‘We’ve still got that bug in the BMW,’ Kemper says.
‘That won’t be any more use to us than the GPS.’
Mr Uzi opens the boot and inspects the bag of money. Holm isn’t interested.
All of Pavlik’s attention is focused on Aaron. With his right eye he sees her in extreme close-up, enlarged twenty-four times, while for his left eye she is small and a long way off. She stands there alone, quiet and collected, her face white as snow. She looks across at him, right into his sights, and his heart breaks.
But she shows no fear. Shares her thoughts with him.
I know you don’t understand.
And you never will.
We’ll see each other.
In this life or another.
Tell Sandra I love her.
Holm pushes Aaron into the back of the car. Sascha wants to get into the back seat again, but he freezes when his brother speaks to him. Pavlik sees Sascha’s eyes stinging. There’s a directional microphone on the aerial of the Ford. ‘What did he say?’ he asks.
‘“You’re not allowed to do that.”’
The brothers face each other, a metre apart, Sascha seems poised to jump, Holm is relaxed. He spreads his shoulder blades. Sascha lowers his gaze. When he walks around the car to the driver’s seat, his gait is angular and stiff.
Your muscles are seizing up because you’re imagining yourself tearing out your brother’s heart and eyes.
Mr Uzi sits down next to Aaron, Holm at the wheel. The BMW drives slowly out of the car park. It turns into 17 Junistrasse, speeds up towards the Victory Column and draws two slender white strips in the immaculate carpet of snow. Pavlik opens the window, hangs half out of it and stares after the car through the target sights. Mr Uzi pulls off his balaclava. Pavlik has to settle for the back of his head. Ash-blond hair, drenched with sweat. His eye remains fixed on the car until it disappears from view by the Grosser Stern roundabout.
‘SET 2 to technical support. Is the bug in the BMW transmitting?’
He isn’t surprised by Krampe’s answer. ‘Negative. He’s using a scrambler, we’re just getting white noise.’
A transporter stops in the car park. The bomb disposal unit. The wind carries a rattling loudhailer voice across to Pavlik. ‘Stay where you are, don’t move. If you follow our instructions nothing will happen to you.’ In German, then in English.
While Pavlik’s tablet is coming on he calls Sandra.
‘What’s happened?’ she asks immediately.
‘Later. Bung the kid in the car and come to Budapester Strasse.’ He puts the call on hold. On the tablet he sees the picture transmitted by the drone. The BMW has joined the traffic, heading east via the Lützowufer.
Schöneberger Ufer.
Nationalgalerie.
Pavlik switches to Demirci’s line. ‘He’s taking the Tiergarten Tunnel. The drone is supposed to check the Invalidenstrasse exit. But I’m sure he plans to get to Central station. The Federal Police need to be informed. They’re not to hound him, though. He could set off the explosives at any moment, we just need to know what train he’s on. Send through their descriptions.’
Demirci issues instructions. The echo disappears from the line. She has turned off the speaker so that no one else can listen in. ‘Have you ever met a man like this before?’ she asks under her voice.
‘No.’
‘He’s thinking the same thing. He’s never met a man like you before. And neither have I.’
21
Holm has driven along this stretch of road before. As soon as the traffic lights by the Nationalgalerie turn green it’s twelve seconds to the tunnel. There he will accelerate to a hundred and sixty with one hand on the wheel, and if necessary use the hard shoulder for forty-four seconds to get to his destination. His left thumb doesn’t move from his phone.
Sascha turns his head round to look at the back seat. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Bosch.’
He looks at his brother. ‘What’s the point of him?’
‘To get us out of this,’ Bosch says, talking to himself.
‘Put the phone down. Let’s have some fun,’ Sascha says without paying any further attention to Bosch.
‘Yeah, you’d have some fun,’ Holm murmurs. ‘Because you’ve never learned to distinguish important things from trivial. I sometimes wonder if you’ve ever learned anything at all.’
He senses Sascha’s hatred. It’s always been like that.
At home there were no kind words, no laughter, no sleep without fear. There was the fist with the signet ring and the pliers and the belt with the spiky buckle. On good days it was the fist. There was their mother’s empty eyes. Dinner at seven on the dot and the stairs to the basement. For six years he had to go down those stairs, counting the cracks in the basement ceiling, hearing his father’s breathing.
