‘You knew my father had put a price on your head.’
‘Yes. Where were you? I’d taken Fyodor away from him. Didn’t I deserve to be killed by his son?’
‘I was in St Petersburg.’
‘I’m sure you’ve often regretted that.’
‘You wouldn’t believe how often.’
‘The guy in the underground car park was enough for me. I haven’t missed a thing.’
‘You knew he’d be waiting there.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you still went.’
‘I don’t like standing people up.’
‘Still as arrogant as ever. You fired a bullet into his brain even though he was kneeling defencelessly in front of you after taking a shot to the belly. Don’t deny it, it’s in your notes. Who was the hitman? Him or you?’
‘Did you know him? Was he your friend?’
‘What did you say?’
‘I asked if he was your friend.’
Auditory disturbances. The next symptom.
Holm laughs. Again a rock comes away above a chasm. ‘He wanted to ingratiate himself with my father, and lay your corpse at his feet like a mouse. Do you think I would respect someone like that? He died like a mouse, quite rightly. But in the Hotel Aralsk you didn’t prove that you were your father’s daughter. Just that you were a coward.’
*
Ten cowardly things that Aaron has done:
Barcelona
*
‘You asked why I shot the teacher. For just one reason: because it was completely pointless. Like what you did in the underground car park.’
‘You sadistic bastard! It isn’t that I think I’m superior to you, it’s that you think you’re superior to the whole world! If someone jostled you in the street, you’d cut their heart out and say they deserved it! You haven’t understood a single one of the books that you’ve read! You haven’t even understood that there isn’t the slightest difference between you and your brother!’
She feels it coming and throws herself sideways, but the butt of his gun catches her on the ear. A mechanism starts up in her head and catapults her at hyperspeed through a worm-hole of myriads of colours. She sees galaxies that are the bat of an eyelash, suns emerging from the dust of dying stars and fading away again; she plunges into the storm of spiral nebulas, into the intensity of a pain that makes her eyes explode.
At first she thinks it’s her own whimpering. Then she realizes that it’s coming from someone else. Vera. Holm has clubbed her, just as he clubbed Eva Askamp. Vera lies at his feet, choking on her terror.
‘I chose the same way as you. The way of honour. Who was my prince?’
‘Nikulin.’
‘I’ll count to ten. If you don’t give me the right answer I’ll kill the woman. One.’
‘Your father!’ she shrieks.
‘Two.’
‘Other people’s fear!’
‘Three.’
‘The hatred of all possessions!’
‘Four.’
‘Please! I want to answer all the questions honestly!’
‘Five.’
‘Fyodor!’
‘Six.’
‘Your brother!’
‘Seven.’
‘If you do this, I’ll have been completely correct!’
‘Eight.’
‘Violence is your prince!’
‘Nine.’
A storm rages in Aaron’s head, blowing Holm’s words ahead of it like leaves: Time for us to talk about loss – how to close the eyes of a loved one – being able to stand by a grave without despairing of the question as to why you aren’t lying there yourself – no pain could be so great that it would be worth hiding.
‘I’m waiting.’
‘Your prince was a woman.’
For a very long time her heartbeat and Holm’s breathing and Vera’s whimpering are the only sounds.
‘Right,’ he whispers at last. ‘Let’s take a break.’
*
Sascha hears the basement door opening. In the hallway he sees his brother with Aaron and the other woman. Sascha barely recognizes him. He seems to have aged ten years. Grey sweat lies on his brother’s ravaged features. His eyes cower dully in their sockets. Even the tattoos on his bare torso have lost their colour.
His brother totters, supports himself on the wall and tries to look at him, but his eyes slide away.
‘I need Aaron,’ Sascha says.
*
Holm waits until his brother has pushed the two women into the kitchen, then follows them. When he crept half-dead from the Havel, fell into the snow and didn’t know how to get back on his feet, it was easier than it is now.
32
‘Put me through to the Department,’ Token-Eyes says.
Vera is sitting beside Aaron at the kitchen table. She isn’t making a sound, she isn’t even shivering. That unsettles Aaron more than tears, pleading, a scream. She needs this woman. Somewhere in the house there is a weapon that no one else knows about. A weapon that everything might depend upon. A weapon that Aaron can’t get to. As long as she doesn’t know the truth about Barcelona, Holm can feel safe. He’s proved that to her. After that, Vera is her only hope of survival. But if she stays like this Aaron won’t be able to get through to her.
Bosch stands by her side. His sweat smells like sour milk. Holm is sitting opposite her. That thing that sounds like faint snoring is his breath. His circulation is going haywire. Presumably he is already suffering from balance disorders.
Token-Eyes has turned on his speakerphone.
Because he is in the room.
Holm leaves the negotiating up to him. Token-Eyes could have the discussion without him, but he doesn’t dare. He sees the state his brother is in, even though he can’t explain it. Never has it been easier to kill him, to savour that thing he has dreamed of since he was eight years old, when Holm lay bleeding in front of him. But Aaron knows that Token-Eyes’ fear of his brother will end only with his brother’s last breath. No, not even then.
‘Demirci.’
‘What’s the whore worth to you?’
