by Jon Stenhugg
“Yes, of course. I have my own insurance.” And I’ll need it to cover the damages to your face if you keep this up, Hurtree added to himself.
*
The train trip to Heidelberg took only a few hours. Hurtree glanced out at the scenery as it flashed by. Germany had been a very different place when he first saw it from a jeep as a soldier in the Second World War. Smoke was always rising on the horizon in those days, a reminder that people were dying only a few miles away. Today the air was crystal clear, and there was probably more smoke and smog in his hometown of Philadelphia than he’d ever seen when he lived in Europe after the war ended.
The high-speed train gouged a cylinder of space and time in the early afternoon, and he felt tired after the Atlantic flight. He was getting too old to be jumping around continents as he’d once done, and a time difference of six hours left him sapped, but he was too afraid he’d miss his stop if went to sleep, so he concentrated on the farmhouses dotting the horizon.
He wondered if there would ever be another war in Europe. There were times when Hurtree felt certain there would be; Europe was just too diverse a place to incorporate all the different cultures, histories and languages that made up the continent. On the other hand, he thought, there had only been three armed conflicts since the end of the war in 1945: Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Bosnia, Croatia – no, that was four, or was it five if you counted Corsica? Or six if the Basque countries in Spain were included, or maybe seven if Europe was as big as Israel and Palestine. And the conflict between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus – did they get on the list? So maybe the problem was that there was war in Europe constantly; it just didn’t manage to spill over the entire continent at the same time, and you could easily get away from it if you were lucky.
The spires of the cathedral in Heidelberg were now visible through the window, and Hurtree remembered the first time he saw them. He wondered if he could find a way back to Europe. This was where he had become a man, where he’d grown up.
“This is where I belong,” he mumbled to himself. Being an aging retiree in the US wasn’t agreeing with him. He longed for easy Sunday afternoons with European soccer on the television, a beer in his hand and a crowd of locals whose only real interest in life was to swear allegiance to a soccer or rugby team. He missed rugby. Americans didn’t know what real football was, encased in those suits of armour and helmets.
*
Hurtree took a taxi to CID headquarters, where he asked to see Captain Charles Peters. The taxi was allowed in through the sentry. Peters met him outside after it pulled up to the building where he had his office, and opened the door before the car had stopped.
“You look like shit,” said Peters.
“You are shit,” said Hurtree, and both men laughed as they bumped each other in the chest with the army greeting.
“Time hasn’t changed you at all,” said Peters. “You’re as ugly as ever.”
“I know, but I’ve conquered time,” said Hurtree. “Here’s my secret. I drink copious amounts of Guinness and raw vodka, I get up every morning at 5 am, and I’m getting too slow to catch women anymore, so I’m wasting less and less energy on sex.”
“Shit, if I followed that I’d be dead in a week.”
The two men walked towards Peters’ office on the base. When they arrived Peters shut the door and the tone of his voice changed; became lower, more serious.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“You said something about Schneller.” Hurtree looked up as he groped for his notebook. “You said I might be able to help you identify him. I saw him a couple of times but he was a lot younger then. If he hasn’t aged or had plastic surgery then I guess he’d be pretty easy to pick out, but he might just have added a few years to his belt.”
“We’ve tried to photograph him several times, but he never shows up at any of the places we’ve tried to lure him to.”
“That’s Schneller alright. He had a sixth sense about that, or someone on the inside. I always wondered if I was the only one who ever got to see his face.”
“How did that happen?”
“He was using a Danish addict to make contact with a guy who was going to sell him a shit load of M-16s out of an arms dump in the mountains outside Frankfurt. We had her pegged, and she was easy to follow: lived at great hotels but dressed like a tramp, probably was one. I followed her one afternoon and she went into a lingerie shop in Frankfurt with this guy and I stood outside to get them on film, but then they both came out and bumped into me. Only thing was, this time he was a she, a knockout babe, and he even wore high heels.”
“Schneller, a cross-dresser? Didn’t you ask her for a date?” asked Peters. “Are you sure he didn’t just lose you in the shop?”
“It was his ring that gave him away,” said Hurtree. “He wore a big gold ring on the ring finger of his right hand. The guy had it on when he went in and the broad had it on when she came out. I’m sure of what I saw. I followed them until the Danish bitch split off and then I went after him. He lost me by going into one of those round, metal urinals in the square, and me thinking ‘gotcha’ the whole time I waited for him to come out.”
Peters’ eyes widened, waiting for Hurtree to finish.
Hurtree smiled, recognising the irritation the silence was producing. “He never came out. I waited there over an hour, and when I opened the door he was gone, vanished.”
“Well I knew he was good, but that is pretty fucking amazing. Did you ever find how he did it?”
“Yup. The guy was an expert on tunnels. He used pissers and telephone booths that had been placed on top of manholes leading to the sewer system. There weren’t many, but he knew how to use them. It was like chasing the Third Man, you know, from the film?”
“The Third Man drowned in the film. I doubt if we’re going to get that lucky. Can you help a forensic artist with a drawing?”
