Blood Eagle

by Craig Russell

  ‘There are quite a few of those …’

  MacSwain brushed away Anna’s comment with a sweep of his hand. ‘Heimat. The concept of a place, a time and a people to which you belong. It lies somewhere between the concepts of home and homeland.’

  Anna nodded vaguely. It was a word she associated with parochialism and narrow-mindedness; with the bland, politically bleached and mannered films that had been made in Germany in the period after the Second World War: a time when any sense of Germanness seemed inappropriate or even in bad taste.

  ‘There are relationships that you find and forge in life that give you that inner feeling of Heimat, of belonging. Except it is not necessarily anchored in one place. Whenever you meet – wherever in the world you meet again – you are at home.’ The intensity melted from MacSwain’s eyes. He shrugged and took another sip of his coffee. ‘That’s why my father is no longer a figure in my landscape, other than as an incidental character. I have learned that there are much more significant bonds between people than mere genetics. Anyway … enough about me …’

  He moved over to the couch. Anna was forced to move to make room for him. He drew close and moved his face towards hers. Once again Anna took in his almost perfectly handsome features and was amazed at the lurch of disgust in her gut as he put his lips to hers. She eased back from him and smiled.

  ‘Time we set sail for shore, skipper,’ she said, hoping her jocularity didn’t sound as hollow outwardly as it did inwardly.

  MacSwain smiled dryly and sighed. ‘Sure …’

  MacSwain had been polite and courteous but perceptibly cool on the return to the jetty. Anna felt a surge of energy and relief as the lights of shore drew closer. She declined MacSwain’s invitation of a lift home, claiming her car was parked near the nightclub; he insisted on dropping her there instead. Paul Lindemann and the surveillance team had withdrawn from sight as MacSwain had pulled into his berth, picking up the trail again on the way back to the nightclub.

  ‘Here’ll be fine …’ said Anna as they pulled up outside the nightclub.

  Again, MacSwain smiled a polite smile. ‘Where’s your car?’ he asked.

  Anna made a vague gesture with her hand. ‘Around the corner.’ She took a small notepad from her clutch handbag and noted down the number of the cell phone she’d been allocated for the operation. ‘Listen … I don’t think I’ve been the best company tonight … Give me a call and we can arrange something some other time.’

  ‘I was beginning to think you didn’t like me, Sara. You seemed … well, uneasy or something.’

  Anna leaned across and gave MacSwain a lingering kiss on the lips. She withdrew and smiled. ‘I told you … I’m not good on boats. That’s all. Call me.’ She opened the Porsche’s door and swung her legs out. ‘Next time let’s make it on solid ground …’

  One of the surveillance cars took off at a safe distance behind MacSwain’s Porsche. Anna stood on the sidewalk watching after the car as it turned the corner of Albers-Eck. It was only after the surveillance car confirmed that MacSwain was clear of Der Kiez that the Mercedes Vario pulled up next to Anna. Maria was first out and put her arm around Anna in an awkward, unaccustomed gesture of affection.

  ‘You did bloody well, Anna,’ she said.

  ‘He gave us a turn when he pulled the boat stunt.’ Paul Lindemann was now out of the panel van and standing next to Maria. ‘I don’t know how you kept so damned cool.’

  Anna gave a small, childlike laugh and realised that her legs were shaking. ‘Nor do I.’

  ‘We had the Wasserschutzpolizei keeping an eye on you,’ explained Paul. ‘You were safe all the way through … help was only seconds away if you needed it.’

  Maria was just about to say something when her cell phone rang. She took a few steps back and answered it.

  ‘I have to say, Anna,’ said Paul, ‘you did really well. But we didn’t get much out of it. He didn’t say or do anything to suggest that he’s connected to either the abductions or the killings.’

  Anna didn’t answer, but remained facing in the direction taken by MacSwain’s car. Somewhere deep in her gut lurked the phantom of the nausea that had gnawed at her every time MacSwain had touched her

  ‘I have a feeling about MacSwain,’ she said, without looking at Paul. ‘A real, powerful, physical reaction to him.’

  Paul gave a small laugh. ‘Female intuition?’

  ‘No,’ Anna replied in a small but hard and sharp-edged voice. ‘Policeman’s instinct.’

