by Max Landorff
Lichtinger stepped in front of the altar, placed the two candles back in the wooden box and moved the screen back in front of the basin. He saw that Tretjak had closed his laptop. They walked along the aisle in the direction of the exit, stopped halfway and sat down next to each other in one of the pews.
‘I hear of your great success putting on “Science-Slams”,’ Tretjak said. ‘What’s that all about?’
‘We always hold them in big barns or toolsheds,’ Lichtinger said. ‘The stage is normally a tractor-trailer. And then people stand up and explain a scientific topic. Everybody has five minutes and when their time is up the audience screams “Stop!” or “Continue!” depending how good that particular performer is. And at the end of the evening there is a vote for who is the winner.’
‘What topics?’ asked Tretjak.
‘Totally open, marine biology, oral surgery, research into aggression, all is possible. Pupils perform, also students, we even had two real professors. It’s fun, you should come.’
Tretjak nodded and smiled. And if he hasn’t changed completely, Pastor Lichtinger thought, then this thought really appealed to him, at least in that very moment.
Munich, East Station, 9pm
Dimitri Steiner stood next to his motorcycle and pondered, maybe for the hundredth time, whether he should get himself a windscreen. The advantages were clear: when it rained one stayed dry behind it, and also on the motorway at higher speed, it promised a more relaxed ride. On the other hand on hotter days one missed the cooling airstream, and above all Dimitri was a great believer in the pure motorcycle experience. Machines with sound systems, GPS, seat or handle heating were not for him, he called them ‘fitted kitchens’. Dimitri looked at his rear-view mirrors. They were drop-shaped, and he thought about exchanging them for circular ones, the ones he had spotted in the Harley-Davidson catalogue a while ago.
Dimitri Steiner was completely happy when he pondered these kind of questions. He could spend hours doing just that, inspecting every detail of his motorcycle: should he replace all the screws with chrome ones? Attach a small oil pressure metre down near the engine block? Pad the seat a little more softly? He didn’t have to account to anybody for these mind games, they could be interrupted at any time, they didn’t have to go anywhere, and above all: he didn’t ever have to do anything about them, there were no consequences for either himself or somebody else. Ever since Dimitri Steiner had renounced his profession, had retired so to speak, these harmless mind games were his hobby.
It was just after nine o’clock in the evening. Steiner was standing with his motorcycle at Munich’s East Station at the loading ramp for the motorail train to Hamburg. He stood there in amongst other riders who had all attached a white piece of paper with sticky tape to the tanks of their machines: on it was written, Hamburg-Altona. Dimitri and his motorcycle stood out in the crowd. His Harley Roadking was sprayed in two colours, an antique off-white and a sunny yellow. Dimitri’s helmet, which was hanging on the handlebar, was also white, and he himself was wearing a bright red, massive leather jacket. He was a strangely square man, a bit too short, with a bit of a belly, but quite a broad, muscular back for a man in his late fifties. His icy-grey hair was cropped in a crew cut, and his face was tanned after his 14-day tour through the Alps. Dimitri Steiner knew that he looked funny somehow, and that would be reflected in the face of the inspector whom he had been told to meet.
It had been four years since he had last received a message from his former life. And then one had arrived today in the form of a telephone call, not a long one, a rather clipped one, a bit too short for his taste. The man on the other end was obviously still young and did not quite appreciate who he was dealing with. Even without the lecture, Dimitri would have known what information he could reveal to the police inspector – and what he could not. He had taken the call standing in the parking lot outside the motorway restaurant at the Zirler Berg. Afterwards he had gone inside and ordered himself a large portion of warm apple strudel with vanilla ice cream and extra cream. He loved this apple strudel that you could find everywhere around here.
