by Martin Suter
During the conversation that followed, Carlos found it difficult to achieve the businesslike tone of a personal assistant interviewing potential employees for his boss. He couldn’t help taking a shine to her.
That made it particularly hard to “ask some more detailed questions.” This was meant to be his excuse for discovering more about Sokolov’s disappearance.
“Very strange that an employer would vanish just like that after such a short time,” he suggested.
To which she answered feistily, “Don’t you believe me?”
“Of course. Naturally. It was purely an observation. But it’s strange, don’t you think?”
“But that’s just how it happened. The morning before, we had discussed what I’d make for dinner the following evening. And next day he was gone.”
Carlos shook his head in sympathy.
“Calf’s liver. He asked for calf’s liver. I kept it for two days. Then I ate it myself.”
“And he never called? Didn’t leave so much as a note behind? Didn’t say a word about where he was going?”
“Nada. Nada de nada.”
“Maybe something happened to him. Maybe he was kidnapped.”
This was the moment Carlos first got to admire her white teeth.
“You come from a country with lots of abductions, like me. Have you ever heard of a kidnapping victim who took a suitcase?”
Carlos smiled too.
Maria Moreno got serious again. “No, no. He went travelling. Before I went to do the shopping, someone from a travel agency called. When I got back, Señor Sokolov was gone.”
“Do you remember the name of the travel agency?”
Maria waved for the waiter, annoyed. “What if I did? Are you going to find out where he’s travelled to, go after him, and ask if he was satisfied with my work? Or what?”
“No, no. It’s nothing to do with the position. I was just curious about his strange behavior. Excuse me.”
The waiter arrived at the table.
“The gentleman wishes to pay,” Maria Moreno said.
Once Carlos had paid for both their coffees, she said, “So what’s the deal with the job? I’ll be honest with you. Sokolov was paying me weekly in cash. For one week I paid myself out of the remaining housekeeping money, but when he still hadn’t returned by the following Saturday I packed my things and returned my key to the agent. I need work. Urgently.”
Carlos searched for a chance to prevent this becoming his last meeting with her.
“I told your boss I could only do full time. But I could work by the hour for now.”
And before Carlos could answer, she added, “I said thirty. But I could do it for twenty-five.”
Carlos promised to report back very positively on the interview. “The position is pretty much yours. It might have to be just by the hour to begin with. But it’s pretty much yours.” They arranged to meet the next day, in Kakadu again.
Carlos had just hired a cleaning lady. A luxury neither he nor Allmen could afford. Unless they found the pink diamond.
17
As it did every night, a police patrol car drove at almost a walking pace through the villa district on the hill. On Spätbergstrasse, the policewoman in the passenger seat had the feeling she’d seen a figure in a spot the headlights’ beam hadn’t reached.
“Did you see that?”
“What?” The driver hadn’t noticed anything.
“Drive slower, and stop when I say.”
They drove on fifty yards. At the entrance to number nineteen she ordered, “Stop!”
Nothing to see.
She lowered the window and shone her powerful flashlight at the garden gate. In the fine drizzle nothing moved except the shadows of the gateposts thrown by the flashlight.
The policewoman opened the car door. Her colleague groaned. “What was it? What did you see?”
“I don’t know. A figure maybe.”
“A fox. Or shadows from our headlights.”
The officer got out, walked toward the garden gate, and shone her light around the garden. Nothing.
At her feet was something bright. She pointed the light at it. It was a special-offer leaflet from a wine store. She bent down and picked it up. Across the leaflet was the imprint of a shoe sole.
“Look.” She held the evidence up to her colleague.
He rolled his eyes. “Let’s go.”
She stood for a moment, undecided. Then she went to the mailbox and pushed the leaflet inside.
Carlos waited till the sound of the engine had faded entirely, then crept out of the hedge. His heart was beating so loudly he was worried the policewoman could have heard it. He’d been pressed into the cypress hedge the entire time, the officer just a few inches from him. He had barely been breathing and now he was gasping for air.
If he’d been caught, they’d have taken him to the station to check his ID. That would be the end of his time in Switzerland. He could have boxed his own ears for being so stupid.
Two or three times, as a car approached, he forced himself to walk at a normal speed, then he sped up again. He was using his windbreaker to keep the rain off his loot—the pile of mail Allmen had mentioned in passing.
There was a light coming from the greenhouse. Don John was in his library.
Carlos climbed the stairs and hung his wet jacket on a coat hook. Only now did he notice he was shivering.
He entered the right-hand attic room, which served as his living room. There was just enough space for a table and chair, an upholstered armchair, and a sideboard on which a few mementos of his native country were arranged: two small Maya heads, copies of archeological finds, a carved candle holder, and a few painted gourd bowls. On the wall was a piece of fabric embroidered with birds, and a wooden mask.
He placed the contents of the mailbox on the table and sifted through it: free local magazines, political leaflets, a fishmonger offering home delivery, a new gym opening, changes to the trash collection schedule, introductory prices from a new cleaning service, a poster for a lost tortoise, travel brochures. There were a few envelopes, but they were covered with marketing phrases like, “Do you love vacations?” or “Gourmets, look no further!” or “It’s your lucky day!”
