’ she says.
‘It’s true. Thirty.’
‘He doesn’t come from Berlin,’ Aaron says. ‘Maybe the Ruhr. But I’m not sure.’
Demirci says: ‘Have Sascha brought here straight away.’
When ten people do a sharp intake of breath all at once, it can be very loud. Aaron reads their minds: Holm hasn’t issued any demands, and Demirci is giving in already. But immediately clear to her what a clever move that is. Holm will call soon and demand his brother’s release. He knows he’ll have to give Demirci at least an hour. She is using every second until the call comes through, and she’s already playing for time.
‘Mr Majowski, Mr Büker, you take that one. Choose another four colleagues. Handcuffs and fetters, an armed transporter, two escort vehicles.’ Quick footsteps fade away. Demirci calls Helmchen. ‘Get me a phone appointment with the Federal Prosecutor’s office. In the next fifteen minutes.’
‘Claus, again,’ Aaron says.
‘I’ll give you someone.’
She hears a background noise. ‘Stop. Back five seconds.’
There.
It’s very quiet, but Aaron can identify it. ‘The bus was near an overground or regional train station. Two or three hundred metres away. A train just pulled in.’
In the Dark Page 16
