Blood Eagle

by Craig Russell

  She broke the surface. Her head resounded with a pain that reverberated against the sides of her skull. MacSwain continued talking. Anna opened her eyes. MacSwain was sitting opposite, his dead and empty eyes fixed unblinkingly on her, his mouth the only animated part of his face. It was as if someone had turned on a tap that could not be turned off until all of the contents of MacSwain’s ugly mind had spilled out.

  ‘He explained it all to me,’ he continued, his voice urgent and excited. ‘We make our own myths. We fashion our myths from our legends and we create our legends from our history. Odin is a god. He is the god of all Vikings because all Vikings believe he is a god. Before the myth said he was a god, the legends said he was a king. And before the legends made him a king, the history tells us he was probably a village chieftain in Jutland. But what he was isn’t important. It’s what he has become. Say the word Odin and no one thinks of a scruffy village chieftain. Say the name Odin and the world shakes. That is the truth … that is the truth. That is what Colonel Vitrenko explained to me. He showed me that we are all variations on a theme and we are all connected to our history and to our myths.’

  He stopped abruptly. Anna had begun to ease herself up to a sitting position. MacSwain stood up and in two steps he was above her. His fist slammed hard into her temple and the pain in her head exploded. The world darkened a little for Anna, but she didn’t pass out. She lay back down on her side and looked across to MacSwain, who continued talking as if he had simply taken time out to swat a fly.

  ‘Colonel Vitrenko showed me how there are those to whom we are linked. Like the Colonel and me. He said our kinship is in our eyes, that we must have had the same Viking father somewhere back in time. And me and Hauptkommissar Fabel. Colonel Vitrenko showed me that Herr Fabel and I share the same mix of blood. That we are both half German, half Scottish. That we have both chosen our place. That is why Herr Fabel has been chosen for me as an opponent.’

  Anna felt some of the strength come back to her. Her thoughts swam more freely and quickly through the thinning sludge in her head. She eyed MacSwain. He was big and powerfully built, but, although his punch hurt, it lacked power. There were no sounds from the boat other than the lapping of water. Anna guessed that MacSwain had switched the engine off and had come down to have his little heart-to-heart with her. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was her where and when. But she wasn’t as drugged as he thought she was. She would fight. She would fight and fight until the last. He was not going to take her life easily.

  ‘But we’re not just connected to those who share our time.’ MacSwain continued his monologue. ‘There are those who have come before and those who will come after. And we are the history of those who will come after. And they will make legends of us. I shall become a legend. Colonel Vitrenko shall become a legend. And then, in time, we will take our places next to Odin.’ MacSwain’s eyes suddenly filled with a glacial malice. He stood up and made his way across to Anna. ‘But first sacrifices have to be made.’ He bent over her.

  Anna’s first kick caught him on the side of the head, but her awkward position and the enervating effects of the drugs sapped the power from the blow. MacSwain staggered back, more shocked than injured. It bought Anna the time to swing her legs off the bed and stand up. But as soon as she straightened up, her head swirled. She was aware of MacSwain pulling himself upright. The cabin was small and narrow and more of a handicap to the tall MacSwain than to Anna. He rushed her and she brought her foot up hard and fast into his chest, her heel slamming into his sternum. MacSwain’s lungs emptied and he sank to his knees, sucking at the air in the cabin as if trapped in a vacuum.

  Anna stepped forward and to the side, her movements hampered by her bound hands. She took time to aim carefully and swung her foot in a vicious kick onto MacSwain’s temple. He was thrown sideways by the force and smashed into the small galley. He groaned and lay still. Anna ran towards the hatch and slammed her shoulder against it. It didn’t budge. She remembered that it was a sliding hatch and she wriggled her arms and wrists down and below her bottom. Squatting first and then sitting, she slipped her hands behind her knees and looped them over her feet. She cast a sideways glance at MacSwain. He groaned again. Anna scrabbled with her still-bound hands to slide the hatch door open. She was going to make it. Out and over the side. Her chances would be better in the water than half doped and trapped in a boat with a psycho.

  The hatch door jammed. Anna summoned up every remaining reserve of strength and will and wrenched at it. It slid open and slammed against its housing. The cool, oil-tainted smell of the river flooded the cabin. Anna lunged upwards towards the night.

