The Valkyrie Song jf-5

by Craig Russell

  ‘No, Werner — that was Liane Kayser who came here last night. The whole point of her visit was to let me know in no uncertain terms that she was not Drescher’s hit woman.’

  ‘Did she know that Drescher was dead?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Fabel. ‘She didn’t say anything to suggest she did. But she definitely was sure that I would know who she was talking about when she mentioned the name Drescher. One thing’s for certain, she’s not the Valkyrie. That’s Anke Wollner. Liane Kayser came here tonight because she has a life worth protecting. She was giving nothing away. Well, she did give one thing away, if inadvertently.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have a funny feeling that she was abused as a child. Or a rape victim. Some trauma that changed her personality and made her a candidate for the Valkyrie project.’

  ‘Why?’ Astrid Bremer looked at Fabel with a puzzled frown. ‘What gave you that idea?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ lied Fabel. ‘Just a couple of things she said about how men treat women. It’s just a feeling I get.’

  8

  It was, Fabel imagined, pretty much how it would be preparing a set for a movie scene: everything had the semblance of normality, of reality, but nothing was what it seemed. No one was who they were pretending to be.

  It was odd to be there, running a major operation a few hundred metres from where he used to live. He knew this area so well.

  Fabel, code name Kaiser One, was on the third floor of one of the grand villas on Harvestehuder Weg which looked out over the trees, across the Alsterpark and over the Outer Alster itself. The Polizei Hamburg had been able to secure the permission of the owner, a prominent Hamburg businessman keen to be seen cooperating with the authorities. It was the best vantage point they could find: from here, with the binoculars, Fabel could see almost everything happening within the immediate area of the Fahrdamm. The Fahrdamm was a quay for the small red and white ferries that criss-crossed the Alster, Hamburg’s inner-city lake. Running past the Fahrdamm and along the water’s edge all the way around the Alster was the Alsterpromenade. If she came, she would come along the Alsterpromenade or down the tree-lined avenue leading from Poseldorf to the Fahrdamm. She could park a car there. Fabel saw the official Hamburg City works van sitting to one side of the avenue with a group of park workers standing smoking outside it: the MEK unit he had requested to assist them.

  Beside the ferry point was a cafe-bar, closed at this time of day, and on the other side a row of benches where people could sit and contemplate the views across the lake. Fabel’s view of the bench itself was still partly obscured, even in winter, by a tangle of naked tree branches.

  A thickset figure with greying hair sat on the bench. Kaiser Two: Werner. Fabel felt a knot in his chest. Werner looked too heavy for Drescher. The Kevlar bulletproof vest was adding to his bulk. What if she didn’t go for it? The Valkyrie had been meeting with Drescher like this for nearly twenty years. What if she recognised the sham from a distance? What if she were just to walk away, realising that Drescher must be either dead or in custody, that her relationship with her control was compromised? The thought of the Valkyrie out there on her own, uncontrolled and untraceable, sent a chill through Fabel.

  ‘There’s a woman approaching,’ one of the undercover officers radioed in. ‘I think she came in from Milchstrasse.’

  Fabel picked out the woman with his binoculars. She was tall and slim but he couldn’t tell her age easily and her hair was hidden by a heavy woollen hat. She was carrying a shoulder bag.

  ‘She’s heading down onto the path,’ said the officer.

  ‘Follow her,’ ordered Fabel. ‘Werner, she’s going to approach from your right. Remember what we discussed.’

  As Fabel expected, and as they had arranged, Werner didn’t reply by radio. Instead he opened a copy of the Hamburger Morgenpost and turned his back to the approaching woman, resting his arm on the back of the bench as if to prop up the broadsheet newspaper.

  ‘She’s closing in,’ Fabel said over the radio, using one hand to keep the binoculars trained on her. She wasn’t walking quickly, almost strolling. ‘Herzog Five… close the gap between you and her. I want you ready to assist Kaiser Two if he needs it.’

  Fabel could see the officer following her. Further back there was a young woman in jogging gear, using the railings as a bar against which to do stretching exercises. Anna Wolff. Sweeping the binoculars along the path past Werner he could see a man and woman dressed in smart dark coats and business wear, standing having a conversation: both planted police officers. Herzog Five, following the woman, was a young male officer dressed casually in a black-hooded jacket. He had closed the distance between him and the woman. The woman stopped and leaned against the railing at the water’s edge. She seemed to be looking out across the Alster to the distant spires that rose above the city.

