Weekends were always the hardest. When he was busy with work, Bernhard Riedle could find distraction in a site visit, in a conversation with a structural engineer, even in lunch with his client. But when the meetings stopped, when the builders went home on a Friday evening and the office in Hamburg closed for business, Riedle was alone with his agony. He drank constantly, he sat on his own in the apartment, unable to read, to concentrate on watching the television, to do anything other than obsess about Dmitri.
He thought about him incessantly. Though there was no evidence for this, he was convinced that Dmitri had left his wife and that all of the promises he had made to Bernhard were now being made to a younger, more vital lover, a partner with whom he would build a meaningful future. He pictured them deep in conversation, laughing and sharing intimacies; devouring one another’s bodies. Everything physical between them was more satisfying for Dmitri, their intellectual life more stimulating and more meaningful than it had ever been with Bernhard. He could hear Dmitri betraying him in conversation, speaking contemptuously of his character. What they had shared over their three years together – the trips to Istanbul, to London and New York – had already become a subject of ridicule. The peculiar hardness in Dmitri’s personality, the chill ruthlessness Bernhard had fought so hard to ignore, was now all that remained of him. He felt discarded and forgotten. He felt weak and he felt old. He wanted, more than anything he had ever wanted in his life, to have the opportunity to confront Dmitri, to rail at him for his cruelty and selfishness, and then to restore their relationship to what it had once been. He felt that he could not live without Dmitri’s love. If he could not have it, he would kill himself. He was going mad.
Brussels was a prison. They had spent so much time in the city in recent months that every street corner held a memory of their relationship. Restaurants in which they had eaten, parks in which they had walked, cinemas where they had watched films, holding hands and touching in the darkness. The bed in which Bernhard slept was the bed in which he had made love to Dmitri, stroked his hair, read to him from the books they adored. It was only in bed that Dmitri had allowed himself to be vulnerable, to articulate his deepest fears and insecurities. On occasions he had encouraged Bernhard to beat him, to punish him – these had been the only times when Bernhard had felt that he had any semblance of control over their relationship. He had been intoxicated by the intimate depravity of their private selves. There had been nothing false between them in this bed. There had been no secrets. Now Bernhard could only sleep by taking a pill that would knock out the night, leaving him exhausted for work the following morning. In his first waking moments, he would be assaulted by images of Dmitri with his new lover. As a consequence, he walked the streets with a feeling of bottled hate – he had never known such humiliation, such a distilled sense of betrayal and loss. This was the wretched character of Bernhard Riedle’s life. He was at the mercy of a man who seemed utterly contemptuous of him. He was fifty-nine years old and knew – because he had no illusions about such things – that he would never again experience a love as intense and as fulfilling as that which he had experienced with Dmitri.
It was a Saturday night in June. Tourists in the Grande Place. Teenagers drinking cheap beer, couples with selfie sticks taking flash photographs in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Bernhard despised them, not least because he envied them their youth and apparent happiness. The square stank of horse manure and cheap melted chocolate and it was almost impossible to take more than a few steps without tripping over a small child. Bernhard felt less alone among the crowds, but wished that he had taken one of the smaller side streets through the old town instead of subjecting himself to the chaos of the square. He had eaten an early dinner in a poor and expensive Italian restaurant, leaving half of his food untouched, a bottle of Verdicchio emptied. Before dinner he had consumed two beers on an empty stomach and now felt the familiar symptoms of a depressive drunkenness. He was wary of encountering an associate from the building project, or even the client himself. It would take very little for Bernhard to break down; a small gesture of kindness, an expression of empathy, and he might even collapse in tears. He did not want to undermine his reputation nor be exposed for the lonely and broken fool that he had become.
He decided to return home, to take a sleeping pill, then to go to church in the morning. He had begun to pray last thing at night, pleading with God to ease his suffering, to show Dmitri the error of his ways. It was time to take his prayers to a place in which he might find some modicum of spiritual solace. He knew that Dmitri believed only in himself and in his own strength. He would doubtless hold Bernhard in even greater contempt for the naivety of his new-found devotion. So be it. He had to try to find some semblance of calm, a way to end the turbulence into which he had been thrown since Egypt.
