Blood Eagle

by Craig Russell

  Gehlen toured the internment camps and liberated dozens of SS men to join the new intelligence network. And he did so with the full cooperation and consent of the Allies. Now was not the time, apparently, to get sentimental over a few million Jews.

  The Organisation Gehlen, and the BND that succeeded it, had been far from successful. The East German Stasi had infiltrated the organisation from the earliest days and there had been a number of spectacular and very public failures. After the reunification of Germany, the BND found itself without its original raison d’être, and started to seek a new role. The fight against terrorism, in which it had been engaged since the late 1960s, became a more central function. But now there were emergent Rechtsradikale neo-Nazi groups as well as the established left-wing brands like the Rote-Armee-Fraktion to contend with. In the mid-nineties it had been decided that the BND should become involved in the fight against organised crime, something that Fabel and other career policemen had viewed with profound scepticism. Fabel was aware that the evil machineries of state that the Nazis had emplaced cast long and dark shadows. And for Fabel, the BND lay half hidden in those shadows. Fabel did not trust the BND. Volker was BND.

  A few clouds scudded across an otherwise bright sky. Fabel’s gaze through the window and across the city remained unfixed, as if he were looking beyond the visible. From Volker to Klugmann. From the BND to GSG.

  Fabel had Klugmann’s adulterated personnel file on his desk. He turned from the window and looked again at the photograph. Klugmann’s position within the investigation had shifted. The face in the file was the same face, but now Fabel saw it anew, read the features differently. He was pretty certain that Klugmann was an agent of GSG9, which, technically, kept his status as a policeman. GSG9 – Grenzschutzgruppe Neun – was officially part of the Federal German Border Police, but its agents had nothing to do with checking passports or looking under fruit trucks for asylum seekers. GSG9 was, ironically, born out of Germany’s mistrust of itself.

  The decision to hold the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich had been a turning point in German history. The mental image that came from putting together the concepts of Germany and the Olympian tradition would no longer begin and end with swastikas billowing above the 1936 Games in Berlin.

  It was still dark at four-thirty in the morning of 5 September 1972. A small group, dressed like athletes and carrying sports bags, made their way silently through the Olympic village in Munich. Their destination was 31 Connollystrasse. The Israeli team’s quarters. Sixteen hours later, the tarmac of Fürstenfeldbruck military airbase, fifteen miles west of the Olympic village, was scattered with the twisted metal of an exploded helicopter, the bodies of five dead Black September terrorists, one policeman and nine Israeli hostages. Two other Israeli athletes had been murdered in the village earlier in the day.

  With the atrocities of the SS so vivid in the national memory, Germany had denied itself, under law, the right to create an elite military counter-terrorist unit, such as the British SAS or the American Delta Force. The result of Germany’s lack of preparedness had been a disastrous, extemporised rescue attempt by untrained marksmen. The result had also been seventeen dead under the unblinking gaze of the world’s media. Within six months GSG9 was in business, masterminded and led by Ulrich Wegener, a forty-three-year-old officer from a patrician, East German family. Wegener had been a thorn in the side of the East German authorities and was imprisoned by the East German Stasi for two years for pro-democracy and pro-reunification campaigning. After his release, Wegener had escaped to the West and had joined the West German security services.

  The premise of the new unit was simple: no member of the armed forces could serve in GSG9, only policemen. Instead of being part of the Bundeswehr army, GSG9 was a 350-strong unit within the Federal Border Police. In 1977, Wegener was to become the hero of GSG9’s most successful operation. The unit, supported by two British SAS ‘special observers’, stormed a hijacked Lufthansa Boeing 707 in Mogadishu after terrorists, demanding the release of Baader-Meinhof members held in Germany, murdered the captain. Wegener himself led the assault and shot dead one of the terrorists. It was GSG9’s shining hour.

  Then the gleam tarnished. In June 1993, GSG9 tried to arrest Wolfgang Grams, a member of the Rote-Armee-Fraktion in a rail station in Bad Kleinen in eastern Germany. The operation was botched and Grams killed one policeman and wounded another. The official report, borne out by forensic evidence, stated that Grams then shot himself. Civilian witnesses, however, claimed that they saw the GSG9 operatives hold Grams down and shoot him in the head at point-blank range.