  ‘ Shit,’ said Fabel in English. ‘Don’t stop… don’t stop…’ he said under his breath, willing the officer following the woman to keep walking. He did. He kept his step and pace unbroken and walked straight past her.

  ‘She’s one hundred metres from the bench,’ the officer said over the radio. ‘I’m going to pass Kaiser Two. There’s a bench twenty metres past him. I’ll sit there and wait.’

  ‘No,’ said Fabel decisively. ‘Turn up the path towards Milchstrasse and cut back along Harvestehuder Weg. Herzog Four — where are you?’

  ‘I’m still in position,’ answered Anna Wolff. ‘South-west corner. I have the woman in sight.’

  ‘Get over there as fast as you can without drawing attention to yourself. Herzog Six and Seven, stay where you are but be ready to move in.’

  He watched Anna as she started jogging in the woman’s direction.

  ‘She’s on the move again,’ said Anna over the radio.

  Fabel swept the binoculars along the path.

  ‘All units, stand by.’

  The woman was now less than ten metres from Werner. Five. Two.

  She walked past him without so much as a glance in his direction.

  ‘Do I stick with her?’ asked Anna.

  Fabel was still tracking the woman with his binoculars. She greeted a man coming in the opposite direction, looping her arm through his. Fabel watched as the couple turned off the Alsterpromenade and headed off together up the avenue towards Poseldorf.

  ‘It’s obviously not her. She’s meeting someone.’ He felt his heart sink. He knew then that she wouldn’t be coming. She was probably doing exactly what he was doing at that moment: surveying the scene from a distance, through binoculars, and failing to be convinced by Werner’s unconvincing wig and too bulky frame.

  ‘Stay sharp,’ Fabel said into his radio. ‘She’s maybe still going to show.’ He scanned the Alsterpromenade, following it from the south, along the water’s edge and up to the Fahrdamm. Nothing. He saw Werner still sitting on the bench. He followed the couple walking arm in arm up the avenue and past the MEK troops dressed as park workers. He noticed the dark Lycra-clad Anna jogging past them.

  ‘Herzog Four,’ he radioed to Anna. ‘Loop round and take up your previous location.’

  Anna didn’t reply.

  ‘Herzog Four, do you read me?’

  ‘Stand by…’ Over the radio, he heard Anna breathing hard as she ran. He watched her through the binoculars. She stopped jogging and leaned forward, hands on her knees, as if exhausted from a much longer run than her brief jog. The couple, arm in arm, passed her.

  Anna straightened up and pressed her hands into the small of her back, stretching her spine. A casual gesture.

  ‘She-wolf! She-wolf! She-wolf!’ Anna’s voice over the radio was so urgent and excited that Fabel found himself looking at her casual figure again. Then the adrenalin surged into his system, slowing time. ‘Herzog Four to Kaiser One, I have a visual on She-wolf.’

  ‘Where? Where is she?’ he shouted into the radio.

  ‘The couple,’ said Anna. ‘It’s her. I can’t be sure, but I think she
’s got the guy at gunpoint. I think she made Kaiser Two and sussed it’s a set-up and just grabbed the guy as a decoy.’

  ‘Shit.’ Fabel cursed to himself, then pressed the send button to call the MEK unit. ‘Wolf Five — it looks like we have a potential hostage situation.’

  ‘We heard,’ said the MEK commander. ‘If it is, we’ve got to take her before she gets out of the park and into Poseldorf. Do we go?’

  Fabel hesitated. ‘Herzog Four, are you sure it’s She-wolf?’

  ‘I can’t be positive, Kaiser One. She’s got a tight grip of his arm and he doesn’t look happy. She’s pressed against him and could have a gun in his ribs.’

  ‘Wolf Five to Kaiser One. Do we go or not?’

  Fabel checked Anna through the binoculars. She was still playing the part of a spent jogger. He could see that half of the MEK troops disguised as park workers had disappeared into the back of the van. He followed the couple with the binoculars as they made their unhurried way out of the park. If it wasn’t the Valkyrie, he had nothing to lose. If it was, then she clearly knew they were on to her. She would spot anyone following her into the city. If Fabel let her go unfollowed, she might let her hostage go unharmed. Or not.

