Brandenburg: A Thriller

by Glenn Meade

  Hernandez said, “You mentioned he might have been ill?”

  Sanchez flicked ash into a crystal ashtray. “One of the servants said he was in and out of the hospital for the past six months. Also, he had an appointment at a private hospital this morning. He was pretty sick. Cancer, the servant said. He’d lost weight. He didn’t look too good.” Sanchez glanced over at the corpse. “He looks a lot worse now. I’m having one of my men contact the hospital he attended. The San Ignatio.”

  Hernandez glanced at the body again, felt the sickness return. He moved a couple of paces toward the open wall safe. “Anything in there?”

  “Nothing.” Sanchez gestured to the fireplace with his cigarette. “But lots of ashes in the grate. Looks like he burned a lot of papers.”

  Hernandez stepped toward the fireplace. It had been his one hope, finding something, anything, but the old man must have been prepared, been sure before death to burn everything.

  “Not a sliver of paper left. Nothing but ashes.” Sanchez stared absentmindedly at the grate. “I wonder what the old man had to hide?”

  “I wonder?” echoed Hernandez.

  Sanchez looked up, stared at him for a moment before looking away again. “Anyway, it’s all over now. And it’s a wrap.” He looked away, pushed himself slowly up from the chair with effort. He took the handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his brow. “You want a beer? The refrigerator is full. Imported beers, too. German, Dutch, you name it. The old man isn’t going to drink them now. Me, I could do with one.”

  “A beer sounds good.”

  Sanchez moved away. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  Hernandez nodded. The detective turned and went out the door.

  • • •

  Hernandez stood there in the middle of the study, trying to think. His eyes went from the bloodied body to the wall safe, then to the fire grate. Why? Why had the old man killed himself? Because of his cancer? Or because of the people Rodriguez had told him about? Or maybe they had killed the old man, too, made it look like suicide.

  He crossed to the big, blackened fireplace and stood in front of it, stared down. He took a tong quietly from the stand of utensils beside the fireplace and raked the ashes. It was just as Sanchez had said. Not a sliver of paper. Only soot and ashes. What had they been, these papers?

  He replaced the tong and moved toward the open safe in the wall, careful to tread softly, listening at the same time for Sanchez’s return. He peered into the safe; it was empty, as Sanchez had said. He crossed quietly to behind the desk, tried not to look down at the body near his feet.

  Blood covered the desk’s blotting pad and polished surface. Hernandez felt queasy again. There were two drawers on the left side of the desk. He tried the top one first. It was unlocked and slid out quietly, the smell of the apple wood rising up to meet his nostrils. Inside were a pair of scissors, a letter opener, and some plain white sheets of bond paper.

  He flicked through the sheets of paper. All blank. He slid the drawer shut and tried the next. More blank paper, some rubber bands, a box of staples. He closed the drawer and looked down at the drying blood that seemed to be everywhere, at the rigid corpse, at the one hand raised in the air as if waving good-bye. So long, Señor Tsarkin.

  The old man had been careful. Very careful. Perhaps elsewhere he kept some information. Something that would point a way, open a door for Hernandez so that he might know what was happening. Gaining access to the house or study again would be difficult, perhaps impossible. This was his one opportunity. He stepped back toward the rows of shelves lining the walls.

  Books on Paraguayan history, a biography of Lopez, gardening books, heavy tomes on import-export regulations. Hernandez plucked one from the shelf. It was in Spanish, its pages virgin, unread. He replaced the book and riffled through some more.

  The same. No thumb marks, the smell of paper strong. The old guy hadn’t been a reader.

  As he replaced the last book, the telephone rang.

  Hernandez froze at the shrill noise disturbing the quiet of the study. It rang a couple of times, Hernandez listening to hear if Sanchez was returning, but nothing, no sound apart from the telephone. He crossed to the desk quickly and lifted the receiver.

  “Sí.”

  “Señor Tsarkin, please.” The man’s voice on the line sounded prissy. Hernandez thought he heard music playing faintly in the background, Ravel’s Bolero. He glanced down at the body of the old man on the floor, thinking for a moment. If it was a relative, it wasn’t his business to break the news.