Then Sascha turned four, and Holm’s job was done. Upstairs he counted the cracks in his bedroom ceiling until he heard the basement door opening again.
Every evening his brother pleaded with him: ‘Kill him.’
And every evening he said nothing.
His father was a woodsman with muscles like tree roots. Once a mastiff strayed through their garden in search of scraps. His father casually strangled the creature.
But Holm knew: eventually.
He started training in secret, lifting rocks at the abandoned quarry, fighting with the nastier boys, bigger and older boys, who inflicted pain on him.
Holm learned from them. He hid his growing muscles and avoided his father until he was strong enough.
Sooner or later.
For four years he heard the basement door being shut.
In the week before his nineteenth birthday he went to the area around the railway station and sought out a pimp the same size as his father. He threw him in an alleyway and drove the bridge of his nose into his brain and only eased off on him when he could no longer feel a single bone in the man’s face. Then he knew that the time had come.
He told his father he would never touch his brother again. His father took off his belt with the spiky buckle, and Holm didn’t defend himself. He enjoyed those minutes.
Every afternoon from then on he went to the forest where the woodsmen felled trees. For six days his father went out drinking with his mates after work. On the seventh he stayed on a little longer. It was just before Christmas, and he wanted to fell a Christmas tree. Holm could have split his skull in half with the axe, but he wanted his father to look at him. When Holm’s fists were numb he picked up the chainsaw. He turned it on, looking his father in the eye as he did so. He saw him screaming but didn’t hear it. He took the shovel out of the car and dug the grave in the deep wood and then washed in the stream. He went home, sat down at the dinner table and passed his brother the ketchup.
Their mother reported their father missing the next day. Policemen came and asked questions, came again and then stayed away. Their mother wept, but not out of grief. The way she looked at Holm told him that she knew. For two months she made him and his brother their favourite food. One morning she was dead. A stroke, they said. At the funeral some people Holm had never seen before said that he and Sascha would be living with them from now on.
While these strangers were eating cake, he ran away with Sascha. He looked after him for all those years. For a while he hoped his brother would eventually stop hating him. That day will never come. He dug the pit. But Sascha would never forgive him for those four previous years. Later it lost all meaning for Holm. He remembers the man he was many winters ago as little as he does some snow that he once shook from his coat.
He tried his best to be a good brother to Sascha. In his world that meant burning his fear like the jacket and trousers sprayed with his father’s blood. While others stayed locked in their basement for ever, whether that basement was in a house or in their head.
For a long time he was concerned that Sascha was doing badly at school. He gave him freedom, that was the last thing he would do fo
r him. Perhaps one day his brother will understand that he must close that basement door once and for all.
*
Aaron tried to determine their position by their change of direction. The first right turn was simple, it could only be the Hofjägerallee by the big star in the middle of the Tiergarten. Shortly after that they turned left. Tiergartenstrasse or the Lützowufer.
Her hands aren’t tied.
Aaron has done it in her mind.
She smashes Bosch’s Adam’s apple and grabs the Uzi that he’s just put under his jacket. Before Holm or Token-Eyes can react, she has blown their brains out.
Two seconds.
She would probably survive the crash.
And twenty-nine people would die.
Another sharp left. Heading downhill, taking a long bend. The tyres are no longer squelching in the muddy slush, and the sound of traffic makes way for a hollow rushing sound. She can tell that they’re in the tunnel that runs beneath the government district.
Holm puts his foot down. Aaron is thrown into another tunnel. In the rear-view mirror she sees an Audi and in it sits death wearing a made-to-measure Savile Row suit.
Suddenly she is kneeling next to Niko. His shirt is red, his mouth is red, his eyes are red, his voice is that of a dying man: ‘Get out of here.’
Holm brakes hard. Aaron’s forehead bangs against the headrest. The doors are pulled open. They are still in the tunnel. Cars speed past. Holm grabs her and presses her tightly to him, runs off with her. Behind them the boot is opened, the money. Aaron stumbles along beside him and clings to Barcelona, to Niko’s last look.
