by Gary Haynes
‘It is, sir. And thank you.’
‘For what?’
She steadied herself. ‘I thought you’d, well, that you’d be angry with me for doing this.’
‘I am angry with you.’ Hester sighed. ‘But I guess the public defender will get a copy of the DVD disclosed to him sooner or later. You’ve seen the filth on it. I want those people caught. Just keep it legal.’
‘I will.’
‘I repeat, I have to get clearance, that’s authority from Deputy Director Johnson, so don’t go near Hall before I tell you his decision.’
She shook her head, agitatedly.
‘And agent, if you disobey me again, I’ll have your badge and your pension.’
*
Driving back to DC, she got a call on her personal smartphone, and took it hands-free. The caller, she noticed, was Robert Dubois, whom she’d met during her stint at the NATO HQ in Brussels. They still had mutual professional interests but hadn’t been lovers for a few years.
‘How are you, Robert?’
‘I’ve been better,’ he said.
Knowing he hadn’t wanted to break up with her, she quickly moved on to professional matters. ‘Have you watched it?’
‘I have,’ he said.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you should come to Brussels to discuss it.’
She made a disappointed face. ‘I can’t. Least not at the moment. Have you seen anything like it before?’
He hesitated. ‘Not in respect of the obvious. No. But I’d say it was genuine.’
If any man could verify that, it was Robert Dubois, she thought. Three hundred violent pornographic videos had been seized in the Belgian Beast’s properties, apart from the ones he’d made himself. Dubois had told Carla he’d had to watch every VT, and as result had received two years of counselling from a police psychologist. She hadn’t doubted it.
‘Listen, Carla,’ he said, his voice serious. ‘I do need to discuss something about the case with you. But not on a phone.’
32
That night, after eating a two-egg omelette in the kitchen, Gabriel stood up and strolled to the living room, holding a mug of coffee. The house seemed too large now, and he only used a few of the rooms. He walked over to the window, made a small opening in the crimson curtains and scanned the well-lit street outside. He caught his reflection in the windowpane and thought he looked jaded and morose. The furrows in between his brows had deepened, such that they had taken on the appearance of half faded scars.
A silver sports car hummed by, its polished steel wheels seemingly revolving anticlockwise. A couple stepped out from a late-night sushi bar. Laughing, they walked arm-in-arm towards a parked taxi.
He’d decided to take a two-week break. He knew he couldn’t concentrate on new cases or lecturing. He would pass his existing caseload over to a lawyer with a similar practice in the city. A reciprocal relationship.
He’d found himself being candid with Carla at Frank’s Place. She’d convinced him that he could trust her. He relied on his intuition in such matters, intuition acquired over years of dealing with liars and truth tellers. By the end of the conversation, which had continued for a further fifteen minutes, she’d said that as a sign of her good faith she would give him a copy of the DVD, although she had to get authorization from her section chief before she did so.
He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He looked up for stars in the night sky, but there weren’t any.
*
The pasta water had boiled over onto the kitchen tiles and had run through the archway that led to Gabriel’s study area. He imagined himself at his laptop in the corner, Roxana sitting on a leather couch, staring at the Picasso print on the wall opposite. The Old Guitarist from the blue period, depicting a haunting, emaciated man; it was a painting he knew that she despised. At thirty-eight, she still had the body of an endurance athlete. She took regular yoga classes and was a vegetarian. Her hair, the hue of a raven’s breast, was tied back in a chignon and her eyes were as flawless as virgin pearls.
He leaned forward in a swivel chair, clicked the mouse. He’d checked out similar disappearances online and had contacted support groups every night since his niece had gone missing. Any clue had been worth following up. Any pattern. But he’d always reached a dead end. Most of the people he’d contacted had said they’d given up all hope, except for a miracle, and then he’d ask himself why he’d bothered communicating with them.
