‘Out of boredom?’
‘You’re still joking. How stupid.’
The back of his hand comes so quickly, landing on the base of Aaron’s nose, that she doesn’t feel the draught until it’s too late. The pain knocks her legs from under her. She falls to her knees. Her brain chafes against the inside of her skull.
‘Let’s try again: what was the spur?’
‘Power?’ she pants.
‘To a certain extent. But not the way you think. What drove him lay deep in his childhood. His father was taken from him when Nikulin was eight years old, the same age as Sascha when I dug the grave. He was a surgeon in a hospital in Novgorod, and he fell victim to one of Stalin’s big purges. The pretext they gave was the so-called doctors’ conspiracy, a supposed plot by doctors accused of having contacts with western secret services. In fact the arrests were aimed at the Jewish intelligentsia, and the crime laid at Nikulin’s father’s door was that of having Jewish friends. He disappeared into a gulag, and Nikulin never saw him again. Or his mother, who was buried somewhere or other. He was put in a state orphanage. The little boy swore that no one would ever have power over him again, and recognized that the only way to reach that state was to achieve power himself. So he became the man he was. The man I called Father.’
Aaron creeps backwards over the floor until she bumps into the wall. She opens her eyes. Closes them again immediately, because it hurts too much.
‘Do you have any idea what it must have been like to grow up in an orphanage in the Soviet Union in the 1950s? He only spoke about it once. He said: “We had lice even in our noses.” What was done to him and his parents would have left anyone embittered for the rest of their lives. Not him. When he met me, I was a twenty-year-old nobody. The basement experience was reflected in my brother’s eyes. But he took us with him, and he left behind the corpse of his physical son. In the house by the lake he led me to his huge library of first editions and said: “Spend as many hours here as you like. But know that none of these books will teach you how to close the eyes of a loved one.” I never encountered those words in the works of any philosopher. Nor have I ever heard anything so true.’
Aaron feels her way around her surroundings with her bound hands, seeking something with which she could defend herself. There is nothing. Only dust and stones.
‘What did your father teach you?’ Holm asks.
‘To shoot, to laugh and to be tender. And that evil exists.’
‘What a wise man. My first father taught me to rely on my fists. He taught me how many cracks there were in the basement ceiling. He taught me how to use a chainsaw. But he didn’t have the strength to teach me pain. My second father taught me everything else. I could list the useful things: how to use a rifle; he was a master, he had learned with the Spetsnaz. How to speak Russian, French, English, Italian. How to make yourself amenable to people, read a balance sheet, negotiate. How a suit should fit, and that you can tell everything about a man by looking at his shoes. How to appreciate a good meal and not eat like a pig. Many other things besides. But the most important things were: that the will must be greater than fear. That you can take everything from me, but not that. How to stand by a grave without despairing at the question of why you’re not lying in it yourself. How many people have you seen go? I don’t mean killing. I mean dying. Looking other people in the eye, hearing words that are too quiet to understand, holding a hand or only waiting with revulsion for someone to be silent at last. How often?’
‘Six times.’
‘Who were those six?’
‘A shoe-shine boy in Tangier, a taxi driver in Helsinki, a woman in an underground car park, a schoolfriend, my mother.’ She hesitates, before whispering, ‘And Niko.’
‘He survived.’
‘For me it was as if he had died.’
Holm’s breathing becomes a shade more laboured. Is the Touch of Death of Aaron’s index finger between his sixth and seventh rib, beginning to take effect?
She summons the courage to ask the question: ‘Have you ever watched the death of someone who was close to me?’
‘Who do you mean?’
‘The man who was guarding Eva Askamp’s flat.’
‘He was good. He sensed that I was after him, even though I didn’t make a sound. It was a matter of centimetres. I broke his neck with a jump kick. He was still alive. There was no grief in his eyes. He had had his time. I gave him the coup de grace with a nukite to the heart.’
Aaron feels herself being led to the courtyard by Pavlik, kneeling down beside Butz, reaching for his cold, snow-covered cheek and saying goodbye to him.
