Tretjak

by Max Landorff

  In the beam of the red flashlight, Lichtinger started up the telescope, opened the cupola, took the protective cap off the glass, and switched on the steering mechanism. Then he turned the apparatus to face the region of the Swan Formation, which was already standing high in the sky. He chose the wide lens and a fog filter, and searched the region until a soft object pushed itself into view. Long, thin, white streaks, which looked like fog or mist over a moist meadow. They spread over a huge area. The Veil Nebula, the remnants of a supernova, 1,700 light years away from Earth.

  Bomb Explosion: Bank Manager Dies In His Car! It had been in the time before mobile phones, before emails. The physics student Joseph Lichtinger had lived in the Türkenstrasse, renting a room in the flat of an old man. The knock of Mr Schmidt on his door had woken him, and then Tretjak had stood in front of him in his room, pale, with this newspaper in his hand. Even now, Lichtinger still saw the look in his eyes, his flickering eyes.

  ‘You did it? You really did it?’ he had asked Tretjak. They had sat across from each other, he on his bed and Tretjak on the old camel stool.

  Again and again Tretjak had shaken his head. ‘No, I haven’t done anything. But they think I did it.’ And then he had looked at him. ‘Our plan was almost exactly like the way it actually happened.’

  ‘Our plan, our plan...’ Lichtinger was practically paralysed with fear. Yes, they had watched the man, spied on him, observed his life, his habits. Gabriel had repeatedly drawn all kinds of diagrams. Yes, they had talked about a bomb, and yes, Gabriel had found somebody who could build it, but all this was not really serious, it was only... ‘Our plan... Was that really a plan, wasn’t it only... Was it?’ The eyes of his friend Gabriel had been very black in that moment. And they became blacker by the second – at least that’s how it had appeared to him.

  From the window of his room, one could see the billboard of a cinema. That night it was showing an ancient Yves Montand movie called The Payment of Fear. Lichtinger had stared the whole time at the box of Lindt chocolates which was lying on the floor next to his bed. A present from his mother. That can’t be the payment, he thought, over and over, like a broken record, that can’t be the payment for fear.

  The remnants of a supernova are what is left over when a star dies. The death of a star is a pretty brutal affair. It fights this death, rebels, escalates, a glowing fireball getting bigger and bigger while running out of fuel. It devours everything it can get hold of in the universe, but there is not enough, and in the end it collapses. And in one last gigantic explosion, the supernova, as its last breath, exhales or rather spits out bits of matter and dust clouds, which travel through the black nothing, glimmering faintly in memory of its long and bright past.

  It was totally silent in the observatory, and the night smelt like summer already. Lichtinger’s right eye hovered over the lens, and his hand held the small electronic guidance system with which he moved the telescope slightly backwards and forwards to increase the contrast of the image.

  In the days after the headline, Lichtinger had practically not left his room, and had told Mr Schmidt that he was ill. Now and again he had turned on his little transistor radio. The assassination had created an uproar throughout the whole country. He immediately turned it off again. He had felt he was burning up in a fever. He still remembered the smell and the pattern of the blanket under which he had crawled. Tretjak went outside, had gone into town, sleepless, getting more and more nervous, and had shown up almost every hour in Lichtinger’s room to report. Lichtinger, however, hadn’t been able to take anything in, almost as if he was in shock. Finally the moment had come when Tretjak had deposited the suitcase in the room. Fifty million, he had said, US dollars. The Russians have paid up. If they think we’ve done it, they might as well pay us for it. Fifty million, Sepp. They belong to us, he had said. You have to hide them, Sepp.

  Lichtinger knew that the suitcase no longer contained exactly fifty million and had to smile. He had left $350 behind in the room for Mr Schmidt. And a note that he should sell the rest of his things. And $8,000 he had put in the pocket of his leather jacket, just like that. He had put the suitcase into a storage locker at the train station, and its key into a padded envelope addressed and mailed to Tretjak. Then he had taken the bus to the airport. Munich-Riem it had been back then, almost in the middle of town by comparison. Today’s new big airport in the Erdinger Moos was still a building site back then. He took a flight to Atlanta, in the US, because that was the next one available, and from there he flew to Venezuela.

