by Marc Raabe
‘Warn him? Of what? What’s going on?’
‘Now don’t be an idiot, damn it,’ Sarkov swears. ‘He’ll have killed us all before I’m done explaining it to you.’
David freezes. ‘Who? Valerius? Is he here?’
‘So, you two figured it out on your own? Good, there you go.’ Sarkov reaches his bound hands out to him. ‘Come on.’
David turns to the door and looks back at Sarkov.
‘It’s about saving your arse, you idiot, we have to get out of here and you won’t get very far without me. The cellar is a labyrinth and, if you want to find Gabriel, you’ll need my help.’
‘Well, then just the feet. No more,’ David says and clumsily unties the tight knot at Sarkov’s feet. When his feet are finally freed, Sarkov moves his numb ankles around and then gestures at his bound hands with his chin. ‘Help me up, my legs are still a bit weak.’
David reluctantly bends down towards him. At that very moment, Sarkov’s bound hands come crashing into David’s jaw from the side, pushing him to the ground. The strong scent of the freshly polished wooden floors fills his nose. Everything is spinning around him. The baseboards form a horizon line, and even they are alarmingly unstable.
‘Stupid idiot,’ Sarkov growls, rolls to the side, gets up on his knees and holds his bound hands out to David. ‘Open it,’ he says and presses a knee against the gunshot wound in David’s leg. The pain is overwhelming, like an electrical current that also mobilises all of his reserves at once. David’s hands shoot up and dig into Sarkov’s thin, wrinkled throat and squeeze with frantic force.
Surprised, Sarkov gasps and loses control momentarily. Driven by a bottomless rage, David rears up, throws Sarkov off of him and pounds the back of his head into the floor. He clumsily swings his right fist against Sarkov’s cheek, making his glasses slide across the wooden boards. David maniacally jumps up, grabs the first object on the desk that seems useful – a glass letter opener – and presses the tip against Sarkov’s throat. ‘Don’t make me kill you,’ he gasps.
Sarkov stares at him, still dazed from the punch, and then a smug grin spreads across his face. ‘With a letter opener?’
‘You owe me answers,’ David says. He is breathing heavily from the exertion.
Sarkov laughs. ‘And how’s a coward like you going to make me talk?’
David locks eyes with Sarkov. ‘I want to know what’s going on here. Why are you here? And what do you know about von Braunsfeld and his son?’
Sarkov glares at him. ‘Find out for yourself. Or do you seriously think that I’m going to talk just because you’ve got a letter opener held up to my throat? Look at yourself! You’re a fucking coward, clinging to your mother’s skirt. You don’t know how to take matters into your own hands. You’ve never done it and you never will. You’re too scared. I can smell it, boy!’
David’s hand trembles, the narrow glass handle of the knife wet and slippery. ‘Could be,’ David says with a shaky voice. ‘Could very well be. But what if you make me so furious with your blathering that I stab you in the leg with this thing here, just like you shot me in the leg? Maybe I’ll also lose control, who knows? Then I’ll stab you again and again in both legs. And then, what if, because I’m such a coward, I get really scared? Scared of you, Yuri, that you could wind up following me for the rest of my life, hoping to get your revenge. Out of fear of you, I might just end up killing you. The fear would just have to be strong enough. Fear – as you must know – is the main cause of murder. It’s not from being cold-blooded, but from fear. So what do you think? How scared am I now?’
Sarkov stares at David silently. The smug grin fades from his face.
‘Can I have my answers now?’
Sarkov’s pale lips open so slowly they almost seem stuck together. ‘None of that is relevant,’ he says. Suddenly, his voice sounds weak. ‘Someone like me has more to lose than you can imagine. Let me go, and I promise you, I’ll leave you alone. But don’t expect me to give you your answers, which would be far more dangerous to me than your letter opener.’
‘Who are you afraid of? Of Valerius? Or his father?’
Sarkov presses his lips together and remains silent.
‘What about Treasure Castle? Weren’t you going to get me the licence? What do you know about that? Or were you just bluffing?’
‘If I answer that question, then will you let me go?’