  The ensuing scandal resulted in careers lost at cabinet level. And GSG9 sank back into the shadows.

  Fabel was no fan of GSG9. Or of the Mobile and Sonder Einsatz Kommando units, styled on American SWAT teams, that had sprung up in almost all of Germany’s police forces. The line between policeman and soldier was becoming ever less distinct and it went against every instinct Fabel had. Fabel’s view on these paramilitary units won him no friends on the upper levels of the Präsidium, particularly when he pointed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as an example. The Mounties had set up a unit similar to GSG9. They had called it SERT – the Special Emergency Response Team – and it was a highly efficient counter-terrorist unit. And it had disbanded. The Canadian officers within SERT could not reconcile the imperative to kill imposed by counter-terrorist operations with their natural instincts as police officers to preserve and protect life. Those, Fabel had always thought, were the kind of cops he’d like to serve with.

  He focused on Klugmann’s face in the service photograph. It was a leaner face than the one that had been opposite him in the whitewashed interview room in the Davidwache station. It was a taut face, the skin pegged tightly to the heavy skull by guy-rope muscles and ligaments. It was the kind of face that told you that the unseen body to which it belonged was powerful and fit. The photograph wasn’t that old; Klugmann must have worked at making himself look that little bit run down for his undercover role.

  What Fabel couldn’t fully understand was why a GSG9 agent was being used to go undercover. GSG9’s stealth was a tactical, operational tool, not an intelligence-gathering one. Fabel had no doubt that if Maria was convinced she had encountered Klugmann before at Weingarten then that’s exactly where she had seen him. And the two locations GSG9 used for training were Hangelar and Weingarten. There was no doubt, with so many special agencies involved, that whatever the focus of the operation, the objective was a major one. Volker was BND; Klugmann was GSG9. Fabel’s guess was that the dead girl, Tina Kramer, had really been BND too. Only the Polizei Hamburg itself seemed to have been excluded. And Fabel had no reason to doubt Van Heiden’s word that he knew nothing whatsoever about the operation. So why was the principal law-enforcement agency for Hamburg kept out of the loop?

  There was a knock on Fabel’s door that was neither tentative nor assured. Volker stepped into Fabel’s office without waiting to be invited. Something had bulldozed across Volker’s face and swept with it any vestige of geniality. There was no hostility in Volker’s expression, neither was there any other recognisable emotion. This, realised Fabel, was Volker behind the affable mask. The dark eyes were empty and the mouth a straight, determined line. Volker had a thick green file tucked under one arm. Fabel gestured towards a chair.

  ‘What is it you want to know, Fabel? I’ll tell you what I can.’

  When Fabel spoke, there was a steel cord in his voice. ‘No, Volker … you won’t just tell me what you can …’ Fabel beckoned to Werner, who came in, closed the door very deliberately behind him and leaned his heavy frame against it, folding his meaty arms across his chest. ‘You’ll tell me everything I want to know. And if you don’t, I promise you I will put you in a cell, charge you with obstructing a murder inquiry and leak the story to the press before your pals in Pullach can weasel you out of it.’

  ‘We’ve had a very good reason for playing this close to the chest, Fabel. We are still on the
same side, you know.’ Volker’s face remained expressionless.

  ‘Are we? I’m trying to solve a series of vicious murders and you have been withholding information – key information – from me. I have had people wasting their time all over Hamburg trying to find out who the second victim was while you saunter in and out of the Präsidium with her identity in your pocket. In the meantime a third victim is killed. You fuck about playing secret agents and some poor woman pays with her life.’

  ‘There is no connection between Tina Kramer and either of the other victims.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  Volker half threw the heavy green file onto the desk. ‘It’s all there, Fabel. Everything we have on our operation. We were going to share it with you anyway, we just needed Klugmann to come in from the field. We’ve cross-checked your other two victims with Tina Kramer and there is no link. Tina just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Your killer must have picked her at random, like the other victims.’