  “What is it?” Hernandez asked more loudly.

  “Señor Tsarkin! I did not recognize your voice.”

  Hernandez was about to interrupt, but the man spoke first. “This is the reservations manager at the Excelsior Hotel. I am telephoning to confirm that everything is in order. The executive suite you requested for Friday evening is Suite 120. I am at your service and hope everything will prove satisfactory for your guests.”

  Hernandez said it automatically, feeling his pulse quicken: “Yes, I’m sure it will.” He turned his head sharply toward the study door, thought he heard footsteps in the distance. Sanchez returning?

  “There is a slight problem, however, señor,” the man went on, his voice now more stilted, formal. “We have some regular guests flying into Asunción late tomorrow night. They require several suites, and we are heavily booked. You said you would require the suite only from seven until nine o’clock. If it is possible, I would like to confirm this so that our expected guests may be accommodated.” There was a pause. “Could you confirm this, señor?”

  “Yes. Until nine.” Hernandez swallowed, hearing his heartbeat quicken, hearing the footsteps outside become louder.

  “Excellent!” said the man. “Thank you, señor. Buenas tardes.”

  “Buenas tardes.”

  Hernandez replaced the receiver and looked down at the body of Nicolas Tsarkin. Maybe not so buenas. When he looked up again, Sanchez was standing in the doorway, two cans of beer in his hands.

  “Who was that?” Sanchez asked as he came into the room.

  “No one,” Hernandez said with a dismissive shrug. “A wrong number.”

  “You’re telling me the truth?”

  “Sure, why wouldn’t I?”

  Sanchez looked at him for a moment, then offered a can of beer, watching as Hernandez cracked open the chilled can.

  Hernandez took a sip of the ice-cold German beer, the brand unknown to him. He looked over at Sanchez. “Good beer.”

  Sanchez said with an intensely skeptical look, “You should have let me take that call.”

  “It’s no big deal, Vellares.” Hernandez smiled.

  “Let me be the judge of that.” The detective raised the can to his lips and swallowed. “Are you finished here?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Drink your beer, then we’ll see what we can do with that car of yours. If I were a proper cop I’d have slapped you in prison for driving a car like that.”

  Hernandez smiled. He finished the beer in one long swallow, then tucked his notebook into his trouser pocket and slipped the pen in after it.

  Sanchez said, “The pen’s mine, amigo.”

  Hernandez winked and handed it back. “Gracias.”

  Sanchez put down the empty can and nodded toward the door. “Come, let’s get out of here. Dead bodies give me the creeps.”

  Hernandez took one last look at the old man’s corpse. Then he turned and followed Sanchez outside.

  • • •

  Hernandez drove back to the city through the dusty, hot streets and parked his car in the office lot of La Tarde, the old engine running smoothly now. He promised himself he would get it fixed just as soon as he had time.

  He climbed the stairs to the newsroom and greeted his colleagues before going to his desk and switching on his computer. It took him only fifteen minutes to write up a filler on the old man’s suicide, the bare facts, the name, the address, and the background
information, remembering it all, no need for the notebook on the desk in front of him.

  It was almost four in the afternoon when he filed his copy with the news editor, time for him to finish work. He flicked open his notebook, saw again what he had written there once he had left Tsarkin’s house: Friday, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., Suite 120. Excelsior Hotel.

  Two days away. The question was, what was happening? Why had Tsarkin booked a suite for only two hours? A meeting? It had to be a meeting.

  If that was it, then what he needed was a plan, a plan to get in there, listen to what was being said. He tidied his desk, then went down to the lot and drove to the Excelsior Hotel on the Calle Chile.

  The hotel lobby was busy. A plush palace of Oriental carpets and dark wood, the best hotel in the city. Hernandez took the elevator to the first floor and found the suite with no problem, noting the nearby room numbers and the layout before going back down to the lobby and out to the parking area and the old red Buick, parked twenty yards from the hotel’s fire-exit doors. Hernandez took note of the doors.

