by Mark Burnell
'Not that kind.'
In a small bathroom there was a large nylon bag lying in a pink plastic tub. Savic unzipped it and took out a selection of weapons, including four sub-machine guns – a Croat ZAGI M91, two Austrian Steyr TMPs and a Hungarian KGP-9 – plus three pistols and a revolver.
Von Harpen reappeared in the doorway. 'Everything okay?'
Brankovic replaced the weapons in the bag and zipped it shut. Savic reached into the pocket of his black leather coat and pulled out two fat rolls of euro notes, each secured by a rubber-band. He handed them to von Harpen, who began to remove the rubber-band from the first roll. 'You don't have to count it, Klaus. It's all there.'
Von Harpen opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, then smiled lamely as though he'd never have considered such behaviour. There was something about him that reminded Stephanie of Marcel Claesen.
'How come you two know each other?'
'Serbia is a main transit route for heroin,' Savic said. 'All Klaus's heroin originates in Afghanistan and comes overland, via Iran, Turkey and the Balkans. He uses Serbia as a hub.'
'Like you?'
'Sure. Guns, narcotics, people – what's the difference?'
They ambled back into the living room of the first apartment. Which was when Stephanie began to feel claustrophobic. Two shapes emerged from a dim corridor, followed by a larger third. They stumbled into the partial light of the living room. A boy and a girl, both in jeans. The girl was gone; her skin had the peculiar bloodless sheen that Stephanie remembered too well. Eyes open but blind to everything, she could barely stand. The boy was supporting her, a bony arm around a bony waist. Stephanie smelt vomit coming from one of them; the girl's T-shirt had a damp patch over the chest. Between the bottom of her Levi's and her Reebok trainers she wore pink socks. There was darkness on the inside of one of them. Blood. A puncture point on the ankle. Which was why she was wearing long sleeves.
It wasn't the walls that were closing in on Stephanie. It was her past.
Outside, Brankovic put the nylon bag into the boot of the Alfa Romeo.
Stephanie said, 'What's von Harpen's story?'
'He's a fucking tourist,' Savic grumbled. 'Daddy's an industrialist with factories outside Hanover and Hamburg, manufacturing electronic components. He's got some huge estate between the two, a chalet in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a villa on Mallorca and an apartment in Paris. So what does Klaus do? Becomes a junkie, then a dealer.'
'With friends in Monaco.'
'Clients, not friends. The sons and daughters of Daddy's friends, all of them in a rush to end up like little Klaus. It's pathetic. I tell you, if I'd started off with one tenth of what that bastard has, I wouldn't be doing this shit, that's for sure.'
'What's the hardware for?'
Brankovic almost smiled.
Savic said, 'You'll see.'
They drove west along Allee der Kosmonauten, crossing intersections with Allee Markische and Rhinstrasse. Suddenly the road narrowed to a lane. The buildings fell away, the traffic died and they were among trees and sprawling vegetation. She knew she was still in the heart of eastern Berlin but there was no longer any sign of it. Instead she was in some dark, menacing corner of the countryside.
Increasingly the trees encroached, scraping both sides of the Alfa Romeo until they came to a row of eight enormous greenhouses. Savic parked the car. Brankovic opened the boot, unzipped the bag, handed a Steyr TMP to Savic, took the KGP-9 himself and offered Stephanie a Ruger P-85.
'Sub-machine guns for the boys and pistols for the girls? Isn't that sexual discrimination?'
Savic laughed. Brankovic didn't.
They entered the first greenhouse. It was vast, larger, somehow, on the inside than on the outside. There was an aisle down the centre with rows of concrete cultivation benches on either side. All that was growing, however, were weeds. Strong enough to puncture the concrete floor, they were flourishing. Swamped by two or three rampant bushes, the far end of the greenhouse could barely be seen. The rain was loud, coming through gaps in the glass roof. Stephanie estimated two thirds of the panes were missing. Many of them lay shattered on the ground.
