The Valkyrie Song

by Craig Russell

  ‘You say there’s something in this for me?’ Berger asked. He was a small man in his sixties, his hair still dark, his face narrow and pinched.

  ‘I can pay you something,’ said Sylvie. ‘If the information is useful.’

  ‘And no one will know about my involvement? My helping you?’

  ‘No one knows I’m here, Herr Berger, and no one will find out, I promise you. Anything you tell me will stay between us.’

  ‘Yes. I was on Adebach’s staff. He was an old bastard.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Six and a half years. From nineteen seventy-seven until eighty-four. Then I was transferred.’

  ‘Voluntarily?’

  ‘No. I ended up in another department, going through tapes of bugged conversations, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Why were you transferred?’

  ‘Adebach got a new adjutant. A mean bastard called Helmut Kittel. He had it in for me.’

  ‘While you were on Adebach’s staff, did you ever come across a Major Georg Drescher? He was HVA or special operations. I think he might even have been Section A. I have reason to believe he worked on a project called Operation Valkyrie.’

  Berger thought hard. Sylvie could see he was making a big effort to earn his money. ‘No … I can’t say I ever came across him at the department. Never heard of any Operation Valkyrie, either.’

  ‘It involved the training of young women for special operations.’

  Again Berger looked gloomily thoughtful, then his expression lightened. ‘Wait a minute, there was something … I remember Adebach requested some files that had been couriered in to be brought through to him. The courier had asked for Kittel – he’d obviously been told to deliver them into his hands so that he could in turn take them in to Adebach. But Kittel was on a meal break so I took the files through. Adebach was on the phone and he told me to wait. He checked through the files and then waved me away. But I do remember the files had photographs of young women in them. Teenagers, really. They also had an HVA stamp on them. When Kittel came back from his meal break he went crazy. Not long after that I was transferred.’

  ‘What did Kittel look like?’

  ‘A miserable streak of piss. He was about one metre ninety tall and as skinny as a rake. Probably because of all of the cigarettes he smoked. A real chain-smoker.’

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Thirty, maybe,’ said Berger with an expression of distaste. ‘Looked younger. He was the real boy wonder of the department.’

  ‘So he was involved with whatever project was in the files?’

  ‘I don’t know if “involved” is the right word. He was a gofer. A filer and paper-shuffler. But he would have had sight of a lot of the files that crossed Adebach’s desk.’

  Sylvie sat quietly for a moment, looking around without taking in the meagre, dull apartment.

  ‘Was that useful for you?’ asked Berger expectantly.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Sylvie. ‘I think Herr Kittel and I have already crossed paths.’

  ‘I’d watch him, if I were you. I heard he went on to bigger things. Investigations. Rooting out undesirable elements. He developed a nasty reputation.’

  ‘It’s all right – Siegfried and I understand each other only too well …’ said Sylvie, ignoring Berger’s confused expression.

  9.

  It was a bright morning. Again there was a welcome freshness in the air and Fabel woke to find himself in a more optimistic mood. Karin Vestergaard was already at the Presidium when he arrived and he waited patiently while she made various phone calls in Danish.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘I got my office to see if they could find out anything about Gina Brønsted and NeuHansa from a Danish perspective. It would appear that Brønsted has almost as many business interests in Copenhagen as she does here in Hamburg. Added to which she has companies across all the Scandinavian countries.’

  ‘Nothing dodgy?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Not that we know about. She seems to be very active in environmental management and technologies. She helps other corporations become greener. It’s a big business now.’

  ‘I’ve arranged a meeting with her this afternoon,’ said Fabel. ‘Believe me, it wasn’t easy. But this morning we don’t have far to travel …’

  Fabel was as good as his word: the Hamburg State Police Academy on Braamkamp was less than a kilometre distant from the Police Presidium. It was here that officers were shaped for command and developments in policing analysed, developed and passed on to the city’s officers. It was a building Fabel was only too familiar with. When he arrived the main hallway was filled with between-classes students. He found himself thinking about his daughter Gabi and how her recently announced decision could lead her here too.

