‘Have we achieved anything at all?’ Farah exclaimed.
‘We proved we won’t be intimidated,’ Roman insisted, but it didn’t sound very convincing.
‘Thanks for bringing us up to speed, Roman,’ Edward said. ‘Talk to you soon.’
After breaking the connection, he looked at Farah with that gaze she knew only too well. It was a look that hinted at an imminent storm.
‘Call me a dinosaur, a journalistic mastodon, who should have been extinct long ago,’ he growled. ‘But I can assure you that we eliminated at least one villain. Although, having said that, we’re dealing with a worldwide network of crooks.’
‘A network that keeps renewing itself,’ Paul added from the back seat. ‘And as long as that network’s in place, it’s our moral duty to continue our efforts.’
‘Please, a standing ovation for my nephew,’ Edward said. ‘And don’t stop clapping just yet, because the European Competition Commissioner has filed charges against AtlasNet for allegedly violating European regulations. Plans for Armin Lazonder’s New Golden Age Project have been shelved by the Amsterdam City Council because of his dodgy connection to Lavrov. And in Indonesia, Baladin Hatta will be chairing the Parliamentary Commission investigating the financial background of the Sharada Project.’
From the back, Paul stuck his head between the two front seats and chimed in.
‘And even in South Africa, where President Nkoane has declared the Scorpion Unit unconstitutional with immediate effect, there was one official who helped us reveal that the new head of state has blood on his hands. Zhulongu is dead, Dingane has been booted out of his job, and Anya is fighting for her life, but each one of them stood up for an ideal we continue to believe in.’
‘And however ingenious the Kremlin’s spin on the Lavrov case,’ Edward resumed, ‘the man is damn well going to be sent on a one-way trip to Siberia. So stop feeling sorry for yourself, Hafez, and behave like a proper journalist. I didn’t train you for nothing.’
‘Stop the car,’ she said.
‘What, why?’
‘Stop the car, damn it!’
Edward swerved on to the verge. She leaped out of the car, her eyes welling up. She wanted to scream, but didn’t have the energy.
When she turned around, they were right behind her – two men bewildered by the situation, and by her.
She wrapped her arms around them, pulled them close and cried. She cried like a baby.
‘I wanted to kill him … But I didn’t do it. Bebakhshen mara. Forgive me. Please forgive me.’
8
At the moment he saw the hearse with Melanie Lombard’s body drive away, Radjen Tomasoa knew he could no longer continue solving crimes. He desperately needed a break from death.
The search of Lombard’s villa revealed what he’d already suspected. The minister was part of an exclusive child pornography network, featuring a restricted internet platform where visitors could sign in at different levels by first uploading child pornography themselves. The more frequently members logged in and the more violent the photos and films they posted, the more access they were given to higher levels on the site. This accounted for the increasingly extreme child pornography displayed. Lombard had access to the so-called VIP zone.
Laurens Kramer had managed to track down most of the IP addresses of the members. One of the addresses apparently belonged to a project manager affiliated with Radjen’s Murder Investigation Team. The site’s administrator was a senior official at the Ministry of the Interior, ultimately responsible for the Department of Implementation, Strategy and Advice for asylum centres nationwide.
These centres, where an estimated eight thousand or more children temporarily lived, turned out to be hotbeds of abuse. Laurens Kramer, together with several refugee organizations, was helping to set up a special website for children in asylum centres that informed them about what they could do if they were being abused.
A unit of experienced child sex-crime detectives was put together especially for the investigation. But even they were regularly repulsed by the images they had to look at to identify victims as well as perpetrators.
Radjen was not responsible for the investigation that followed. Melanie Lombard’s recorded confession and Angela Faber’s new testimony were enough to prove Lombard’s involvement in the hit-and-run.
Paul Chapelle’s feature article about AtlasNet, which appeared in the international edition of the AND, revealed that for years Lombard had done the bidding of the Russian oligarch Valentin Lavrov. All related to the plans for a large gas hub in the Netherlands, which was of vital importance to AtlasNet. The construction would allow the Russian conglomerate to continue to play a major role in European gas distribution. Lombard had become Lavrov’s linchpin, lobbying to get the Dutch government to cooperate with AtlasNet to get the project off the ground. And with success – despite the fact that the European Parliament, municipalities in Noord-Holland as well as the Commissioner of the Queen there, Dutch nature conservationists and the Council of State had categorically rejected the permit request. Over eight hundred and fifty million euro had already been invested in the realization of the project. Most of that money had come from the Dutch government. Without Lombard’s intensive lobbying campaign, it would have never happened.