  There was an animal scream behind her. She felt MacSwain’s full weight crash into her. Her face smashed down hard onto the top step that led to the hatch. The thick iron taste of blood filled her nose and mouth. MacSwain seized a fistful of hair and snapped Anna’s head back hard and pulled her back into the cabin. His fist came down hard against her neck; but Anna realised it wasn’t a punch. She felt the cold metal in her neck and the hard sting of a hypodermic needle. Then the night she had so desperately reached for reached back to her and claimed her.

  Saturday 21 June, 10.15 p.m. The Elbe, between Hamburg and Cuxhaven.

  Franz Kassel watched the cruiser stop. It was out of the main navigation channels and properly lit-up, unlike the WS25 that had stealthed along behind it. He watched the tall young man emerge on deck. Kassel could not be sure, in the dark and at such a distance, but, when the young man wiped his face with a towel, he could have sworn the towel was stained black. As if with blood. He snapped the binoculars from his eyes and turned to Gebhard.

  ‘Try to reach Oberkommissarin Klee again. And if you don’t get hold of her, I’m going to pull chummy over just for the hell of it.’

  He looked back to the cruiser. There was a plume of foam, white against the black silk of the river.

  ‘He’s moving …’

  Saturday 21 June, 10.25 p.m. Harvestehude, Hamburg.

  The white tiled walls of MacSwain’s bathroom glittered antiseptically and the expensive taps and drying rails had a sharp, cold, scalpel gleam. Fabel, Maria and Werner stared at the shape of a man. A dark blue and red diver’s drysuit hung from the shower rail, dripping onto the bright enamel. It had the unnerving appearance of a cast skin. Something that had been sloughed off after a transition. A dive hood was draped over the bath’s rim.

  Werner pointed to the drysuit with a small movement of his chin. ‘This what he wore, you reckon?’

  Fabel peered into the bath. Another two drips drummed echoing beats against the bath. Fabel thought he saw the drips bloom a faint pink against the bright white enamel. He took a pen from his pocket and pushed up the lever to close the plug.

  ‘If it is, then it’s a bad choice for getting the blood out. A drysuit may have an impermeable body, but the collar, ankle and wrist cuffs are neoprene. No matter how often he’s rinsed it through, there will still be blood trapped in the neoprene. No one touches anything in here until Brauner arrives.’

  Fabel decided to re-immerse himself in the claustrophobia of MacSwain’s tiny, windowless box room. There were layers and layers of stuff pinned or taped to the walls. Rather than sift through them methodically – a task he would assign to Werner – Fabel let his gaze run its own route across the landscape of MacSwain’s madness. A psychotic topography that Fabel explored whole, not in part. There were articles on the Soviet-Afghan war and cuttings from magazines and books. One in particular caught Fabel’s attention; what struck him as odd was that it was only a segment of what must have been a much larger piece. It had been carefully cut out, yet began and ended in the middle of a sentence:

  ensuing discord. Unable to find among themselves a suitable ruler, the Krivichians, Chud and Slavs agreed to seek out a foreign prince or king to govern and establish the rule of law. They looked amongst those Vikings of France that are known as Normans. They sought amongst the Angles of Jutland and England. And they sought
amongst the Svear or Swedes of Sweden. These Swedes are also known by the Moors as the Rus, and from their number three brothers, Rurik, Sineus and Truvor, came forth with their families and established dominion over the peoples of the Dnieper. Rurik, the eldest, became ruler of Novgorod, and the lands and the people of that region became known as Russian. Rurik’s brothers both died soon after and Rurik became sole ruler. It was brought to his attention that there was a city to the south that was in great peril. It had been founded by the Polianian ferryman Kii, his brothers Shchek and Khoriv, and his sister Lybed. This city had taken Kii’s name and was known as Kievetz or Kiev and had been governed wisely and well. However, after the death of Kii and his kin, the city had fallen into great peril and was suffering at the cruel hands of the Khazars. Rurik was moved by the plight of the

