The Carnival Master

by Craig Russell

  The man who had been sitting at the centre had prematurely white hair that had been trimmed to a coarse stubble on his scalp. A scar reached down out of the bristle, across his broad brow and down to the outside corner of his right eyebrow. Buslenko had done his usual split-second survey of the room and had already guessed the seniority of the scarred man from the body language of the others. But it wasn’t Buslenko’s instinct or training that told him that he was looking at a mean, dangerous son of a bitch. He had recognised the Russian as soon as he had entered the room and his chest had tightened. Kotkin. What was Dmitry Kotkin doing here? He was too senior in the organisation to be a recruiting sergeant. Buslenko also didn’t need to turn around to know that there was now a fifth man behind him, at the door. But he sensed there was someone else. Someone who lay beyond the reach of Buslenko’s skills; someone who waited, silent and unseen, behind the dark glass wall in the room beyond.

  The Ukrainian Beauty put Buslenko’s beer down on the table and left the room. He did not turn as he heard the door click shut behind him. The presence of the fifth man was academic: Buslenko was good and was perfectly capable of taking on four or five men in the right situation. But this was not the right situation and these were not the right men: they all had a similar background to Buslenko and, he guessed, had all killed before, more than once. At best Buslenko could take one or two with him. But he knew that if death were to come, it would come from behind and the man at the door.

  ‘You’re Rudenko?’ Kotkin spoke in Russian. Buslenko nodded.

  ‘Sit down,’ Kotkin said and sat down himself. The other three stayed on their feet. The scarred Russian opened the file. ‘You have a very impressive record. Exactly what we are looking for. Or so it would seem. But what I want to know is why you came looking for us?’

  ‘I didn’t. You contacted me.’ Buslenko answered in Russian. He thought about taking a nonchalant slug from his beer bottle, but was afraid that his hand would shake. Not fear. Adrenalin.

  Kotkin raised his eyebrows and wrinkled the scar unpleasantly. ‘You went around asking questions. More than that, you knew the right questions to ask in the right places. That means only one of two things: you were advertising yourself or …’

  Buslenko laughed and shook his head. ‘I’m not a cop, if that’s what you were going to say. Listen, it’s as simple as this. Money. I want to make money. A lot of it. And I want to work abroad. You do want people to work abroad, don’t you?’

  ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’ The scar-headed Russian nodded to the others, two of whom approached Buslenko and gestured for him to stand up and raise his arms. One frisked him manually while the other scanned him for a wire with a hand-held electronic wand. Buslenko smiled. When they had satisfied themselves that Buslenko was clean, they sat down again.

  ‘We know what we’re looking for. You need to convince us that you’re it.’

  ‘I’m guessing it’s already all in there,’ Buslenko nodded towards the file. ‘Twelve years’ experience. As a paratrooper, then with an Interior Ministry Spetsnaz. I can handle myself and I can handle any job you give me.’

  ‘I know the Spetsnaz unit you served with. Do you know Yuri Protcheva? He would have served about the same time.’

  Buslenko made a show of trying to remember. He had been through the files, through all the team lists, a dozen times. He knew right away that there had been no Yuri Protcheva: it was an obvious trick. Too obvious. Kotkin didn’t want him to admit to knowing someone who didn’t exist. He wanted him to deny it too quickly, revealing he had been rehearsed.

  ‘No … I can’t say I did,’ Buslenko said eventually. ‘I knew everyone, just about. But no Yuri Protcheva. There was a Yuri Kadnikov – could that have been him?’

  ‘You say you got into trouble?’ Kotkin ignored Buslenko’s reply.

  ‘Some. Not much. We had to bust up a prisoners’ revolt in SIZO13 prison. I killed an inmate … Not a big deal, given the situation, but a prison official took one in the neck because he didn’t do what he was told and stay out of the way. Not my fault. His. But his brother was a big shot in the Interior Ministry. You know how it is …’

  ‘We’re not looking for misfits or drop-outs. We’re looking for soldiers. Good soldiers who can take and carry out orders.’

  ‘That’s what I am.’ Buslenko straightened himself up in the leather chair. ‘But I thought you were looking for people to … well, break the law.’