Yet it was still unclear how Lombard had been rewarded for his part in the realization of the gas hub. A special inquiry into his finances would be needed. Radjen requested that such an investigation be initiated, but added that someone else would have to be in charge.
He was not only intent on eliminating death from his life at this moment, but also any kind of professional responsibility.
He’d shut the last file piled on his desk, walked into Kemper’s office without knocking, placed his resignation letter on his boss’s desk without uttering a word and walked out again.
When he returned home later that day, he also knew his domestic life was over.
He found the envelope she’d left him beside their wedding photo on the mantelpiece. He didn’t even need to read the note inside to know what it said. Her story was also his story.
The tent was the only item he took with him. After that summer disappearance, he’d intended to get rid of it, but something had stopped him. Holding it now, he noticed the canvas smelled like the past, as if time had crawled inside to hibernate for thirty-odd years.
And now he was standing on the shores of Lake Trasimeno. A gentle wind caressed his body. Clouds crept along the flanks of the distant mountains, occasionally illuminated by barely audible lightning.
It wasn’t the safest moment to go into the water, but he did it anyway.
He struggled to keep his balance. It was easy to slip on the pebbles at the bottom of the lake. He spread his arms like a tightrope walker and waded into the water to waist height. Then he dived under, the way a swan does with its head, and he started to swim.
He was a slave to the rhythm of his strokes, keeping his head under water, only turning it to the right for air after seven strokes, and he swam until he reached the middle of the lake.
Then he looked back at the shore.
He saw the glowing light of the oil lamp, which he’d lit as a beacon in the darkness.
He turned over on his back and floated with the night sky above him, the clouds lingering between the mountains and the sound of thunder resembling muffled machine-gun fire.
He thought of the last time he’d lain here like this. The sight of the empty tent when he’d returned from his swim. Disbelief, panic and later the numbness. It wasn’t clear whether she’d chosen to leave or been forced. There was no trace of violence. Still, everyone thought a crime has been committed.
The only crime he’d never been able to solve.
Monique. He’d devoted years to looking for her. Getting more obsessed as time passed, consumed by powerlessness and a feeling of guilt that grew and grew.
As he lay on his back in the water and saw the stars appearing from behind the clouds,
he knew that whatever had happened on the shores of the lake couldn’t continue to be a part of his life. He’d carried it around with him for much too long, as if it were an original sin. Here, back on this spot, he’d leave it behind.
He swam back to shore with a slow breaststroke. He dried himself in the light thrown by the oil lamp.
Then he carefully unzipped the tent.
A storm burst loose above him. The rain drummed on the canvas. Lightning lit up the top of the tent, which quickly began to show signs of leakage. He didn’t give a damn. He lay on his back and deeply inhaled the burning Gauloise between his lips.
Chaos reigned outside. He lay safely inside, in the eye of the storm, presiding over the stillness there.
Master of a life that would soon be forgotten.
9
The reunion with Sekandar had been awkward. In contrast to their recent Skype session, he seemed rather withdrawn in person.
Without a word, she’d accompanied him to the fenced-off meadow beside the farmhouse, where a curious white Arabian horse trotted towards them. The mare moved her wet snout across Sekandar’s cheek and then gave the boy a playful little shove, which momentarily threw him off balance. He burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. That’s how unexpectedly his sparkle could reappear from behind his armour of silence.
‘There are times you wish you could simply forget everything you’ve been through,’ Farah said, while trying to make eye contact with him.
He looked away and ran his hand through the horse’s mane. He rested it on the spot where he could feel the animal’s pulse most strongly.
‘But,’ she resumed, ‘if everything were to disappear, you’d no longer be able to think of the old days, of the time when you were happy, when you were at home and everything was the way it’s meant to be …’
He put his head against the mare’s neck and cried without a sound.
After she’d put him to bed, she gave him Rino’s drawing.
He’d looked at it closely and gave her a guarded smile. ‘I can fly too, just like those stars.’
Then she’d sung him to sleep.
Now she was standing in front of the window of her apartment, looking out over Nieuwmarkt, which was illuminated with strands of small lights.
You’re home, she told herself. But her heart was still wandering around Jakarta.
She thought of a song her mother had taught her, and took a deep breath. The melody came easily, having been embedded in her memory for more than thirty years. And the whispered words followed as if she’d sung them only yesterday.