  Fabel reread the segment. Was this how MacSwain saw himself and Vitrenko: Vitrenko as some latter-day Rurik and MacSwain as his loyal kinsman? He roamed further across the landscape of meticulous psychosis. Another cutting. This one concerned the warlord lieutenant of Prince Igor, a Varangian called Sveneld or Sveinald. A name, distant in time and geography, but from the same root as MacSwain’s own and brought close under the magnifying glass of MacSwain’s insanity. He travelled further. Numerous depictions of one-eyed Odin. A one-page pantheon of the twelve principal gods of the Aesir. Another on the Vanir, headed by Loki. There were fragments of downloaded Internet pages on Asatru. The largest item was a reproduction of a woodcut illustration of a giant ash tree, its branches and roots writhing and stretching like tentacles to loop through representations of a dozen different worlds. A vast eagle sat in its uppermost bough. This, Fabel knew, was Yggdrasil, the tree of the universe and the centrepiece of Norse beliefs. It was Yggdrasil that connected all things: mortal men with gods, the past with the present and the future, heaven with earth with hell, good with evil.

  Maria’s voice made him jump.

  ‘The unit we sent down to the harbour has reported in. MacSwain’s boat is gone.’

  ‘Shit!’ Fabel spat the English word into the small space of the box room.

  ‘But there’s good news too, Chef …’ said Maria, her pale blue eyes glinting. ‘I’ve had Kommissar Kassel of the WSP on the phone. He was the guy who helped us out when MacSwain took to the water the other night.’

  Fabel nodded impatiently.

  ‘He’s trailing a boat at the moment. It’s heading west along the south coast of the Elbe. He’s sure it’s MacSwain …’

  Fabel rushed forward and Maria had to step back swiftly to avoid being knocked over.

  ‘Paul, Werner, Maria – I want you to come with me.’ He turned to the other two Mordkommission officers ‘Landsmann, Schüler – you wait here in case he turns up.’

  Fabel snapped open his cell phone. He spoke as he walked briskly out of MacSwain’s apartment, Werner, Paul and Maria in his wake. ‘Put me through to Kriminaldirektor Van Heiden,’ he said. ‘And do it right away.’

  Van Heiden had arranged for the helicopter to be waiting to pick up Fabel and his team from the pad at Landespolizeischule, next to the Präsidium. Buchholz and Kolski were both in custody and, as Fabel had asked, Norbert Eitel’s lawyer had been informed that a police officer had been abducted by MacSwain. As Fabel had predicted, Eitel’s lawyer was very keen to allow his client to make a statement as soon as possible.

  Fabel and the others crouched low as they ran towards the helicopter, the rotor blades of which were already slicing through air thick with the smell of aviation fuel and the roar of the helicopter’s engines. Once they were buckled up, the co-pilot handed Fabel a large-scale map of the river as well as a microphone and earpiece headset, gesturing for him to put it on. Fabel could now communicate with the flight crew.

  ‘You know where we’re headed?’

  The pilot gave a sharp nod of his helmeted head.

  ‘Then let’s go. And patch me through to the WSP launch commander.’

  Kassel’s current position was close to the south shore of the section of the Elbe known as the Mühlenberger Loch. They were coming up to Stade and would soon be entering the section of river where the Elbe widened its arms to embrace the North Sea. Kassel explained that they had lost visual contact with MacSwain’s boat – it was just too fast for them – but he was tracking it on radar, and he had scrambled two launches to assist from the WSP Polizeidirektion at Cuxhaven.

  Fabel processed the information. They would soon be passing along the shore of the low, flat lands where the drugged girls had been dumped. The thought hit him like a steam hammer. He beckoned for Maria, Paul and Werner to lean in closer. Fabel pushed the microphone arm of his headset down from his mouth and shouted against the whine of the helicopter’s engines.

  ‘They didn’t take the girls to wherever they were raped by car: MacSwain probably brought them there in his boat and afterwards he or someone else at the ritual took them by car and dumped them nearby.’ He snapped the mouthpiece back to his lips. ‘Patch me through to the Polizei Cuxhaven. I need to speak to Hauptkommissar Sülberg and I need to speak to him now.’

  They were far out from the city by the time Sülberg’s voice came on the other end of the radio. Fabel explained that MacSwain was unaware he was being tracked and he was probably heading towards the general area where the other two had been abandoned.