In the second greenhouse there were colossal pieces of diaphanous pink nylon draped from iron struts suspended from the roof. Here all the cultivation benches had been removed. There was a thin blanket of dirt on the ground, almost all of it dry. The roof was intact despite the fact that the tops of the trees along the right-hand side were pressing against the glass. In the next greenhouse, which was also dry, there were a dozen arc lamps on tall stands, arranged in a broad circle. Power cables snaked through the dirt to a diesel generator outside.
One by one they went through them, all in various states of decay except for the last two. Beyond these was a concrete cube of a building.
'What is this place?'
'It used to be a flower factory. Industrial flower farming. It was during the time of the GDR. The flowers that were grown here were distributed to Party offices throughout the country. And to the homes of high-ranking officials.'
'This was just for the Party?'
Savic nodded. 'And when the GDR died, so did this place. A classic white elephant. A symbol of the GDR, in its own way.'
'But there are flowers being actively cultivated in two of the greenhouses.'
'Sure. People still want flowers. Demand and supply. It's just the scale that's changed. I'll show you.'
Six, large, rusting pipes protruded from the concrete cube, high enough to allow a lorry to pass beneath, before dipping vertically into the ground.
'Heating pipes,' Savic explained, 'pumping hot water to all the greenhouses. It used to be a different temperature for each. Now, for most of them, it's whatever temperature Nature decides.'
There were workshops beyond, also abandoned, except for the last one. As they got close, Stephanie saw shapes moving inside.
'We provide fresh flowers for the stalls and stores in the city but we also press dried flowers here.'
'I can't believe you're telling me this with a Steyr MTP in your hand.'
Savic grinned. 'What can I say? The flower business has never been more cut-throat.'
They entered the workshop. There were two wooden benches running down the centre beneath suspended fluorescent lamps. Stephanie estimated there were twenty workers. All female, all young. A portable radio was playing europop, the tinny sound echoing off hard walls. A few of the girls were treating dried flowers with some kind of chemical. Others were arranging them, copying designs from printed templates set in front of them. The rest were packaging. It took Stephanie a moment to realize that German wasn't the predominant language being spoken. She looked at the girls more closely: the clothes they wore, their faces, their demeanour.
They came to an adjoining office, where an older woman sat behind a desk. She had too much make-up and wore lipstick like a wound. She was on the phone. As soon as she saw Savic she finished her call and kissed him on both cheeks, leaving crimson prints that she didn't bother to wipe away.
'Milan, my darling. You look wonderful.'
'You too, Tamara.'
'Liar.'
'I could never lie to you.'
'Listen to him!' she shrieked.
'Is everything ready?'
She nodded. 'The boys will be here by six.'
Stephanie looked at her watch. It was half past four. Through a window on the other side of the office there were five more girls, sitting around a portable TV perched on a chair. They were all smoking.
'Can we wait upstairs?' Savic asked.
Tamara nodded. 'If you like, one of the girls can bring you tea. What time do you want them to leave?'
'In about half an hour. Are any of them included?'
Tamara inclined her head towards the five next door.
'Where are they from?' Savic asked.
'Three from Chisinau, one from Bucharest, one from Sofia.'
Upstairs there was another small office: one desk, some shelves �
� mostly empty – and a filing cabinet that had been pushed onto its side. Brankovic decided to use it as a seat.
Stephanie said, 'Your flower-pressers downstairs – they're all female.'
Savic pulled a face. 'It's not really a man's job, is it?'
'And young.'
'It's delicate work. You need nimble fingers.'
'And pretty.'
'You think so?'
'Their German isn't very good, either.'
'You said you wanted to see everything. So now you're going to see.'
Shortly after six, two battered Volkswagen vans pulled up outside. Stephanie, Savic and Brankovic went downstairs. Tamara and her girls were nowhere to be seen. A dozen men climbed out of the vans; surly, in leather coats and stubble, all dark. Most were already armed. Brankovic supplied those that weren't. A quarter of an hour later a third van pulled up, more men spilling out. At seven Savic addressed them as a group. Sweep the area, then take your positions. No sub-machine guns for those on display. The meaning of which became apparent when half the men melted into the darkness of the surrounding vegetation. At eight the rest congregated in the greenhouse with the arc lamps, which were now ablaze.