‘Who are you talking about?’ Demirci’s voice rings out.
That’s not operation headquarters.
It could be a bunker, a hall, a warehouse with a concrete or stone floor, a high ceiling, bare walls.
A hangar. They got my message.
Relief carries Aaron over the abyss of her despair like a glider.
‘Who indeed,’ says Token-Eyes.
‘You’ve had five million.’
‘So?’
Demirci’s voice is as relaxed as if she were ordering a pizza. Aaron knows how much strength of will it must take. ‘I want to talk to your brother.’
‘You’re talking to me. If that doesn’t suit you I’ll hang up and shoot the blind bat in the head. No, I’ve got a better idea. I’ll blow her brains out first, then I’ll hang up.’
‘Prove she’s alive.’
‘One word out of place from the bitch and I’ll poke the other woman’s eyes out. That’ll give them something to talk about.’
‘I’m fine,’ Aaron says. ‘There’s a second hostage.’
Demirci has startled her several times today. But nothing like this. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got a meeting. Talk to Mr Pavlik.’
Even Holm holds his breath.
‘Here I am,’ Pavlik says. ‘What do you want?’
Just the sound of his voice! Aaron’s glider finds the updraught, rises high into an endless sky, above the clouds, leaves the abyss far below.
‘Has she lost her mind?’ Token-Eyes says, regaining the power of speech.
‘You’ll have to make do with me. So?’
‘Five million. Used. Small denominations.’
‘Have you spent the money already? I hope you spent it on something sensible. Brain surgery?’ Pavlik asks.
‘Either you pay up or tomorrow you’ll have big headlines: “Department Sacrifices Blind Heroine”. Is that what you wa
nt?’
‘You know we’re not going to give you another five million. So get thinking. And chin up: you can make a lot out of not very much. Suggestion: call me if anything happens.’
Pavlik hangs up.
She imagines Token-Eyes’ face. Again she thinks about the furious boy sitting under the Christmas tree. She knows what Demirci and Pavlik are doing. They want Token-Eyes to believe that her life is much less valuable than he thought, that those five million were paid for the schoolchildren and not for Aaron. She was making it clear to him that he isn’t negotiating from a position of strength, thus raising his inhibition threshold for doing something to her. It’s only absurd at first glance. She’s all Token-Eyes has. If you were rich once and you’re suddenly reduced to poverty, you learn to value the little you have left. During her time in the Department the tactic was often used successfully in ransom demands. The ‘Lissek manoeuvre’.
And once we failed.
It’s risky. She feels cold. If her life is seen as being of so little value, how insignificant is Vera’s?
She imagines Token-Eyes looking at his brother.
Holm struggles through the words. ‘You have never taken an interest in economics. Otherwise you would know that the burned money doesn’t represent a loss for the Berlin Senate.’ His lung rattles. He pauses, then starts again. ‘As if they had never paid it. It was just paper. They just need proof.’ Again he breaks off and collects himself. ‘On the other hand you have Miss Aaron. It’s up to you whether you want to let them go on treating you like a… like a schoolboy and…’
He lacks the strength to carry on.
Bosch still hasn’t said a word. But it smells as if the sour milk has been heated up.
Token-Eyes paces up and down, and stops behind Aaron.
‘Then we can get rid of this one too,’ he barks.
Aaron knows he doesn’t mean her, he means Vera, that he has drawn the Glock and wants to kill Vera, that he needs this the way other people need headache tablets. She pushes her knee against the edge of the table and topples over on her chair. At the same time she shoots her leg up vertically and strikes Token-Eyes on the head. She feels a stinging pain in her ankle. Aaron tries to straighten up, but can’t do it quickly enough to dodge the kick that Token-Eyes has aimed at her chin. He grabs her by the throat and begins to strangle her. Her bound hands wrap around his neck. She jerks her arms down and feels him somersaulting. Aaron throttles him with the cable tie and presses her knee against his throat.
And stops abruptly. The muzzle of the Glock 33 presses against a spot between her collarbones. ‘Not what I expected,’ Token-Eyes chokes from under her knee. ‘But the hell with it.’
The gun goes off.
Holm has fired. Aaron hears the Glock clattering to the floor. She tries to reach for it, touches it with her fingertips, but the gun skitters over the tiles when Bosch kicks it away.
Token-Eyes wails like an animal.
There is a slight strain in his brother’s voice. ‘You have three possibilities: complain about your little scratch. Pick up the Glock and try to kill me. Or call the Department. I’m fine with any of those.’
Aaron pulls one of Token-Eyes’ teeth out of her foot. She straightens and places herself in front of Vera to protect her, going into the attack position opposite Token-Eyes. Her legs are about to give. A gate bangs in the wind behind the house. Once, twice, three times. Nothing else.
Token-Eyes rises to his feet. Groans. Takes the phone. ‘Put me through to the Department.’
The sound of the gate again. Aaron thinks about Pavlik and knows how hard it must be for him to leave Token-Eyes floundering. At last he speaks: ‘I’m all ears.’
‘The five million has been burned.’
‘Were you cold?’
‘I can prove it.’
‘Have you got it on video?’