  The alternative was to try to take her down in the park. The chances of the hostage surviving were not good; nor were the odds against one of the police team being injured or killed.

  ‘Wolf Five to Kaiser One…’ Fabel could hear the impatience in the MEK commander’s voice. ‘I repeat: do we go or not?’

  Fabel lifted the radio to his mouth.

  9

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be back today,’ said Ivonne. She brought in a coffee and a pile of papers, which she laid on Sylvie’s desk. ‘How did you get on in the Far East?’

  ‘Fine. I’m close to finding who it is I’ve been after. The person with all the answers. I’m only back in Hamburg for a few days. Is this the stuff?’

  ‘Yep — everything you asked for. All the information I could dig up on Gennady Frolov as well as everything I could find on the NeuHansa companies you asked about. And the latest copy as well as a few back numbers of the magazine you asked about — the one behind the protest in the Kiez the night that English pop star was murdered. By the way, Andreas Knabbe is looking for you. You should answer your cellphone messages sometimes. Actually, you should answer your cellphone sometimes.’ Ivonne made a pained face. ‘When I say Herr Knabbe is looking for you, I mean it in an angry-mob-with-burning-torches way. I don’t think he was too happy that you weren’t here to cover that bomb blast down by the harbour. The word is that Gennady Frolov was one of the diners in the restaurant.’

  ‘Frolov?’ Sylvie frowned. ‘Sounds like he was probably the target. What does he want? Knabbe, I mean.’

  ‘Probably your scalp. Oh, another thing. There’s been something funny going on in Altona, not far from where you live. Four days ago the street was blocked off and a pile of police were going through a couple of apartments. Then nothing.’

  ‘What’s the official line?’

  ‘At the moment there isn’t one.’

  ‘They’re stalling,’ said Sylvie. ‘They won’t give out misinformation, so they’re trying to say nothing for as long as they can. Who’s on the story?’

  ‘That creep Brandt is following it up.’ Ivonne wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘You know, the one who smells.’

  ‘He couldn’t find his ass with both hands, far less uncover a story,’ said Sylvie. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Nope… should there be?’

  ‘It’s just that I was expecting a message. No one called Siegfried has phoned or emailed?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  After Ivonne had left her office, Sylvie began leafing through the information Ivonne had compiled. She was in the middle of the latest issue of Muliebritas when an announcement caught her eye: an extract from Njal’s Saga.

  The heavens are stained with the blood of men,

  As the Valkyries sing their song.

  Now that, she thought to herself, is one hell of a coincidence.

  10

  He was hesitating. She could sense it. She knew it would be Fabel, head of the Murder Commission, who would have oversight of the operation. She cursed her stupidity: after all these years, after all the coded messages and rendezvous with Uncle Georg, she had simply not considered that it would be a set-up. She should have thought it through. Especially that other announcement, in the wrong place.

  ‘I have a wife and children,’ said the man whom she held tight with her arm looped through his. ‘Please don’t kill me.’

  She pressed the barrel of her Beretta PX4 Storm automatic harder into his ribs, urging him forward with a tug on his arm. ‘If I were going to kill you, you’d be dead already. If anything happens to you it’ll be the fault of the police. I know what I’m doing, they don’t. If you want to stay alive and see your wife and kids again, then shut up and keep walking. Once we’re in the city and I can lose myself in the crowds, I’ll let you go.’

  She kept their pace even, unhurried. There had been a cop behind her, closing the gap as she had approached the bench. That was what had alerted her first. Then that stupid woman pretending to be a jogger. But, of course, she had realised from twenty metres away that it wasn’t Uncle Georg on the bench. It was a stupid, clumsy set-up and she had been stupid and clumsy to walk into it.

  He’s watching me now, she thought. My money would be somewhere in an upper storey on Harvestehuder Weg.

  ‘Tilt your head close to mine,’ she hissed at the man. He was tall, nearly ten centimetres taller than she was. ‘Make it look like we’re a couple and you’re talking to me.’

