“It’s got a nice coastline. Chalk cliffs, sandy beaches, smart little towns with old wooden villas.”
“Oh. That sounds nice. I would like that. If I’m not imposing on you?”
Carver looked at her. She gave him a polite, almost demure smile but a knowing twinkle lit up her eyes for a split second. “Not at all,” he said. “By the way, I got in touch with the chairman of the foreign press association yesterday,” said Carver. “He said you can get temporary membership and they can help you get accreditation for election day and for the big campaign rallies.”
“Thank you very much, Frank. I need all help I can get.”
The storm moved south and the setting sun broke through the clouds in a blinding blaze that reflected in Carver’s rear view mirror. It made him squint. A deep red mackerel sky was unfurling ahead of them.
“Oj!” said Ludmilla. “How beautiful.”
“So have you been selling more stories?” he inquired.
“A few,” said Ludmilla, looking out of the side window. “A profile of Gutman, a story about neo-Nazis and trouble they are in” … she turned to him “thanks to you and your friend.”
“Who do you sell them to?”
“Trybuna, Gazeta Polska, and some smaller regional newspapers. Ones that can’t afford full-time correspondents here but want to know about election.” “What will you do after the election?”
Ludmilla shrugged. They entered a long avenue lined with chestnut trees in autumn colours. Between the trunks speeding past, Friesian cows threw long shadows on the green pastures. The fields were bathed in the setting sun.
They reached the small resort of Sellin 20 minutes later. The season was over and there weren’t many guests in the 100-year-old clifftop hotel. Carver came here for a brief holiday just before he left Germany. Long before he met Rebecca. From his room, he could see waves crashing onto the beach in the last vestiges of daylight. White crests lined the Baltic right up to the deep blue horizon. He spotted Ludmilla at the edge of the cliff, staring out to sea. The wind tousled her hair.
Stralsund
Tietjen’s car got a police escort out of the town. “I don’t want to drive to Berlin tonight. Head to Rostock,” he ordered, drying his hair with a towel. Achim Beckmann nodded and slowed down to avoid a group of neo-Nazis surrounded by police. One of the skinheads spotted Tietjen and raised his arm in a Hitler salute. “We need to talk, Commander. Urgently,” said Beckmann, looking at Tietjen.
“OK, stop when we’re out of this shithole,” said Tietjen.
They drove on in silence for 20 minutes. “This will do,” said Tietjen. Beckmann pulled into an empty layby, jumped out, got an umbrella from the boot and opened Tietjen’s door. They walked well away from the car and stood under a tree.
“Commander, I ran into Wuttke back there,” said Beckmann. “Possible security problem. In Dresden. A member of Sturm Wotan. Sven Schwartz. He’s been asking around about you.”
“Go on.”
“He’s been asking if there’s anything going on with you and Gutman. Apparently, he also asked people about the Wewelsburg meeting. A few days beforehand, he wanted to know if you were going.”
Raindrops pattered on the umbrella. “Shit. That must be the leak,” Tietjen said. “Tell Wuttke to deal with him. Tell him I want him to suffer. Before he dies, I want to know if he spoke to that journalist.”
“The Chronicle guy?”
“Yes. And the German freelancer. If they dig around anymore, they’re going to have to go too.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Did Wuttke say what exactly went wrong in St. Goar?”
“No, Commander. He just said Gutman got lucky. And that it was always a long shot.”
“Drole,” said Tietjen. “And the next one’s still Bonn?”
“Yes.”
“It had better work. We’re cutting it fine. That’s just five days before the election.”
They walked back to the car.
Sellin
They met in the lobby an hour later. Ludmilla planted a kiss on Carver’s cheek. He recognized her perfume, Rive Gauche. “Frank, this island and this little hotel, it’s so beautiful!”
They walked down a long flight of wooden steps to the beach. The pier, recently restored to its 1920s splendour, was an elegant jumble of white-painted wood and glass. Its outlines were illuminated by a string of lightbulbs. Inside, the mahogany-panelled restaurant was decorated with ship’s wheels, anchors, fishing nets and sepia-toned photographs of the fishermen of Rügen. A staircase led to an upper level for the best views. A little incongruously, a black grand piano stood in the centre of the room.