In his imagination, Roxanna got up and shuffled through the archway to the kitchen to collect a mop. She wore a tie-dyed sarong with a matching pale green, open back halter-neck top. Of all the things he loved about her, it was her back that aroused him most. The colour of burned umber, her shoulder blades inclined towards her spine as the slopes of a distant valley.
‘Dinner in five,’ she said. ‘Once I’ve mopped up.’
They took turns cooking and doing the household chores.
A few minutes later, he heard her crying. He got up and moved to the kitchen. She was stirring the pasta with a long wooden spoon. He put his arms around her waist, kissed her bare shoulder. She let the spoon stand in the saucepan and squeezed his hands.
‘I thought everything would be normal with us, Gabriel. Whatever the hell that means.’
He thought, as he often did, about the years his sister had spent in agonizing IVF treatment that at the time had left her both physically and mentally shot. Despite using some of the ablest doctors in New York City, her money had been wasted. She and her husband had been desperate for a child. They loved Sangmu. Even a blind man could see that. He’d ruined it for them. He couldn’t help thinking these things, even as Roxanna’s hand went to his inner thigh. He didn’t react.
Roxanna had turned and had looked at him.
‘You’re not the same, Gabriel. You’ve lost your joy. And I can’t bring it back. No one can.’
*
The next day the sky was still overcast, the sun a mere brush stroke of cadmium orange on the western horizon. The single-lane road led to the coast, a few miles east of New Haven and Yale University, south-west Connecticut. Wading birds were scouring the shoreline, as the gulls scavenged among the decomposing clumps of detritus. They squabbled, with wings bent, exposing their red tongues. The wreck of what looked like a wooden yacht or fishing vessel was half-submerged in the pale mud, the hull’s rotten planks resembling the green ribs of some prehistoric beast.
Gabriel had been asked by Carla to meet her here. He saw her car parked some distance away, with its lights off. Otherwise the place was empty. Approaching her at no more than five miles per hour, he turned his lights off too. He pulled up beside the SUV and got out of his hybrid sedan, leaving the car unlocked. He opened the passenger door and sat beside her.
‘A little Cold War, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘You think?’ she said, dismissively. ‘I’ve got the go-ahead from my section chief to allow you to find out what you can. But you report to me. And don’t do anything without my say-so. Clear?’
‘Clear,’ he said. ‘You can tone down the authoritarian attitude now.’
Ignoring him, she said, ‘But you have to do it from the outside. You can’t represent Hockey anymore. Tell him that you’ve got a tip-off that you’re under surveillance for some infringement or other. You’re smart. You’ll work it out.’
She took out a DVD in a plastic case from a brown envelope and handed it to him.
‘Don’t tell anyone about this. It’s a copy. Watch it, do what you need to do, and then destroy it. Understand?’
‘You think I’m indiscreet?’
‘If I did, would I be giving you the DVD?’
He shook his head a fraction. ‘I suppose not.’
‘Did your niece have any distinguishing marks?’
He clenched his jaw. ‘No.’
‘I should tell you that I checked the FBI computer records yesterday. Twelve young Kalmyk women have gone missing in the US since 1990, including y
our niece. One every couple of years. On its own that doesn’t mean a lot, given the number of people who go missing every year. But — ’
Interrupting her, Gabriel said, ‘There are only about 3,000 Kalmyks in the US, mostly in New Jersey, so the odds against that are high. Right?’
‘Exactly,’ she said.
‘My sister took Sangmu to language lessons in Howell Township. That’s how I know. There are only around a 150,000 Kalmyks in the world. I thought at first that was why she wanted a little Kalmyk. Rare, you see. She likes rare things.’
She touched his forearm, her mood changing. ‘Be careful, Gabriel.’
‘Do you know something I don’t?’
‘There’s no evidence of serial murders. Not a scrap. But I’ve talked to a colleague and the DVD is real. There are many forgeries. Of killings, I mean. I’d say that Hockey is on the fringes of a highly organized, tight-knit group. There’s a lucrative market for this kind of barbarity. They will protect it, just as they will protect their liberty. I know enough from experience to tell you that these are extraordinarily dangerous people. Their clientele are powerful people, like Watson. They are without mercy. My badge and your association with me will mean nothing to them.’