  Maybe, she thought, the manoeuvre had worked: maybe they had crossed her off their list and were seeking some other woman approaching, alone. She thought about the man on her arm. The fake Uncle Georg had probably looked at her as she had passed, but she had turned her face away as if looking out across the water. Only this man had seen her up close. If she got out into Poseldorf, she would take him up a side street. She didn’t have the silencer on her gun, so she would finish him with her knife.

  If she got out into Poseldorf.

  They had passed a Hamburg Parks Department van a couple of seconds ago, with a group of workmen standing beside it. She felt like laughing: they could have thrown in at least one older or overweight cop, just for appearances. The workmen had special weapons and training written all over them. Polizei Hamburg MEK unit. Six of them. Body armour under overalls, probably. She knew that these men could move fast and could keep pace with her on a long foot-pursuit. To become a member of the Polizei Hamburg’s MEK squad you had to be able to run three thousand metres in less than thirteen minutes thirty seconds. But the body armour would slow them. Legs and heads. If it came to it, she would go for legs and heads. They had a massive advantage in numbers and equipment, but she had a big advantage in knowing that they would do it all by the book. By numbers.

  Fabel was watching her and hesitating, she knew he was. Every second he hesitated brought her closer to the city, to streets and people. Once she was there she could get away. And if they came after her she would create so much havoc. She would lose them in a tidal wave of dead civilians.

  The polycarbide knife. The Beretta. Three spare clips, fourteen rounds each, in her shoulder bag.

  She could see straight up Alsterchausee. The trick was not to start rushing. She kept calm. Kept her grip on the hostage constant and firm. She was nearly there. He wasn’t going to call it. Fabel wasn’t going to call it.

  Uncle Georg.

  They had Uncle Georg. Then the realisation hit her. They didn’t have Uncle Georg: he was dead. She dug deep into herself to feel something. And she had to dig deep. So little feeling.

  She thought about the talks they had had together. She thought about when she had been fifteen and he had taught her everything she knew. She remembered sitting on the grass outside the training school on a summer’s
day. She had felt the sun prickle on her neck. She remembered the cool orange juice they had drunk together and the few moments they had chatted — Uncle Georg, Liane, Margarethe and her — about silly, inconsequential things.

  ‘This is a golden moment,’ Uncle Georg had explained. ‘Between meetings, you should enjoy these moments. Savour them.’

  And in that golden moment she had truly felt that the other girls were her sisters; that Uncle Georg really was her uncle. She had glimpsed a life that she had never known. It had been a perfect golden lie for a perfect golden moment. But even in that lie she had discovered what it must have been like to have been part of a family.

  And now Uncle Georg was dead.

  For a moment, in the middle of the chill Hamburg winter, she felt the warmth of that long-gone summer afternoon. She found the pain, the grief that she had dug for.

  It was then that she heard them running towards her from behind, shouting for her to let her hostage go and to stand still.

  Fabel had called it, after all.

  Chapter Seven

  1

  Anke Wollner spun around, pulling the man she held captive in front of her as a shield. She knew, of course, that there would be other MEK and Criminal Police closing in behind her, but the main threat would come from the front. The six MEK men had broken into three teams of two. Standard formation, by the book.

  She saw the other cop, the woman dressed as a jogger. She was yelling at Anke to stand still. Anke fired twice at the woman cop, hitting her in both legs. She went down and started to scream. Anke aimed for her head but was aware of the MEK officers advancing towards her, three moving, three covering. She fired into the face of the first. The others opened fire, but their shots went wide: they were clearly afraid of hitting her hostage. She fired twice more. One miss, the second took off the side of an MEK man’s head. Two dead cops. One heavily wounded. They would pull back to avoid any civilian injury. Anke backed up towards Harvestehuder Weg, keeping the hostage in front of her. He was shaking violently and she was having trouble steering him. Checking behind, she saw two cops duck down behind a parked car. She fired into the windows, shattering them and sending glass flying. She fired three shots into the petrol tank, then a round onto the asphalt where the petrol had already started pooling. The sparks from the round hitting the road ignited the petrol and the rear of the car lifted into the air as the tank exploded. She heard screams from behind the car and other officers came running up. She could see a car screech to a halt further up Harvestehuder Weg, stopped by a uniformed officer.