  ‘The only law we follow is the soldier’s code. If you join us, you will be a member of an elite. Everything we do is regulated by the highest military standards. It’s no different from normal service with a Spetsnaz unit. The only difference is that it pays a hell of a lot better. But you’re not in yet. I need you to answer a few questions.’

  ‘Go ahead …’ Buslenko shrugged nonchalantly, but his mouth felt dry and he had to resist the temptation to look over the Russian’s shoulder to the black glass wall behind. His instinct now jabbed at him incessantly. There was someone in there. Watching. Listening. He was there. Sasha’s intelligence had been right.

  ‘Do you know what it is that holds a military unit together?’

  ‘I dunno … obedience, I suppose. The ability to carry out an order as efficiently as possible.’

  Kotkin shook his scarred head. ‘No, that’s not it. I’ll tell you what it is. It’s trust. The trust of true comradeship. Loyalty to one another and to your commander.’

  ‘I guess so.’ Buslenko detected something changing, like a sudden shift in air pressure just before a storm. He sensed the other three men on the long sofa tensing almost imperceptibly. But there was no change in the Russian’s demeanour. Too professional. The files on Kotkin showed that he had been an interrogator, or torturer, in Chechnya or elsewhere on the fringes of Russia’s crumbling empire. Maybe that was why he was there. Not as Buslenko’s recruiter, but as his torturer and executioner. And still Buslenko’s instinct nagged at him that there was someone watching and listening behind the glass wall.

  ‘Loyalty. That’s what holds a unit together. Brothers under arms.’ The Russian paused, as if waiting for Buslenko to say something. The other three men stood up. Buslenko strained to hear the hint of any sound behind him.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Buslenko asked, trying to keep his tone even. It will come from behind, he thought again.

  ‘We all share a common experience.’ Kotkin continued as if he had not heard Buslenko’s question. ‘We are men of war whose lives depend on each other. What we fight for is secondary. What really matters is that we fight together. There is an unspoken, unbreakable bond of loyalty between us. There is no greater bond. And there is no greater treachery than when that bond is betrayed.’

  As if responding to a cue, the other three men reached into their leather jackets and Buslenko found himself staring down the muzzles of three heavy-calibre automatics. But no one pulled a trigger.

  ‘Your name is not Rudenko,’ said the Russian. ‘And you didn’t serve with the Titan unit. Your name is Taras Buslenko. You served with the Sokil Falcon organised-crime Spetsnaz units and you are now an undercover agent of the organised-crime division of the Interior Ministry.’

  Buslenko gazed past the Russian at the glass wall. He was in there. Buslenko was sure of it. Close to the kill, the way he always liked.

  ‘You’re alone, Buslenko,’ said Kotkin. ‘You couldn’t wear a wire and you couldn’t come armed. Your people are outside but we are better than your people. By the time they get in here, you will be dead and we will be gone. In short, you’re fucked.’

  It was then that Buslenko heard the slightest hint of someone moving across the room behind him. He anticipated the next move perfectly. He had already worked out that they would want to kill him as quietly as possible and as soon as the loop of wire was whipped down in front of him he slid down in the leather chair. The wire dug painfully into his forehead before slipping off, having failed to hook under his jaw and the soft tissue of his throat. Bu
slenko rammed his heels into the coffee table. It was heavy and protested as it slid on the floor and it did not slam into the shins of the gunmen with the force he had hoped. He rolled sideways on the floor. Still no gunshots: it was clear that they were certain they could kill him without opening fire.