  Principal Commissar Michael Lange was not an officer whom Fabel had encountered before. From what Fabel had been able to find out, Lange had started off in the Polizei Schleswig-Holstein and had transferred to the Polizei Hamburg early in his career. He was now a lecturer in the Hamburg State Police Academy; but it was Lange’s experience early in his career that brought Fabel to his door.

  The older uniformed officer at reception directed Fabel and Vestergaard up to the first floor of the Academy. A tall, lean man in a blue Hamburg Schutzpolizei uniform was leaning into the corridor from his office, clearly watching out for Fabel after having been told of his arrival by reception.

  ‘Principal Chief Commissar Fabel?’ Lange smiled and extended his hand as Fabel approached. Lange was about forty but Fabel felt he had the eyes of an older man. But that was maybe just because he knew of Lange’s experience.

  ‘Call me Jan,’ said Fabel. ‘This is Politidirektør Karin Vestergaard of the Danish National Police. Could we speak in English? It would save me a lot of translating.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Lange. ‘I just hope my English is good enough.’

  ‘Thanks for arranging to see me so soon,’ said Fabel. ‘It’s just that the case I’m working on has a Balkan connection and Anna Wolff, whom I believe you know, suggested I should talk to you.’

  ‘I’ll help if I can,’ said Lange. ‘You said on the phone you were looking into Goran Vujaić’s death. And his background. Of course his death wasn’t in our jurisdiction but in yours, Frau Vestergaard.’

  ‘Vujaić’s death may not have been in our jurisdiction, but the murder of the Danish detective who was investigating it is,’ said Fabel. ‘He was one of Frau Vestergaard’s officers. We suspect that the Danish officer was murdered by the same professional assassin who took out Vujaić. I take it you understand that this must stay between us, Michael?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We suspect that this person is a contract killer, based here in Hamburg. And that makes everything our jurisdiction.’

  Lange pursed his lips meditatively. ‘You’re right. We do have jurisdiction under Section Seven of the Criminal Code if the perpetrator is a German national. And you say no one outside the Commission is aware of this? What about top brass – shouldn’t they be told?’

  ‘The Police President has been briefed,’ said Fabel. ‘But at the moment we’re keeping it tight. There’s been another murder, committed by someone else, but it is related to the investigation and we’re trying to keep it quiet until we flush out this killer.’

  ‘And you think there may be something in Vujaić’s background that could point you in the direction of more solid evidence?’

  ‘Truth is, I don’t know. But if this Valkyrie – that’s what this contract assassin is supposed to be code-named – if this Valkyrie is based here, then he or she would have a pretty good motive for taking Jespersen out of the equation. And Vujaić is the connection.’

  ‘Okay, I’m glad to help if I can. The jurisdiction issue may not be an issue at all. But I only know about three years of Vujaić’s life. The three years he was active in the Bosnian War. And even then Vujaić was not a leading figure. More a footnote in the diary of atrocity, so to speak. We never g
ot enough to indict him, mainly because he successfully argued a special defence of alibi. He had gall, I’ll say that. He never tried to hide, like most of the others. But there again, that actually worked in his favour. Flight is a judicially acceptable indicator of possible guilt.’

  ‘So you think he was innocent?’

  ‘Like hell. Goran Vujaić was clever and more than a little lucky. I wasn’t personally involved in his case, but I was able to access the files through OSCE.’ Lange referred to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. ‘Vujaić had already assembled a gang around him. The writing was on the wall as soon as NATO got involved in the conflict and I think that Vujaić started to look at the bigger picture. But Vujaić was there. In the rape camps. In the forests by the mass graves. He was up to his elbows in it all, except that he had half a dozen affidavits swearing he was lying wounded in a hospital bed in Banja Luka.’

  ‘This unit or gang of his … Petra Meissner of the Sabine Charity told me they called themselves the Dogheads or something.’