The boarding was beginning, and the motorcycles were first up. One had to mind one’s head when driving into the wagons as the steel girders supporting the levels above hung deep. Dimitri knew that, he had taken the motorail many times before. He was well practised in moving his Roadking into the position assigned to him by the guys in the orange vests. He turned the alarm to transport mode, took his black leather bag from the carrier – and threw it on the bed in his compartment a short while later. Dimitri Steiner travelled the most luxurious way when he took the motorail, a single bunk compartment with private shower and toilet. A small bottle of red wine already stood next to the bed. Tomorrow morning, an hour before his arrival, he would be served breakfast here. He hung up his leather jacket, took off his tee-shirt and took a fresh, red and blue checkered shirt from his bag.
He had only had got along well with policemen all his life. No matter what country, policemen were sensible, nice guys. Clueless about what really went on, but you had no problems with them. Inspector Maler, who was already expecting him in the dining car, was cast in that same mould. Maler was wearing a pale beige shirt, a grey jacket and had grey skin. Dimitri was reminded of his childhood in Rostow, a grey city of a million-odd grey inhabitants in the middle of nowhere in the former Soviet Union. There everything had been as colourless as the inspector; the houses, the streets, the people. They had three quarters of an hour to talk, then the inspector would have to get off and the train would leave the station. Dimitri would have forgotten the man before the train reached its ultimate travelling speed.
‘I have to confess, Mr Steiner,’ Maler opened the conversation, ‘that I am at a loss as to what our meeting is all about. Maybe you can enlighten me.’ He was sitting in front of an alcohol-free beer and a black coffee. Dimitri had ordered a yeast beer. ‘I am investigating a murder, two as a matter of fact,’ Maler continued. ‘In these cases there is a person of interest on whom I require additional information. Gabriel Tretjak. Our police computer supplies almost as much data as the telephone book. But today I received a somewhat strange call from the Federal Criminal Police Office.’ He looked at Dimitri. ‘I was told that a certain Dieter Steiner could assist me in my investigations. A meeting had already been set up. Not much more was revealed by that colleague, who talked about a discreet affair, something which lay outside the normal police remit. The information which you could give me would be the only information I would get on this matter.’ Maler reached for his cup and waited for the man sitting opposite to say something.
Dimitri was always a bit surprised when somebody used the name Dieter, especially if nobody had addressed him that way for a while – like in the past few days. He had never had a problem with Steiner, but Dieter he simply couldn’t get used to. Dieter Steiner, Grosser Elbberg 27, 22767 Hamburg, German citizen. Sometimes, when he awoke in this flat on the ninth floor overlooking the harbour, he pondered what turns life could take. Who would have known that the little Dimitri Tschernokov would morph into a Dieter Steiner, a man without any financial worries, secured by the German state, a man who looked out onto cranes, cruise ships and oil tankers like a king from his castle turret, living in a flat which cost almost 3000 euro in rent a month. Every day he was greeted by a friendly doorman, and he had private health insurance which meant he could consult the best doctors. Although there was nothing wrong with him, blood pressure a bit on the high side, that was all.
Dimitri realised that he had to let the inspector in on who was sitting in front of him. So he began to talk about two worlds: there was one in which a normal life was lived by people who had normal jobs, whose children attended normal schools, who ordered normal cars and who were protected by the police while doing all that. And then he spoke of the other, the world of shadows, the world of the secret services, the world of the investigation bureaus, of agents and of contacts, but also the world of organised crime, of the mafi
a, with all that is connected to it like drug and human trafficking. ‘In that world,’ he said, ‘laws have a different meaning. I was active in that world all my life.’
The expression on the inspector’s face told him that he did not have to be too explicit at this point. It was obviously not the first time that Maler had been confronted in his work with state activities belonging to a more shadowy world. ‘It is a cold, somewhat more technocratic world,’ Dimitri added. ‘To the secret service you are a file, sometimes only a number. As far as organised crime is concerned, you are just a name, often only a first name. Loyalties change all the time, people you deal with disappear, power lines shift. You don’t have a guilty conscience if you change sides, like I did.’
Further back in the dining car a five-strong Danish family had sat down, all of them blond, all of them tanned, all of them in good spirits.
‘When the Iron Curtain came down, a chance presented itself and I took it,’ Dimitri said.