“As a girl or as a guy?” asked Hurtree.
“Both, if you can remember it. And give me any other details you think will help us catch him.”
“He must have done something very bad.”
“We’ll find out how bad when we catch him,” said Peters, leading Hurtree into the attractive young artist’s office and pointed to him as he told her, “Here’s the guy I told you about. Pick his brains if you find any. And Hurtree, keep your mind on business.”
“Oh hell, yes,” said Hurtree, sitting down to help the artist sketch the two pictures that would soon end up on Ekman’s desk. Peters let Hurtree keep the third sketch; a very good likeness of Peters that Hurtree had described in jest.
*
Schneller had begun his career as a murderer when he was thirty-five years old. Previously, his mission in Sweden had been to negotiate high-level purchases of weapons systems for the East German government, and collect information regarding the status of the internal debate on disarmament taking place behind the scenes in the Swedish Parliament. His dual sexuality and language skills gave him access to both men and women, and in ways that he could use to blackmail his victims.
He was attractive and sociable, regardless of which guise he was using, and it was easy for him to befriend women, luring them into situations where he could obtain either the information or the next step he required.
His first killing had been a simple task. A pair of women journalists working for Swedish Television had been investigating one of his purchases of several truckloads of tank ammunition supposedly bound for India, but rerouted to Czechoslovakia instead. Schneller, dressed as a dark-haired woman, had followed them to a bar in Stockholm and offered to contact a man who would give them detailed information on the weapons-smuggling deal they had managed to sniff out. It was too much for the two journalists to pass up and they drove Schneller to the cheap apartment on Bonde Street which he used when he was in Stockholm, close to the Hammarby Canal in the southern part of the city.
It was nearly freezing, and they readily accepted the tea he offered to warm them up, laced w
ith a drug that would incapacitate them and make it easy for him to carry them into the bathroom and drown them. He’d even added salt to the water in the bath tub to make it appear to a forensic examiner that the women had drowned in the Baltic Sea. He then placed them in their car and drove it off the edge of the canal. There were no witnesses to see the car splash into the harbour on that cold, rainy November night.
They weren’t discovered until six months later, when a diver was clearing debris from the bottom of the canal. A forensic examination noted the anomaly of the salty, chlorinated water in their lungs that definitely didn’t come from the brine of the Baltic Sea, but their deaths were still classified as an accident and the case was closed, testimony to Schneller’s excellent connections within the Government. By then Schneller had increased his reputation as someone who could handle anything thrown his way. He was given the use of a house in southern Sweden, close to the ferry terminal to Germany, as a place to relax.
Schneller’s life was uncomplicated for the next five years. He admired the hardworking Swedish people, their attention to detail and willingness to subject themselves to the social engineers of the greater good. There were times when he felt Sweden had progressed further than his own country in realising those Marxist goals describing the ideal Communist state. His reports to East Berlin always included positive comments regarding the work of Swedish politicians, including Niklas Shoreman, who’d helped him make contact with the government agency responsible for licencing the export of weapons.
During his early years in Sweden he’d used the Red Army Fraction attack on the German Embassy in Stockholm as a way to find potential agents at beer parties thrown for university students, managing to recruit a young student who later would become his prime source of information after she’d completed her degree in Information Services. From her position in the Swedish Parliament’s archives, she would provide him with detailed and powerful information regarding the status of Swedish thinking on international trade treaties and defence contracting. She’d chosen her own codename, taken from a Biblical figure hated in some circles and loved in others: Magdalena.
In 1989 the unthinkable happened. The Berlin Wall, which had for such a long time divided the two major forces in Europe, was conquered by the inadequacies of Schneller’s own government. Instead of shooting the massive crowds at the wall, the soldiers started to allow them to pass through to the West, jubilant and still alive. Then, without explanation and in full view of the entire world, the crowd was allowed to destroy the wall, the symbol of division which had kept them prisoners for so many years. Only one year later the entire government collapsed and Schneller’s country had been integrated into one giant Deutschland.
As Schneller sat in front of his Swedish TV, watching the crowd tear into the wall, he felt they were breaking into the sanctity of his home. A feeling of dread and fear in his heart mirrored the freedom he saw in the faces of the crowd.
He knew he’d have to act quickly to erase records of his background; he was now living in a very dangerous world. Schneller had made a frenzied trip back to East Berlin’s monumental administrative zone of Lichtenberg, to find himself surrounded by other Stasi agents as they all scrambled for the files which could identify them, burning them in small piles on the concrete floor of the archive. Schneller made sure his own file didn’t disappear, that would be too obvious, so he carefully destroyed all but two pages, one divulging his birthplace, the other his codename in a list of several other codenames, none connected to real people.
After his return to the house outside of Trelleborg in southern Sweden he spent several anxious months planning a new life. It turned out he had no reason to worry. A man of his skills and background could always count on employment by the men who ran countries where fear and subterfuge were the beacons guiding the direction their society could take.
Before the week ended he was a self-employed weapons dealer and killer for hire, an entrepreneur in the business of calamity and death.