  ‘Well,’ said Paul, ‘it looks like you went through all of that for nothing. I suspect Mr MacSwain is nothing more than a womanising yuppie.’

  ‘It would appear you’re right.’ Maria snapped shut her cell phone. ‘That was Fabel … at last. Seems he’s had quite an evening of it too. MacSwain’s out of the picture. We have a name for our killer. Vasyl Vitrenko.’

  Anna now turned back to face her colleagues. Her dark eyes sparkled cold in the neon glitter of the Kiez. ‘I don’t care what Fabel’s turned up. I know that there is something evil about MacSwain. He’s our killer. I just know it.’

  Saturday 21 June, 1.04 a.m. Harburg, Hamburg.

  Despite it being a mild night, Hansi Kraus lay shivering under both his rank, ragged bed linen and the heavy army greatcoat that accompanied him everywhere. His meagre frame convulsed, his teeth chattered and he had the feeling that a rat gnawed endlessly at his gut. He maybe shouldn’t have come back to the squat; but he had needed somewhere warm and a place where, perhaps, he could beg, borrow or steal enough to pay for the fix he so badly needed. Unfortunately for Hansi, there had been no opportunity to exploit any of the three means.

  He was exposed here, but he had to get sorted out. He would go to the Turk in the morning and tell him what he had seen in the Polizeipräsidium. The Turks would know what to do: they might, for once, even give him a little something on account. He had also written a letter to his mother, the first proof he had given her in five years that he still drew breath. In it he had come as close as he was capable to apologising to her; asking forgiveness for having destroyed her only son and extinguishing every hope and dream she had had for him. It was ironic that, after a decade of fear and threat, and five years in which his mother and sisters had probably assumed him dead, Hansi had come to terms that this was now, probably, his time. It was now that he made amends; it was now that he had left a message that would endure beyond his life.

  Hansi was scared. Hansi was always scared, it was his natural state: but now his fear had switched up a gear. Somewhere, infused into his bones, was some memory of childhood that had not melted away with the flesh that had once given his frame some form. Whenever Hansi had been ill or afraid, his mother had let him sleep with a low light by his bed. The wraith Hansi now reached back to the child Hansi and remembered the soft, warm pool of light, the smell of fresh linen, the sensation of polished skin after his bath and the tickle of joy and cosy security that snuggling down into his bed had brought.

  Now, twenty years on, all that was left to Hansi was a naked bulb burning bleakly and ineffectually in the ceiling as a talisman against the chills and the aches and the terrors that wracked his wasted, craving body. He heard footsteps out on the landing. Normally he would have ignored them: there was always activity in the squat, people coming and going, drunk or high, fighting or calling out in their sleep. Unmoving, he strained his ears but the footsteps had stopped.

  Not faded away. Stopped.

  He had just started to raise himself up on one elbow when the door slowly opened. Hansi actually found the mental time to note that he would have expected them to burst the door open, instead of gently and quietly easing it open the way his mother used to when she checked on him as a child. The older man held the door open and allowed the younger man, the one built like a bodybuilder, to enter and move swiftly and silently across the short distance to Hansi’s bed. The cry that started to rise in Hansi’s throat was muffled by the younger man’s huge, powerful hand as it clampe
d down hard and immovable onto Hansi’s mouth. The older man came in and closed the door. Smiling at Hansi, he produced a metal case from the pocket of his tan leather coat. Still smiling and tilting his head slightly, he held the oblong case up between finger and thumb and rattled it, like a parent teasing a child with the offer of some candy.

  ‘Time to get happy, Hansi,’ he said in a voice that could almost have been kind, as he opened the case, taking out a disposable hypodermic syringe. ‘Happy like you’ve never been happy before …’

  Hansi tried to scream, but the younger man rammed a foul-tasting cloth into his mouth before forcing his arm out straight and pulling up his sleeve.

  In the fraction of a second before the lethally pure heroin hit his system, Hansi’s eyes darted from one man’s face to the other. The words, I know who you are … I saw you and I know who you are … died on his immobilised tongue under the filthy rag they had stuffed in his mouth. It took only a few seconds for the heroin to invade all that was the meagre presence of Hansi Kraus. As they pulled the rag from his mouth and turned their backs on him, leaving him to die alone, he thought he could smell freshly laundered bedclothes.

