Carver’s heart wrenched as they lay Renner down roughly on the stained carpet of the train corridor. They tore off his jacket and opened his shirt, massaged his chest, fitted an oxygen mask. They were good, but Carver’s hope started to fade. They applied electric pads. They shocked his heart over and over again. Carver cringed at the high-pitched whine of the defibrillator and the sight of Renner’s lifeless body convulsing with every discharge. Then they injected adrenalin. There was silence. He could see the medics look at each other. “Last try,” one murmured.
Renner’s chest lurched again. His eyes, wide open and bloodshot, clouded over.
One medic stood up and shook his head at Carver.
“Hang on,” said his colleague. “Got a pulse. There’s a pulse. Really faint.”
Carver squeezed past the medic and knelt by Renner. “Wolfgang. Hold on, man. You’re going to make it. They’re going to get you to hospital. You’re going to be OK. Can you hear me? Wolfgang?” His voice was choking. “Can you hear me? You got them! You got them. I’ll … I’ll finish it.” Carver’s throat tightened.
“Come on,” said the ambulanceman. “We’ve got to him to hospital really fast.”
He followed as they stretchered Renner off the train. Renner’s face was sheet-white in the cold neon lights of the station. People stood aside and watched as they ran, wheeling the stretcher to the end of the platform. They loaded Renner into the ambulance. A medic closed the doors. “Your friend isn’t out of the woods. Do you want to come along?” Carver saw two policemen walking towards them. He shook his head and backed away. “I think he may have been poisoned. God knows what with.” No time for long explanations now. The Polizei had had their chance. He slipped into the crowd of onlookers and ran out of the station.
He felt dazed. His mind was blank. He crossed a street and found himself walking along the “East Side Gallery,” the longest surviving stretch of the Wall, a mile-long line of murals painted by artists. One of them showed the “Brothers’ Kiss” between Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker. The sight of the old men pressing their mouths against each other made him feel sick. He leant with his back against it and looked up and down the street. There was no one around. Come on you fucking bastards, where are you? With your guns. Or your bombs. Or your fucking vials of poison. Renner’s open-eyed, death-white face kept flashing into his mind, a grimace of panic and fear. Carver slid down the wall and crouched on the pavement. Panic welled up in him. Panic was the worst thing. Anger was what he needed. He hardly knew anything about the brave, peerless reporter he had just seen battling for his life in such agony. A school group of babbling Italian teenagers walked past him. He remembered the recording. He waited until it was quiet enough again, held the recorder to his ear and listened.
It was hard to make out the words. Hauser was speaking quietly, and in a heavy Bavarian accent. He got up and walked on along the Wall, occasionally leaning into it to drown out the noise of passing traffic. Once he had turned the volume to maximum, he could understand the old man’s whispers. It was clear evidence. Then he got to the last sentence.
“That one’ll kill you and send you off with the funeral march. Lethal bitch.”
He played the sentence again.
“That one’ll kill you and send you off with the funeral march. Lethal bitch.” What did that mean? Send you off? And why the funeral march? Why the definite article? Why not a funeral march?
Carver walked on. The funeral march. The funeral march. The fucking funeral march. It struck him like a kick in the gut. He felt dizzy and reached out to the Wall to steady himself. He shook his head. The blackness faded from his eyes.
It couldn’t be. Impossible. He felt guilty even entertaining the thought.
The Funeral March. He saw her delicate fingers on the keyboard in Sellin. She played nothing but Chopin that night. She had tears in her eyes. “Chopin is my passion, Frank. He is part of the Polish soul. All that pain. And honour. And beauty.”
He stood, petrified in thought, staring blankly down the street. It was getting dark. The disbelief gave way to horror. She was on the coach to Bonn. She could have planted the bomb on Chhadat. She could even have poisoned Wolfgang. Ludmilla. No. It couldn’t be. He rang her number. He waited for 10, 20, 30 rings. No answer.
She used me to get into the press corps, to get on the trips. Did I ever actually see anything she wrote? How do I even know she’s Polish?
No. This was ridiculous. He rang her again. She had his new mobile phone number. He changed his phone setting to withhold his number. She answered immediately. “Yes.”