  ‘Yep. Psoglav. It’s Serbian for “doghead”, but it’s also a mythical creature that Serbs – Bosnian Serbs in particular – used to believe in. A pagan demon or werewolf-type thing. The Psoglav unit was little more than an organised-crime gang and that’s exactly what it became after the conflict. There was talk – little more than a rumour, mind – that Vujaić and his Psoglav chums got heavily involved in people trafficking after the Bosnian War. All kinds of bad stuff: organ farming, selling women into the sex trade, slave-labour sweatshops, that kind of thing. But you’d have to talk to the Europol organised-crime division about that. As far as I’m aware, Vujaić was not directly active in Northern Europe. Sorry, that’s not that helpful, is it?’

  ‘I appreciate it anyway,’ said Fabel.

  ‘One thing I would say,’ said Lange, ‘is that Vujaić was one of the most evil sons of bitches to walk the earth. The stories about what he did to Bosniaks, Croats and ethnic Albanians … particularly what he did to women. I tell you, I saw more than my fair share of beasts out there, and Vujaić was right up there with the worst of them. Unfortunately it’s not always about who deserves justice most, but about who you can get the evidence on. Vujaić was such a cunning little bastard that we never had anything more than rumour on him. It’s not a very policeman-like thing to say, but when he got topped my first reaction was that he got what he deserved. The only pity is that he didn’t suffer the same way the people who fell into his hands did.’

  Fabel nodded, watching Lange. There are some things, he thought, even in this job, that it’s better not to see. To know. At that moment he knew he was talking to someone whose dreams were even darker, even more terrifying, than his own.

  ‘Thanks, Michael,’ said Fabel. ‘If anything else comes to mind, please let me know.’

  Fabel and Karin Vestergaard had just stepped through the revolving doors and into the bright double-storey reception atrium of the Police Presidium in Alsterdorf when they were stopped in their tracks by a determined-looking Anna Wolff.

  ‘Don’t take your coats off,’ she said, with a grin. ‘We’ll take your car, Chef. I’ll give you directions. There’s someone I want you to meet …’

  The café Anna took them to was in the Sachsentor pedestrian zone in Hamburg-Bergedorf. When they arrived, a young woman with a pretty but rather severe face and long dark hair was waiting for them. Sandra Kraus sat with a huge canvas bag at her side, the strap still over her shoulder, and tapped the café table with the tips of her fingers as Fabel, Vestergaard and Anna approached, almost as if she was announcing their arrival with a drum roll. She didn’t stand up but smiled at them. Fabel noticed that it was like when Karin Vestergaard smiled: nothing of it seemed to reach the eyes.

  ‘I’ve known Sandra since we were kids,’ said Anna after she had done the introductions. ‘She was the smartest student in the whole school. And she is an absolutely brilliant cryptologist.’

  ‘Really?’ said Fabel with genuine interest but looking questioningly at Anna. He was slightly distracted as Kraus drummed her fingers again on the tabletop. He turned to her and found the intensity of her gaze disturbing, as if she was looking at him as an object rather than a person.

  ‘Yes – really,’ said Anna, with more than a hint of defiance. ‘And trust me, bringing you here to meet Sandra isn’t a waste of time. I gave her a copy of Muliebritas. The same issue we found in Drescher’s flat.’

  ‘Does she know … ?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘You told us to keep a lid on the Drescher thing and that’s exactly what I’ve done. Sandra only knows that we may have a coded message in this magazine. To be honest, that’s all she’s interested in.’

  ‘And did she find anything?’ asked Vestergaard.

  ‘It took her five minutes to find the message and crack the code. No more.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me that an amateur cryptologist can break a code created by one of the world’s most successful secret police and espionage agencies?’ Fabel smiled patronisingly.

  Kraus drummed her fingers on the table again, took a sip of her coffee and then spoke briskly. ‘I have advantages that they didn’t have. I have an inbuilt ability to recognise patterns in things. What you see as complexity, I see as structure and ultimately simplicity.’

  ‘There’s more,’ said Anna. ‘I got all of the issues of Muliebritas for the last three years. Drescher was using it regularly to communicate with the Valkyrie. Sandra has decoded dozens of messages.’

  ‘It really wasn’t that difficult. The person who called himself “Uncle Georg” in the announcements used a combination of polyalphabetic cyphers. Basically he used a Vigenère Square with a staggered shift of Caesar cyphers. Basic stuff. For example …’

  She took a pad and pencil out of the huge shoulder bag and wrote ALTONABALKONSFOURTHIRTYPMTHURSDAY on the pad. Fabel noticed that Kraus’s handwriting was perfect, the capital letters corresponded exactly with the lines on the pad.