  ‘Except this time,’ added Fabel, ‘he’s got a police officer who can identify him. He has no intention of letting her walk away from this, drugged or otherwise.’

  ‘I’ll get units out there right away,’ said Sülberg. ‘We’ll get into position and wait for your instructions.’

  As soon as Sülberg was off the line, the co-pilot informed Fabel that Kassel had been in touch again. MacSwain had stopped. Somewhere just past Freiberg.

  Fabel consulted his map. ‘The Aussendeich area,’ he said in a voice that the others could not hear above the thunder of the rotors.

  Sunday 22 June, 00.10 a.m. Aussendeich, between Hamburg and Cuxhaven.

  MacSwain’s boat was moored at an old abandoned wooden jetty that looked as if the wake of a passing boat would send it tumbling in pieces into the dark water. Kassel estimated that it had been there a good ten minutes before the WS23 had reached it. Time for MacSwain to have lugged Anna off the boat and out across the marshy fields that glistered coldly in the moonlight. Kassel and Gebhard had disembarked, weapons drawn, and slipped quietly into the bushes that fringed the field beyond. As they crouched in the scrub, Kassel could sense Gebhard’s electric excitement; this was the kind of action he had dreamed about. Kassel cast a look in his direction.

  ‘We take this easy, Gebhard, okay? I’ve radioed the Hamburg KriPo and they’ll take it from here. We just watch out that this guy doesn’t head back this way and try to escape on the boat.’

  Gebhard nodded impatiently, like a teenager being denied permission to go to a party. Kassel scanned the field through his binoculars. The carelessly cast light of the moon was not bright, but Kassel could be pretty certain that there was no one there. MacSwain must have passed over to the other side. He lifted the binoculars the smallest degree and opened his horizon out by a hundred metres. There were two derelict buildings behind the far hedgerow: they looked like disused barns. He held them centre frame for a moment before recommencing his sweep back along the dark fringe of the field. Something snapped his focus back to the barns. A light. A faint, moving light inside the building to the left. Kassel slapped Gebhard twice on the shoulder with the back of his hand, then handed him the binoculars and pointed across to the barns.

  ‘Over there!’ he hissed. Raising the radio to his lips, he pressed the transmit button and spoke the helicopter’s call sign twice.

  Fabel found himself juggling radio conversations: he was keeping the Präsidium informed: an MEK unit was already on its way, but it would take nearly an hour before they were there. He told Kassel to sit tight and passed on the details of the location to the helicopter pilot and also to Sülberg and the
Cuxhaven SchuPo units. The pilot confirmed that they would be able to land near the barns.

  ‘No. I don’t want to alert MacSwain to our presence too early. It could cost Anna her life. Fly clear of them and come down close to the main road. We’ll join up with Sülberg there.’

  Fabel radioed Sülberg, who gave him a map reference. He turned to Werner, Maria and Paul. Each of them had a look of hard determination on their face. Paul had something extra: an anxiety that jarred with Fabel’s instincts and made him feel decidedly uneasy.

  The helicopter set down in a clearing close to the main road. Fabel realised, as he ran, half crouched, from beneath the slicing blades of the chopper, that they were very close to where the two girls had been dumped. The untidy, squat form of Sülberg came running towards Fabel and the others.

  ‘Our cars are on the main road. Let’s go.’

  Sülberg ordered the patrol cars to kill their headlights as soon as they hit the dirt track that led to the barns. A driver, Sülberg, Fabel and Maria were in the lead vehicle. The track was pitted and clearly seldom if ever used; the green and white Mercedes lurched wildly as it engaged its erratic topography. They approached a bend where they were shielded from the barns by a high, unkempt hedge. Sülberg ordered the driver to stop. The other three patrol cars pulled in behind.

  Sülberg and Fabel went on ahead, crouching to keep their bodies concealed behind the hedge. There were two large BMWs parked, empty, in front of the barn. MacSwain was not alone.

  To one side of the building was a largish window that spilled a cheerless, pale light out into the night, but its angle prevented Fabel and Sülberg from seeing inside. They carefully made their way back to where Werner, Maria, Paul and the four Cuxhaven SchuPos were waiting. They huddled into a circle, like some American football team choosing a game-plan.