JF04 - The Carnival Master (33 page)

Cologne was so different to Hamburg. Was it possible, Fabel wondered, to change your surroundings and change yourself to suit? If he had been born here, instead of in the North, would he be a different person? The waiter arrived with his meal and a fresh glass of beer and Fabel tried to put it all from his mind. For now.

It had been four hours but Maria had turned down Olga’s offer to take over watching the monitors. It was getting dark and the villa was reduced to a dark geometry broken up by the brightness of the windows. Suddenly two lights came on above the front door, illuminating one of the guards.

‘Tell Buslenko they’re on the move …’ Maria barked at Olga.

The door swung open and Vitrenko’s bodyguard
emerged. The Lexus door opened for someone still inside the villa and out of sight. Then a tall dark figure was framed in the bright doorway. Again a shudder of recognition. He might have changed his face, but at this distance some primeval instinct identified a form burned into Maria’s memory. He stopped, his silhouetted head angled. Maria felt ice in her veins: it was as if Vitrenko were looking through the camera, directly at her.

He stepped forward and into the Lexus, out of view.

Maria followed the car as it drifted silently down the drive and out of the gate. ‘They’re turning right.’

The Lexus was gone. Vitrenko was gone.

‘Taras has picked them up,’ said Olga Sarapenko. ‘They’re heading out towards the autobahn. He wants you to help him with the surveillance.’ She tossed Maria a walkie-talkie. ‘Channel three. Taras will guide you in. I’m to man the command post here. I’ll liaise between you and Taras and update you on any developments.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better for you to go?’ asked Maria. She suddenly felt very afraid and ill-equipped to deal with the consequences of catching up with Vitrenko. ‘Aren’t you better trained for this?’

‘I’m just a police officer like you. The difference is that you’re a
German
police officer. Taras thinks that might be useful if things get complicated.’

‘But I don’t know this city …’

‘We’ve got all the geopositioning kit we need to direct you. Use your own car. You’d better go. Now.’

It was dark, wet and cold. Cologne glittered bleakly in the winter evening. It was a straight drive to Lindenthal through Zollstock and Sülz. The radio
lay mute on the passenger seat. After ten minutes and as she approached the Stadtwald park, Maria picked it up.

‘Olga … Olga, can you hear me?’

‘I hear you.’

‘Where am I supposed to go?’

‘I’m on the autobahn heading north …’ It was Buslenko’s voice. ‘Head for the Kreuz Köln-West junction and take the A57 and head north. I’ll let you know if we turn off. Olga, guide Maria through Junkersdorf onto the autobahn. Vitrenko’s car is not moving fast, but Maria won’t catch up to us till we stop. Olga … any idea where this takes us?’

‘Hold on,’ said Olga. There was a pause. ‘It looks like Vitrenko’s heading out of the city. Could be that he’s heading back up north. Hamburg.’

‘Unlikely at this time of night,’ Buslenko said. His voice over the radio a universe away. Maria felt isolated, cocooned by the darkness and the thick, sleety rain against the windscreen. How had she got herself into this situation? She had taken so much on trust with these people. Who was to say that they were who they said they were? She shook the thought from her head: they had saved her life; they had found Maxim Kushnier’s body and disposed of it; they had given her ill-planned, half-assed mission some kind of coherence and at least a hint of viability.

Maria pressed the call button of her radio. ‘Tell me where I’ve got to go …’

The Hotel Linden was only a few minutes from where Cologne’s Hansaring joined the Konrad-Adenauer Ufer which ran along the Rhine’s edge.
It somehow gave Fabel hope to sense something of the old Maria in her choice: the Linden’s situation gave her as central a base as possible without being conspicuous. He told the taxi driver to wait for him and trotted up the steps into the hotel’s small lobby. A pretty dark-haired girl smiled at him from behind the reception desk. Her smile gave way to a frown when he showed her his Polizei Hamburg ID card.

‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ he reassured her. ‘I’m just trying to trace someone.’

Fabel showed the receptionist a photograph of Maria. ‘Ring any bells?’

Her frown deepened. ‘I can’t say that it does … but I’ve been off the last week. Let me get the duty manager.’

She disappeared into the office and returned with a man who was too young to wear such a serious expression. There was a hint of suspicion in the way he eyed Fabel.