  ‘That becomes VLEYLRJEGKZXQWWYMTSSPKGTHT-SEPJLET,’ she continued. ‘Of course, a long jumble of letters like that would be very easily noticed by anyone looking at the magazine, and would attract the attention of any cryptologist, so he buried them in several personal ads throughout the announcements section. He put in thanks notices that listed names. The initials would give several of the encrypted letters in each announcement.’

  ‘And you’re absolutely positive that you have interpreted the codes correctly?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Like I said, it was a simple enough encryption. In principle. But for three hundred years the Vigenère cypher was considered unbreakable simply because to decode the encryption you have to know which word was used as the keyword. In other words, what the vertical letters are on the axis of the Vigenère Square.’

  ‘And you worked it out?’ asked Fabel. ‘How?’

  ‘I just saw it. I have this knack for frequency analysis of letters and recognition of common pairings. I read all the messages and I could see the patterns. You’re only supposed to be able to do frequency analysis with monoalphabetic cyphers; not with a polyalphabetic cypher like this one where an encrypted letter can be decoded as more than one original.’

  ‘But Sandra can do it,’ said Anna with clear pride in her friend’s abilities. ‘Tell him the keyword, Sandra.’

  ‘Valkyrie,’ said Kraus, again drumming out the same tattoo with her fingertips on the tabletop. ‘The word used as the keyword was Valkyrie.’

  As Anna drove back to the Presidium, Fabel sat in the passenger seat and went through the messages Sandra Kraus had decoded.

  ‘These are all times and places,’ said Fabel over his shoulder to Vestergaard, who sat in the back. ‘Obviously he passed anything sensitive on in person. This was just used to set up a meeting.’

  ‘So that means we can now do exactly the same,’ said Vestergaard. ‘We can lure this Valkyrie out into the open. Assuming she really doesn’t know about Drescher’s death.’


  ‘We’ve still got the lid tight on that, but for how much longer I don’t know.’ Fabel turned to Anna. ‘That’s an interesting friend you’ve got there.’

  ‘Sandra? She’s great. She has a genius IQ.’

  ‘I guessed that much,’ Fabel said, with a small laugh.

  ‘And she’s an Aspie.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Did you notice her drumming her fingers all the time? Same rhythm, same number of beats. Or how she’s got an unnerving way of seeking eye contact with you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I did,’ said Fabel.

  ‘Sandra has Asperger’s syndrome. But she calls herself an Aspie. She doesn’t see herself as a sufferer from a disability. Just different, and she’s cool with that. She campaigns for a group that promotes neurodiversity … the idea that there is more than one type of mind. She calls us NTs – Neurologically Typical.’

  ‘I thought people with Asperger’s have difficulty with interpersonal relationships. You said she’s your friend …’ said Vestergaard from the back seat.

  ‘A good friend,’ said Anna. ‘Sandra has problems in some areas, but, as you could see, there are compensations in others. And she has taught herself coping strategies and stuff. I’ve learned not to judge. It’s funny: Sandra said that one of the stereotypes people have of Aspies is that they have little or no empathy for the feelings of others. That’s why it’s often difficult to recognise a male Aspie: who can tell the difference from a normal man?’

  Vestergaard gave a loud laugh. Fabel shrugged.

  ‘Well, one thing’s for sure,’ he said. ‘Your friend Sandra has probably given us our biggest break in this case so far.’

  The preliminary forensics survey of Sparwald’s house had, as expected, surrendered nothing much. Fabel was surprised, however, at just how much Astrid Bremer had been able to read from such meagre trace evidence. She was still at Poppenbüttel when she phoned him at his office in the Presidium.

  ‘I’ve had the body removed and we’ll get the autopsy report, obviously. But my guess is that the victim was dead before he hit the floor. The killer put another bullet in him, firing along the victim’s already supine body and causing an entry wound under his chin. Very professional job. The last shot was probably insurance. Professional meticulousness.’