by Gary Haynes
She’d first met him a year before that, and they first made love in a medieval house that had been converted into a bespoke hotel in Bruges, an hour’s train ride from Brussels. She’d woken up to the sound of ducks on the canal outside the lattice windows.
They’d become lovers almost instantly. For her, it was a visceral passion that had erupted just at the sight of him. He’d occupied her thoughts every day. When they touched, she had felt, what seemed to her sensations, something which no other person could possibly have felt.
But she had known from early on that their relationship would be short. Dubois was unable to mask his rapacious nature. She’d ended it. She’d said it was due to the physical distance between them, since she’d moved to Washington by then. It had become too intense, as she’d known it would, and Dubois showed signs of an increasing jealousy. She’d been conscious of not wanting to exacerbate that to a potentially dangerous level. She’d missed him terribly, although it had been the right thing to do, for both their sakes. She’d never doubted that and still didn’t.
They talked about the past for a few minutes. The good times. The bad. Carla brought up Gabriel and Dubois quizzed her about him so relentlessly that in the end she told him to back off. When he didn’t, she told him to shut the hell up. They didn’t talk for a while, after that.
The waitress appeared at the table without sound.
‘Coffee?’ she said.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Carla said.
Dubois nodded and looked out of the window. Carla followed his gaze.
‘What information do you have for me, Robert?’ she said.
He told her what Finkel had told him about the Chechen. He said that the Chechen had talked to a deep-cover operative about an old man who lived in Berlin, a serial killer, albeit the Chechen had been under the influence of crack cocaine at the time. He told her about the DVD that the Chechen claimed he’d sold to a wealthy American.
Was it the same one? she thought. It had to be, didn’t it?
He took out a white envelope and passed it over to her.
‘You must ensure that the Chechen is found in the US, that as many resources as possible are mobilized. His recent photograph,’ he said, nodding towards the envelope.
She didn’t find that patronizing. How could she? She knew what motivated Dubois. When they’d been lovers, they’d talked of what they might do together in the fight against the murder of girls and young women, and now they were doing it. Weren’t they?
‘There is something else,’ he said. ‘The Chechen said the old man was known as Snow Lion.’
‘Snow Lion,’ she said, her mouth bunching.
She had to stop herself from emitting a little squeal, to celebrate this breakthrough.
‘Is the Chechen to be believed?’
‘Finkel thinks he is,’ Dubois said. ‘In this, at least.’
She knew the German and she accepted that.
‘Thank you, Robert.’
‘My pleasure.’
She saw him looking at her, a hint of a sneer on his handsome face. He was noble, and he was weak in equal measure, she thought.
She called the waitress over and asked for the cheque. He looked disappointedly at her.
‘I have a flight back to DC in three hours,’ she said.
‘I see.’
‘My treat,’ she said, passing the back of her open hand over the table. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
She smiled, and he nodded, knowingly, she could tell.
‘Could you ask Finkel to check Berlin records for missing Kalmyk girls going back, well, going back sixty years?’
‘The old man in Berlin, huh? Yes, I will.’
‘Thank you, Robert.’
*
In a cab to Brussels Airport, she rang Hester. She’d already found out the material facts relating to the disappearances of young Kalmyk women in New Jersey, and since her discussion with Dubois, her investigative imagination had fired up and she’d decided that all possible angles had to be covered.
Six hours behind Brussels time, Hester was still in his office. He was diligent and tenacious, even as he was physically slothful, she thought.
‘It’s Carla Romero, sir.’
‘It’s late,’ he said.
‘Are relationships still frosty with the FSB?’ she said, referring to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.
She heard Hester sigh.
‘Why, Agent Romero?’
‘Are they, sir?’
‘Officially.’
‘And unofficially? Do you have a contact there?’
‘Where’s this going?’