Riedle walked towards his apartment block in the Quartier Dansaert, the crowds ebbing away as he reached Rue des Chartreux. The entrance to the building was set back from the street by a short, dimly lit passageway in which couples sometimes lurked for a furtive kiss, and where Bernhard’s neighbours tied up their bicycles and pushchairs. By the time he reached it, the bustle of the night had receded to an absolute stillness, the only noise in the neighbourhood the echo of Bernhard’s footsteps as he turned towards the door.
What happened next happened quickly.
There was a man of Somalian appearance standing in the passageway, most likely a drug addict. His jacket was torn, his shoes stained. Bernhard could smell the sharp acidic filth of his clothes and sweat.
‘Entschuldigen Sie mich,’ he said, instinctively speaking in German. The Somali was blocking his route to the door and took a step towards him.
‘Argent,’ he said, the French aggressive and guttural. ‘Portefeuille. Maintenant.’
As Bernhard processed the realization that he was being mugged, a second man walked into the passageway behind him, shutting off any hope of escape. This man was taller than the Somali and almost certainly of Eastern European descent. He loomed over Bernhard. There was a livid birthmark to the left of his nose.
‘Un moment, s’il vous plaît,’ he said, turning back to the Somali, desperately searching for his wallet. Bernhard reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a handful of loose change. Some of the money spilled on to the ground as he tried to pass it to the Somali.
‘Fucking money now,’ said the Eastern European.
‘Oui, oui. Yes, OK,’ Bernhard told him, spinning around. That was when he saw the knife, hidden within the folds of the man’s leather jacket. Bernhard let out a gasp, still desperately searching for his wallet. Had he been pickpocketed in the Grande Place? He was terrified of being cut. Of all things, at that moment he thought not of Dmitri – who would surely have been able to protect him from his assailants – but of ISIS, of kidnap, of heads sliced apart by machetes. He wondered if the men were terrorists.
‘Watch.’
The Eastern European had flicked at the antique Omega Constellation on Bernhard’s wrist, sending pain shooting along his forearm. He winced and cried out as the man hissed at him in French to remain silent.
‘Argent.’
Before Bernhard had a chance to remove the watch, the Somali had grabbed him by the right arm, almost knocking him to the ground. A car drove past but did not stop. Bernhard wanted to shout out but knew that they would run him through with the knife. He was pitiably afraid. He had never known such fear, even when attacked as a young man, for his habits, for his dress, for the sin of being gay. Those attacks had conferred upon him a certain nobility and he had at least experienced them with other men, in groups of two or three. On this occasion, however, he was quite alone. He could be killed for the watch, for the contents of his wallet, and the men would never be caught.
Then, a miracle. One of the tenants from the apartment block came into the passage from the street, jangling a set of keys, whistling a tuneless song. He was about forty-five, lean and reasonably fit. The man looked up, realized what was happenin
g and acted with astonishing speed. In clear, confident French, he approached the men, stepping in front of Bernhard as he did so.
‘Mais qu’est-ce qu’il se passe? Dégage de là.’
Bernhard felt himself pushed against the wall as the Somali moved past him to confront the neighbour. The next thing Bernhard knew, the neighbour had disarmed the Eastern European, knocking his knife to the ground. It spun away to the far side of the passage as the Somali doubled over from a savage kick in his groin. Meanwhile, the Eastern European was nursing a cut on his arm. He cried out in pain and ran on to the street, leaving his friend behind. The neighbour – who was dressed in jeans and a dark sweater – dispatched a second, heavy blow to the Somali, this time to the side of his neck. He fell on to the cobbled tiles of the passageway, where blood had dripped on to the ground. The neighbour then grabbed Bernhard, put a key in the lock, and guided him inside the entrance of the apartment building before slamming the door behind them. All of this had taken less than twenty seconds.
‘Are you all right? Ça va?’ he asked, holding Bernhard’s forearms and fixing his eyes with a manic, adrenalized stare. As Bernhard registered that his saviour was British, he became dimly aware of the rapid kick and scrape of a man trying to kickstart a motorbike on the street.