Another door. ‘Keep your mouth shut,’ Holm snaps at her. The sound of a railway station surges towards them. ‘Attention passengers on platform six. The 15:12 Intercity to Hamburg, scheduled to depart at 12:58, will be delayed by twelve minutes.’ A train rumbles above her into the interchange station. A toddler shrieks, two throatily warbled sentences jitter by, Italian. Aaron is jostled, hears a muttered apology. Holm drags her onwards. Up the escalator. She slips, scrapes her ankle open. Holm whirls her back to his side. She tries to find the steps, keep pace, as he goes on dragging her after him.
Aaron lurches on to the platform. ‘Attention passengers on platform sixteen.’ The rattle of a suburban train, still quiet. He has calculated their movements precisely so that they get there with a second to spare. The idea shoots through her brain. She has lost all sense of time. When did they enter the building? Did the station police notice them? And what came next? A death sentence for her and for twenty-seven children?
Bosch stands on her left, lugging the money, pumping air, his lungs rattling. In the bus his voice sounded anxious but clear. But when they got into the car and he said incredulously, ‘They’re actually letting us go,’ she was numb. A moment later he pulled something off his head.
A balaclava. He wasn’t wearing it on the bus. But when they got out he didn’t want his face to be seen.
At that moment she sees herself here with Niko, she’s in love, she tickles him, he tickles her back. Laughing, she looks into one of the surveillance cameras and sticks out her tongue.
‘Careful, take a look behind you,’ she says to Bosch.
She feels the movement as the man turns round. Holm’s hand clamps around her arm like a fully inflated blood-pressure sleeve. ‘How stupid can you be?’ he snaps at Bosch.
‘Excuse me, could you take a picture of us?’
Aaron freezes.
But Holm says in impeccable Oxford English: ‘Sure. Say cheese, ladies.’
‘Thank you very much.’
‘My pleasure.’
The train is on the platform. ‘Step,’ Holm barks. They get in. They are pushed from behind. The carriage is airless. Aaron pushes against shoulders, gets an elbow in the ribs. Holm squeezes through with her. Presses her on to a seat, pushes her to the window. Something heavy is set down in the corridor, the bag of money. Some youths are laughing and shouting behind them.
‘Stand back from the platform edge!’
The doors close, they judder off.
Aaron is kneeling beside Niko in Barcelona. She sees his ribcage twitching, sees his agony. ‘Clear off.’
‘Next stop: Bellevue,’ blares the speaker.
A phone plays a lilting little tune. A woman tells off a sulky little girl. The youths noisily leave the train. ‘Hey, loser, out the way.’ Cold air forces its way into the carriage, people press in. Fresh pear shampoo, wet dog, kebab. On the train from Wiesbaden to Frankfurt Aaron has been addressed twice, because she was lost in thought and, without noticing, stared at men who thought she was flirting with them. That mustn’t happen now, it could be disastrous. Aaron turns her eyes towards the window. One more stop. After that they cross 17 Junistrasse. If she wasn’t blind, she would see the coach.
‘Next stop: Tiergarten.’
Holm leans over to her. ‘You know the drill,’ he whispers. His voice is so quiet that even Aaron can barely hear it. ‘The bomb disposal guys will open the bag first. Of course that’s a risk. There might be a sensor in the bag that will spark the explosives as soon as the zip fastener is opened. Alternatively, the robot might remove the bag from the luggage area to take it a certain distance away. But that would be an even greater risk; a pressure switch under the bag is a favourite trap set by bombers. So they go for the zip option. The robot cameras show that it’s a relatively simple mechanism. I didn’t need to go to any unnecessary trouble. They’ve decided to separate the blasting cap from the charge with a water-gun.’
They pull into the station. The dog barks. Someone opposite her stands up. ‘Can I get through?’ The seat is filled immediately. Bosch. Aaron hears him dragging the money bag over. Her heart thumps to a techno beat.
‘Stay back!’
‘The disposal guys have nineteen and a half minutes, that should be enough. Once we’re on the bridge over 17 Junistrasse, I’ll let go of the button. If I’ve miscalculated we’ll know straight away.’