She told him the relevant details about the Chechen, the Berlin connection and her thought process, the fact that she worried the disappearances of Kalmyk girls could go back way beyond the timeline established in New Jersey. She didn’t mention Dubois, although she’d been authorized to go to Brussels as part of her ongoing investigation.
‘I’ll make the call,’ he said
She smelled a waft of her perfume. She knew why she’d worn it, and felt stupid. A fraud, even.
64
Brooklyn Heights, three days later.
Gabriel got out of bed and walked to the bathroom in his boxer shorts. He’d overslept. He took a shower and had a bowl of porridge, then, following a second cup of coffee, he got a call on his smartphone from a private investigator he’d contacted named Sam Cartwright. Sam did the leg work for Gabriel, serving court documents, occasional surveillance and the kind of digging around in other people’s lives that up until now Gabriel had deemed inappropriate for a lawyer.
Sam was an ex-cop, but had been suspended for an alleged assault on an underage drug dealer in a police cell. The kid was the son of a successful businessman from Rochester in Upstate New York. The charges against the kid had been dropped on the proviso that Sam resigned. He’d told Gabriel that at that time his career prospects had been about as healthy as a ketamine addict’s bladder — but he was now regarded as one of the most proficient PIs in the state and had confided in Gabriel that his earnings had trebled since he’d worn the blue. Gabriel was pleased for him.
He gave Gabriel the address he’d asked for and said that the man was still named Bronislaw Stolarski, that he’d changed addresses three times in the last eight years and had no credit history or private pension.
He’s still alive, Gabriel thought.
‘Thanks, Sam.’
‘Hey, forget about it. You’ve always been good to me, Gabriel.’
‘Thanks anyway. Be sure to send me an invoice.’
Gabriel figured that Stolarski was no older than his late seventies, which was relatively young by today’s standards. He now knew that he lived in the White Mountains.
He leaned back in his chair, his mind unable to join the dots. What connection could there be, with what had happened in Berlin in 1945 and the disappearances of Kalmyk girls? There was only the similar manner of death of the young woman in the DVD and what had allegedly been inflicted on Red Army soldiers back then.
He decided he would visit Stolarski in the next couple of days and see if he’d talk. Sam had said that the man didn’t have a mobile or landline number and only received mail twice a week.
His smartphone rang again. Thinking it was Sam and that he’d forgotten to tell him something important, he picked it up agitatedly. But it was Beal, the federal public defender. He said he’d filed a pre-trial motion to test the validity of the prosecution evidence. He also said that Hockey would like Gabriel to be there. Gabriel said that he wasn’t representing him, as he well knew, and that the last time he’d seen Hockey he’d told him that face-to-face, and he hadn’t taken it too well. Beal said he could simply sit at the back of the court as an interested observer. Hockey had asked if Gabriel could ring him after the hearing and fill him in on the legal details, which he could do legitimately as a non-participant.
Disconnecting, Gabriel rubbed the back of his head and clenched his
jaw. He guessed he couldn’t afford not to keep up the pretence. Hockey might say something to someone that could prompt a dangerous investigation into him. It hadn’t worked out the way he’d once hoped it might. Hockey would rather languish in prison than give even a hint of the whereabouts of those who bankrolled him.
He consoled himself with the knowledge that if he hadn’t offered to help Beal with the defence of Hockey, he would never have met Carla. If he hadn’t met Carla, he wouldn’t have seen a copy of the DVD, and if he hadn’t seen the DVD, he wouldn’t have spoken with Professor Boris Iliev. That, he dared to think, might lead to something else, something positive, if he managed to have a meaningful conversation with Bronislaw Stolarski.
*
The next day, Gabriel left the court room at 3.46 pm. He walked over to a payphone and called Hockey in prison. He told him that the motion had gone well enough and that Beal was up to the job. Hockey sniffed at that and said he didn’t understand legal procedure but thanked him for going as he’d asked. It was good of him, he said.