‘Oui. Ça va. Yes,’ he replied, shaking his head in bewildered gratitude, thanking the Englishman as effusively as he could manage. So great was his relief that he felt he might be on the verge of laughter.
‘Did they attack you?’ the man asked. ‘Did they take anything?’
‘No,’ Bernhard replied. ‘You were extraordinary. I do not know what happened. Thank you.’
‘Stay here,’ said the neighbour and re-opened the door. He walked back along the passageway until he was standing outside on the street. The Somali had disappeared. The neighbour then took a tissue from his pocket, bent down and mopped up the blood that had spilled on the ground. At that moment, Bernhard heard the motorbike catch and roar, buzzing past the Englishman, who swore loudly – ‘Fuck you!’ – as the Eastern European made his escape.
‘Did you get the licence plate?’ Bernhard asked, when the man had come back into the foyer.
‘I’m afraid not,’ he replied.
‘Never mind. Probably it was a stolen bike.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Probably it was.’
9
The two men stood face to face in the lobby. One of them was in a state of advanced shock. The other was pleased that the plan he had so meticulously prepared had come off without a hitch.
Thomas Kell, the brave, resourceful English neighbour who had come to the aid of Bernhard Riedle, placed a comforting hand on the German’s back and felt the quick surge and drop of his chest as he struggled to control his breathing. Riedle put out a hand to steady himself against the wall of the lobby and looked across at Kell.
‘I cannot thank you enough,’ he said. ‘Without your help …’
‘Don’t mention it,’ Kell replied. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
Riedle had a kind, friendly face, solid and bespectacled. It was a face Kell warmed to immediately. Riedle took a moment to gather himself, then quite literally dusted himself down, running his hands along his sleeves and down his thighs as though trying to drive away all evidence of contact with his attackers.
‘You said you didn’t lose anything?’ Kell asked. ‘They didn’t take any of your money?’
‘You didn’t give them a chance,’ Riedle’s face broke into a relieved smile. ‘They took nothing.’
Kell introduced himself as ‘Peter’ and explained that he had been coming back from eating dinner at a local restaurant. Riedle – to Kell’s surprise – introduced himself as ‘Bernie’, a nickname that had not come up in any of the surveillance of his email traffic. Taking advantage of the German’s mood of heartfelt gratitude, Kell suggested that he accompany him to his apartment and sit with him until he had completely recovered from the shock of the attack. To Kell’s relief, Bernhard happily agreed to the idea, adding that he was mesmerized by the skill and professionalism with which his neighbour had disarmed and chased off his assailants.
‘Were you once a soldier?’ he asked as they walked side by side up the stairs.
‘Not as such,’ Kell replied. ‘In a former life I worked as a diplomat, often in some fairly hairy places. Kenya. Iraq. Afghanistan. I was taught a bit of self-defence, you know? Luckily I very rarely get a chance to use it.’
‘Well, I am extremely grateful to you.’ They had reached the door. Riedle took out a set of keys. He was several inches shorter than Kell, who could see a small summer insect trapped in the light white hairs on the crown of his head. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if you had not appeared,’ he said, turning the key and ushering his guest inside. Kell walked into the hall and heard the thunk and click of a sliding bolt as Riedle closed the door behind them. ‘He had a knife. You cut him.’
‘He cut himself.’ Kell noted the same off-the-peg watercolours, candlesticks and soft furnishings that adorned his own apartment, two floors above. Clearly the developers had bought dozens of the same items in a job lot, distributing them evenly throughout the building. The layout of the rooms was also identical. A kitchen off the hall, a bedroom and bathroom to the rear of the apartment. ‘But not seriously,’ he said. ‘The blade must have touched his wrist as I went to disarm him.’
Riedle listened intently, though Kell was spinning a further deceit. The man who had been holding the knife was a former Polish intelligence officer named Rafal Suda whom Kell had met many years earlier while working on an SIS operation in Gdansk. Rafal had snapped open a small vial of theatrical blood that had dripped, effectively enough, on to the cobbles. His accomplice, Xavier Baeyens, a retired Belgian Customs official, had acquired the motorbike on which Suda had made his escape. He had stripped the plates, fudged the insurance, and put enough petrol in the tank to get to Bruges.
