This would have put off men more powerful and perhaps more cautious than Wegener, but for him it became a further incentive. Once he had savoured the mirage of riding the Dragon and sitting at the grown-ups’ table, he had begun racking his brain for a way to make the big leap.
He decided he had to get himself noticed.
He would not go to them like a beggar asking for a handout. The Consortium would come knocking at his door. For that to happen, he had to impress them.
Only by biting, and biting hard, would the bug escape the sole of the shoe.
The opportunity presented itself when, after lengthy stakeouts, flattery and threats, Wegener discovered the route of an articulated lorry, a monster carrying goods of astronomical value across his territory with just two men on board. Nobody would ever have dared make a move against that mobile strongbox. The eighteen-wheeler, the men and the cargo all belonged to the Consortium. Only a madman would have thought of attacking it.
A madman, or Herr Wegener.
He assembled a small team from among his smartest henchmen. Three men armed with pistols and automatic rifles. Four, including him. He set up fake roadworks that diverted the lorry onto a road that was not much frequented. There they sprung the ambush. Pointing their pistols, handkerchiefs over their faces, like outlaws in the Wild West. There was no need to fire a shot. The two drivers were no amateurs. They knew what they had to do. They put their hands up, got out of the cabin and followed their assailants’ orders without breaking a sweat. Why should they be scared? They weren’t the dead men walking.
Before leaving, as the lorry, driven by two of his men, vanished around the bend and Georg waited for him in a Citroën with the engine running, Wegener removed the handkerchief and revealed his face in the light of the street lamps.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes.”
“What’s my name?”
“Wegener.”
“Herr Wegener, arsehole.”
“Herr Wegener.”
“Report back that I have a business proposition.”
The two Consortium men laughed heartily.
Look at that, a dead man walking.
But Wegener had hit the bull’s eye. The faceless members of the Consortium were favourably impressed with his audacity. And so, instead of a hitman, they had sent the silver-haired man to knock at his door. A lawyer.
The lawyer did not utter a single word that could have been used in evidence. And yet he was perfectly clear. He described his employers as businessmen who did not like to waste time but who prized initiative. Initiative was the engine of the economy, and for some people the economy mattered more than anything else. What he had done, even if over the top and perhaps too theatrical, had been interpreted as a sign of outstanding initiative, and had led them to give him a chance to prove just what he was made of.
Hadn’t this been the aim of that stunt out of a John Wayne film?
“I hate John Wayne,” Herr Wegener had replied. “Tell me what I have to do.”
“Apart from paying back the loan?”
“Complete with a full tank, an oil change and my sincerest apologies.”
The lawyer had smiled. “Wait for instructions. Though I must warn you, it may take a long time and it won’t be pleasant. You’ll have to show total dedication. Beware of disappointing my clients, Herr Wegener. Beware.”
19
“No, thank you.”
Worry lines appeared on Keller’s forehead. “It’s going to hurt. Once the effect wears off. Later on.”
“I can bear it,” she said. “It’d be a waste otherwise. I just need to sleep, I’m alright.”
Unconvinced, Keller hesitated. “I have a large supply of it.”
“I’m alright. Really.”
Keller put the poppy seeds back on the shelf and escorted her to the upper floor, watching her struggle up the creaking stairs, but making no comment.
“Wait,” he said, once they had arrived.
He went back downstairs. Marlene heard him moving about the Stube and opening a door to the cellar. He came back with a hammer and nails, a couple of thin planks, an old sheet embroidered with hearts, a bucket and a container of quicklime for unpleasant smells.
Within a few minutes, without saying a word, he had built her a private toilet in the corner of the room opposite the window. He checked that the nails were in tightly, spread the sheet and nodded, pleased. “Women,” he said, blushing, “don’t like to be seen when they do certain things. And the outside toilet is much too cold for a city girl.”
Marlene repressed a smile at the man’s sense of modesty and thanked him with the respect due to him.
Keller turned his back on her and made to leave the room. He stopped at the door.
“Tomorrow,” he said with a little cough, not turning around, “I think I’ll go hunting in the woods. For a couple of hours, or maybe longer. But at least two hours.”
Marlene looked out of the window. Darkness and blizzard.
“In all this snow?”
He cleared his throat again. “The storm will take a while to subside. You may have to stay here for a couple of days, and women don’t like being dirty. Tomorrow, I’ll heat some water for the tub. Then I’ll go hunting, so that you can . . . You never know what you can catch, even in this weather. You need fresh meat, city girl.”
He turned, looking embarrassed.
“I make the soap myself. It smells of carnations, my mother’s favourite. Do you mind the smell of carnations?”
“I love it,” she said reassuringly, touched by all his care.
Relieved, he bade her goodnight and closed the door gently behind him.
Marlene waited a couple of minutes and then rushed to her private toilet. Then, dressed as she was, she got in under the blankets. She was nearly asleep when the pain returned. Without the poppy infusion, it really hurt.
Marlene was angry with herself for having declined Keller’s offer.
It was not only the injury to her forehead, it was the bruises all over that were clamouring for her attention, and Marlene was forced to keep tossing and turning on the uncomfortable mattress to resist the stabbing pains – the stabbing pains and the thoughts.