“Ludmilla! It’s Frank!”
There was pause. “Hi Frank. Can’t talk right now. Will call you back.” Her voice was different. Monotone, cool. Not the Ludmilla he knew. She put the phone down before he could answer. He rang back but she rejected the call. She no longer had to put on an act.
Carver was in a cold sweat. It was too much to fathom. Where was she now? Who the fuck was she?
“I’ll go to cover whatever party wins, for a colour piece. I’ll come to you afterwards, darling.”
Carver held his face in his hands. He couldn’t hold it in. “You fucking monster!” The Italian teenagers, far ahead of him, heard the furious shout and looked round at him. You treacherous, murdering, mercenary, evil, monstrous whore. The hatred was back. The same blind loathing he had felt in Sastrow when he was kicking, punching, stabbing and biting those bastards, feeling satisfaction with every contact. When he watched them burn. It was worse this time. The guilt made it worse. Through him, she got close to Wolfgang, to Gutman, to all those people who died in Bonn. A tour bus drove by. People were taking photos of the Wall. They were so far away. He was in a new society now. In a simple, violent, ruthless place with rules of his own making. The story no longer mattered. What mattered now? Forget the safety of Gutman, now one of the best-protected men in the world. Forget the scoop, forget the truth, forget justice. This was just about avenging his mate. He started running.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Berlin, SPD Party Headquarters, 7 p.m.
The beer was flowing fast. The polling stations had closed an hour ago, and the latest TV projection showed the SPD two points ahead of the conservatives. The gap was widening. Gutman had made it. Hundreds of ecstatic campaign workers, MPs, ministers-in-waiting and journalists milled around the modern atrium, watched by the outsize statue of Willy Brandt, the legendary SPD chancellor. The party faithful were slapping backs, hugging each other, shaking their heads in disbelief that their man had pulled it off. Some were standing in stunned, contemplative silence, munching sausage canapés and gazing at the colourful charts being shown on the TV screens, awed by the prospect of a return to government after eight years.
A crowd of thousands gathered outside the modern, triangular, glass-fronted building on Wilhelmstrasse. This was a global sensation. The nation that perpetrated the Holocaust had elected a Jewish leader, despite terrorist threats that prompted the biggest security operation in German history and caused massive disruption to voting. “Germany’s rehabilitation is now complete,” one pundit proclaimed on CNN. Finally, almost 70 years after the collapse of the Third Reich, the country could put the crimes and the terror of the Second World War behind it. Finally, Germany was free to move forward unencumbered by its past, in the eyes of the world. “Symbolically,” said one TV news reporter, “what has happened today is as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall.” The question, said more sceptical voices, was whether Germany would see it that way, whether it would grasp the enormity of this change and would have the courage to fulfil its new role – to move away from the chequebook diplomacy, to stop hiding behind its history, to assume the global responsibilities befalling a nation of its size and power. The answer, according to many pundits, was: “If anyone can do it, Gutman can.”
Now everyone was waiting for him. The stage, decked out in the SPD’s trademark red livery, was ready. Ludmilla Janowski took the radio microphone o
ut of her bag, climbed the steps and walked towards the lectern. A glass and a sealed bottle of chilled water had already been placed there in preparation for Gutman’s victory address. As she put the microphone on the lectern and adjusted it, a tiny jet of liquid squirted from the middle button of the cuff of her elegant grey jacket. It hit the inside of the empty glass and formed into several droplets of clear liquid, imperceptible to anyone not looking closely. She was just turning round when an SPD worker jumped on the staged and rushed towards her. “This is out of bounds!” he called out. “No microphones here! You must remove it!”
Her face was a picture of shocked innocence. “Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t know! I’m from Radio Warsaw. In Poland we put microphones on the stand!” She gave him a demure smile.
“You will have to stand it next to a TV or talk to our press department,” said the worker, eyeing the accreditation pass pinned to her jacket. “They can give you a feed for Herr Gutman’s speech.”
“Thank you. I’m new here.” The reporter walked off the stage clutching her microphone.