Only a couple of other tables were occupied. The waiter lit the candle. “I would like beer,” said Ludmilla. Carver ordered two large glasses of the local brew, Störtebeker. “It’s named after the 14th century pirate Klaus Störtebeker,” he said. “When he was caught and sentenced to be beheaded, legend has it that he asked the mayor of Hamburg to free as many of his companions as he could walk past once his head had been cut off. His head was chopped off and lo and behold, he stood up and staggered past 11 men before the executioner tripped him up. But they were all executed anyway.”
“That last bit sounds very German,” said Ludmilla.
She had makeup on. She didn’t need any, but Carver felt a tinge of satisfaction that she had made the effort.
“I love sea,” she said. “I was born in Gdansk and went to school there. I reported on fall of Iron Curtain from there. For my school newspaper. The Germans think they brought down the Berlin Wall. What did they do? They waited to see that it was safe and then they made a few demonstrations. But we Poles” – she tapped her chest – “we bled. We founded Solidarity. We were organising strikes when East Germans were still obedient little communists. We had free election five months before Wall opened! Everyone forgets it.”
They ate battered cod and chips from the limited menu. She had an impressive knowledge of Germany and knew all the campaign issues, the strengths and weakness of the candidates, who the most powerful regional governors were, the latest opinion polls. She told him how she had been busy fending off the attentions of Gutman’s spokesman, Becker, in the last few weeks.
“He is awful man, Frank. He keeps inviting me out to dinner whenever I ring up and ask questions. You are lucky you are a man. You don’t have to deal with pigs trying to get into your pants.”
“That must be dreadful,” said Carver. “How about another drink?”
She threw a chip at him. His phone rang. It was Suzy from the Chronicle’s research unit. He excused himself and walked out onto the terrace.
“You asked for rich Nazis who died in the last year and who might have bequeathed their estates to the FNP or to neo-Nazis,” she said.
“Yes. Have you found something?” Carver walked around to the back of the restaurant to shelter from the wind.
“We’ve only found two possibles. One is a Heinz Grimm, an SS man, became a banker, died in Vienna in July. He was well-off by the looks of it, but he had two daughters. Don’t know if he left them anything. The other guy lived in Nice, Siegfried Stahl, an antique dealer. Died in March. There was a report in a local paper exposing him as an SS man, claiming he had left a large sum of money. No relatives.”
Carver made her spell the name. “Thanks, Suzy. That’s extremely helpful.”
Carver returned to the restaurant lost in thought. Grimm had died too recently. But Stahl? He and Renner would have to go to Nice. This could give them their first concrete lead. As he climbed the steps to their table, he heard classical music. He thought it was a CD until he caught sight of Ludmilla at the grand piano, playing a Chopin polonaise. She smiled at him and broke into “Rule Britannia” for a few seconds before shutting her eyes and starting the “Raindrop” prelude. The restaurant was empty now. The waiter was sitting at a nearby table, listening. He studied Ludmilla with rapt admiration on his face.
Carver was no connoisseur. But
it was evident that she was superb. He liked Chopin, and she was playing him beautifully. Another waiter appeared, followed by two cooks. They sat down to listen. Ludmilla had her back arched and a look of intense concentration on her face, every bit the concert pianist. Her graceful fingers stroked the keys with languorous delicacy, then gripped them with irresistible, almost violent authority during the dark crescendo. When she had finished, a fleeting look of despair crossed her face as the last note quivered in the air. She gave a shy smile when Carver and the other listeners broke into applause.
“Encore!” the cook called. “Encore, bitte, bitte!”
She turned to Carver. “What would you like to hear?”
“Your favourite,” he said.
“Ah, Ballade Number Four.” By now the entire restaurant staff, including the head chef, were in the room. Ludmilla was transformed. She was no longer the easygoing freelancer. She played the piece as if it were the story of her life, as if she herself experienced all the hope, all the passion, all the tragedy that rang out of Chopin’s melancholic masterpiece. After another round of loud clapping, the restaurant manager came over, bowed and shook her hand. “Are you a concert pianist?”