  ‘That’s a pile of crap, Volker. Coincidences like that just don’t happen.’

  ‘They do, and in this case they did. Agent Kramer wasn’t our main undercover operative. That’s Klugmann. Kramer ran the apartment as a meeting venue where Klugmann could talk with his underworld contacts. We’ve set Klugmann up as a corrupt ex-cop, specifically an ex-special-forces police officer, with a grudge against the police. It’s all in there …’ Volker pointed to the file. ‘The story was that Kramer rented the apartment from Klugmann as “Monique” with the suggestion she was a hooker. Their arrangement was supposed to be that Klugmann still used the apartment for secret meetings.’

  ‘Meetings with whom? What was the objective of the operation?’

  ‘It was an observation point. Klugmann was placed on the fringes of organised criminal activity without any clear loyalty. He was employed by Hoffknecht, who was in turn employed by Ulugbay, but he wasn’t tied in to the Ulugbay organisation. He’s been making noises to the effect that he wants to get involved in some serious action.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question. Who was the target and what were the objectives of the operation?’

  ‘It was an intelligence-gathering op. The specific target was a powerful new Ukrainian outfit that has moved into town. We suspect that they killed Ulugbay.’

  Fabel recalled what Mahmoot had told him. He let Volker continue.

  ‘We instigated the operation because no one will talk to us about them. All our usual contacts are too scared. With good reason. Remember I told you we had a very good reason for playing this close to the chest?’

  Fabel nodded curtly.

  ‘Well I’m afraid you’re not going to like it. Nobody is prepared to talk about this new outfit because they are unbelievably efficient and ruthless in dealing with informers, competitors or simply anyone who gets in their way. What’s more, they’ve made it clear that they have contacts inside the Polizei Hamburg and that they will find out if anyone talks.’

  ‘They’ve got insiders here? I don’t believe it,’ Fabel protested.

  ‘That’s what our intelligence suggests. We don’t know for sure where, but it would have to be at a pretty senior level. That’s why the Polizei Hamburg was kept out of the loop. It was a joint BND and BAO operation, and we recruited Klugmann from GSG9. Sorry, but that’s how it had to be.’

  ‘What about Buchholz and the Organised Crime Division?’

  Volker shook his head. ‘No one in the Polizei Hamburg has any knowledge of the operation. The rumour is, believe it or not, that these Ukrainians were previously policemen and Soviet Interior Ministry special forces. They are supposed to have set up contacts with police officers serving in Germany. That’s why we gave Klugmann the background he had – we reckoned he’d fit in more easily. And because he had a genuine special-forces background, his cover would stand up to scrutiny. But we couldn’t risk a leak, so no one here knows a thing.’

  ‘Presumably that’s why you changed Klugmann’s records here, and why his federal records don’t match up?’

  Volker nodded.

  ‘Who heads up this Ukrainian unit?’ Werner spoke without moving from the door. Volker did not turn to answer, but spoke to Fabel, as if he had asked the question.

  ‘That was one of the prime objectives of the operation. We don’t know. He is totally faceless and nameless at the moment …’

  Just like our second murder victim was, thought Fabel.

  Volker continued. ‘Klugmann has made contact, through a member of Yari Varasouv’s outfit – or at least the outfit that used to be run by Varasouv – with one of the new Ukrainian mob. Klugmann only knows his contact as “Vadim” … he reckons that his contact is the real deal, but quite low in the pecking order, otherwise he wouldn’t be exposed. That said, we believe there’s only ten to a dozen in the main group – we call them the Top Team – each of whom is running half a dozen existing “captains” from the old gangs. The way this new outfit operates puts the “organised” in organised crime. The Top Team works almost like the command structure of an occupying army. They have, in effect, removed the governments of each of the top Hamburg gangs, eliminating the gang bosses. That leaves them with a body without a head which they then control. They started with the Ukrainian, Russian and other east-European gangs, then they turned their attention to the Ulugbay organisation. They were taking the structure out from under Ulugbay. And then, of course, they took Ulugbay out of the structure.’