  The day was still hot, and he kept the windows down on the way to his apartment, smoking as he drove, trying to work something out in his head, trying to come up with a plan. The key to it all was Tsarkin. Only now Tsarkin was dead.

  When he stepped into his apartment twenty minutes later, he heard the gentle whirr of the air-conditioning unit by the window. He had forgotten to turn it off that morning. The room was cool, pleasant, and his body was very hot.

  The apartment overlooked the city and had a sweeping view of the river south of Asunción. Rudi loved it. A bachelor’s place, compact, one bedroom, a couch in the living room, where he had slept during Erica’s stay. He went into the kitchen and poured himself a large scotch, added some cracked ice, then went to sit by the window, staring absentmindedly at the riverboats plying up and down the Rio Paraguay.

  He glanced up at the photograph of his mother and father on the bookshelf in the corner of the living room. Why had his mother chosen to come to such a godforsaken city as Asunción? And yet it was home for him; he fit in more easily here than he ever had in his mother’s homeland. There were many things he hated about this city, many things he loved. He hated the poverty, the corruption; he loved the girls, the sun, the easygoing mestizos.

  He finished his scotch quickly, placed the glass on the table. He could still smell the scent of Erica’s perfume lingering in the room.

  He looked at the photograph on the bookshelf again, his father dark and handsome and smiling; his mother blond, pretty, but her Nordic face set in a harsh, strained smile. She should have smiled more. But then, she had never had much to smile about. That was the one thing the mestizos had done to his blood. Made him smile more.

  He smiled now, thinking of the suite in the Excelsior Hotel, the plan coming into his head with such ease, so complete, that he picked up the telephone at once and began to call the number.

  Perhaps the old Indian woman on the Calle Estrella had been right. Perhaps Erica would bring him luck.

  He hoped so.

  Because if not, then maybe he would end up dead, too.

  5

  RICHMOND, SURREY, ENGLAND. NOVEMBER 24

  There were no pedestrians in the quiet street of redbrick Victorian houses, the small park it faced empty on this winter’s day.

  The black taxi drew up outside Number 21, and Volkmann paid the driver and stepped out. It was cloudy and cold, the sky threatening snow as he walked up the narrow front path. The garden was overgrown, dockweed climbing between the bare winter rosebushes.

  As Volkmann unlocked the door and stepped inside, he heard the faint sound of music coming from the room at the back of the house and smiled. Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.”

  He left his overnight bag by the door and passed the small parlor, its door open to reveal the silver-framed photographs on the mantelpiece and the walnut sideboard, the bric-a-brac his mother had collected over forty years.

  In the kitchen, the big Aga range was fired, its metal throwing out a blanket of heat into the small room, the door at the end open, the music louder now as he stepped toward it.

  She sat by the window of the music room, her gray head bent close to the Steinway piano. The silver-topped walking cane lay on top of the black, polished wood. She looked up as he peered around the door, smiled before removing her glasses.

  “You’ve made an old woman very happy. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.”

  He smiled back warmly, crossed to where she waited, and kissed her cheek. “It’s only two days, I’m afraid. I’ve got to be back by Saturday.”

  She touched his face with her palm. “No matter, it’s good to see you, Joseph. How was your flight?”

  “Delayed, two hours. Why don’t we go into the kitchen? It’s warmer there.”

  He handed her the silver-topped cane and helped her toward the door, holding her arm as she limped. “I managed to get some tickets for the Barbican tonight. What do you think?”

  “Tonight? But that’s wonderful.”

  “It’s Per Carinni. He’s doing the three Beethovens.” He smiled down at the old woman. “And how’s the patient?”

  “Much better now that you’re here. You can tell me all the gossip about Strasbourg.”

  • • •

  It never changed, the house, remained always as he remembered it each time he returned: the same familiar smells, the same peaceful quiet that enveloped him like a warm cocoon, and always music somewhere in the background. The radio was on, Bach playing softly.