‘What’s this all about, Herr …?’

‘Principal Chief Commissar Fabel.’ Fabel smiled and held out his ID again. ‘I’m down from Hamburg looking for this woman …’ He paused while the pretty receptionist handed the photograph to the manager. ‘Her name is Maria Klee. Our information suggests that she stayed in this hotel. But she might have used another name.’

‘What has she done?’

‘I don’t see that has anything to do with your answer to my question.’ Fabel leaned forward on the reception desk. ‘Have you seen her or not?’

The duty manager examined the photograph. ‘Yes, I have. But she doesn’t look like that now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She checked out of here a couple of weeks ago.’
He typed something into the reception computer. ‘Yes, here it is, the twenty-sixth. But when she checked out her hair was cut really short and dyed black. The other thing was her clothes.’

‘What about them?’

‘They were always different. I don’t mean just a change of outfit … I mean completely different styles of clothes. One day really expensive, the next scruffy and cheap.’

Surveillance, thought Fabel. She had a lead and was following it. ‘Anything else? Did she ever meet with anyone here?’

‘Not that I’m aware of. But she did park her car in the hotel car park without registering its licence number with us. We nearly had it towed away, but one of the porters recognised her as a guest. I was going to have a word with her about it but she checked out before I had a chance.’

‘Did you get the number?’

‘Of course …’ The prematurely pompous duty manager again referred to the hotel computer. He scribbled something down on a pad and handed it to Fabel.

‘But this is a “K” plate … a Cologne licence.’ Fabel looked at the number again. ‘What kind of car was it?’

‘Cheap and old. I think it was a Citroën.’

‘Would you have any idea where she was going from here?’

The duty manager shrugged. Fabel scribbled his cellphone number on the back of a Polizei Hamburg business card.

‘If you see her again, I need you to phone me on this number. Immediately. It is very important.’

Back in the taxi Fabel examined his list of Cologne hotels. He had to try to think like Maria. He guessed that she had left this hotel because she had checked in under her own name. She would seek out somewhere even less conspicuous. He leaned over and handed the list to the taxi driver.

‘Which of these would be the best if you wanted to book in somewhere under a fake name and pay cash without too many questions asked?’

The taxi driver pursed his lips in consideration for a moment, then took his pen and circled three names.

‘These would be your best bet, I reckon.’

‘Okay …’ Fabel leaned back in his seat. ‘Let’s start with the nearest.’

‘They’re stopping …’ Buslenko’s voice broke the radio silence that seemed to have gone on for hours. ‘We’re at some kind of disused industrial building next to a reservoir or a flooded quarry or something. There’s another car here. They’re obviously meeting someone.’

‘Can you see who?’ Olga’s voice crackled across the airwaves.

‘No … no, I can’t. Where are you, Maria?’

‘I’m on the A57 north of the city, near Dormagen.’ Maria felt sick. She realised she was retracing the route she’d taken the night she had played cat and mouse with Maxim Kushnier.

‘Right …’ Buslenko sounded hesitant. ‘You’ll be here in about fifteen minutes. Head out along Provinzialstrasse towards Delhoven and you’ll come to a bend in the road. Take a left and you’ll come to
a farm track that leads off of that. I’ve hidden my car, a black Audi, up the track. I’ll see you there in quarter of an hour.’

‘Okay,’ said Maria and found her mouth was dry.

‘Olga.’ Buslenko transmitted again. ‘I’m going in for a closer look. I want to see who Vitrenko’s meeting with.’

‘Wait, Taras,’ said Olga. ‘Wait until Maria gets there. I think you should get in touch with the local police. This is our chance to nail him.’

‘That’s not how we’re going to deal with it. I’ll be fine. But I’m switching off my radio until I get back to the car. Vitrenko has probably posted guards.’

‘Be careful, Taras,’ said Maria. She put her foot down a little more on the Saxo’s accelerator. Now, she thought. Now it’s going to be over for once and for all.

Olga guided Maria to the position Buslenko had last given. The roads became narrower and the houses fewer. Maria found herself in a landscape of open fields punctuated with scattered, dense clumps of naked trees. The inky blueness of the darkness outside yielded to a deeper black as she drove, marking the subtle change from late afternoon to true night. The rain stopped.

