Private Berlin (7 page)

IT’S JUST AFTER dawn, my friends, and the rain pours as I drive south out of Berlin in the Mercedes Benz ML500 I picked up last year. Do
you know the ML500? It’s like a tank in wet conditions, my power vehicle, my go-anywhere car.

Normally I’m the picture of confidence behind the 500’s wheel. But I’m nervous as I drive, thinking about the police at the
slaughterhouse last night. When I awoke, I desperately wanted to pass by again this morning, but I had such a long way to
drive and so little time before I needed to be back at work.

Southeast of Halle, I find a two-track lane that goes down by the river, a secluded spot. Especially in this foul weather.

I park and wait, thoughtless except for the pleasant task before me.

Twenty minutes later, a motorcyclist rides up wearing rain slickers and a black helmet. The deluge has ebbed to a light drizzle.
I get out wearing a rain jacket with deep pockets and my gloved hands shoved into them.

My friend pulls off the helmet, revealing a swarthy man in his late thirties, a Turk who is also a thief. And as a thief would,
my friend says, “I want more money. I almost got caught. I almost got killed.”

“So you said on the phone last evening,” I reply agreeably. “Fifty thousand euros instead of the twenty-five. Will that cover
it?”

I could see the thief had expected an argument, but now he nods.

“You show me yours,” I say. “I’ll show you mine.”

My friend goes to dig in his saddlebags. I open the rear of the Mercedes. Next to the tarp that contains the body of the computer
hacker, I find a leather satchel. I open it and draw out a little something to help speed things along. Then I pick up the
bag as if I were serving it at a fine restaurant, the jaws gaped so the cash inside is visible.

I walk to the thief. He’s holding the hard drive.

I make as if to hand him the moneybag and then stumble. The bag pitches from my hands.

My friend instinctively reaches out to catch it.

I stick him with a stun gun and jam the trigger.

He jerks violently and collapses.

I stun him again, then drop the device and ram the screwdriver up under the nape of his skull.

Now the thief quivers on his own, but I hold him tight, feeling the mystery drain from him and fill me once more.

But on this occasion I cannot pause to savor the moment or the sweet stillness that follows death. I’m in the open. It is
raining. But I could be seen if I remain too long.

Instead, I superglue the wound, and drag the thief’s body to the riverbank. I wade out and push him into the main current,
hoping that the cold rushing waters will take him deep and far away.

I get out, chilled but not caring.

I get the satchel and fling it in the back of the Mercedes. Then I drag the tarp and the carcass of my friend the computer
genius to the river. I roll the bundle into the river, pull the tarp, and roll his body into the water.

The thief’s body is already out of sight.

I quickly fold the tarp and put it beside the satchel in the ML500.

I hurl the helmet into the river. I start the motorcycle, put it in gear, hold the brake, gun the throttle, pop the clutch,
and let go.

The bike roars forward, flies off the bank, and disappears.

I have to hurry back to Berlin now. I can’t take it any longer. I have to check the slaughterhouse.

I have to make decisions about its future, my friends.

Terrible decisions.

MATTIE PUT HER right eye to Private Berlin’s retina scan at six forty-five on Monday morning. She’d slept fitfully. Her eyes were bloodshot
and puffy. She wondered if it would affect the scan, but it did not, and the bulletproof doors hissed open.

Dawn was just breaking when she walked through the glass hallway above the park. No lights had been turned on yet. She was
the first to arrive.

Or so she thought. When she entered the lounge area, meaning to start coffee brewing, she flipped on the light. Someone groaned
loudly.

Mattie jumped and looked at the couch. “Who’s there?” she demanded in German.

Jack Morgan sat up from the other side and looked at her blearily. “I don’t speak German, Mattie. What time is it?”

Like many Germans, Mattie spoke fluent English. “Ten of seven,” she replied. “Jack, I’m sorry I didn’t…”

Private’s owner waved a hand at her and got to his feet. He wore a pilot’s leather jacket, jeans, and low-heel cowboy boots.
A tall, lean man who always seemed in a hurry, Morgan pushed back his dark sandy hair and said, “Don’t worry about it. They
say you’re better off staying up, right?”

Mattie smiled. She liked Jack Morgan. He was smart without being overbearing, and he owned the company but didn’t act like
God.

He came over to her. “How are you?”

Mattie shrugged and started making coffee. “As well as you can be when you find out that your…uh, colleague and friend is
missing except for a tracking chip dug out of his back.”

“It’s why I came,” Morgan said sympathetically. “The moment I heard.”

“When did you get in?”

“About an hour ago,” Morgan said. “Thirteen-hour flight.”

“You must be beat,” Mattie said, flipping on the coffeemaker. “I can bring you up to speed on what’s happened while you’ve
been in transit. Do you want to go have a real breakfast somewhere?”

“Coffee’s fine for right now,” Morgan said, taking a seat at the lounge table. “And I would appreciate a briefing, but first,
because it was bugging me the entire flight, why did you and Chris break off your engagement?”

Mattie made a puffing noise and looked away from him. She rarely talked about her personal life except with Katharina and
her aunt. But her boss had just flown thirteen hours to help her find Chris. She figured an honest answer was the least she
could offer.