One large envelope was stamped with the logo of a travel agency. Someone had written on it, by hand, “No one home. Please call us.” Below it, an illegible signature.
From the library came the sound of piano music.
18
Allmen jumped at the knock on the door, so late at night. Since he’d been shot, he’d never felt wholly at ease in his glass library. He had Carlos draw the curtains early, and always sat in different spots.
With the pink diamond case, a different kind of agitation had been added to this nervousness. A kind of constant professional alarm. Hunter’s syndrome, he called it.
That night he was having trouble concentrating on his reading. He tried re-reading passages from Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia. Then he put the book aside and turned to the small dossier of Internet research on pink diamonds Carlos had compiled for him. He read about the irregularities in the carbon molecules that in rare cases could color a diamond pink and thus make it twenty times more valuable than normal diamonds. But the rapt attention he usually paid to all things written, whatever the content, was ebbing by the sentence.
He sat down at his Bechstein, whose days with him would have been numbered without the diamond job. He was blundering his way through the Great American Song-book when the knock came, and Carlos entered before Allmen could say “come in.”
He walked up to Allmen without a word and handed over his find. “From Sokolov’s mailbox,” Carlos declared with a flourish.
The top sheet was a memo on the letterhead of a travel agency. Out of the various options, “Further to our telephone conversation” had been ticked. Enclosed was the brochure of a five-star hotel at a snow-white Baltic coast resort on the Bay of Mecklenburg. It was called Le Grand Duc, after the resort’s found
er, Grand Duke Friedrich Franz I. This was the oldest seaside resort in Germany.
In the margins of the brochure someone had made notes from a telephone conversation. “10 July onward” and “Spätbergstrasse 19” and “Sokolov.”
Carlos had reported back on his meeting with Maria Moreno—without mentioning that he had more or less hired her. Allmen knew about the telephone conversation with the travel agency, and the suitcase Sokolov had taken with him.
“On July tenth,” he noted. “The day after he got the call saying the Brits had taken the server.”
Carlos nodded. “Over a month ago.”
“Maybe he’s still there. And if not, maybe they have some information about where he is now. I’ll have no choice but to do some research on site.” He didn’t manage to make his sigh convincing.
Carlos said nothing. But Allmen knew the budgetary aspect of this business trip would be worrying him.
“We’ll have to ask Montgomery for a second payment,” Allmen added.
When Carlos still said nothing, Allmen got up and went to the telephone. “Unless he possesses a fake ID or credit card, he’ll have been forced to check in under his real name.” He dialed the number on the brochure.
Carlos heard him speak in English, “Mr. Sokolov, please.”
Allmen held his hand over the receiver and nodded to Carlos, excited. After a short while he said, still in English, “I see. Never mind. No, thank you, no message. Goodbye.”
He looked at Carlos, triumphant. “Not in his room.”
19
Allmen had already heard great things about the establishment, and the midnight-blue Bentley Mulsanne that picked him up from Rostock Airport seemed to confirm its good reputation.
The upholstery was taupe leather, the interior veneered in redwood burl, the driver silent and uniformed, steering the vehicle with the assurance and care of an elderly aristocrat’s chauffeur.
Allmen enjoyed the journey from Rostock to Heiligendamm. He leaned back and took in the avenues slipping past, interrupted from time to time by homesteads with heavy thatch roofs. Right now the profession of investigator was very much to his taste.
At the Grand Duc he was welcomed like a longtime regular. The general manager had been informed when the Bentley entered the hotel grounds and was waiting for Allmen in the lobby. He expressed his conviction that the weather would improve by the following day and accompanied his guest to the reception desk, where he placed him in the care of a colleague.
The receptionist had filled in the registration form already, leaving Allmen just to sign it. It was only when she asked to make an impression of his credit card that a slight hiccup occurred in the smooth reception process.
“Credit card?” Allmen asked in amazement. “I have never owned a credit card and will never own such a thing.” He displayed his most charming of smiles. “But I take it you also accept real money?”
The receptionist returned his smile, but asked to be excused for a second and vanished into the office behind the desk. Shortly afterward she returned, smiling again. She made no further mention of the credit card. “Shall I show you to your suite now?”
On the way to the elevator, Allmen confirmed this was his first visit to the Grand Duc. In the elevator he assured her his journey had been pleasant and he wasn’t too tired from the exertions. In the corridor he asserted he was reassured by the prospect the weather would improve. And in the suite he expressed satisfaction with the latter.
In that instance there really was no cause for complaint. It included a generous bedroom with en suite bath, a separate toilet, a walk-in closet, and a large salon with a view of the Baltic Sea and the beach with its wicker chairs. Allmen had decided on the highest category of accommodation. He saw no reason why he should stay more modestly at the firm’s expense than he would at his own.