  When people go on long trips, they tell stories about them afterwards, they show their photographs, share tips, tell of their experiences. Of the long journey on which the physics student Joseph Lichtinger had embarked that November day more than 20 years ago, no records exist. No letters, no photographs, no tickets, no diary. And he never talked to anybody about it.

  The dangerous mountain path in the Andes in Peru, the even more dangerous drug parties in Colombia, the jobs as a drug mule, as a nurse in a clinic, as a bouncer in a brothel... nothing, so it seemed later, had been hard enough or risky enough to push him to his breaking point. Twice he had found himself in a prison cell, once in Lima and the other time in Caracas. Each day he survived, each kilometre he travelled, put more distance between the Joseph Lichtinger from Lower Bavaria he once had been and the person he was now becoming. There was no proof that this year of his life had even happened. Only for the end of that journey was there a witness. Maybe this witness was the one human being he knew best or should know best, but who tonight of all nights, in the observatory at the Jedlitschka Farm, seemed to slip away, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that he did not have the faintest clue who he was really dealing with.

  Lichtinger screwed the ocular out of the telescope and stowed it away carefully in the correct box. The cupola closed and obscured the view of the sky. He thought of Tretjak, who was in jail. Would he be able to sleep?

  Back then, Tretjak had suddenly appeared, sitting on his bed in a hut in Haiti. Lichtinger had been lying there for days, drugged up to his eyeballs, high on mushrooms of some sort. One put a few drops of the stuff on your tongue and sank into a fog, comparable to the misty remnants of a supernova. There was a big fiesta going on in the little town, with dancing, ritual slaughter, voodoo songs. Lichtinger had no idea how long Tretjak had been sitting there before he had noticed him, or how long he had had to stay there before Lichtinger could actually recognise him.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Pack your things.’

  Lichtinger saw that Tretjak was slipping the owner of the hut some money.

  Two days later, they were back in Munich. Tretjak took him to a small apartment in the Olympic Village, which he had rented for him.

  ‘And?’ he had asked Lichtinger in the taxi on the way to there. ‘Did you manage to get rid of the bad spirits?’

  Lichtinger had taken only a brief look at the apartment and then shaken his head. ‘I don’t want to stay here. I am going home.’

  ‘Home?’ Tretjak had asked.

  ‘To the country. To my parents.’

  ‘You do that. They were worried sick about you.’

  The padded envelope Tretjak had handed him then had been the same one that he had sent Tretjak, and it was still unopened. One could feel the key inside. Back then they didn’t routinely open and empty storage lockers after a while.

  ‘This belongs to us, Sepp. You have to look after it.’

  Lichtinger remembered this scene like it was yesterday. This had been the fork in the road. From then on, their paths had diverged. Soon after that Lichtinger started to study theology, and his friend’s visits had become less frequent. Their debates about the manipulation of reality had lost their attraction. And the money in the suitcase was never spoken of again. And now, thinking back to the scene, he tried – so many years later – to read one more time Tretjak’s face, which he clearly saw in front of him. But he didn’t succeed.

  He
took out a little flask from his jacket pocket and switched on the red flashlight. The liquid contained in the flask appeared to be almost black. He had bought the rabbit from Farmer Sigl. It hadn’t been difficult for him to cut the animal’s throat. And the blood had immediately flowed with no problem. He had been surprised only at how warm it had been. He opened the flask, looked around the observatory, and then carefully let individual drops of the blood fall to the floor in different spots he had specifically chosen.

  PART 2

  ALIENATION

  1

  It was a warm, almost hot September day, which was drawing to a close, and the funeral cortège with Paul Tretjak’s coffin at its head looked decidedly strange. That was partly due to the vehicle that was transporting that coffin. It was in fact a tiny two-wheel tractor pulling a small wagon. On the front edge of the wagon sat a young fellow who was steering the tractor with what looked like a bicycle. The coffin was sticking out over the back edge of the wagon platform and was held in place with several belts. There were two plain, scarlet red ribbons for decoration. No floral bouquet, presumably because it would have been difficult to attach.