  Buslenko rolled again but the fifth man, the one who had failed to strangle him with the high-tension wire, slammed his boot into the side of his head. It hurt like hell but Buslenko was not stunned as his assailant had intended and caught the boot as it came down again – expertly, edge first – towards the cartilage of his throat. Buslenko twisted his attacker’s foot and swung his own boot upwards and into the other man’s groin. Buslenko knew he was going to die. What the Russian had said was true: his support would not get here in time, but he sure as hell was going to take someone with him. Now Buslenko moved without the panic of someone fighting for his survival; instead every part of his training came together in a perfect final performance. He leapt to his feet, spun his assailant around and in a single, continuous movement, snapped his neck and threw his dying body into the path of his attackers. The Russian feinted to the left and let the body fall on his companions. Buslenko saw something bright flash towards him and only just dodged the first thrust of Kotkin’s knife. With a grace and skill to match Buslenko’s own, the Russian changed his grip on the knife and brought it back in an arc. This time Buslenko did not move fast enough and, although he felt no pain, he knew the blade had sliced into his shoulder. The other three had now recovered their composure and a series of blows rained onto Buslenko. He found himself pinioned to the wall by his assailants, helpless against their combined strength. Kotkin moved close. He lifted the knife and jabbed the point into the side of Buslenko’s throat. Buslenko knew what was coming next. It was a classic form of silent killing: forcing the blade in behind the windpipe then forwards and out. It was how they used to kill pigs on farms. No squealing. Just a breathless second of silence, then death. Buslenko looked straight into the Russian’s cold grey eyes.

  ‘Fuck you,’ he said, and waited for the knife to sink deeper.

  There was a cursory knock and the door to the entertaining room swung open. Everyone, even Buslenko, turned to look. The Ukrainian Beauty stepped in, a tray in her hands and started to ask if they needed more drinks. Her words trailed off as she saw the dead man on the floor and Buslenko pinned against the wall, a knife at his throat.

  ‘Get her!’ Kotkin barked at the others and two of them made towards her, leaving Kotkin and one other with Buslenko.

  The girl dropped the tray, under which she had been concealing a Fort17 automatic. Calmly, she took Kotkin out first. Buslenko heard the round smack into the centre of the Russian’s forehead, and felt a light splatter of fluid against his cheek. As the Russian dropped, Buslenko grabbed the knife from his grasp and arced it up under the jaw of the man who still held him. The knife sliced up through the soft tissue of his victim’s underjaw, through his mouth and tongue and jammed into the hard palate of the roof of his mouth. There was a series of other shots and Buslenko knew that the other two men were dead. He shoved his last assailant, the knife still lodged in his jaw, away from him. As the man staggered back, Ukrainian Beauty fired two more rounds. The first hit the man in the body and brought him to the floor. The second, textbook style, hit him in the head.

  She kept her automatic at locked-arm’s length, scanning the room. There was a commotion outside and a troop of Spetsnaz burst into the room. Buslenko, clutching a handkerchief to the side of his neck where the Russian’s knife had cut him, gestured towards the glass wall at the back of the room.

  ‘In there! I think he’s in there.’

  Ukrainian Beauty walked over to Buslenko. ‘You okay?’

  ‘I think I owe you a large tip, waitress.’ Buslenko smiled bitterly and looked at the body of the man he had stabbed and she had shot twice. He had wanted to take at least one prisoner alive for interrogation and thought Ukrainian Beauty’s coup de grâce had been unnecessary. But considering she had just saved him from being slaughtered like a farm pig, he passed no comment.

  The Spetsnaz commander came back from the other room. Like Buslenko, Peotr Samolyuk was a Sokil Falcon officer.

  ‘It’s clear.’

  ‘What do you mean, “clear”? He was in there,’ said Buslenko. ‘Watching. I know it.’

  Peotr Samolyuk shrugged black armoured shoulders. ‘There’s no one there now.’

  ‘You sure it was him?’ asked Ukrainian Beauty.

  ‘Our primary fucking target was in there. I could feel him. And he’s the only reason we’re here. The intelligence we had that he would be with this group was as solid as it could be. But him …’ Buslenko frowned and nodded down to where the body of the scar-headed Russian lay. A halo of dark crimson had oozed from the exit wound in his skull. ‘He just doesn’t make sense … what was Dmitry Kotkin doing here?’

  ‘He’s part of the organisation. Why wouldn’t he be here?’

  ‘Right organisation, wrong side of it. He’s a Molokov man.’ Buslenko was still looking at the black glass wall. ‘And it wasn’t Molokov in there behind the glass. Watching. It was the big guy himself. Vasyl Vitrenko. Some big business has brought him back. Something really big or he wouldn’t have left himself exposed. Even Kotkin’s far too senior to be recruiting thugs. He’d reached a level where he was becoming less and less visible.’