“Alas, no!” said Ludmilla.
“Well you should be! That was … that was simply sublime! What can I bring you? On the house.”
“That’s very kind! I’d like a vodka please.” She got up and walked over to Carver. The waiter brought two ice-cooled glasses and a bottle of Russki Standard. “With our compliments.”
She laughed and poured out two shots. “Nastrovje!” They downed them in one. She refilled the glasses.
“What are you doing wasting your fingers on laptops when you should be in a concert hall?” Carver demanded.
She shook her head and studied her glass. “I trained but believe me, I’m not good enough. I made three mistakes there. It is hobby. More than hobby. Passion. Chopin is my passion, Frank. He is part of the Polish soul. All that pain. And honour. And beauty.”
Carver smiled at her. “Shall we go for a walk?”
The tide was out and the wet pebbles glinted in the moonlight. The wind had died down a little, and it was still warm for early September. Dozens of Strandkörbe –wicker “beach baskets” that seated two and offered protection from the sun and wind – stood in neat rows along the white beach. The lights went out in the pier restaurant. Ludmilla took a swig of vodka, handed him the bottle, kicked off her shoes and padded towards the waterline 20 yards away. She stood in the wet sand, looking out to sea and letting the waves hiss up around her ankles. He put his hand on her shoulder, gently turned her around and looked at her. Her mouth opened. Her tongue was like velvet. “Come,” she said, leading him by the hand towards the beach baskets. “This one.” He sat down under the canvas awning. She squatted astride him and rubbed her crotch against his. He undid her blouse and tore her bra down. Her hand unzipped his fly. He grabbed her buttocks and pulled her closer. Her lips tasted of salt and vodka. The basket creaked and rocked on the sand as he thrust into her. Her muscles tensed around him. She gave a low moan and held onto the sides of the basket, her hips quivering. He came with copious thrusts. “So much,” she breathed into his ear. Suddenly the back of the basket collapsed with a loud scrape, leaving them horizontal and under the open sky. She gave a loud shriek and laughed. She climbed off him and picked up the bottle. A lighthouse beam from miles up the coast flashed across the sky, silhouetting her slender figure. She turned to him. He couldn’t see her face.
He woke with a start in his hotel room. A hand was grasping his balls and the base of his cock. Her tongue was licking his shaft. “Come on,” she said. It sounded like a command. She lay on him and slid up and down, spreading her wetness on his stomach, his groin and his thighs. He gathered her full breasts in his hands. The curtains billowed in the breeze. The sea sounded angry. He rolled her over and eased into her. Her legs locked around his back. She gasped out loud and held the back of her hand against her mouth. She gazed at him with a distant, pensive look. Then she put her hand around his neck, pulled him towards her and kissed him hard.
When his alarm clock went off a few hours later, she was gone. It was 8.30 a.m. He showered and dressed and knocked at her door. There was no answer. She wasn’t at breakfast either. “The lady checked out and paid a couple of hours ago,” said the receptionist.
Chapter Twenty-One
Schwerin, North-Eastern Germany, Tuesday, August 28
Stefan Schulte liked the thought of being a secret agent. But working nine-to-five in an office in the bowels of the interior ministry of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern wasn’t exactly James Bond.
The 27-year-old telecoms expert signed up with the anti-terrorism department covering the north-eastern corner of Germany only six months ago, but was tired of being treated like a trainee by middle-aged bureaucrats who had no idea about IT.
Better-paid jobs in the private sector beckoned, and the main clandestine operation he was involved in was job negotiations with the owner of a start-up company developing smartphone apps in his native Berlin.
Schulte’s duty was to handle surveillance equipment and provide technical help with phone tapping. He also maintained links with mobile phone companies. The department’s main task was to keep an eye on violent neo-Nazis, of which there was no shortage in the region.