David suspiciously looks for any sign that in his eyes he’s lying, but Sarkov gives nothing away and there’s little more than a vague sparkle. ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Yes.’
Sarkov smiles, pleased with himself. ‘You should look into the owners of the company that lost you your licence.’
‘I know who the owners are. It’s on the companies register. Is that all?’
‘I’m not talking about the companies register. Haven’t you learned to look behind the curtain?’
‘Behind the curtain? So the owners are just a front?’
‘The owners are the owners. But if you look at their accounts, you’ll find another consulting firm collecting vast sums. It’s just a question of why. And do you know who owns this consulting firm?’
‘Who?’ David asks.
‘He’s been right in front of your nose this whole time,’ Sarkov replies. ‘It’s Bug. The firm belongs to Dr Robert Bug.’
David stares at Sarkov with his mouth agape and drops the letter opener. He grows dizzy and his cheeks are fiery red with anger and shame at the same time. ‘Bug,’ he gasps hoarsely. ‘That shithead.’
‘Now you know,’ Sarkov says. His lips curl into another smug grin. ‘Let me go.’
David considers Sarkov for a moment. ‘One more,’ he says and presses the letter opener up to Sarkov’s throat again. ‘I have another question.’
Sarkov presses his lips together.
‘Before, you said that the cellar was a labyrinth. What’s waiting for me if I go down there?’
Sarkov narrows his eyes and looks at David as if he’s misjudged the slender blond man kneeling over him. ‘I can’t tell you much,’ he begins.
David’s hand trembles as Sarkov speaks. When he’s finished, David nods distractedly.
‘And now,’ Sarkov demands, ‘get that damned thing away from me and let me go.’
David sits on Sarkov and doesn’t move. If he gets up, what will Sarkov do then? Just leave? Beat him to death?
‘Let’s go, now, damn it.’
David shakes his head. ‘I can’t trust you.’
‘You’re an idiot. We have to get out of here, don’t you understand that?’
David still doesn’t move.
‘Oh god,’ Sarkov says, horrified. His eyes dart over to the door behind David.
David instinctively turns around, but there’s nothing there.
At that moment, Sarkov pushes David’s hand aside. The letter opener clatters onto the floor and Sarkov rams his fist against the gunshot wound in David’s leg.
David screams and then sees Sarkov reaching for the letter opener. The pain in his leg makes him furious. With both hands, he grabs Sarkov’s head and slams him against the wooden floor again. Once. Sarkov’s eyes widen with surprise. Twice. David closes his eyes. He only hears the dull pounding and Sarkov’s groaning. He imagines it’s actually Bug that’s between his hands. Three times. A thump against the floor, but no groan. He has to tighten his grip, since the head is slipping out of his hands. Four times! A burning pain sears the fingers on his left hand, which are sandwiched between Sarkov’s skull and the hard wooden floor, but the pain is good, almost better, because he can finally feel his own rage for once. Otherwise, he couldn’t believe what he was doing right now.
When David opens his eyes, he’s startled at the sight of Sarkov’s face. His eyelids flutter over the whites of his eyes. His focus floats off in the distance until it’s lost entirely and Sarkov’s whole body succumbs. David immediately hopes it’s just a deep state of unconsciousness, but then he realises it is more.
; He slowly gets up and doubles over almost right away. The bullet wound hurts like hell. He can’t believe what he’s just done or how little he feels.
Chapter 51
Berlin – 28 September, 7.46 a.m.
Nothing. Gabriel has reached the end of the cellar and is now hurrying back to the door to the stairs. Not a goddamned trace in the whole cellar. The hallway crushes him like a tunnel that’s too narrow, the brick walls, the doors, the concrete floor – everything seems to be getting narrower. The adrenalin feels endless and his body just keeps pumping more and more stress hormones into his overworked system.
Liz! Where are you? he would like to shout, but he knows how dangerous that is. At least he doesn’t feel the pain any more; that’s disappeared in the frenzy.
At the foot of the stairs, he nearly stumbles over the dogs’ bodies. The two Dobermans lie across each other like freshly butchered pigs. With a wide step, he jumps onto the stairs and runs up into the marble hall.