  Saturday 21 June, 4.00 a.m. Polizeipräsidium, Hamburg.

  The atmosphere in the incident room was an odd mix of excitement and exhaustion. In the dead hours before dawn, officers just awoken and those, like Fabel, Maria, Paul and Anna, who had been awake and active all the previous day struggled to shake off the physical tiredness that clung to them, dulling the thrill of closing in on their prey. There was a buzz of voices on telephones, waking disgruntled officials across Europe, from Hamburg to Kiev.

  And there, centre stage, enlarged and pinned to the middle of the inquiry board, the cold green eyes of Vasyl Vitrenko, like the malevolently heroic portrait gaze of some eastern-European dictator, stared out defiantly at those who would pursue him. Beside the image of Vitrenko were copies of the images in the barn supplied by his father. When Fabel had first taped the images to the board, a stunned incredulity had temporarily muted the clamour in the room.

  Maria, who spoke English reasonably well and a little Russian, had been pursuing by telephone reluctant police officials in Odessa and Kiev. She had also scanned Europol’s and Interpol’s databases, finding a scrap here and there to help assemble a person behind the image on the inquiry board.

  Fabel took a moment of comparative quiet in the room to call together the majority of the team, who then waited until their colleagues still on phones concluded their calls.

  Fabel stood before the incident board and leaned on the table, pressing his knuckles down onto the polished cherrywood. He took in a sharp breath before starting his debrief of what the Ukrainian had told him. There was a silence in the room, an intense quiet as if the air had been corded and stretched tight, as he repeated the old man’s account of pursuing his son through the mountains and half-desert plains of Afghanistan, following a trail of growing atrocity, culminating in the discovery in the barn. He then outlined what he had learned about the killings in Kiev.

  ‘Okay, people. We have a clear prime suspect … but, while we have enough to get the Staatsanwaltschaft state prosecutor to grant us a warrant for his arrest and questioning, we have absolutely no solid evidence to nail him with.’ Fabel turned and slapped his hand against the blown-up portrait. ‘Colonel Vasyl Vitrenko, formerly of the Ukrainian Berkut, or Golden Eagle counter-terrorist unit. Forty-five years old. And a tough and heartless son of a bitch. We have our eye-witness account, albeit after the fact, of Vitrenko having orchestrated mass murders using exactly the same modus we have seen here in Hamburg. We also have an identical series of murders in Kiev … But again this isn’t much good because we cannot tie Vitrenko conclusively to these, particularly as the Ukrainian police believe they already have the perpetrator. But what we do have is a potential motive. It would appear that at least two of our victims had some knowledge, potentially very damaging, about a vast property scam that involves our friends the Eitels and Ukrainian connections. Maria?’

  Maria Klee pulled out her notes and flicked through them. She started to speak but tiredness had cast gravel in her throat and she gave a small cough before resuming.

  ‘I’ve spoken to the Ukrainian police in Kiev, the Berkut CT unit and the SBU secret service. Unsurprisingly, the SBU were not very forthcoming, but I did get some information from the police about the Kiev murders. They seem to think we’ve got a copycat killer, because, as Hauptkommissar Fabel has stated, they swear they got the right man for it.’ She checked her notes again. ‘A Vladimir Gera …’ Maria stumbled over the name and took another run at it. ‘Vladimir Gerassimenko. Apparently he was a bright underachiever who worked as an administrator for the railways. There were three victims. Two of whom were found to have been, well, sacrificed as part of some kind of rite. It was suspected that there were others involved in the rituals, but Gerassimenko was convicted for the third killing.’

  ‘The journalist?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Yes. And in her own apartment.’

  ‘Just like Angelika Blüm.’ Fabel stated the obvious for emphasis, but his voice was dull and tired. ‘Is there any chance that we can get someone over to the Ukraine to interview this …’

  ‘Gerassimenko …’ Maria helped Fabel out. ‘Not likely. The Ukraine signed a moratorium on the death penalty in 1997 and abolished it in 2000 … but Gerassimenko was executed in ninety-six.’

  Fabel sighed. ‘What else did you find out?’