Soon after, the first of them arrived. Three Turks in a Mercedes 4x4, two fat ones and a thin one with a black beard. They parked beside a long shed with a corrugated-iron roof, then checked their guns with two of Savic's men.
'In some places,' he murmured to Stephanie, 'we don't have to be so cautious. But here, in Berlin, it's better to avoid violence. Especially loud violence.'
Savic greeted the Turks stiffly. Clearly there was no love lost between them. It was the same with the other groups: Albanians, fellow Serbs, Russians, more Turks, more Albanians, and five Chinese. By eight-thirty Stephanie guessed there were thirty men in the greenhouse, including Savic's eight. She remained on the periphery, keen not to be too visible.
The door at the far end of the greenhouse opened and a man appeared. Behind him there were three girls. Behind them another man, as large as the first. They approached in procession until they reached the circle of white light. The girls were nudged into it, blinking, uncertain. One of the men arranged them in a Line. Two blondes – one fake – and a brunette. The fake blonde was tall and slender. She wore jeans and a crop-top. The brunette, taller and larger, wore a PVC skirt and purple T-shirt. The other girl was tiny. She wore a flimsy dress with a floral print. It reminded Stephanie of a cheap motel curtain. It fell half way between her waist and knees. She didn't seem aware of anything, whereas the larger girls looked frightened.
Most of the men gathered on the rim of the light, half of them muttering into mobiles, shrouded in cigarette smoke. Savic himself withdrew to the darkness, allowing someone else to take over. Stephanie recognized him immediately but couldn't recall his name or where she'd seen him. A bull of a man, coarse black hair running off his scalp, down his neck and into his shirt without a trace of thinning.
Moving towards the centre of the circle of light, he said, in German, 'I won't waste any of your time.' He waved a large, hairy hand at the three girls. 'From the left, then, one to three. Starting with one – twenty years old, Russian, from Nizhniy Novgorod. No German, no English, no certificates. Three thousand euros?' There was a pause, then he spotted a reaction in the blackness. 'Three to you. Three five, anyone? Yes, you. Four? Four thousand. Back to you – four five?'
Stephanie became aware of Savic standing just behind her left shoulder.
'An auction?' she whispered.
'How did you imagine it happened?'
She knew the auctions existed but was still stunned. She shrugged, hoping it conveyed indifference.
Shardov, she remembered. Aslan Shardov. He'd been one of Gilbert Lai's guests at Deep Water Bay. Stephanie had talked to his girlfriend. Julia from Moscow, six foot tall, blonde, green eyes. She'd said that she'd worked in Berlin before Shardov took her to Almaty. Stephanie had asked her what line of work he was in and remembered the answer: construction, transport, banking. In other words, anything and everything. Including, it now seemed, auctioneering.
The first girl went for six thousand euros. The brunette, a Ukrainian, went for four thousand five hundred. The girl in the floral dress went for nine thousand.
'Why so much more?' Stephanie asked.
The girl was smaller than the other two but no more attractive.
'She's got medical certificates proving she's clean.'
'Authentic?'
'I doubt it. She's from Belarus. Mind you, perhaps it's the novelty.'
'What do you mean?'
'Most girls from Belarus are from the countryside. Raised on farms. Like pigs. Plain and fat but good in winter. Especially in somewhere like Irkutsk.'
Later there were Chinese and Thai girls, all of them bought by the Albanians. For the London market, Savic told her. Stephanie felt strangely detached from the process. Except for when a mousy-haired girl from Slovenia started to cry. One of the escorts marched her out of the greenhouse. She was paraded again at the end of the auction when interest was waning. She'd put on extra make-up. Stephanie assumed that was to hide a blossoming bruise. The Chinese stepped in when no one else was prepared to meet the starting price.
'They pick up anything white for the Far East market,' Savic said. 'It doesn't matter how ugly they are. It's the colour of the skin that counts. They'll probably make her dye her hair blonde, just to emphasize the fact she's white.'
Stephanie didn't need to suppress a reaction. She was numb, the blur of sold faces rendering her senseless. They were girls, not women. None of them were beautiful but they'd all been attractive. Even the Slovene reject. Stephanie knew that was because the ugly ones never made it to northern Europe. Wealthy Europeans had money and that meant they got the best.