  The people who lived in the mountains above the Lago Maggiore were used to whatever they did being done the hard way. As gay and easy as life appeared at the lakeshore, with its slim beach strips, ristoranti and boat charterers, it was completely different if one climbed only a few metres up the hill. Many roads and paths were not accessible by car, they were too narrow, too stony, too steep. They constantly had to be patched up, the encroaching thorny bushes cut back. The houses stood on the mountain like small boulders. The delivery of a new oven could take two men all day. In former times they had used donkeys to transport loads – and nowadays the small two-wheeled tractors, which could be used for practically anything.

  The small church of Santo Stefano and its cemetery lay above the town of Maccagno and were accessible only on foot. The fit ones took 20 minutes to reach it, but for those in slightly worse condition it might take up to three quarters of an hour. In the summer, funerals took place early in the morning or late in the afternoon.

  The small funeral cortège, which had gathered behind Paul Tretjak’s coffin and which set off slowly, split into two groups. There was a small group of locals, identifiable by their dress. They wore lightweight black trousers and short-sleeved dark shirts on top. The mourners who had come from further afield all were dressed much too warmly, wearing suits and ties, even some hats. The Munich police officer Rainer Gritz belonged to this group.

  Rainer Gritz was 33 years old, tall and thin. He had earned his nickname ‘Croco’ not so much because of his appearance but because of the tenacity with which he grabbed hold of the files and details of a case and wouldn’t let go. Wasn’t it strange how life played out sometimes? He had joined the Homicide Squad in Munich just at the time when Inspector Maler came back after his heart transplant. Slowly of course, tentatively, only for a few hours at first, then for half days. Maler had to take things easy, the police had to take care of him. So that became Rainer Gritz’s job. Long-winded research, tiresome report-writing, extensive sifting through files – this part of the work became the responsibility of the young officer. And this is how they became an interesting team, the inspector with a new heart, a man with intuition and experience, and the tall thin guy who developed into some sort of super-assistant, working in the background, checking hypotheses, filling in official applications, gathering evidence and buying train tickets. By now Maler was back full-time and there was no mention of taking it easy anymore. But the division of labour had remained in place somehow.

  They had meant to go to the funeral together, in a way to pay their respects to an unusual case. But Maler had been taken ill yesterday morning, and they had quickly diagnosed that his body was rejecting the new heart. Maler had had to go into the hospital in Grosshadern. It was not a serious rejection, only a Category 1b. By now Rainer Gritz had become a bit of an expert and knew that as long as there was a 1 in front, the rejection was not yet life-threatening. But he had driven to the Lago Maggiore alone, via Lindau on Lake Constance and the San Bernadino Pass.

  He had taken his place in the cortège behind the locals and caught himself thinking that one day in the not too distant future he would have to walk at the very front, at the funeral of his mother or father. He loved his parents and hated this thought. Here it was the priest who led the procession, directly behind the tractor, which was huffing and puffing in a not very pious fashion. He also had come from afar, a man whom Gritz had interviewed as part of this case. His name was Joseph Lichtinger. He was wearing his simple black cassock and carried a wooden crosier with a plain brass cross on top. Gabriel Tretjak walked behind the priest. The Fixer, as they had called him in police headquarters ever since Gritz had interviewed the farmer’s wife, and had seized the suitcases with Tretjak’s data files from the tool shed of the Jedlitschka Farm. Walking beside Gabriel Tretjak was his girlfriend, the tax inspector Fiona Neustadt.

  Just before the path led into the forest, which was already showing autumn colours, it reached a difficult spot, a sharp corner, at which the tractor got stuck and the whole vehicle had to backtrack. In the end Gabriel Tretjak himself had to lend a hand and push the wagon to get his father’s body around the bend. His face was completely unmoved.