Ritz Carlton Hotel, 7.15 p.m
Gisela Hornbauer bit down hard on the black rubber ball gag strapped onto her mouth. Tietjen tugged with his teeth at the chain attached to her nipple clamps, snarling and snorting and shaking his head like an attack dog. His saliva splattered her breasts. Her nipples were stretched so far that they were turning white, and they were starting to bleed under the teeth of the clamps. With each tug on the chain, the pain got better, and the delicious spasms ebbing and flowing in her crotch grew more violent. Her blood was smeared on his sheet-white, hairless chest. He reached over to her nose and squeezed it tight. She squealed and retched and felt her body convulse in the most brutal, wonderful climax he had ever given her. He let go of her nose and ripped the thick rubber handle of the whip out of her pussy. She had stars in her eyes. He flipped her round, as if she were a slab of meat on a butcher’s bench, pulled her loins towards him, spread her buttocks apart and thrust into her anus, squatting on his haunches and making rapid, Alsatian-like thrusts. He came in seconds, as usual.
This was a celebratory fuck. Hornbauer’s contract with the SPD ended tonight, and her master had won a great political victory.
Tietjen slapped her buttocks and climbed off. “I’ve got to go soon,” he said, slipping into a white hotel bathrobe. “Meet my people, face the press.” He grinned. “Eleven percent! A fantastic result for the movement. Historic.”
Hornbauer freed her nipples, pulled out the gag and padded over to him, still a little unsteady from the punishment. She rubbed her cheek against the soft towelling covering his chest. “I’m so proud of you, Hermann. You are so … so … strong. So talented.”
7.20 p.m.
Carver ran across Oberbaumbrücke bridge, which spanned the Spree river, into Kreuzberg. The taxis were either full or ignoring him. He rang the police emergency line.”An assassin is posing as a Polish reporter at the SPD party headquarters. Her name is Ludmilla Janowski.” He was put on hold. A man came on and asked him to identify himself. Carver knew he was too out of breath, too flustered to sound immediately credible. He was told to wait again. An agent from the Berlin Regional Criminal Police Office came on. Carver yelled down the phone: “Stop passing me on! Gutman is in immediate danger! Notify the security team at SPD party headquarters. The assassin is a reporter accredited as Ludmilla Janowski!”
Carver gave Ludmilla’s mobile phone number and home address. But the agent sounded sceptical. “Come on man!” Carver shouted. “I’m the Berlin correspondent for The London Chronicle! How many crank calls do you get that are this detailed?”
“You’d be surprised,” the officer replied.
Ludmilla walked through the lobby and out of the building with her mobile phone clamped to her ear, looking the part of the busy reporter filing copy on a breaking story.
SPD Campaign Headquarters, 8 p.m.
It took Carver five minutes to wade through the crowd thronging Wilhelmstrasse. He ran into the lobby and flashed his press pass. Security was tight. He went through an X-ray gate and got a thorough pat down. He thought about alerting the guards but changed his mind. He pushed his way into the atrium. The laughter and excited chatter were deafening. The SPD faithful had settled in for a long night of heavy partying. How was he going to spot her in this? Had she planted a bomb and left already? Would she risk anything here? How could she get anything through security? Two police officers brushed past him. They looked edgy. Maybe they were taking his warning seriously.
“Frank! What a show!” He turned round to see Brian Evans of the Sunday Herald. “What’s this I hear? The Chronicle’s letting you go? Is it true?” Carver ignored the question and stared at the stage. Two men with sniffer dogs were checking it for explosives one last time. A roar went through the crowd. Gutman was coming. Müller conceded defeat a few minutes ago. Surrounded by bodyguards, he and Heise drifted through the mass of delighted supporters, shaking hands and slapping backs, pointing, giving thumbs up, laughing. Gutman skipped onto the stage from the side and raised both arms like a boxing champion. Hundreds of party workers in front of him and on the rows of internal balconies above the vast atrium broke into roars of “Rudi! Rudi! Rudi! Rudi!” Carver tried to push forward but the hall was so packed that he couldn’t move an inch further. He couldn’t even see Gutman properly. A couple of tall guys were blocking his view.