She spotted Tamara on the other side of the light circle, standing beside a man in a black suit and white T-shirt. His silver hair was pulled into a pony-tail and he had a trimmed goatee beard. He was scribbling notes into a pad. Tamara appeared to be dictating to him.
'Dieter Maier,' Savic said. 'Tamara keeps track of everything. She gives the information to Maier – the girl, the price, the purchaser – and Dieter works out the back end.'
Of the five who had been smoking in the room next to Tamara's office, three were bought by the Turks; two of the Moldovans and the Bulgarian. The thin Turk with the beard demanded a closer inspection of the Bulgarian, a willowy girl with long black hair, dark skin and a large, pointed nose. She'd kept her arms firmly crossed during the bidding so he checked her elbows for signs of drug use. They were clean. Then he pinched her waist for spare flesh. She didn't wince. He pinched harder. Nothing. So he slapped her across the mouth. Still nothing. Which pleased him a lot. He grinned at her, then looked across at Shardov and nodded. Tamara whispered to Maier, who scribbled on his pad.
'They're not looking for fresh girls,' Savic told Stephanie. 'Or girls with attitude.'
They were looking for compliant, experienced ones who looked fresh, but who would have sex with ten or more men daily without complaint. That was a working asset. Girls who got tired or upset were a liability. Not that they tended to remain that way for long. Instruction was painful, protest was pointless. It was better to be a quick learner. Which was something that remained true for Stephanie; standing there, in the greenhouse, with the butchers in the meat market, it was all she could do to hold herself together.
It's as though I've got some kind of eating disorder. Every time I swallow a mouthful of food I want to regurgitate it. We're sitting in Margaux, on Wilhelmstrasse. It's one of Berlin's most expensive restaurants.
The auction finished abruptly at ten. As soon as the last girl was sold – a slender, shivering Chinese, purchased, predictably, by the Albanians – everyone vanished. First the traders, then Savic's security, emerging from the bushes, dripping, sullen and silent. They climbed back into the Volkswagen vans. Five minutes later the arc lights were out, the last car was gone, all evidence destr
oyed. Brankovic drove the Alfa Romeo, dropping Savic and me at the restaurant. In the boot there were two bags: one containing the guns, the other containing cash, every euro accounted for by Dieter Maier.
Now, an hour later, there are six of us at the table: Savic, me, Dieter Maier, Aslan Shardov, Wim Frinck and Else Brandt. Frinck is a senior police officer and is the reason why the auctions occur without interference. Brandt works in the mayor's office. When Savic tells me this, she doesn't bat an eyelid. Both of them appear quite happy to be seen in public with the businessman Martin Dassler, not to mention the pony-tailed financier, Dieter Maier, or the Kazak industrialist, Aslan Shardov. Or even me, the Swiss tourist, Andrea Jakob.
We're drinking champagne, Dom Perignon 1962, and claret, Chateau Margaux 1953. It's not that surprising, really. We have so much to celebrate. According to Maier, sixty-five girls have generated over half a million euros, all of it in cash. Not bad for ninety minutes' work.
'Any problems?' Wim Frinck asks.
Savic waves his hand one way, then the other. 'Only with the Albanians. They never want to pay up front. But you can't deal with them any other way. They never pay afterwards.'
'Is the situation resolved?'
'I think so.'
'By force?'
'Not at the moment.'
Frinck looks concerned. 'Is it a possibility?'
'There are some other issues. But I think it'll be okay. Even baboons have some kind of brain.'
Frinck peers into his glass. 'On a related subject, I have something for you.'
'What?'
'Farhad Shatri is in Berlin.'
Savic stiffens. 'That prick.'
'Arrived last week from London.'
'You couldn't have told me then?'
'I only found out last night.'
Shardov summons a waiter then waves an empty champagne bottle at him.
Savic says, 'That explains why those dogs were so slippery this evening. I swear, Milosevic may have been a useless bastard but he was right about the Albanians. They'd sell their mothers to cannibals. Where is he?'
'It's being looked into. There's a rumour he's got a safe house, on Hobrechtstrasse.'