All things considered, her plan had been straightforward. Steal the sapphires, exchange some of them for clean identity documents and a new life with Klaus, as well as some currency (possibly dollars: dollars were accepted pretty much everywhere), get on a plane and escape to the other side of the world (any part of the world as long as it was warm: Marlene had promised herself she would never again suffer the cold), then, once they were safe, very carefully arrange for Herr Wegener to find the remaining sapphires.
Letting him find the remaining sapphires, at least 70 per cent of them, according to her calculations, would serve a dual purpose: first, to leave a false clue for her husband’s henchmen, and second, to get him to back off.
Or try to, at least.
She was dubious about the outcome, though.
There was a third reason, the one that mattered most to Marlene. The sapphires were her last connection to Wegener, a connection she could not wait to sever.
Starting from scratch meant forgetting: forgetting Wegener, forgetting everything.
A new life with Klaus, that was all she asked. In a warm place, with sand and sea and palm trees. She liked palm trees. The way the leaves swayed in the breeze.
That was her dream.
A new life, she thought, huddling under the blankets, exhausted, before at last falling asleep.
Despite her tiredness, Marlene had dreams. Not about sun-kissed beaches and palm trees. Not about Klaus and the future. Not even, as she had feared, about the crash.
Marlene dreamed of small, nasty, cruel creatures with blue eyes.
That night, Marlene dreamed about kobolds.
20
Small, treacherous and nasty, kobolds had blue eyes that glowed in the dark. The dark was the only thing they loved. The dark, a
nd the soil in which they lived. Sometimes, though, the light would disturb them even there, in their burrows deep in the entrails of the earth.
The light was not brought there by heroes like Siegfried the dragon-slayer or even by kind, handsome Prince Charmings like the ones in the stories that Mamma (when she was still Mamma) would tell Marlene to get her to fall asleep.
The disturbers of the kobolds’ peace, their bitterest enemies, were frail little pixies worn down by hunger, exhaustion and disease. Skinny creatures forcibly sent down cracks into mines in places with exotic names: Thailand, Burma, Kashmir.
There was a word for these pixies who were not pixies: “children.” Slaves with pickaxes in their hands and crusts of bread in their pockets, although those who put them down those shafts didn’t give a damn. They were only interested in the shiny blue stones, not in the pixies who brought them to the surface.
Sapphires.
Kobolds.
The kobolds had travelled a very long way to Herr Wegener’s villa on the River Passer. From Burma to Hong Kong, from Hong Kong to Israel and from Israel to Merano.
Travelling made them furious.
Too much light.
Kobolds hated light at least as much as they loved revenge. Revenge on the innocent and the guilty. Revenge in thousands of different ways. That was why the journey they had made had left a trail of blood in its wake.
The blood began in a mine surrounded by men whose favourite pastime was squashing mosquitoes and using the butts of their rifles to hit those children who were slower, more tired, or simply happened to be in their way.
One of them, the pixie who had dug into the rock and brought the kobolds up into the light, died with his eyes wide open in a tunnel with no oxygen, two days after handing the small stones over to his jailer, a wiry guy who, exactly one month later, got drunk and (dreaming that pixies were dancing on his throat) drowned in his own vomit.
The smuggler with rotting teeth who got the sapphires from the jailer died with his eyes open, after giving the sapphires to a shifty Chinese man in a Miles Davis T-shirt just across the border. This smuggler was on his way to the village where he had planned to spend half the money he had earned on drugs and whores when he was set upon by bandits. They searched him and took the roll of dollars, knocked him about, forced him to his knees and killed him with a shot to the back of the head from a Kalashnikov, which sounded like the laughter of the still-travelling kobolds.
The Chinese man carried the precious stones in his 4 × 4 for many kilometres through the jungle, and two weeks later, clean-shaven now and without the Miles Davis T-shirt, boarded a merchant ship bound for Hong Kong. Once there, he got on the telephone and duly reassured the relevant person. At the appointed time, a slim blonde knocked at his door, was given the pouch of sapphires and took off on a Boeing 707 to Israel.
The blonde was never to know that a homemade bomb killed the Chinese man, whose only pleasures had been making money and listening to “Kind of Blue” with the lights turned down low.
Just as she was never to know that the cutter in Tel Aviv, after working on the rough stones she had given him in a nightclub and then sending them on to Genoa, became racked with guilt about the petty life his debts had forced him into, stuffed himself full of tranquillisers and whisky, wrote a confused letter (in which apologies to his nearest and dearest alternated with visions of blue-eyed creatures eating away at his brain) then cut his wrists and died in his bath with his mouth open.
The blonde was never to know these things because, a week later, swimming off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, wondering if she’d like to have a Manhattan or something less strong, she made the acquaintance of a wonderful specimen of Hapalochlaena lunulata, a member of the octopus family whose body is adorned with beautiful blue rings (as brilliant as a kobold’s eyes).