Carlos had already mailed an invoice for the second payment to Montgomery the day before, due upon receipt. The reason: costs incurred during extended research. Where this was taking place, he had not specified. If there was any connection between Montgomery and the other investigators, he didn’t want to jeopardize this potential head start.
Allmen anticipated the payment would appear at any moment in the firm’s account. So he had no reason for financial worries and planned to mix business with pleasure.
20
Never, during his countless travels, had he experienced the sea like this. Such mighty calm, such guarded promise, a mysterious symbiosis of the northern and southern.
Although the sky was cloudy, the climate was mild, gentle, inviting, damp, almost tropical. Only the light was different. More serious, more ceremonious.
A long jetty stretched out into the water, like a bridge to a vanished shore. He could see a few people on it, walking in both directions, slowly, like passengers on a ship who want to draw out their departure or arrival.
Without even unpacking his suitcase or filling the closet, he put on his swimming trunks, slipped into a bathrobe, and walked to the beach. Only a few of the canopied wicker beach chairs were occupied.
He threw the white robe with the hotel crest onto the fine sand and approached the water.
It wasn’t as cold as it looked, and he walked into it on a carpet of sand so soft there was enough time for his body to get accustomed to the cool.
Only when he was out of his depth did he start swimming. And only when he had swum beyond the far end of the jetty did he turn.
He looked at the beach, the tall chairs, the parasols, and the snow-white palatial hotels.
Somewhere there was the man he was searching for.
PART 2
21
Next day the weather was even worse. Out of habit, Allmen had ordered a cup of tea in bed at 7:00 a.m. The room waiter advised him it might be better to stay there.
Two hours later he was woken by gusts of rain battering the windows.
The swallows, normally in constant flight, providing for their young, were sitting fluffed up by their nests on the small tower designed for them, waiting for the rain to stop.
Last night, Allmen had ordered an early supper in his room. Afterward, he had sauntered through the hotel complex, discreetly checking the various restaurants, the lobby, the smoking room, the library, and the bar. He saw no one resembling Sokolov. Had he moved on now?
After his tour, he called Carlos and asked him to telephone the hotel and request to speak with Sokolov. A few minutes later Carlos called back with the information that Herr Sokolov was away for the night, expected back tomorrow. Relieved, Allmen went to bed and slept wonderfully.
After his early morning tea, he ordered breakfast in his room: milchkaffee, croissants with butter and honey, scrambled egg with ham, and a little smoked eel. A nutritious meal. Later he planned to emulate the hardy types he could see down on the beach, leaping into the breakers despite the weather.
At ten he called Carlos. Allmen knew he was on a morning shift today and would switch on his phone at this time. He took his break at ten. Like every Hispanic person throughout the world.
Carlos was, “Sin novedad, gracias a Dios,” an expression from his native Guatemala, where news tended to be bad: without news, thank God.
Carlos had heard nothing from Montgomery, which to Allmen implied he had accepted the second payment request. However, no money had appeared yet. Carlos assured him he planned to check the balance on the Allmen International account at lunchtime again.
Soon after their call, the rain eased off. Allmen packed his beach hamper, a wicker shopping basket lined with plastic and sporting the hotel emblem. He put his trunks on, a pair of washed-out chinos on top, and wearing a sweatshirt with the Charterhouse crest and his much-loved Barbour jacket, freshly waxed by Carlos before the trip, he left the suite.
In the corridor he met the housekeeper, a tall, bony woman in her mid-forties. “Smudgy day,” she said.
Allmen didn’t understand.
“It’s raining from north, south, east, and wes
t,” she said.
“Aha. And that’s known as smudgy?”
“By me it is.”
In Allmen’s hotel experience, housekeepers were almost as important as concierges and maîtres d’hôtel. If you got on the right side of them, your room was always clean, little wishes were granted, your washing returned from the laundry swiftly, your suits were brushed and ironed out, your tissue box full, and your bathrobe fresh each day. Allmen inquired after her name, gave her a hundred euro tip, and wished her a not too smudgy day.
She was called Frau Schmidt-Gerold. He noted the name.
The gate to the beach was locked. Only when the idle beach attendant rushed to his assistance did Allmen realize that it opened with his keycard.
He had a beach chair set up for him, got comfortable, and gazed at the sand, watching the gulls.
For a long while they remained immobile. All of a sudden, they flew up, screeching, described inscrutable figures, then settled back down, immobile again.
Occasionally they scuttled along the edge of the surf, looking for edible jetsam as the water retreated.
In the distance he made out three container vessels. A trawler, closer by. The little catamaran from the hotel’s sailing school launched from the beach; on board were a few children in enormous, fluorescent life jackets.
A thinner bundle of cloud hung from the dark-gray bank that blocked the pale-gray clouds beyond.
Allmen took a book from the beach basket and began to read: The House on the Strand, by Daphne du Maurier.
An hour later he was suddenly pulled out of Maurier’s delightful time-travel story back to the present. It took him a moment to register what it was.
A man’s voice, speaking Russian.
22