‘You think this is about money?’ he said.
‘I do. I suspect Watson purchased the DVD.’
But Gabriel was sceptical about that, without knowing why exactly.
She handed him a plastic mobile phone. Pay as you go, disposable.
‘It’s untraceable. Don’t use it for anything else. I’ll call in a few days, see if you’ve come to any conclusions. But don’t talk about this on it. We’ll meet up again.’
He thought that a little strange, given that the National Security Agency would have better things to do than listen in on an official investigation. But fingering the DVD in his hands, his thoughts focused on the hell he knew he would encounter there, and he shuddered.
33
Berlin, 2015, the next day.
An Italian fresco, a Pompeian nude, hung above an empty mantlepiece of pink marble. The fresco portrayed four women of ancient Rome, huddled against a scratched vermillion wall, with seaweed-green pillars. The muted grey and gold stolas curled around their bare feet like anacondas. The old man’s most precious piece. It had once been held in a crate within a secure storage room at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Now it was covered by a clear polycarbonate sheet, the temperature and humidity adjusted remotely to preserve its exquisite beauty.
César Vezzani had cooked a Corsican meal. Loup de mer, seabream, fritelli castagnini, chestnut flour fritters, and the classic, civet de sanglier, wild boar casserole. He’d poured a fine Patrimonio red wine. The old man had complimented him on the cuisine, saying he should have been a chef de partie at Restaurant Amador in Mannheim, rather than a Sergent chef in the Legion. Vezzani had smiled at that.
They were sitting now in the main living room, opposite each other on oxblood chesterfields. The walls were pale yellow, the curtains a luxuriant green, edged with gold thread. Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 1 drifted through the evening air. In his mind’s eye, the old man was playing the piece to a well-dressed audience that listened in silent adoration.
Vezzani was an undoubtedly excellent cook, but the old man knew that he always surpassed himself when he had some bad news to impart. The old man blinked slowly, like a lizard waking up in bright sunlight. His forehead became granulated like a walnut shell. He jerked out his chin to indicate that Vezzani should speak, appearing almost emperor-like in his imperiousness.
‘An FBI special agent has a strong interest in the case, at least as far as the DVD is concerned. She works out of Washington DC. Her name is Carla Romero.’
‘Romero. Brazilian?’ the old man said.
‘Her grandparents lived in São Paulo.’
‘Ah. A city of diasporas.’ His breath rattled.
‘A New York defence lawyer volunteered to assist the public defender with Hockey’s case. Name of Gabriel Hall.’
The old man couldn’t risk paying a private practice lawyer to help Hockey. That would’ve been indiscreet. He smoothed his skull, like a curator caressing the head of an alabaster bust.
‘Do we know why?’ he said.
‘Publicity.’
‘Is that credible?’ the old man said. It was more of a statement than a question.
Vezzani made a face, his mouth turning down at the sides. His palms swivelled over to communicate: who knows?
The old man stood up and shuffled over to an art nouveau drinks trolley beside the high fireplace. He poured himself a glass of Ducastaing Armagnac, then took a sip of the brandy from the heavy crystal.
‘Have you packed?’ he said.
‘I leave for America tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Good.’
The old man walked over to his sandalwood bookshelves. He couldn’t decide whether to read Balzac or Voltaire. Clotilde de Lusignan or Micromégas. His forefinger hovered over both the hardback books before he plumped instead for the eroticism of Goethe’s Roman Elegies. The old man had amassed a lifetime of learning. The killings aside, he led an oddly monastic life.
He stood still for some moments, lost in the music, both lulled and energized by it. He pondered just one question; how could man create such things when there was no God?