Aaron gets a shove. ‘Tell him, you piece of shit.’
‘It’s true. I was there.’
‘They’re holding a gun to your head. That’s not proof.’
‘I’ll throw her body out of the car somewhere. You’ll find the ashes of the money during the autopsy. I’ll force the whore to eat them. Then you’ll have your proof.’
‘Let’s just do some calculations for a second. This morning your brother had thirty hostages, and we paid five million for those. Now you’ve got two. Mathematically speaking that makes, just a second, three hundred and thirty-three thousand. I don’t want to cheat anybody, so I’ll round it up, seeing as we’re all friends.’
‘You’ve got ten seconds and then I’m putting the phone down.’
‘I’m a good person,’ Pavlik murmurs. ‘A million. Non-negotiable. Take it or leave it.’
Vera sobs. Aaron finds that strangely reassuring.
Token-Eyes lets the gate bang four times.
‘You have two hours to get us the money.’
‘And then?’
‘We’ll dump them somewhere.’
‘Sure. And I’m Father Christmas.’
‘Two hours.’ Token-Eyes ends the call.
It’s only then that Aaron notices that she’s bitten her lip till it bleeds.
*
In the hangar Demirci feels the men’s eyes on her. She shivers in her lined coat. She knows: everyone is waiting for Senator Svoboda to call. Instead she turns to the screen showing Berlin HQ. ‘Mr Majowski, how much counterfeit money do we have in the evidence locker?’
‘About two million Euros.’
‘Have a million put in a bag with a tracking device. Prepare Delmonte and Büker for the handover.’
Majowski is speechless.
‘Have we had reception problems?’
‘No,’ he says, composing himself.
Demirci avoids making eye contact with the others and walks quickly to the end of the hall. She opens the door to a narrow corridor. Closes it. Sits down on the floor, leans her head against the wall. Minutes pass. Pavlik comes. He sits down beside Demirci and holds out his pack of cigarettes. They smoke in silence, down to the filter.
Then Demirci says: ‘Jenny Aaron and Svoboda have a score to settle. She reminded him of that today. He won’t authorize any more money. When she’s dead he’ll sigh with relief.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Her life doesn’t depend on a million or a billion. Sascha doesn’t make the decisions, and his brother didn’t care about the money from the get-go. I could have told him to fuck off as well.’
‘They burned the money. How come?’
‘It was either Aaron or Holm. That would be his style. To demonstrate that he’s finished with everything.’
‘Do you think he wants to die?’ Demirci says, sitting up.
‘For thirty years he’s invisible. But all of a sudden he sends us his fingerprints. Why?’
‘And the chartered plane for three?’
‘To reassure Bosch. Holm never intended to get on that plane.’
‘Or else Finow was just a distraction. They might have left the country long ago.’
‘No. They were in Freienhagen. That’s just off the freeway, on the way here. The airfield remains an option for Sascha and Bosch. Holm will let them get on with it. He’s only interested in Jenny Aaron. Once he’s taken his revenge, he will kill himself.’
‘Why should he do that?’
‘His references to Bushidō. At first I thought he was only talking about her. Not any more. He lives by its rules just as she does. At any rate that’s what he imagines, however insane it might be.’ Pavlik fumbles a cigarette from the pack and rolls it between his fingers before putting it back. ‘I think I know what’s in the bag that he carries with him.’
Demirci gives him a questioning look.
‘A seppuku dagger.’
Her hands are so cold that she has to stick them in her coat pockets. ‘What reasons did the Samurai have for doing such a thing? Do you know about it?’
‘Only what Aaron has told me. Infringement of the code, loss of face, to honour
the prince. I’m sure there are others.’
‘And she follows those laws?’
‘I’ve never really tried to understand.’
‘So then in her eyes André deserved to die.’
Pavlik nods vaguely.
‘And in yours?’
‘No, it was just money.’
‘Kvist clearly saw things differently.’
‘He shot him in self-defence.’
‘I’ve read the Internal Affairs report. They were very dubious. It was a second-class acquittal.’
‘André died for one reason alone,’ he shouts at her. ‘Because I was a coward and Kvist wasn’t!’
‘I knew your twin brother,’ Demirci sad. ‘At first glance it’s barely possible to tell you apart. We didn’t get off to a good start, but then he became a big support to me and my most important adviser. He was a stranger to self-pity. If you ever see him again, tell him I miss him.’
‘He can fuck off.’
They gauge each other for a moment.
Nowak opens the door. ‘You need to listen to this.’
They follow him to the hangar. The picture and sound of the video display are out of sync. Majowski’s voice follows his lips after a short delay. In the pauses between the sentences it looks as if he’s repeating the last words he said, and can’t quite believe them. ‘Mertsch and Stemmler took over the surveillance of Kvist thirty minutes ago. He caught up with the train at the Buckower Chaussee crossing. He accelerated to the other side, right in front of it. They couldn’t keep up with him. They’ve just found his car on the Fritz-Erler-Allee. His phone was in it.’
‘You’ve lost Kvist?’
‘Yes.’
Demirci looks at Pavlik. Something falls from his face, like a stone that has just been hit with a hammer.
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