Now, like all salesmen, he was trying to dodge the warranty; the assurance that his word was as good as the gold he’d taken for the sale. Misplaced trust would have its consequences, even for Schneller.
Chapter 10
Sara got to work early on Friday morning, still tired from another night of problem-solving dreams. The tapes included several of Hoffberg’s appearances on television debate programmes, and she would have turned off the TV if it hadn’t been part of the job. They were boring and repetitive. Hoffberg always began by tipping his head forward, looking down over his glasses towards his opponent, then turning to smile into the camera as he rubbed the tip of his nose. He then proceeded to devastate the logic of the argument which had just been heard by using emotional arguments which were difficult to counter.
Hoffberg was certain humanity was on the brink of destruction and had itself to blame. His opponent in the debate was always the person who was most guilty. Hoffberg offered proof he was right by referencing hundreds of scientists who had the same point of view, but could never actually provide a name to be contacted. He made logical leaps that left even the most intellectual of opponents gasping for breath as they tried to rebuild the kaleidoscope pattern Hoffberg built in the air with his eager hands, as he interrupted and waved off opposing arguments. It was clear Hoffberg was totally convinced he was right, and woe to those who didn’t agree with him.
On almost every tape Sara watched, there were references to the weaknesses of democratic rule. At first she thought they were mirthful, ironic comments. On the final tape, however, made only a few months before Hoffberg had quit Parliament, the tone of his voice had become hard and his eyes narrowed as he interrupted his opponent again.
“Democracy isn’t the solution,” said Hoffberg, slamming his fist on the glass table that separated him from his opponent, “it’s the problem! We’re forced to follow the will of a majority of people who aren’t equipped with the intelligence necessary to discover the only solution that’s adequate to save our world from impending destruction. Peace is the only answer, but it seems very many democratic institutions are making this peace impossible. What we need is a new order, someone who can take over and make peace the only option.” At that point Hoffberg got up off the sofa and left the television studio. For him the debate seemed to be over.
Another tape included Hoffberg standing in front of a small group of young people, demonstrating against the United States’ involvement in Grenada. “Peace now, peace now,” they shouted behind Hoffberg, and he took the microphone from the seasoned reporter’s hand to begin a long, ranting monologue about the need for a single, strong leader who could stand up to the misuse of power exhibited by the superpowers of the world.
There was a mark in the tape indicating where the television news editor had clipped it, robbing television viewers of the true nature of Hoffberg’s personality. In the unedited version of the tape, Hoffberg’s eyes seemed to glaze over as he continued, and his speech became short and staccato. He wasn’t facing the group behind him; he was looking directly into the television camera, hoping that he was speaking to the nation, or perhaps the entire world.
Sara closed her eyes for a minute as Hoffberg ranted on. She began to hear a likeness between Hoffberg’s way of speaking and some of Hitler’s speeches she’d heard on documentaries just before she’d turned them off.
For one shuddering minute she became frightened as she heard Hoffberg say, “And they will learn, these forces of evil and the governments that support them. They will learn by example that there is only one choice for humanity: peace. And if they don’t choose it, then the followers of the cause of peace will bring it to their doorsteps. These silly men will have no choice but to choose the right answer, or be obliterated by their own foolishness!”
This was a large-calibre threat. Sara understood why the television news editors had removed it from the news blurb, if for no other reason than to protect Hoffberg, who was clearly not having a good day.
> She went back through the tapes again, searching for anything that looked like the image of the priest witnesses had mentioned, but it was a dead end. When she went back to her office someone had put an envelope on her chair, and it contained a translation of the single word in the Cyrillic alphabet that Mrs Spimler had found on the brochure from her husband’s trip to Estonia: torpedo.
Sara repeated the word several times after reading it, and stared out the window, still covered with snow and raindrops from last night’s storm. It was eight o’clock in the morning and the sun had been struggling up over the horizon for an hour now, leaving only ten more hours of daylight until darkness began again. Sara was drained; another full night of fruitless work trying to find the connection between a simple murder and a complexity in the fog beyond.
Next month the days would be even shorter, and she’d have about eight hours of daylight if the clouds didn’t cover the sky. By December there would be only six hours of daylight.
She made a promise to herself to book a trip to some sun-drenched Mediterranean beach if her bank account allowed for it. “torpedo,” she repeated to herself, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
Sara picked up the phone, hesitated, put it back on the cradle, then picked it up again to dial Ekman.
“Ekman.” His voice was as dry as medieval parchment.
“This is Sara Markham.” Sara tried hard to hide the tremor in her voice. “I’ve been looking at some video tapes of Hoffberg and I think there’s something we should talk about. I’m not sure it fits into the murder yet, but it’s something you might want to know anyway.”
“Yes?” Ekman stretched out the word to a question which had to be answered.
“I’m sitting in the Hoffberg room. Do you think you could come over for a minute or two to look at one of the tapes? We also have something that Spimler’s wife left us, a word written in Russian which I just had translated.”