Where the hell is David?
The gas lamp flicker in its glass cage. Everything in his head starts to spin around. Not David, too!
Then he remembers that David was downright terrified. He hurries through the living room out onto the terrace. His eyes scour the garden from right to left.
Here, too: nothing.
Goddamned idiot! Where are you?
Maybe he’s gone back over the fence.
Didn’t I tell you, Luke? He is a coward.
Gabriel cringes.
Surprised?
Rather . . . well . . . I thought you were . . .
What? Gone? Never. I would never let you down.
Let me down?
You’re upset. You should calm down, Luke. Look at your hands, they’re shaking.
Gabriel looks at his hands and decides to ignore the trembling.
His eyes scan the garden again. Suddenly, he stops and squints to see better. Way over to the left is a broken glass structure.
Gabriel’s heart speeds up again.
Wait, Luke! Think about it!
Gabriel doesn’t even think for a second before he runs off. A greenhouse, he thinks as he approaches, a shattered greenhouse.
His skin is covered in goosebumps as he stops in front of the metal frame and stares at the glass shards, the plants, flowerbeds and wooden floors. A few rays of sunlight make their way through the surrounding foliage, making the dirty glass fragments sparkle. He looks at the middle of the wooden floor: there’s a clearly cut rectangular surface of about two square metres with almost no glass on it.
A door in the ground. And recently used!
His heart races as he pulls up the hatch and looks down the stairs.
In a feverish haze, he climbs down them and feels around the edges of the door at the foot of the stairs. No handle, nowhere to pry it open. The keypad for the lock is flush with the plaster. When he knocks against it, the wall sounds hollow.
He rushes back up the stairs and his eyes dart between the broken glass and the flowerpots. Then he finds what he’s looking for: a small metal trowel.
The trowel digs into the area around the keypad like a pickaxe. Chunk by chunk he removes the cement that’s been weakened by years of water damage. When the hole is large enough, Gabriel simply prises the plate out of the wall. The rest is easy, thanks to his years at Python.
When he shorts out the wire, the door opens with a soft click.
Gabriel opens the door.
A door to a secret cellar, he thinks.
He blocks the lock from snapping in place and peers into the semi-darkness. The cut concrete walls disappear back into the darkness. The corridor seems to lead back in the direction of the villa. Something deep in the pit of his stomach pulls him onwards. Fear, he thinks, stunned. Not his fear for Liz. Not his fear of a Rottweiler snapping at his throat or someone trying to choke him. The tugging in his stomach is a deep-seated fear, more primal. He stares into the pitch-black centre of the corridor. An immense force pulls him in that direction, and he begins to move.
After progressing about ten metres, he reaches the point where the walls dissolve into the darkness. Now his eyes have adjusted to the darkness, he sees the concrete walls have been replaced by bare brickwork. A strong breeze runs across his neck, making the hairs stand on end as if he were a puppy.
He glances back. Radiant morning light makes its way in through the door and a stream of fresh air blows across his face. Suddenly the beam of light narrows to a thin crack – and then the door falls closed. The sound it makes as it clicks into place is amazingly soft, but to Gabriel it sounds like two freight trains crashing.
He is enveloped in an unnatural silence. Dead silence.
The only thing that he can hear is his breath.
He can feel the tugging in his stomach again. He recognises the feeling; he experienced it a lot as a child.
His hands touch the raw, slightly damp bricks and he feels his way further down the corridor, as if it were his bare feet leading him down the stairs. Keep going. Just keep going into the centre.
Control yourself, Luke, control yourself. Someone like you should be fearless!
I’m not Luke! I’m Gabriel.
So, the voice whispers maliciously, you think you can make it without me?
‘I don’t know what I think,’ Gabriel whispers back.
Then kindly stop being so thick. This is bigger than you. You shouldn’t refuse a bit of help. It’s not what Luke would’ve done!
The pull in his stomach takes control, his body seems to shrink. ‘I’m not Luke. I’m Gabriel!’ he blurts out. His words echo like multiple voices whispering down the corridor and then fade away. His tentative steps gently scrape across the slightly downward-sloping floor.