For a moment he thought back to the arrogant behaviour of his German handlers. Now that your empire is collapsing turncoats are not worth anything anymore, their behaviour implied... Nobody was interested in his skills, in his networks, which spanned the world, his know-how. He was paid a modest sum to get him started and was used as a shabby little agent, as a courier, security guard, things like that. If his former contacts hadn’t passed the occasional job his way he wouldn’t have been able to live off the meagre salary from the German Intelligence Agency.
And then, after 9/11, everything changed. Suddenly they got off their high horses, suddenly he was picked up by limousines and brought to meetings where he wasn’t bossed around by simple bureaucrats, but nice men in well-cut suits offered him espresso and smoked salmon sandwiches. Suddenly they were not rubbing his face in morals, human rights and the rule of law, which he was supposed to learn first. Instead, everything was reduced to the all-important question: what methods did the Soviet Union deploy – and Russia still deploy – to prevent its citizens becoming the victims of terrorist kidnappers? Americans, Germans, Italians, Japanese – citizens from all these countries ended up in the hands of terrorists, ransoms were demanded from companies, from governments, from private individuals. Only the Russians were spared. Why? They knew that this had been his special field. In these weeks after 11 September 2001, Dimitri Tschernokov, already called Dieter Steiner, his new code name, but without his German citizenship yet, understood that his knowledge was worth a lot of money. And the German authorities understood a few things as well: the man was no show-off, his information was correct, most of it checked out. And the man was dangerous. For years he had organised targeted assassinations – in many cases he had carried them out himself. Not that the officers were afraid for their own lives. The danger was inherent in getting involved with him. Dimitri Tschernokov had worked in the Arab world, where a German secret agent had once called him ‘a Blitzkrieger against terrorists’, and he was known in terrorist circles, still was, which was undoubtedly part of his strategy: whoever kidnapped a Russian never saw any money but got to know Tschernokov’s troops. But who said that the terrorists from back then were the terrorists of today? They had continuously voiced that worry: was their cooperation with Tschernokov going to attract the attention of terrorists to Germany and make German citizens targets?
Finally came the conversation that clinched the deal. It took place in a small conference room in a business hotel near Münster. There, Dimitri, who at that point was still a master of external inconspicuousness, met an equally inconspicuous man, who had nothing to say and was only there to make a telephone connection. The important part was the voice on the phone. Dimitri knew it belonged to the head of the German Federal Investigation Bureau although no mention was made of any names. The voice was soft and matter-of-fact. ‘We reject the methods you applied,’ the voice said. ‘We don’t want you to work for the German state or German organisations or companies. We just want your knowledge, your information.’
In the dining car of the stationary motorail train in Munich it took Dimitri only a few seconds to remember this decisive point in his life, only a pensive look down onto the top of the table.
Inspector Maler ordered another coffee – ‘decaffeinated again, please’ – and said: ‘Mr Steiner, we will probably never meet again. You couldn’t care less, nor could I, what I think about you, what you did or how you made a living. I was informed that you could tell me something about Tretjak which might help me in my investigations.’
Dimitri nodded in the direction of the drinks on the table and said: ‘Alcohol-free, decaffeinated... you like to take risks, eh?’ He saw a fine line of irony crease the corner of the inspector’s mouth, but he otherwise didn’t remark on his nod. ‘Tretjak, Gabriel Tretjak...’ murmured Dimitri. ‘You know Inspector, in my business it is like in every other one. There are some first rate people, some mediocre ones and a lot of completely useless ones. And like in every profession, outstanding ones are noticed very quickly.’
‘That’s what happened with Tretjak?’
Dimitri nodded. ‘Let’s say, it’s like in ice hockey. Suddenly there is this young guy. He is playing at some God-forsaken provincial club, but he is dancing with the puck completely differently from all the others. It doesn’t take long before a certain buzz, an excitement surrounds this youngster. And then suddenly powerful people are standing at the barrier and want to take him away.’ He explained that the young Gabriel Tretjak had stood out because he’d carried out unusual jobs in an unusual way. He was somebody who pulled strings and changed things that way. Although it was not clear at first where the assignments came from, or who this Tretjak was. Was that really his name? ‘In my world,’ Dimitri said, ‘you see secrets everywhere.’