  ‘Why would they talk to someone as small-time as Klugmann’s cover suggests he is?’

  Volker hesitated. ‘We gave Klugmann something to bargain with …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve got to understand, Fabel, that we are playing against highly dangerous opponents. People who are often unpredictable. It means that sometimes we have to take risks …’ Fabel didn’t know what was coming, but he already knew he wouldn’t like it. Volker sighed. ‘We gave them the details of the drugs meet where Ulugbay was killed.’

  Fabel stared incredulously at Volker. ‘You used a law-enforcement operation to help set up a hit on a major underworld figure? Christ, is there nothing you people won’t do?’

  ‘Of course we didn’t set up the hit!’ Volker’s indignation was unconvincing. His eyes settled on a spot on Fabel’s desk. ‘It all turned to shit. Unlike what we’ve got on this new crowd, our intelligence on Ulugbay is excellent. We gave Klugmann details of a major drugs deal that was set to make Ulugbay millions. But we didn’t expect Ulugbay to turn up in person. Klugmann had details of the initial meeting, the names and details of the Colombians involved, the quantities, et cetera. Klugmann was able to claim that he had got the information through a contact he had some leverage on in the Drugs MEK unit. It was enough to flush out one of the Top Team. Vadim is obviously low down in the Team, but that’s all relative when you think of how much power each of them has. Anyway, all we wanted was to give Klugmann credibility. It was not an easy decision to make. We threw away a major drugs bust in the process, but we thought it was worth it to crack the Top Team. We reckoned that the Ukrainians would move in on the deal. We were right. We were more right than we wanted to be. Before we knew it, the Colombians were back on the plane to Bogota and Ulugbay had his brains splattered across an underground Parkhaus.’

  ‘Ulugbay thought he was meeting with the Colombians?’

  ‘Yes. But instead he met with a bullet. Like I say, he was not supposed to be there. We thought that the Ukrainians would muscle in on the deal or at the most heist the drugs.’

  ‘Christ, Volker, you really couldn’t have made much more of a mess of things, could you?’

  Volker gave Fabel a defiant stare. ‘You don’t have a clue what we’re up against here, Fabel. We have ten or twelve ultra-hard Spetznaz-trained Ukrainians who are all, except one, totally faceless and nameless. Even the rumour trickle has dried up. They’re like ghosts, but they have almost all of Hamburg’s underworld in their grasp. Only Yilmaz and what’s left
of the Ulugbay organisation lies outside their control, but not for long. This Ukrainian unit represents the greatest criminal threat to Hamburg ever. We have to take radical measures to stop them.’

  Fabel gazed blankly at Volker as he absorbed the information. He could not believe that Volker did not know much more than Mahmoot had already been able to tell him.

  ‘What about the leader? I can’t believe you have nothing at all on him.’

  ‘We don’t have anything. All we know is that the Top Team is headed up by a former senior officer in the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. We don’t have a name, description or even an age, although we suspect that he has served in Chechnya. And he is rumoured to use unspeakable brutality to achieve his aims.’

  ‘Or even make a point? How can you be sure that it wasn’t this guy who is behind Tina Kramer’s murder?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t make any sense. Klugmann’s cover has not been blown, except now, by you, and we’re going to have to pull him in. But there’s nothing to link our operation with your other two victims. And without Klugmann’s cover being blown, the Ukrainians have no motive to kill Kramer.’

  ‘What did Klugmann say when he called in to you that night … just before he reported the murder to us?’

  ‘He was in a hell of a state. He told us what had happened to Kramer and we recognised it as the same modus as the psycho who killed the first girl. Like I said, we couldn’t see a connection, but I had to make an operational decision in the heat of the moment. I ordered Klugmann to come in, to abort the mission. For all we knew it could have been that his cover was blown. I told Klugmann that once we had him safe we would contact the Polizei Hamburg and report the murder.’

  ‘So why didn’t that happen?’

  ‘Klugmann is one of the best officers I’ve ever worked with. He told me to leave him out in the field, to let him handle it, to check out if his cover had been blown and to report the murder to the police.’