‘What was his name?’
‘Butz. Nice name. My father witnessed his young wife dying in a car accident. Later he saw his son and their oldest daughter die. I was there both times. He kissed his son’s forehead and called him by his pet name. His daughter suffered from a rare disease, no doctor could help her. In her last weeks he only left her room to go and wash. But when he had closed her eyes and I tried to comfort him, he looked at me with such indifference that I pulled my hand away. I’m sure you know what I mean.’
‘That it’s unworthy of a Samurai to show emotions.’
‘Yes. You refuse to obey that commandment. As I do. My father wanted to teach me, but that one time I was a disobedient student. Eventually his second daughter died as well. Natalya, his Natashenka, the apple of his eye. He couldn’t be with her to hold her hand. But the man who brought him the news told me that my father banged his head against all the mirrors. So in the end the student was right, and not the teacher. No pain can be so great as to be worth hiding.’
‘You became Nikulin’s right-hand man,’ Aaron says.
‘Much more than that. I visited a lot of countries, he initiated me into his business secrets, and showed everyone else that I had assumed the position of his son. When my apprenticeship was over, he called me in and put a photograph on his desk. It showed a good-looking man, perhaps in his early fifties. My father gave me the task of killing him. He didn’t tell me why. The man lived in London. I observed him there for days at a time. He led an unremarkable life in the suburbs, he didn’t seem to be particularly wealthy, he had a pretty young wife, children. I could see him reading stories to them through the window. He played with them in the garden, he was affectionate towards them. I struggled with myself. I couldn’t see why I should take the children’s father away, the wife’s husband. While I was thinking about that, day after day and night after night, someone forced his way into my hotel room. He thought I was asleep and tried to press the silencer of a Beretta against my forehead. After I had smashed his face in, I watched him dying and learned my lesson.’ He is breathing heavily again, it takes him a long time to utter the next sentence.
‘Who sent the man?’ Aaron asks.
‘The same one that Nikulin had told me to kill. His unremarkable life was just a façade.’
Footsteps upstairs. Token-Eyes. For how long will he manage to contain himself?
‘Yes. He was a rival. I shot him in his garden, right in front of his children. My father had taught me that mercy and the readiness to die for it are one and the same.’
‘And what did your father teach your brother? How to spit on graves?’
‘He sent him to expensive boarding schools. First in Lausanne. When the Soviet Union fell and we went back to Russia with him, it was one near Lake Baikal. But bad news started coming in. Sascha was torturing other children. He had to change school five times. The last one was in Kaliningrad. He was told to get something from a basement store room. When he didn’t come back, another pupil was sent down to get him. The boy was found dead in the basement. Sascha had rammed a broken wine bottle into his jugular. It was then that I understood that I would never be able to pay my debt.’ Holm says nothing. When he resumes talking, his tone is leaden and dull. ‘My father made sure that my brother wasn’t locked up. You can do a lot of things with money, it even eases some parents’ grief. He put Sasch
a in the care of a man who was indebted to him. The man wasn’t afraid of my brother. But today you can see what he taught him. In later years my father gave Sascha jobs for which he was ideally suited. I didn’t think it was a good thing; my father was skilled in cruelties that I didn’t share. But he was doing all this not for my brother, but for me. What did your father do for you?’
‘Nothing you need concern yourself with.’
‘I challenged my father. You never challenged yours. I saw the way you talked to him at the graveside. Your devotion is unconditional, you showed him obedience even in death. He was a man of iron principles, I studied every sentence of his that was ever written down. When I asked why you didn’t let Boenisch bleed to death, you were evasive. Wasn’t it the case that you talked to your father in the house in Spandau? Hadn’t you already decided to set yourself up as Boenisch’s judge? Did your father forbid it?’
She is mute and rigid.
‘I don’t want to have to hurt you again to get an answer.’
‘Yes, it’s true.’
‘Have you regretted it?’
‘No.’
‘You’re lying.’