Aaron stops breathing. The train gains speed. It’s on the bridge. The dog whines. A newspaper rustles. A woman talks about four numbers she got in the lottery. Someone blows their nose.
‘You’re saving twenty-nine people,’ Holm whispers in her ear. ‘But you won’t save yourself.’
*
Pavlik calls Demirci. ‘Has the bomb been defused?’
‘Three minutes ago. The kids are fine.’
‘Did anyone see Aaron at the station?’
‘No. The Federal Police only have fifteen officers on duty at that time of day. And six of them were at a stabbing in the underpass.’
‘What about the cameras in the car park?’
‘They were switched off. The getaway car is in the tunnel. They got into the building through a fire door. Where are they?’
‘I’ll be right there.’ Pavlik charges out of the lift on the fourth floor of the Department. He sees Nieser with Majowski and Delmonte. ‘Where is he?’ Pavlik asks.
‘Listen—’
‘Where?’
‘Interrogation room II.’
The door practically crashes off its hinges and Pavlik comes flying in. He hammers his fists into Niko’s kidneys. Niko goes down with a groan, Pavlik pulls him back up. Two in the ribs, one in the face. Niko’s nose breaks. He doesn’t resist the barrage of blows. Solar plexus, head, spleen, liver. The wall is all that is keeping him upright. Men come running, pull Pavlik off. Niko topples over. Pavlik breaks away and kicks him in the stomach. Four men can hardly hold him.
He roars: ‘What have you done?’
They try to drag him away but can’t. He rages, flails his fists until he hears Sandra’s voice. ‘I know, Ulf.’ Pavlik shivers. The men let go of him. Two of them help Niko to his feet. Blood streams from his nose as if from a tap. They put his arms around their shoulders and haul him to the door. Sandra gets in their way. Niko hangs limply in front of her. Her fist hits his nose-bone with all her might, breaks it again. Not a sound. There is more
grief in his eyes than she has ever seen. She stands aside. The door closes quietly behind her. Pavlik falls to his knees. Sandra drops in front of him and pulls him to her. They both cry.
‘It’s my fault,’ Pavlik whispers.
She takes his head in both hands. ‘I give you five minutes to blub. Then you stand up and get them out of there.’
*
Helmchen is holding the bawling baby in her arm. She uses a tin of paperclips as a rattle and calms the little one down with it. Jenny taps the new toy with her hand while Helmchen picks up the ringing phone off her with her free hand. ‘The Department, Helm speaking. Miss Demirci has been informed. Sorry, I don’t know when she’ll have time.’ She sees Pavlik and Sandra. ‘I’ll call you back.’ Helmchen puts the phone down.
‘I want Sandra and Jenny to be taken to the safe house in Cottbus. Who have we got?’
‘Nobody. But Miss Demirci said the Five will look after both of them for as long as necessary. I’ll call them in.’
Inan Demirci enjoys personal protection, even though she might not put it that way. Even though the Department isn’t actually part of the the BKA, its security division, known as ‘the Five’, consists of men from that security squad.
Sandra takes the baby from Helmchen and puts her in the sling, where she laughs and waves her arms and legs about. Pavlik draws his wife to him. ‘I’m to tell you that she loves you.’
New tears come.
His voice is firm. ‘Do you remember how we used to play cowboys and Indians with her and the twins in the garden?’
Sandra nods.
‘Back then we used to play with toy pistols. She used to say, “No one is faster than me, stranger.” It was the truth. There’s no one faster. Tomorrow evening we’ll play Scrabble with her and let her win.’
Helmchen hangs up. ‘The Five will be there very soon.’
Pavlik kisses Sandra. ‘I’ll call you.’ He runs outside, turns around and lifts his daughter up to inhale her smell once more, because he doesn’t know how long he’ll have to do without it.
*
At operation headquarters upstairs, half the squad is standing around Demirci. She calls the police at the railway station on speakerphone. ‘They should have been in the building at ten to one. He calculated it precisely so that they would be on the platform just before the train pulled out. I want all trains that set off between 12:50 and 1:00 p.m. Long-distance and regional, underground and suburban.’
In the Dark Page 22