  They sat in the kitchen drinking tea. She had placed a plateful of cookies beside his cup, but he left them untouched, the old guilt creeping in on him again, the thought of her alone in the big old house, shuffling around on the silver-topped cane.

  Every time he returned Volkmann remembered her as younger. He glanced up at the photographs on the wall over the kitchen fireplace: his father and her, taken more than thirty years before, her dark hair falling about her face as she smiled out at the camera, himself a boy sitting on her knee outside the cottage in Cornwall.

  “Tell me about Strasbourg.”

  Volkmann put down the china cup. “There’s not much to tell. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and there’s a lot of distrust about. The French don’t trust the English; the English don’t trust the French.” He smiled at her. “And the Italians, of course, don’t trust anybody. So much for mutual-security cooperation.”

  “What about Anna? Do you hear from her?”

  “She telephones now and then. She met someone. She seems happy.”

  He stood up and placed a hand on her shoulder, smiled down at the wrinkled face. “Come. I’d like to hear you play for me. We have some time before the concert. Then I’ll call a cab and have them pick us up at seven.”

  • • •

  It was after one o’clock when the taxi taking them home after the concert turned into the street. The snow had stopped and when they reached the park, the old woman told the driver to stop, they would walk the rest of the way; she needed the exercise. Volkmann helped her out and gripped her arm, the snow soft underfoot, his mother ignoring his protests, saying she felt better, the evening had done her good.

  The trees of the park were ghostly white as they passed the entrance, snow outlining their branches, the open spaces a gray expanse in the gloaming.

  She wasn’t limping now as they strolled toward the house. For someone of an artistic nature who had fallen ill, his father had once remarked, the doctor ought to prescribe a round of applause, not pills. Volkmann smiled in the darkness, remembering the remark.

  She looked up at him. “Wasn’t Carinni divine?”

  They had reached the park entrance, and Volkmann looked down at her. “I’ve heard you play better.”

  She smiled. “You’re a flatterer, Joseph. But you know the way to an old woman’s heart.”

  She stopped to regain her breath, and he watched as she looked around at the sno
wy park landscape, then moved toward the entrance, stepping through the open gates. He stayed close behind her.

  “This reminds me . . . ,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  “Of when I was a little girl. Of Christmas. There was always snow in winter in Budapest.” She looked up at him and he could see her face dimly. “But that was all such a long time ago. Long before I met your father.”

  “Tell me again.”

  He had heard it all before, many times, her words like some comforting litany. The season of plenty in Budapest, and the anticipation of Christmas. When the blue flag was up on the frozen lake in Octagon Square, and the ice was thick enough for skaters, and the red candles flickered in the windows of warm houses, warm as an oven, the smell of burning oil lamps, great gray plumes of coal smoke rising in the cold air. Budapest long ago, the city of her childhood.

  But she was silent. Volkmann looked down, saw her wipe tears from her eyes. He touched her arm gently.

  “Come, you’ll catch cold.”

  She turned her head then, looked out over the cold white park. Volkmann moved to grip her frail arm before the melancholy took hold. As he looked at her face, he remembered the young woman she had been on the beach in Cornwall all those years ago.

  She looked up at him and he saw the grief in the wet brown eyes. “I miss him, Joseph. I miss him so.”

  Volkmann bent and took her wrinkled face fondly in both hands, kissed her forehead. “We both do.”

  6

  ASUNCIÓN. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25

  The giant Iberia 747 banked onto final approach and began its descent into Campo Grande airport.

  Of all the passengers on board the packed flight to Paraguay’s capital that late afternoon, none was probably as tired as the middle-aged man in the dark-blue suit who sat quietly in row 23.

  The flight he had endured earlier from Munich to Madrid had been tolerable, but the long haul from Madrid to Asunción had taken its toll and now his dehydrated body ached.

  It was almost three months since he had last visited Paraguay. He hadn’t enjoyed it then, and it was unlikely he would enjoy it now. Mosquitoes. Heat. Temperamental natives. But this time his visit would be even briefer, twenty-four hours, and for that, he was grateful.