Yes. She has been regretting it constantly since the day before. When she ran her hand over the sticky trickle in Boenisch’s cell. When she remembered Runge and the waitress. When she rocked Eva Askamp’s corpse in her arms. When Pavlik said ‘Butz’. When the shot was fired on 17 Junistrasse. Each time Aaron wished she hadn’t listened to her father’s voice that day.
And she wished the same thing now.
She goes into her inner room. She needs to think.
How is it possible that he knows my thoughts, my whole life, all my secrets? My friendship with Sandra and Pavlik. What my father represents to me. Gantenbein. Marlowe. That I had a rusty nail in Boenisch’s basement. That I’ve stolen. That I love Niko. That I follow Bushidō.
‘You’ve been in my flat.’ Aaron practically vomits the words, she feels so ill.
‘That took you a long time.’
It’s a shock. Like a rape.
‘There’s a painting by Eşref Armağan in your bedroom. You probably don’t want to know what it shows. I’ll leave you with your illusions. You have a lot of books. I thought that was strange at first, but then I understood. It’s enough for you to know that the books are there. Like the lamps, the plants, the painting. I was struck by two books in particular: Hagakure – The Way of the Samurai and, of course, Gantenbein by Max Frisch. Your favourite sentence from that one might be: “Every human being sooner or later invents a story that he sees as his life.” Another passage strikes me as more apt. “I’m blind. I’m not always aware of it, but sometimes I am. Then again I doubt whether the stories I can imagine are not really my life.” You read it. But you didn’t understand it. If you had faced that truth, just once, you would know that your life has been a lie for eleven years.’
‘You want to avenge your father. Say it.’
‘I’ll leave the simplistic answers to you.’
He’s swallowing his consonants. Aaron is sure now that the Touch of Death is responsible. The first symptoms. To be able to fight him she needs to wait until his circulation breaks down. But she will only have a brief window to do that, and then Holm will recover.
‘I sat on your bed,’ he goes on. ‘Even in sleep you control your breathing, did you know that?’
‘I bet we both do that.’
‘Are you trying to pay me a compliment? If I were an illusionist in a music hall and you jumped up after each of my tricks and cheered, do you think it would mean anything to me? The applause of a blind woman?’ He snorts. ‘For you, I learned Braille. I read your notes and felt your despair on my skin. You’re losing your memory, that perfect machine is running out of fuel. For me that would be worse than blindness. The fear of having been cowardly in Barcelona is growing in your head like a tumour. You are yearning for the truth. But which truth? You hoped that I would grant you absolution, that you were acting correctly. That’s why you’re kneeling in front of me right now. But what if everything was like a nightmare that you have never been able to escape? That you betrayed the Department’s code, and broke the seven commandments of Bushidō, and your only way out was seppuku. But not even that concession was made. I wouldn’t allow you that honourable death.’
‘Tell me what happened in Barcelona. Please.’
‘“Did Niko touch me? Did I touch him? Did we speak? What did we say? Why did I flee, leaving Niko behind?” That’s the only reason why you came to 17 Junistrasse. Because I’m the only one who can tell you the truth.’
‘That’s not true,’ she whispers. ‘I was concerned about those thirty people.’
‘For the Samurai lying is not a sin. It is much worse than that, more deplorable even than weakness. I will now give you my gun. It’s loaded, you’ll be able to tell that from the weight. I’m offering you the chance to kill me. It’s very easy. But then you will never know the truth. You won’t have another day of happiness, and you will die aware of having been cowardly. It’s entirely up to you.’
He puts the Remington in her bound hands. Her heart rushes full pelt into the tunnel and performs a somersault. She hears steel eating its way into concrete. She has the stench of coffee in her nose.
Hears herself screaming.
He grips her hands and brings the barrel of the pistol to his forehead. ‘What do you want more: to kill me, or to have a moment of recognition?’
She orders her index finger to pull the trigger.
Orders it, orders it, orders it.
But it won’t obey.
Holm takes the gun from her feeble hand. Aaron weeps and curls up on the cold, dirty floor, just as Niko curled up in the warehouse.