‘Should I call the police?’ Riedle asked.
It was a question Kell had been expecting and one for which he had prepared a suitably tortured answer.
‘It’s difficult,’ he said. ‘The same thing happened to a friend of mine in London recently. Broad daylight, cameras everywhere, two witnesses to a mugging at knifepoint. She lost her bag, her wedding ring, a cellphone, about three hundred pounds in cash. The police did nothing. They tried, of course, but it was impossible to track down the men who had attacked her. She got lost in weeks of bureaucracy and eventually nothing came of it.’
Riedle was momentarily frustrated. He wanted justice. Kell could see it in his face.
‘But they looked like drug dealers and local criminals,’ he said. ‘There might be photographs on file at the … the …’ He struggled for the correct English term. ‘Commissariat? Precinct?’
‘Police station,’ said Kell.
‘Yes. We could identify them.’
The brave English neighbour managed to look suitably dismayed by this idea.
‘If you need to do that, Bernie, of course I’d be happy to help. But I’m very busy with work and, being one hundred per cent honest, slightly reluctant to get dragged into a court case. I live in London, I’d have to keep coming back and forth to Brussels. You seem unharmed. Nothing was stolen, so you have no need to file an insurance claim. But of course if you want to …’
Riedle nodded. He could hardly ask Peter to waste time speaking to the police, to assist in pressing charges or to travel regularly from London to Brussels to stand as a witness in any ensuing trial. It was just a street mugging, after all. He had lost nothing but his dignity. It would be best for Riedle to comply with the wishes of the man who had so uncomplainingly come to his rescue.
‘Of course, of course,’ he said, turning towards the kitchen. He gestured at Kell to sit down. ‘Better to have a drink and forget all about it. These scum will never be found.’
As Kell muttered ‘Yes’, the mobile phone in his jacket buzzed with an incoming tex
t. He assumed it was Harold, sitting upstairs in the rented apartment on the fourth floor, doubtless helping himself to a large tumbler of Kell’s single malt. Mowbray had been waiting in the lobby as Kell approached the passageway on Rue des Chartreux, ready to intercept any neighbour who threatened to leave the building while the mugging was taking place.
Kell checked the phone. It was a text from Rafal. He had met up with Xavier. They had abandoned the motorbike. Kell gave them the all-clear and thanked them for a job well done. Suda was due to return to Poland the next day, Xavier to take a ten-day holiday in Accra. Kell was putting the phone back in his pocket when Riedle appeared from the kitchen.
‘Can I make you a drink?’
Kell asked for whisky. His commitment to remaining on the wagon had lasted only until his first night in Brussels, when he had succumbed to the temptation of a glass of Talisker. He was not yet back on the cigarettes, but reckoned the Minasian operation would have him on twenty a day before the end of the month. As a precaution, he had bought a packet of Winston Lights and stowed them, still sealed, in the drawer beside his bed.
‘Ice?’ Riedle asked.
‘No, thank you. Just a splash of water to open it up.’
Riedle disappeared and returned with the drink. Kell sat down in a suede-covered armchair identical to the one upstairs in which he had read Rafal and Xavier’s surveillance reports on Riedle’s movements around Brussels. The staged mugging had been planned for the night before, only to be called off at the last moment when a taxi had pulled up on the opposite side of the street, just as Xavier was taking up position.
‘I like this expression,’ said Riedle, passing Kell the whisky. Kell thanked him with a brisk nod. ‘To “open it up”. The water does this with the flavour, yes? I do not drink whisky.’
Riedle himself was holding a long-stemmed glass of red wine and appeared to be slightly unsteady on his feet. Xavier had been tailing him all evening and had reported the consumption of two beers in the old town before eight o’clock, then an entire bottle of white wine at an Italian restaurant in the Rue de la Montagne. Shock usually took the edge off drunkenness, but Riedle had been saved from the lions and might easily be slipping into a state of euphoria.
A Divided Spy (Thomas Kell Spy Thriller, Book 3) Page 4