‘What kind of jobs were they?’ Maler asked.
‘Harmless stuff, you could say,’ Dimitri answered. ‘Once he arranged for the smashing of a newly founded sect in Cologne. Dealing with sects is not easy. Tretjak initiated simultaneous actions against the founders. One was arrested for drug trafficking, the other, an editor at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, got into trouble when it was made public that he belonged to a sect. Tretjak skilfully juggled the information. After just about three weeks the sect didn’t exist anymore.’
‘And why did he do it?’
‘There was no other explanation than that he got the assignment from an industrialist whose daughter had lost her way and had ended up joining the sect.’
‘And you had noticed that?’
‘I personally hadn’t noticed it yet. But a short time later he tried to extricate a German industrialist from an Algerian detention centre. He needed my help for this job. And this was proof of his abilities. He shouldn’t have even known that I existed.’
Dimitri reached for the menu and scanned it quickly. He was hungry, signalled to the waiter, and pointed at the photo with the large cheese platter. ‘I of course started to investigate,’ he said. ‘None of us could imagine that Tretjak was working for himself. Everybody thought that he had an organisation, a secret service, some company or another or the mafia behind him...’
‘But that was not the case, was it?’ Maler asked.
‘No, it wasn’t.’ Dimitri answered. ‘But now he was getting offers from every quarter.’
Maler looked at him. ‘The powerful people showed up at the barrier... Were you one of those who wanted to whisk him away?’
‘Maybe.’ Dimitri felt his mobile vibrate in his trouser pocket. A message. He knew full well who it was from.
‘And who, in the end, bought him?’
Dimitri took his time with the answer, chose every word carefully. ‘Nobody bought him. He was paid for his work, yes. But as far as I know he didn’t join forces with anybody.’
Maler now leafed through a little notebook. ‘Tretjak is being investigated at the moment by the Inland Revenue,’ he said. ‘The tax inspector told me...’
‘Ms Neustadt,’ Dimitri interrupted. ‘Ms Fiona Neustadt.’
Surprised, Maler looked up.
Dimitri smiled and raised his arms in his defence. ‘Sorry, Inspector, information was my business for too long, my drug. Sometimes you have relapses.’ He liked this policeman, who was now closing his notebook with an irritated expression. ‘So what did this Ms Neustadt tell you?’
‘That Tretjak meddles in the lives of a lot people by profession,’ Maler said after a short break. ‘And that this probably conjures up a certain degree of enmity. That’s what she said. I believe she wanted to protect him somehow...’
That was the start of the sort of policeman’s questions Dimitri had been expecting. Who were Tretjak’s enemies? Was there somebody in particular who wanted to settle a score? When was the last time Dimitri had seen Tretjak? Did the names Kufner and Kerkhoff mean anything to him?
Dimitri had, in the meantime, devoured the German Rail cheese platter, which had made it possible for him to fob off the inspector’s questions with monosyllabic answers or the occasional shrug. But at the end of the conversation Dimitri tore off a piece of the menu and with the inspector’s pen scribbled a few words and a few numbers on an empty space on it.
Darkness had fallen outside; the inspector had paid for his drinks and stood up. Dimitri rose too and handed him the piece of paper. ‘There is a man in room 324, ward F of the Munich University Hospital in Großhadern who you should go and see,’ Dimitri said. ‘He is going to die and this is going to happen soon. Pancreatic cancer, terminal phase.’ Maler looked at him, unmoved, but Dimitri had the feeling that the mention of the clinic – or the illness – made him feel uncomfortable. ‘The man’s name is Krabbe and he is a doctor himself,’ Dimitri continued, ‘Dr Martin Krabbe. Your records will show him to be an ear, nose and throat specialist with a practice at the Tegernsee. Forget that. Just show him this piece of paper and then talk to him about his pupils. Because he was also a kind of teacher.’