They included a pig farmer named Sven Wuttke, head of the Kameradschaft Mecklenburg. He had previous for grievous bodily harm and displaying unconstitutional symbols. He once ran a swastika up the flagpole at a garden party he had advertised in Internet forums as the “Happy Holocaust Barbecue.” His only ever jail sentence was suspended, and the fines he was ordered to pay didn’t bother him.
Schulte printed out the email, walked down the corridor and knocked on the door of his boss. “Herr Direktor, there’s something interesting here.” Heinz Krumnagel, the rotund chief of anti-Nazi operations for Mecklenburg, snatched the printout from Schulte. “What am I looking at?”
“It’s from the phone company of Sven Wuttke. His movements in the last six weeks.”
“I didn’t request this.”
“The order came from headquarters in Cologne last month. It went out to all regions. To send out stealth text messages to keep tabs on the whereabouts of top neo-Nazis. I think you were on leave.”
“They don’t need to worry about Wuttke,” Krumnagel murmured as he studied the list of towns Wuttke had visited. “He gets around, doesn’t he? So what? He’s a businessman.”
“There’s something strange about the times and dates.”
“Come on, then. Out with it.”
“Nuremberg, July 31. Münster, September 24. He was in the vicinity at the time of two Islamist attacks. The grenade thrown at Gutman in Nuremberg. The bombing of the church in Münster. He was within a few hundred metres of the incidents both times. Struck me as an odd coincidence. I mean, OK, he might have been in Nuremberg to demonstrate against Gutman or whatever. But Münster’s a bit out of the way. And there were no far-right events there that week. I thought it might …”
“Thank you, Herr Schulte,” said Krumnagel, standing up. “Please forward me that email and delete it from your system. Good night.”
“But …”
“No buts, Herr Schulte. I’ll take care of things from here. Leave it with me.”
Berlin
When Moshe Stein, the Israeli ambassador to Berlin, wanted something from the German government, he usually got it pretty quickly. His request for an urgent meeting with Chancellor Müller’s chief of staff, Horst Schmidthuber, and with the German coordinator of intelligence services, a career bureaucrat called Holger Bouffier, was granted almost immediately. Within two hours, the three men were sitting together in a spacious, windowless room in the chancellery building, the modernistic white block dubbed the “Washing Machine” by Berliners.
Stein, a bearded, gaunt man, came straight to the point, as usual. “Rudolf Gutman. We have information that his s
ecurity isn’t as tight as it should be. There was an assassination attempt on him in St. Goar on the Rhine on August 19.”
“Excuse me?” said Schmidthuber.
“He was fired at,” Stein said. “From across the river. He is extremely lucky to be alive. The bullet missed him by inches. No one noticed.”
Schmidthuber looked at Bouffier. “We do not have any such information,” Bouffier replied.
“A receptionist was murdered in the hotel Zur Traube in St. Goarshausen, just across from St. Goar,” said Stein. “Gutman was on stage at a festival there. We think the sniper fired from a room in the hotel. We think he was disturbed by the receptionist.”
“Do you have evidence?”
Stein raised both hands and gave a thin smile. “Trust me.”
The German officials stared at him in disbelief. “We also believe there was a security lapse at the press ball last Friday,” said Stein.
Bouffier cleared his throat. “Yes, there was an incident which is being investigated. Two security guards and a waiter were overpowered and knocked out by a guest with some kind of gas. But we have no information that Gutman or anyone else was targeted.”
Schmidthuber turned to Stein. “Do you know who was behind it? The shooting in Goar? Revengers of Allah?”
“We don’t know. It’s possible. We also believe his private home is not well enough protected and that the grenade attack in Nuremberg …”
“Just hold on, please, Herr Stein,” Schmidthuber said. “Gutman is a German national. This is Germany!”
“… and that the grenade attack in Nuremberg could and should have been prevented,” Stein continued. “You will understand that we have a particular interest in Herr Gutman’s safety.”
“As do we!” said Schmidthuber. “Is Herr Gutman aware of this particular interest? I somehow think he would be furious if he knew.”
“We offered to help you protect him,” said Stein.
“And we declined because we know how to protect our politicians!” Bouffier retorted.
The Jewish Candidate Page 13