Holm gives her time. But not out of consideration. He wants her to feel the pain for as long as possible, the pain of knowing that he is for ever telling the truth and she is for ever lying to herself.
Only when she is silent does he say: ‘Alina invited you to Moscow. How did you react? Were you tempted to refuse and tell your superiors nothing about the call?’
Not for a second.
All night Aaron sat facing BKA chief Wolf, a colonel from the Russian secret service, the FSB, and some FBI agents. Suddenly the success of one of the biggest international operations depended on her. She had reached the goal of all her dreams.
‘No.’ She has to fight for every word. ‘It was the chance I’d been waiting for.’
‘Even though you knew it could mean your death.’
She remembers: at the end of the conversation Richard Wolf asked her to stay while the others left the room. He thoughtfully lit a cigar. ‘Miss Aaron, you are very young, and you’ve embarked on a remarkable career. But those men you met a little while ago are already putting bets on your head. I assume the rate won’t be very flattering to you. In Moscow there will be so many people from the FBI, the FSB and our own organization in the background that it’s going to feel like a works outing. Except that it isn’t one, it’s a suicide mission. Forget the organization. You’ll be on your own. Is that clear?’
‘Yes.’
Wolf looked at her quizzically, then reached out his hand.
‘You’ve left out something important,’ Holm says.
She remembers: Wolf didn’t release her hand straight away. ‘A name like yours can break you. My daughter has her own opinion on the matter. Your name can’t be the reason why you’re going. Are you sure that isn’t the case?’
‘My name has nothing to do with it,’ Aaron replied. And she knew that Wolf didn’t believe her.
‘I’m waiting,’ Holm says.
‘I wanted to demonstrate whose daughter I was.’
‘That’s the first true sentence that I’ve heard from you in this basement. You see, yesterday all that was missing. But now I’m giving you back your memories. They won’t be the last.’ He leaves the words hanging in the air like a death sentence. ‘I didn’t care about Alina. She was the property of a ma
n from the middle ranks of the Nikulinskaya. A silly flibbertigibbet. But I knew her brother very well. And so did you.’
Fyodor. A Maths genius.
He was the most handsome and the most lonely person I’ve ever seen.
He had developed an algorithm for calculating the maximum profit on trade in raw materials. Fyodor was indispensable to Nikulin. He knew a lot about his business deals. Most of it repelled him. Alina introduced him to Aaron. He liked her sad eyes. And she liked his. When she told the Moscow FBI resident about Fyodor, he gasped with excitement. ‘Whatever it takes, make him cooperate with us.’
‘My father ruled over his empire like a Tsar. He was unassailable. Until you came to Moscow and prostituted yourself to take everything away from him.’
‘You see me as a whore? Like your brother does? Yes, I slept with Fyodor. When he was very unhappy. And I was too. Because the man who saw Alina as his possession slit her open from belly to throat the night before. Because he’d taken some kind of drug. Or because she’d spoken out of turn. Or maybe just because he felt like it. That was why Fyodor clung to me and confided in me. But she was just a silly little girl.’
She hears him breathing for a minute. It sounds like gravel sliding from a tipper truck. Then he asks: ‘Did you see my father back then?’
I remember that too.
‘Once. The man who owned Alina was invited to a birthday party in the Petrovsky Palace. She took me along too, her German friend with the platinum credit card, and no one was suspicious of me. Women were part of the backdrop at the Nikulinskaya; they were displayed like a gleaming car or a gem-studded watch, but you know that. Nikulin held court in another room. His sidekicks sat around him, boring him with their eagerness. You can judge the status of a man by the number of his lackeys. I went with my father to state receptions where presidents attracted less attention. When I’d freshened up, Nikulin approached me in the corridor. His shoes shone like mirrors, his expression was quizzical. If the FBI agent had been there he would have drooled. But in Nikulin’s eyes I saw the cruelties that are supposedly alien to you. I would never have got into that cold bed. Alina was butchered that night. Fyodor was transferred to an FSB safe house. He only agreed to be questioned by me. I had to stay there for two days. The longest of my life.’
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