‘Taqat nadara dilam be tu. Be tu chi konam?’ ‘My heart is restless without you. What am I supposed to do without you? My heart tells me: “Go, go.” And then it whispers: “Stay, stay.” ’
She ran a bath and sprinkled a few drops of almond oil into the warm water. The familiar scent had a relaxing effect. She sank down in the tub, became weightless and drifted off.
She thought of Uncle Parwaiz’s words on the piece of paper she found in the bundle of love letters from Raylan to her mother.
The past sneaks up on us like a shadow.
Memories and images of all that had happened crowded her mind. They all led to a single man.
Valentin Lavrov.
For the first time in her life she’d felt the urge to kill.
The mere idea of it made her feel agitated. She got out of the bath. As she dried herself, the phone rang in the living room.
The display showed an unknown number, but she didn’t hesitate to answer.
‘Hello?’
‘Ms Hafez?’ said an unfamiliar male voice. ‘My name is Enayatullah Alirezaei. I’m the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in the Netherlands. I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but I have important news for you. Is this a good time to talk?’
‘What is it?’
‘It concerns, how shall I put it, a matter that dates back more than thirty years that’s never been satisfactorily resolved. I’m talking about the Saur Revolution of 1978. Prominent victims, including the then President, his entire family and ministerial team, have not been located until now …’
‘Until now …’ Farah echoed. She could feel her heart beating faster and faster.
The man was silent for a moment.
‘A mass grave has been discovered a few kilometres outside Kabul,’ he cautiously resumed. ‘One of the bodies identified is that of the former President … Another …’
‘You found my father …’ she whispered.
‘Indeed, Ms Hafez. Dental records have shown that the person in question must be former Interior Affairs Minister Aadel Gailani. It took some effort, but we’ve finally managed to find you, his daughter. On behalf of the government in Kabul I have the very sad task of inviting you to attend the official ceremony to rebury your father. It will take place in five days’ time. As our guest, your travel and accommodation expenses will of course be covered by the Afghan government.’
‘I … I wasn’t expecting this,’ she stammered.
‘My apologies, ma’am. I’ve caught you off guard. Please call me back on this number once you’ve reached a decision.’
After hanging up the phone, she couldn’t tell if the tears she brushed from her face were tears of joy or of haunting sorrow.
Acknowledgements
Humility is essential for a writer. Because writing a book isn’t feasible without the support and inspiration of others.
So many people shared their knowledge and inspired me with their ideas while I was writing the second part of The Heartland Trilogy. I would like to extend my personal thanks to each and every one of them.
First of all, my love, my muse: my wife, Nicole, who every day again nurtures and encourages the passion I have for writing.
My agent and close friend, Marianne Schönbach, for her steadfast faith in me and the Heartland project.
My publisher and editor, Tom Harmsen, who, thanks to his keen analysis, lifted this second book to a higher plane. Diana Sno for her inspiring feedback and unique take on the characters. And Baukje Brugman and Leo Boekraad, who pointed me in the right direction when I embarked on this second book.
Thanks also to all the experts who assisted me in word and deed. Leo Erken, who showed me amazing corners of Moscow. Martin Kayser, who encouraged me to send Farah crawling through the ventilation system in Jakarta. Merijn van Vliet for her insights into Sekandar’s world. Annet van Woerden, who introduced me to the world of VIP chauffeurs. Frank Schoute, Ronald van Wijk and Vincent Sneek for sharing the enjoyment they experience working as drivers. Vincent Schouten for the efficient and patient way he explained digital technology to me. Jeannet Noordijk and Rene Bergwerff for their forensics expertise, and Ton de Haan for his detailed assistance with all the other facets of police work that appear in this book.
Thanks to Piet Hein Peute for the safe descent of a Boeing on a stormy night. Jan Willem Zwart for sharing his fascinating knowledge of botany with me. Julian Langitan and Shenaaz Asruf for all their insights and demonstrations of the Pencak Silat techniques described in this book. Nico Plasier and Rolf Jan Wilms for all their efforts as intermediaries. My music-loving brother Arnold for the stories behind the classical compositions mentioned in this book. Celeste Neelen Artisa for her hospitality, and Marcia Karlas for giving me a second home at Mi Casa Su Casa.
And thank you, dear reader, for taking the journey that is this book.
Walter Lucius
THE BEGINNING
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MICHAEL JOSEPH
India | New Zealand | South Africa
Michael Joseph is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published in the Netherlands as Schaduwvechters by Luitingh Sijthoff, 2016
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph, 2018
Copyright © Walter Lucius, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover images © Tom Payne/Alamy Stock Photo and © Shutterstock
ISBN: 978-1-405-92142-8
Angel in the Shadows Page 38