  This facial expression had been described by everybody Rainer Gritz had interviewed. Concentrated but not engaged. The manager Peter Schwarz had said that he had met the man only once personally, in a hotel in Sri Lanka. His whole expression had been: you have a problem. You. Not me. ‘Throughout dinner I looked into this face – and at the end of the meal my life was changed completely.’ Rainer Gritz could not shake the thought that Peter Schwarz was still trying to come to terms with what had really happened that evening. He had also visited Schwarz’s wife Melanie, a former starlet, in her flat in Heidelberg. What kind of a man was this Tretjak? ‘Mainly a man who showed understanding,’ was her answer. ‘An attractive man, one who knows what has to be done and then actually does it. He gives one the feeling of being well taken care of.’ But then she told him how quickly Tretjak had withdrawn after the job was completed. That had been somehow hard to take. She had written him two more, very personal letters, detailed letters, written by hand. There had been a rather curt response, three lines, wish you all the best... ‘Well... I needed a while to comprehend that for him, it was only business. That it hadn’t been a friend who had done all this for me, but a professional.’ Gritz remembered this Melanie Schwarz well, how she had stood in the door when he left, still a bit unsure in the new town and in her new life.

  Even the woman Tretjak was now seeing, who had been his tax inspector at the time, had stated in a long conversation they had had at police headquarters that this was in a way the fundamental principle of his work: stay detached – then interfere. She had said that he had not considered how deep these intrusions were and what feelings they would bring about. She was convinced that he had no appreciation as to what he was creating, a situation that in the end could turn on him.

  Your problem. Not mine. That, it was clear, could not apply to the scene unfolding here on the steep path uphill to Santo Stefano. The lives of the man in the coffin and the man who was helping to push the coffin were intertwined, in a way which could only be described as ominous.

  Tretjak did what had to be done: identified his father’s body in the morgue. Acknowledged the body of evidence. Obtained permission to have him buried in the little cemetery up on the hill. Organised the priest, the tractor. Pushed the coffin when it got stuck. Gabriel Tretjak, Rainer Gritz knew, was not only burying his father. He was burying an enemy. And he was burying – probably for the umpteenth time in his life – his childhood. He was doing this in a very determined fashion, seemingly not looking right or left. The only thing he hadn’t done yet was to deliver a eulogy. And somehow Rainer Gritz had the feeling that he wasn’t going to do that at all.

  The small cort�
�ge went around another bend and came out of the forest. In front of it, an almost unreal scene unfolded. Gritz looked at a gently sloping meadow with freshly cut grass framed by hydrangea bushes. Below, the dark blue of the lake with the ruin of a castle on an island, and at the horizon the snow-capped mountains. To the left was the stone wall of the church, which one could have mistaken for the wall of a farmhouse if it hadn’t been for the church bell which started ringing in that very moment above the heads of the mourners. It was hanging in a small open tower, which consisted of four columns and a flat rectangular roof. The whole thing was not higher than two metres, directly above the entrance of the church, which the cortège had now reached. In front of the entrance, a semi-circle was paved with granite slabs. The young man turned off the motor of the tractor. Somebody cleared his throat in the ensuing silence. Gritz was puzzled that one couldn’t see the cemetery. Four men stepped forward and loosened the belts around the coffin, and as if following a silent command, lifted it from the wagon onto a wooden trestle, which had been erected in front of the church entrance. To the left and right of the trestle stood two stone vases with bunches of dark purple aconite. Gritz saw a big gecko dash from one of the arrangements over to and then up the church wall. Just below the window sill, it paused to observe what was happening below. And now Gritz noticed Mrs Poland standing at the edge of the semi-circle, next to a stone tub with a rosebush inside it. Obviously she had not followed the cortège but had come up here earlier. She was wearing dark blue cotton trousers, a simple black blouse and a string of pearls. Big black sunglasses shielded her eyes.

  Rainer Gritz had been 18, just about to sit his high school graduation exams, when he had decided to join the police force. When he had announced his decision, his family and friends had all given him the same warning: it’s not like in the movies, you have the wrong impression, it is a boring agency full of boring people and dusty offices and dreadful forms and reports. You really couldn’t say that about this case, he thought, looking at the well-known writer Charlotte Poland standing over there, a little bit apart from the others in the light of the setting sun. The four thick folders standing on his desk in Munich’s police HQ, all properly labelled and now closed, contained so many stories, twists, characters and plots, that there was enough material for a movie.