He walked back to his chesterfield and saw that Vezzani had picked up his sewing and was using silver thread to embroider a rune onto a piece of black silk. The old man knew that he’d learned to love sewing during his time in the Legion. It calmed him, he’d said. It had become for him a form of gentle, active meditation, he’d said, like tai chi. The rune was the elf rune, which symbolized loyalty and devotion. It had been worn by Hitler’s personal adjutants. He had told Vezzani very little of his past, except that he’d fought in World War Two. That he’d fought in the battles of the Caucasus and Berlin.
The past was as much interwoven with the present as Vezzani’s stitching, he thought.
34
Berlin, 1945, the same day.
Major Volsky’s scarred face remained dispassionate after Richter said that the Waffen-SS had killed the Red Army soldiers in the bunker out of revenge for the destruction of Berlin, that they’d dismembered and disfigured their victims almost beyond recognition before putting them back together again like a macabre game.
‘As an academic, I would never do such a thing to you Russians. The country that gave the world Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin and Ivan Shishkin,’ Richter said.
‘So, you are an academic familiar with Russian culture. So, what? The Nazi Party and the SS are full of academics.’
Richter rebuked himself for such a cheap attempt at flattery. What Volsky had said was true. Even three of the four commanders of the Einsatzgruppen death squads had been doctors of philosophy. And they, together with the German paramilitary Order Police and the various foreign auxiliary police units, had killed as many Jews as had died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, according to the scrupulous records the SS had kept. Over 1,000,000 men, women and children.
He watched Volsky nod to the guard, who walked the few steps to him. He took a semi-automatic pistol from the leather holster. A Mauser C96, with its distinctive thin and elongated barrel. The ‘Red 9’, issued to the Luftwaffe, rather than the Nagant he’d suspected.
Richter’s head was pulled back and he was hit on the bridge of the nose with what he guessed was the steel barrel. He swore aloud. He couldn’t stop the hot tears. The blood gushed out and then dropped in clots, the pain an almost detached throb rather than excruciating. But he wondered miserably if the nasal bones were broken.
After a few seconds, Volsky handed him a white handkerchief.
He accepted reluctantly, but said, ‘Thank you.’
With one hand holding the handkerchief to his nose, Richter looked around for the second cigarette that had fallen from his spare lips. He picked it off the damp floor. It was still alight. He inhaled deeply and l
eaned his head back. He blew a cloud of smoke from his mouth and then dabbed some residual tears from his eyes with a clean corner of the otherwise blood-soaked handkerchief.
He was taken back to his cell then, to consider what Volsky saw as his timewasting, he guessed.
Unknown to his captors, Richter had spent the first years of war in the Ahnenerbe-SS. The Ahnenerbe had been founded by, among others, Heinrich Himmler. Its full name had been Forschungs- und Lehrgemeinschaft Das Ahnenerbe e.V, the research and teaching community of the ancestral heritage. Its president had been one Walter Wüst, a dean at the University of Munich and a part-time member of the SS secret service, who’d been known as the orientalist. The unit had ultimately been incorporated into the Allgemeine-SS.
Richter had worked on the Generalplan Ost, the master plan for the east, within the Reich Security Main Office. The plan had foreseen the extermination and ethnic cleansing of central and eastern Europe. Himmler had said that it was a question of existence, a racial struggle of pitiless severity, in which twenty to thirty million Slavs and Jews would perish through military actions and starvation. This would have meant that Germany would not have suffered another blockade, as had occurred in World War One, with its attendant food shortages.
After the invasion of the Soviet Union, Richter had left the main office and had become a Sonderführer, a so-called skilled leader in the Waffen-SS. Being both mature in years and an SS officer, Richter was a man with special talents who hadn’t been content to sit behind a desk and draft reports for the duration of the war.
35
Now, Richter was back in the interrogation cell.
Volsky pulled down the sleeves of his tunic as if he was calming himself. ‘How did the contents of the bunker come to be there?’
Richter looked up at the meat hook. He was sweating. He had stomach cramps. He was suffering from both physical and physiological withdrawal systems. He wanted opium.