Now Hockey said: ‘You know, I had a dream yesterday. I was tied down on a beach. The waves were crashing in. I could smell the salt and the seaweed. Then people came. Just random people. But they began shoving live fish in my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. I was dying. They were killing me. You ever had a dream like that?’
Gabriel shivered, wondering if that was a threat.
He said, ‘No, Johnny. Can’t say I have.’
‘They’re moving me.’
‘Where?’
‘Some army base in a few days. They still think that failed attempt to hijack the prison truck had something to do with me, I guess.’
‘I see.’
‘You don’t see shit,’ Hockey said.
Gabriel ended the call.
65
The farm, Bezirk Potsdam, East Germany, 1988 —
The farm, near Potsdam, German Federal State of Brandenburg, 2015.
She’d been kidnapped off the mud-caked street of a small village ten miles from Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, a month ago. Her kidnappers had been three middle-aged men, wearing trainers and baseball caps, that she’d suspected had been in the Soviet military. Everyone spoke of the fact that they were untrustworthy and corrupt. Who else would do such a thing?
Gagged and bound, she’d been driven overnight to a teeming city that she hadn’t recognized. For two days, she was held in a damp cellar that had smelled of blocked drains, where night and day were indistinguishable. She’d been drugged by a man that had looked to her like a bandit. Thickset and tattooed, with little eyes like a Dalmatian pelican. He’d put a needle in her thigh and had grinned. She’d woken up in the back of a truck, bleary-eyed and nauseous. Vaguely, she’d seen another man, whose countenance had been equally terrifying, as he’d crouched by her legs, and she’d lapsed into unconsciousness again. The journey from her homeland had taken close to eight days and she’d been kept alive by drip-feed.
The farm was fifteen miles from Berlin’s city centre. It had two stacks of chimneys, and a large black flue jutted out from one side. There were no discernible security systems, although they existed. It was owned, on paper at least, by offshore companies. The names of the shareholders were dead people, the victims of posthumous identity theft.
She’d been held in one of several bare brick cellars, tethered to the wall like a medieval prisoner, except her restraints had been padded so as not to mark her skin by chaffing. She was put in what the old man called ‘the hole’, a dry well that had been built around years before and left intact, and fed liquidized food laced with drugs through a garden hose. She was seventeen years old. She’d spent the time wringing her little hands before being brought back to the cellar.
She’d started crying and begging to be set free when the door had opened. She’d called her mother’s name. Her chains had been removed. She’d been blindfolded and coaxed to her feet by her elbows. Weak through lack of exercise, she’d wobbled like a day-old lamb. Then, she was lifted into the air and felt movement.
She’d been washed in a porcelain bath scented with oils and chrysanthemum petals. Her hair rinsed with rosewater, her nails shaped and buffed. Any moles, other blemishes or distinguishing marks had been concealed with cinematic make-up. She’d been drugged with Rohypnol, which had caused delayed sedation, muscle relaxation, reduced anxiety and partial amnesia.
Her blindfold had been removed about ten minutes previously. She was woozy now, her body drained. The room was unlike the one she’d been held prisoner in. Sticks of aromatic incense rose from iron pots that were half-filled with sand. The room was thick with it. The floor was strewn with ornate silk cushions and multi-coloured rugs. There were bright lights and 8mm movie cameras attached to tripods.
The door opened and someone scuttled in. The hands were gloved, the face covered by a ghastly mask, one that she thought she recognized, even above the haze in her head. She decided it must be a man, because the person wore the maroon and yellow robe of a Tibetan monk. It had the old Buddhist symbol of Tibetan Buddhism embroidered on it, a swastika, with a dot in each of the four quadrants.
‘Please sir,’ she said in Kalmyk Oirat.
The unmistakable dour scent of burning juniper floated in from the adjacent room he’d come from, the smell of a Tibetan funeral pyre, mixing now with the incense.
He said something to her that she didn’t understand. She shook her head.