  ‘Well … your guy – Vitrenko’s father – he’s no longer on active service in any arm of the Ukrainian police. I spoke with someone from the Ministry of Internal Affairs – the only one they were willing to get out of bed – and, according to him, Major Stepan Vitrenko was retired out of the Berkut years ago. I was able to squeeze out of the guy I spoke to that Vitrenko senior has made hunting down his son a bit of a one-man crusade. Apparently the Soviets sent him after Vitrenko in Afghanistan, and since that time it has become an obsession with him.’

  ‘I can imagine why,’ said Fabel.

  ‘I have to add,’ said Maria, ‘that the only reason the Ukrainians are giving more weight to Vitrenko’s disappearance than a standard missing person is his importance as an anti-terrorism and organised-crime specialist. As far as they’re concerned, the only crime he has committed is to desert his post.’

  ‘What about the Berkut … this counter-terrorist unit to which he belonged?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Basically they’re the Ukraine’s all-purpose riot-squad and counter-terrorism unit. Concerns about their conduct have been raised by Amnesty International. They are run by the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior. From what I can gather, Vitrenko’s brief went far beyond the Berkut’s usual operational parameters. He was a high-flyer with an expertise across the board of civil, political and terrorist crime. The Ukraine has a real problem with organised crime and there are massive tensions between the minority Russian and majority Ukrainian populations. Added to this, they have probably the highest incidence of serial murderers in the world. Which is why they lead the world in tracking down serials.’

  Fabel rubbed the twenty-hour-old stubble on his jaw. ‘If Vitrenko’s father is on a one-man crusade to track him down, who is the girl who is working with him? And why?’

  ‘I think I have an answer for that,’ said Maria, again shuffling through her notes to find the relevant fact. ‘I suspect she is Lieutenant Martina Onopenko. She was, until recently, an officer in the Kiev police.’

  ‘A detective?’

  ‘No … uniform branch. But she has some military experience. It also turns out she is the younger sister of the journalist who was killed. She, apparently, shares the old guy’s conviction that it is truly Vitrenko who is guilty of her sister’s killing. She resigned from the police force when they refused to reopen the case.’

  ‘It’s an unlikely partnership,’ mused Fabel. ‘The sister of a victim and the father of the chief suspect …’

  Maria
shrugged. ‘I’m merely assuming that’s who your girl is. They certainly were active together in the Ukraine after Vitrenko’s disappearance.’ She handed Fabel a head-and-shoulders photograph of a young woman. ‘I had this e-mailed to me by our Ukrainian friends …’

  Fabel examined the photograph. In many ways the girl in the photograph was similar to the old Ukrainian’s assistant, but the hair was darker and the face more oval.

  ‘She looks similar, but this isn’t her …’

  ‘I know. This is the murdered Kiev journalist. Valerie Onopenko.’

  ‘Then this is definitely the sister of the woman with Vitrenko senior. This entire case seems to be about bloody families.’

  ‘Speaking of which –’ Werner eased to the front of the gathered team – ‘I checked out our friends the Eitels. I know we’re not looking at them directly for the murders, but they both have solid alibis for the first killing. The father has a corroborated alibi for the second and Norbert Eitel for the third. I’ve spoken to some of our financial and corporate crime guys on the second floor, but they say they’re not looking at the Eitels for anything at the moment, although they are now taking an active interest in these allegations of property fraud. I’ve handed over a copy of our file. They were able to give me a full breakdown of the registered companies and interests controlled by the Eitels or in which they have an interest. And, right enough, they are directors of Neuer Horizont.’ It was Werner’s turn to flick through his notes. ‘They also have an interest in Galicia Trading. It is a holding company that seems to be doing on-paper trade with the Eitel Group’s property wing. It’s this news that has whetted the appetite of the financial and corporate crime squad. I’ve been able to establish that Galicia Trading is co-directed by Wolfgang Eitel, Norbert Eitel, Pavlo Klimenko and an American businessman called John Sturchak. Galicia Trading has been buying quite a bit of Hamburg real estate recently.’

  ‘And Pavlo Klimenko is one of Vitrenko’s men.’ Fabel thought for a moment. ‘What do we know about this American?’