It’s more an instinct that makes him stretch his right hand out in front of him than because he doesn’t want to crash into the end of the corridor when it comes.
When his fingertips feel a wooden door, he stops abruptly. He sweeps his hand across the door and finds the cool metal of a handle.
His heart is pounding. Much too quickly, much too loudly. Just like when he stood in front of his father’s lab.
He knows that he needs to open the door. That he needs to know what’s behind it. But he also knows that he will never be able to close this door again. And now the pull seems to be tearing his stomach apart.
Then he turns the handle. He opens the door.
The light blinds him, even though the vaulted ceiling isn’t particularly brightly lit. Further back, straight between the columns, one spot is bathed in intense light.
Gabriel stops breathing.
A pitch-black figure is standing there with its back to him. Behind it, there is a grey stone altar. There is someone lying on the altar – a woman, half blocked by the broad back of the black figure. The woman is chained down by her arms and legs, lying on her back in a white, hauntingly beautiful, but somehow strange dress, like a bride’s.
Liz!
For a short moment, like a balloon bursting, Gabriel only has this one thought:
Liz!
His eyes land on the old oversized mirror positioned behind the stone altar. In the lower part of the mirror, he can see a reflection of Liz in her white dress. Over her rounded stomach, there’s a slit down the middle of the dress, as if someone had intended to do a caesarean section. The mirror shows her bare legs sticking out at an awkward angle, like she’s seated in a gynaecologist’s chair. The black figure stands between her thighs.
Gabriel is staring at the mirror in sheer terror when he realises he’s looking right into the face of the dark figure.
It’s a face like he’s never seen before. The face of a demon, a grotesque face from a horror film, a face split in two – one half a gruesome, acid-burned devil mask and the other beautiful, sophisticated, almost pristine and somewhat arrogant. Gabriel is paralysed by the contrast of beauty and monstrosity. In slow motion, the face turns to Gabriel and stares at him in the mirror like Zeus and
Hades. The undamaged eye has a red glow, like the eye of a monster that’s just emerged from hell.
That one look and the burning red glow, like the red light by the peephole in his father’s lab that had drawn him in for so long, clears the way for him to remember again. Like a supernova that bathes everything in a devastating light, that look evaporates every wall, every limit, every hard and deep cut in Gabriel’s memory. Like hot liquid metal, everything in Gabriel’s head pours back into place, into a large, whole, painful remembering, feeling and reliving.
The door is open. And now it can never be closed again.
In just a few seconds, he is hit at full force by a night that never should have been. The night he wished had never happened. In front of him is the man he’d banished from his memory. The man he later thought he’d killed. The man who was burned in his father’s lab.
In front of him is the policeman.
Chapter 52
Flashback
Eleven. Eleven years old. No one had prepared him. No one had told him that there were doors that were better left shut – like the door of the lab.
Dad’s lab.
As if of its own accord, Gabriel’s index finger had approached the buttons of the VCR and pushed one. He had jumped when there was a loud click inside the device. Twice, three times, then the hum of a motor. A cassette! There was a cassette in the recorder! His cheeks burned. He feverishly pushed another button. The JVC responded with a rattle. Interference lines flashed across the monitor beside the VCR. The image wobbled for a moment, and then it was there. Diffuse with flickering colour, unreal, like a window to another world.
He had leaned forward unconsciously – and now he jerked back. His mouth went totally dry. The same image as in the photo! He wanted to look away, but it was impossible. He sucked the stifling air in through his gaping mouth, and then held his breath without realising it.
The men, the women . . . and the person very close behind the camera . . . He had seen his mother naked, but other women or girls . . . He wanted to look away, but it was impossible. His breath blew through his parted lips. A very, very young woman was lying on her back with her head very close to the camera on some sort of stony table or altar. She was wearing a black dress that had been cut open from top to bottom. Around her, it looked like she was in some kind of underground church with all the columns and arches. The men and women looked like crows with baroque, crooked-beaked masks, dark cloaks and hats. Bare skin was shining everywhere.