Fascinated, the blonde dived in order to get a better look, and the animal took fright and bit her, injecting into her thigh muscle the speciality that makes it famous among toxicologists throughout the world: tetrodotoxin, a neurotoxin that attacks the muscular system and paralyses it.
The blonde did not drown; it was the poison that killed her.
Meanwhile, the kobolds had arrived in Genoa. Had their thirst for revenge been quenched? Not in the slightest. The man who went to pick them up on Wegener’s behalf and exchanged them for a heavy suitcase full of money wore a perfectly tailored suit. He was a simple man named Moritz.
Asphyxia. Lead. TNT Remorse. Poison. The kobolds’ revenge.
In a thousand different ways.
Also part of their revenge were the questions planted like knives in Herr Wegener’s mind as, assuming a mask of calm to conceal his terror, he let the silver-haired lawyer into the study of the villa on the River Passer and offered him his best brandy.
Which of his men had tipped off the Consortium?
Or had it been more than one?
How many had betrayed him? How many were loyal to him?
And the worst question of them all: Was he alone now? No longer barefoot, no longer a child, no longer forced to walk in his father’s footsteps through the cold and ice, but alone once more?
His only certainty lay in the mocking sneer of the opened safe. No, he corrected himself, as the lawyer told him to drop any mawkishness and forced him to tell him everything. No, it wasn’t true. There was another certainty.
His life depended on this meeting.
21
The lawyer had listened, sitting there in the study, sipping his brandy with an engrossed, almost kindly expression on his lean face.
Herr Wegener had not lied. The fact that the lawyer had come here meant that the Consortium was aware of what had happened, so it was pointless making up stories.
He had begun by telling him about the Friday-night meetings. He had described his return home, the need to disturb Marlene in order to write a few names in the black notebook. His surprise at not finding her there asleep. He had told him about the detail that had immediately alarmed him: the painting that concealed the safe hanging askew.
His frantic hands composing the combination and discovering that the safe had been raided. The missing velvet pouch. He told him about the clues he had gathered and the investigation that had ensued. The telephone calls. The orders. The certainty of Marlene’s betrayal.
The wait.
“We’re looking for her. All my men, without exception, have been alerted,” he said, running his fingers down the crease of his trousers. “We’ll find her. I can assure you of that.”
The lawyer leaned forward with a benevolent look on his face. Suddenly he slapped him. “You’re a fool,” he said. “I’m the only thing standing between you and a bullet, Wegener.”
“Everything’s under control.”
The lawyer’s gaze had turned mocking. “Do you realise the seriousness of what’s happened? Do you even know what’s been stolen from you?”
“Yes,” Herr Wegener said, his cheek burning as if it were on fire.
Yes, he did now.
Those sapphires had been his trial by ordeal before the great leap. Converting his assets into precious stones. Into sapphires, to be precise. Blue, like the sky he aspired to ascend into.
Acquiring a large number of sapphires on the black market presupposed friends and contacts who could demonstrate courage, audacity and initiative. Yet this was not an ordinary money transaction, like buying shares so that you could sit on a board of directors.
The Consortium had other aims. Property could be plundered, money stolen and multiplied. Men like Wegener, on the other hand, were rare. And the hearts of men like Wegener had to be conquered.
The Consortium had no use for servants. They needed people whose ambition went even higher than the stars in the sky. That was why, just as the old feudal lords used to do, what the Consortium puppeteers asked of the candidate was a pledge. And that was what the sapphires were. A symbol of submission and a promise of freedom. Above all, proof of goodwill. It’s what
distinguishes the servant from the master.
And the living from the dead.
“Today,” the lawyer said, “I was asked some questions, and I had to answer them.”
“What kind of questions?”
“About your goodwill. I vouched for you. I went out on a limb. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I said that the Herr Wegener I knew was strong, brave and unscrupulous and that he would do everything in his power to recover the sapphires. And more.”
“That’s very kind—”
“I haven’t finished yet,” the lawyer cut in.
“Sorry.”
“I guaranteed that the problem would be eradicated. As soon as possible.”
Wegener sat up straight. “Marlene is dead. I’ll kill her with my own hands, you can be sure of that.”
“When?”
“As soon as my men find her.”
“How can you be certain they will?”
“You have my word.”
The lawyer ran his fingers through his hair and looked him in the eyes, his face turning livid. “Don’t you realise your word is worth nothing anymore?” he cried. “Until this matter is brought to a conclusion, even you are nothing. You’re not even a human being.” He pointed a finger at Wegener’s face. “You’re a thing. An object. You belong to the Consortium. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” Wegener said, trying hard to restrain his anger.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Who does this house belong to?”
Wegener looked at his reflection in the lawyer’s pale eyes. “The Consortium.”
“Who do your men answer to?”
“The Consortium.”
“And who do you have to thank for the fact that you’re still breathing right now?”
“I get the idea,” Wegener growled, punching the armrest of the sofa.
“Answer me, damn it!” the lawyer yelled, flinging his glass to the floor. “You were stupid enough to tell your wife about the sapphires! Like any little amateur. You were stupid enough to have them stolen by a two-bit whore, and you still think you’re . . . just what do you think you are, Herr Wegener?”
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