The man lifted his mask somewhat, but enough to reveal what looked to her like a barnacled neck the circumference of a black stork’s. To her, he appeared as an ancient man, whose teeth she imagined, were jagged and fang-like, his eyes, sunken rubies.
He bent down, grasping the robe above the hem and lifted it up. His legs, she thought, were as thin as those of an ibex or wild sheep. He spread his arms so that the robe resembled the wings of a great bat. He made small circles with his outstretched arms, such that the splayed material began to undulate.
He turned gracefully, and as he did so, the room was filled with sound, the deep, haunting notes of a dungchen, a Tibetan horn, and above it, the eerie wailing of the femur trumpet. The back of the robe was all but covered by something unmistakable that made her smile, despite the drug and the mild uncertainty brought about by his antics and her surroundings. It was a holy creature, one of the four dignities, sacred in her homeland. It was leaping.
A snow lion.
*
Nearly thirty years later now, the old man, dressed in a silk bathrobe, walked falteringly over to a battered chest, positioned against a red-brick wall at the farmhouse, the lingering smell of incense making his hairy nostrils flare.
A few hours ago, he’d been thinking of that time back in 1988. He’d thought about how many times Jed Watson must have watched the converted 8mm cine film before Johnny Hockey killed him. Many, he’d guessed.
He’d finished converting all the old films to DVDs flawlessly, using professional imaging equipment to scan and transfer each frame. He’d kept the original films at the ghost house so that he could update them via state-of-the-art technology when it became available.
Now he stopped for a few moments in front of the gilded Renaissance mirror above the chest, licking his blotchy forefinger. He lifted his oval glasses and shaped his meagre eyebrows. He wanted to look his best for her.
He bent over, flipped open the brass clasps. It had been decades since he’d seen her, so long, in fact, that he sometimes wondered if that time had been imagined. But when he took out the black and white photograph, marred and fading, beneath his old military uniform, it was if it had all happened a few days before.
You were so beautiful, he thought.
This was the only aspect of his war that had brought forth life into the world instead of death.
66
Outskirts of Berlin, 1945, the same day.
Sonderführer Lutz Richter was sitting in the back of an NKVD staff car, like the one that had first taken him to the temporary interrogat
ion centre. He was on his way to an isolated airstrip, where he’d be flown the thousand miles to Moscow. He knew that all the airstrips for miles around had been destroyed by the months of Allied air force raids and two weeks of near constant Soviet rocket and artillery bombardment. He knew too that his specific destination was Lubyanka Square and the NKVD HQ, an imposing nineteenth century neo-baroque building, with a distinctive yellow brick façade.
The administrative centre and Beria’s third-floor office had expensive parquet flooring and spotless pale green walls. The mincing machine, the notorious prison section, did not. He wondered why both Beria and Himmler had wanted their offices so close to the torture cells.
Himmler’s office had been at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, Berlin, the headquarters of the Reich Security Main Office, the Gestapo and the SS. It had once been an art museum. El Greco and Bellini had hung there. Then prisoners had hung there, their wrists tied behind their backs so that their shoulders had dislocated. It had been renamed the house of horror by the locals. Passers-by reported screams coming from within. The prisoners were subjected to repeated near drownings in a tin bathtub filled with ice-cold water, to electric shocks, to beatings with rubber batons and cow-hide whips, to the burning of flesh with soldering irons.
Do these things now await me at Lubyanka? Richter thought.
What he did know was that few survived the mincing machine, and even if they did, they were no longer of any use to anyone.
Squeezed between the two NKVD guards, behind the driver and with Beria’s nephew occupying the front passenger seat, Richter’s visibility was marginal, although he knew there were two motorcycle outriders up front.
Straining for a view of the city, he caught glimpses of the aftermath of the devastation. People were scavenging what they could from near demolished houses and offices. There were little groups of female civilians, dishevelled and flustered, with scrawny children at the roadsides, pulling small carts of ragged clothes, pushing prams full of firewood, the odd tin of food. The injured and the infirm were transported in wheelbarrows.