  ‘All I can say is that we’ve got this place sealed up as tight as a drum. Whoever you thought was in there couldn’t have got out.’ Ukrainian Beauty followed Buslenko’s gaze to the adjoining entertaining room. ‘It was always going to be a long shot, Taras. Our intelligence was contradictory. We had information that Vitrenko was back in Ukraine and we had equally sound intelligence that he is still in Germany.’

  ‘Well,’ said Buslenko, turning to face the beautiful Captain Olga Sarapenko of the Kiev police militia, who had made such a convincing nightclub hostess. ‘That was what my grandmother always said about the Devil: he has the craft to be in two places at the same time.’

  5.

  Fabel waited to be shown into Criminal Director van Heiden’s office and thought about how he would soon become someone else. And how everyone except Susanne seemed to be doing their best to talk him out of it. He guessed that van Heiden might be about to try again.

  The whole idea of resigning from the Polizei Hamburg had been to get away from death. His entire career as a policeman had been founded on its violent intrusion into his life. The young Fabel had never considered being a police officer; with the absolute certainty of youth, Fabel had had his entire career as a historian planned out for himself. But then death, in its most sudden and violent form, had shouldered its way, unbidden, into Jan Fabel’s path.

  It had happened while Fabel was still a student at the Universität Hamburg. Fabel had only been dating Hanna Dorn, the daughter of his history professor, for a few weeks when she had been randomly selected by a psychopath as his next victim. He knew that Hanna Dorn, in her own right, would not have made that much of an impression on his life. Without the trauma of her murder, she would have faded from his consciousness long ago. They would, no doubt, have had a relationship that would have lasted a while: they would have gone to parties, eaten out when they could have afforded it, met with friends. But every time Fabel thought back to her, he knew that they would not have stayed together and that Hanna Dorn would have diminished into the far distance of his memory. A name that would have to be prompted into his recall. It had not been Hanna’s presence in his life that had marked Fabel for ever. It had been her sudden absence.

  Fabel had moved on from trying to make sense of Hanna’s death to trying to make sense of the death of strangers. Fabel had come to know so many names, so many faces of the dead. As head of the Polizei Hamburg’s Murder Commission, Jan Fabel had spent his career getting to know people who were no longer capable of knowing him. He had become a master at reconstructing a life and a personality that was lo
st to everyone else; to walking in the footsteps of the murdered and understanding the minds of those who had killed them.

  What had kept Fabel sane had been the fact that, throughout his career, he had always sought to keep death at arm’s length. He had never been entirely detached: it had always been his empathy for the victims that had given him that critical edge. But since Hanna’s murder, he had tried never to let death come too close to him. The last three cases had changed all that: one officer dead, one seriously wounded and mentally scarred. And twice more he had seen his officers placed in serious peril.

  It was time to go. A chance encounter with an old schoolfriend had resulted in an offer of a job. More than a job. An escape into a normal life, whatever that was. To become someone else. It had been a monumental decision for Fabel. And now everyone was trying to talk him out of it. Everyone except Susanne. Susanne saw it as more than a change in Fabel’s career; she saw the opportunity to change the basis of their relationship.

  Fabel’s superiors had, with great reluctance, agreed that he would leave the Polizei Hamburg’s Murder Commission at the end of the so-called ‘Hamburg Hairdresser’ case. It had been this case, piled onto the three other serial-killer investigations he had undertaken, that had led Fabel to the final decision to quit. There was, he had decided, just so much horror and fear that one could experience, only so much bearing witness as foul, corrupted and sick minds opened themselves up in front of you, before you started to become more and more like the thing you hunted.

  Criminal Director Horst van Heiden was Fabel’s boss, in charge of Hamburg’s Criminal Police, the investigative branch of the Polizei Hamburg. Fabel had been surprised at van Heiden’s persistence in trying to persuade him not to resign. Fabel and van Heiden were, in many ways, opposites. Van Heiden was the typical career police officer, with a background in the force’s uniformed branch. Fabel still saw himself as the accidental detective: an outsider. And he liked to think that he held little regard for the formalities of his occupation.