‘I’ve reached the junction on Provinzialstrasse,’ she radioed in to Olga Sarapenko. ‘Where now?’

‘Take a right and follow the road for about a kilometre. Then you should see the bend Taras talked about and the lane where he’s hidden his car.’

To start with, Maria drove past the entrance to the lane: it was crowded in by dense thorny bracken and she had to reverse to turn into it. After about twenty metres she discovered Buslenko’s Audi. She got out
and shivered in the cold winter air. That old shiver. There was something about the lane, about the night, that gave her the darkest form of déjà vu.

‘I’ve found the car,’ she said into the radio, her voice low. She peered in through the rain-speckled side window. ‘But no sign of Buslenko.’

‘Sit tight,’ Olga responded. ‘He’ll still be doing his recon. He’ll be back soon.’

Maria checked her watch. He had said fifteen minutes. It had taken her twelve to get there. Something caught her eye on the passenger seat of the Audi.

‘Olga … he’s left his radio in the car.’

There was a static-crackled pause, then: ‘He said he was maintaining radio silence.’

‘But wouldn’t he have just switched the radio off instead of leaving it here?’

‘Maria. Just sit tight.’

Maria slipped her radio into her coat pocket. She made her way back along the lane to the road, the mud yielding beneath her boots. Once out onto the road she checked, her body still concealed by the bracken, for cars coming in either direction. She heard nothing, but the chill breeze rustled as it stirred the naked branches. She made her way along the road to the bend. On the other side she could see an exposed field with a barn-type building at one edge. There were two cars parked outside. Maria felt the nausea well up inside her again and her heart hammered in her chest. The scene she looked upon was like some landlocked version of the field and barn near Cuxhaven. The place she’d last encountered Vitrenko. She found herself looking up at the starless, cloud-heavy sky and at the winter barren field as if to assure herself that she had not travelled back in time.
No stars, no swirling grasses. Maria crouched low as she ran back along the road, the lane and into her car. She slammed the door shut and gripped the steering wheel tight. She looked at the keys in the ignition, still with the label of the garage she’d bought the car from attached. She could turn that key, reverse out onto the road and in minutes she’d be on the autobahn heading for Hamburg. She could put it all behind her. Start again.

Maria snapped open the glove compartment with a sudden decisiveness and took out both her service SIG-Sauer automatic and the illegal 9mm Glock and slipped them into her pockets. She reached over again, grabbed her binoculars and headed back out on foot along the lane.

There was no cover in the field. It would be almost impossible to cross undetected. Buslenko knew what he was doing. Vitrenko and his team certainly knew what
they
were doing. But Maria didn’t have the kind of training for this kind of stealth. She moved quickly and quietly to the corner of the field where a thin, wind-bowed tree and some leafless shrubbery offered meagre cover. She scanned the field, the parked cars, the barn with her binoculars. Nothing. No guards, no signs of life. There wasn’t even any hint of a light inside the barn. And no sign of Buslenko. She sat down on the damp grass, leaning her back against the tree. Apart from the wind, there was no sound. No hint that another human being shared Maria’s dark, frightened universe. She took one gun, then the next, and snapped the carriages back, placing a round in each chamber and snapping off the safety. She put her service SIG-Sauer back in her pocket. She could see the fumed ghosts of her hard, fast breathing in the chill air.

Maria took a deep breath and set off across the field towards the barn, bent over as much as she could while running, the Glock automatic held stiffly out and to one side.

She was about halfway there when the light came on.

Maria’s instinct reacted faster than her brain could process the fact that a light had come on in the building and cast a yellow shaft across the field. She threw herself onto the cold, damp earth and lay perfectly flat for a moment, her arms and legs spread, her head down. Realising she could still be seen, she rolled swiftly on her side and back into darkness. She looked up. The barn window was an empty yellow square in the dark. Then a figure appeared briefly, but long enough for Maria to feel that same terrifying sense of recognition. She aimed her 9mm Glock at Vitrenko’s silhouette, but then it was gone. She got to her feet, keeping her gaze fixed on the window, and closed another twenty metres before dropping to the ground again. She scanned the field, the illuminated window and the perimeter of the barn. No one. This was too easy. And where the hell was Buslenko?