Gutman surveyed the hall, the ecstatic faces, many streaming with tears, the lines of TV cameras, the barrage of flashguns. The world was watching. The ground shook with the rhythmic stamping of feet. The applause, the cheering, the whooping, the whistling, this was the wonderful, deafening sound of victory. He never felt happier, never prouder of his dear, beloved Germany. His nation made history today. It defied terror, rejected intolerance, and showed faith in a Jewish man who had pledged to change it, to lead it into new, uncharted waters. This was true courage. He beamed as he motioned to the crowd to quieten down, but they were having none of it. Gutman seized the opportunity, unscrewed the bottle, poured himself a glass of water and gulped it down. “Comrades! Friends! Please!”
Finally, the noise subsided. Gutman took a deep breath.
“I will be chancellor of all Germans!”
A delirious roar reverberated around the hall.
“The campaign was divisive and hard fought. The nation has been shaken by the terrorist attacks. But we must now unite. We will unite!”
Gutman winced and lost his balance for a second. He clasped the lectern with both hands.
“Our country jumped over its shadow today and proved it will not be bowed by terrorism. The German people have struck a hammering, sonorous blow on the bell of freedom and democracy that will be heard all over the world. It will chime in the ears of all those who would deprive their fellow men and women of those fundamental rights.”
More wild applause. The wall of sound started to overpower him. He fingered his tie knot. He was feeling numbness and tingling in his hands, and his heart was missing beats. He paused, a few seconds too long. There were looks of concern from the front rows. “The tragic attack … the tragic …” Gutman’s voice was failing him. He suddenly felt intensely sick and short of breath. The microphone picked up a sharp gasp that echoed around the atrium. Gutman’s legs buckled. He could feel Heise behind him grab his arm to support him. He looked at the shocked, open-mouthed faces in front of him. He tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. He felt himself slumping down.
Three bodyguards hurled themselves at him from the sides of the stage. He tried to suppress a surge of panic and nausea welling up in his stomach. He pushed away the arms reaching down to him. He felt himself convulsing, and realized in a flash of panic that life was abandoning him. He could hear himself crying out “Peter! Peter!” The voices around him started to sound muffled, as if he were underwater. They faded until they vanished altogether. A sudden darkness descended on the hall. He lost consciousness.
Ritz Carlton, 8.12 p
.m.
Tietjen jumped up from the sofa and punched the air. His hotel bathrobe came undone. “Yesssss!” Hornbauer gave him a puzzled look. He picked up his cell phone and disappeared into the bathroom. After a minute, he emerged with a triumphant grin. “We did it!” He pulled her to her feet and started to dance around the room with her. “Who did what, Hermann? I don’t want to dance! This is terrible! He’s had a heart attack or something!”
Tietjen grabbed her hair and tugged it. “The Jew bastard is dead! We fucking did it!” He let go of her, leapt on the bed and began singing, banging his fist against his chest. “Deutschland, Deutschland üüüber a-ha-les, über alles in de-her Welt!” Then he fell silent and stared trance-like into space, as if receiving instructions from a higher authority.
Hornbauer gaped at him. “Are you all right, Hermann?”
He jumped down. “The Jew has been eliminated! And you helped me, my little wildcat!” He pulled her towards him and bit her lower lip.
Hornbauer cried out in pain. “What do you mean?” She tried to push him away, but he held her tight. “What do you mean I helped you? Hermann! What are you talking about? Hermann, are you drunk?”
He cocked his head and scrutinized her, his eyes empty, his face expressionless. Suddenly he ripped open her bathrobe and grabbed her crotch, stabbing his middle finger into her. “I looked in your files and gave her his campaign dates,” he breathed. “Very useful. Very useful. You will be rewarded. The movement thanks you.”
“You’re not serious, Hermann.” Hornbauer was starting to feel scared and angry. “Please tell me you’re not serious. What’s going on?”
Tietjen slapped her face. “I’m deadly serious. Don’t talk back like that. Control yourself.” She stepped back, holding her cheek.
“You had something to do with this? You spied on me?”
The Jewish Candidate Page 26