In a strained voice Mattie said, “We had a whirlwind romance shortly after you hired me. We were engaged in six months. But
I eventually found out that Chris was a troubled man, Jack. There was a part of him that I could not reach, that I could not
know. He never talked about his childhood. But there was something from that time that haunted him. The longer I was with
him, the more I could feel how large a space it occupied in his soul. I pleaded with him to tell me, but he refused. Finally
I decided I couldn’t marry a man with so much unknown inside him, no matter how much I loved him. It wouldn’t have been fair
to me. And it would not have been fair to my son, Niklas.”

“So you ended it?”

Mattie nodded. “One of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.”

“How’d Chris take it?”

“Like he’d been expecting it. He said he didn’t blame me, and that he still loved me.”

“No idea what this secret was that he carried?”

“I just know that he used to have these nightmares. They’d come in waves. And he’d start crying in his sleep, calling for
his mother. Sometimes screaming for her.”

“You ever ask about the nightmares?”

“Only if I didn’t want him speaking to me for a few days,” Mattie replied, pouring coffee into a mug and offering it to Morgan.

He took it. “I knew he grew up in East Berlin and that his parents died when he was eight or nine. And he grew up in an orphanage
out in the countryside, right?”

Mattie nodded. “That’s about all he ever tells anyone. He once told me that the past is best forgotten, but I don’t think
he’s ever forgotten. He just won’t tell anyone about it.”

KATHARINA DORUK ARRIVED at seven fifteen. Dr. Ernst Gabriel checked in at half past the hour. So did Tom Burkhart.

Together they and Mattie briefed Morgan on what they’d found so far, including the slaughterhouse, Chris’s scheduled meetings
with soccer star Cassiano and billionaire Hermann Krüger in the days before he disappeared, and the various phone calls he’d
made to the nightclub owner Maxim Pavel and others.

For a man operating on just a few hours’ sleep, Mattie thought Morgan acted soundly when he decided to split the investigation
three ways.

Katharina would take the lead on Hermann Krüger.

After he arrived from Amsterdam later in the morning, Daniel Brecht would begin working the Cassiano angle with Morgan helping.
Private’s owner had conducted several major sports investigations in the past. Brecht spoke six languages, including Portuguese,
the Brazilian striker’s only tongue.

Gabriel would track Chris’s movements in more detail while Mattie and Burkhart continued shadowing the official police investigation
and pitching in on the other veins of inquiry as needed.

But when Mattie and Burkhart were preparing to leave for their scheduled meeting with Dietrich, her cell phone rang. It was
the high commissar himself.

“I’m calling you under orders from my supervisor,” Dietrich said, the annoyance evident in his voice. “Our meeting at my office
is canceled.”

“What?” Mattie said, growing angry. “You said—”

Dietrich cut her off. “What I am about to tell you is not, I repeat, not for public dissemination. Are we clear?”

That took Mattie aback. “Yes.”

Dietrich cleared his throat. “As you might imagine, because of the nature of the building we found a great deal of blood evidence,
so much that I decided to take twenty random samples and have them run overnight. Of the twenty, twelve were animal—four swine
and eight bovine. The remaining eight were human. I’m sorry to say that four small spatters have been identified as Chris
Schneider’s. The other four were completely unlike one another.”

Mattie froze, blinking, trying to understand what he was telling her. “You found blood from four other people besides Chris?”

Dietrich hesitated, coughed, and then replied, “That is correct, which is why we are returning to the slaughterhouse this
morning. And it turns out our forensics teams are under heavy demand at the moment. Though I am opposed to this, my supervisor
would be pleased if Private Berlin’s forensics team could help us examine that slaughterhouse in more detail.”

“We’ll be there in an hour,” Mattie promised, and hung up.

AT TEN FIFTEEN, Mattie, Burkhart, Dr. Gabriel, and three Private forensics techs entered the slaughterhouse carrying equipment, including
blue lights, cameras, thermal imaging systems, and a pressurized tank attached to a hose and nozzle.

Hauptkommissar Dietrich was already on site, waiting for them along with Inspector Sandra Weigel and a Kripo forensics team.

“We’ll assign you a piece of the floor and wall,” Dietrich told Gabriel, whom he eyed with open distrust after the hippie
scientist removed his jacket to reveal a bright orange sweatshirt featuring Bob Marley’s image.

Gabriel smiled agreeably. “I’m calling this place eighty meters by forty.”

“Roughly,” the high commissar replied. “So?”

“So let’s reduce the space,” Private’s forensics expert replied. “Or at least let’s understand the full dimensions of what
we’re dealing with.”

Dietrich looked at him suspiciously. “How?”

“Superpressurized luminol fog, my own invention,” Gabriel said as he retied his gray ponytail and tucked it up under a surgeon’s
cap. Then he put on goggles, picked up the pressurized tank, and twisted the valve.

“Shut down the kliegs, please,” he called.

Dietrich nodded to his assistants. They killed the lights, leaving the place dim and shadowed. Rain pattered on the roof.

“Start recording,” Gabriel told two of his technicians who waited with video cameras mounted on tripods.

Private Berlin’s chief scientist aimed the spray wand toward the western end of the building, then squeezed a lever trigger.
With a burst and hissing, a fine aerosol fog of luminol, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxide salt shot from the wand, widened
into a cloud that drifted into the rafters, crept down the walls, and settled on the floor.

“Sonofabitch,” Burkhart said.

Awed and horrified, Mattie nodded.

It was like looking at depictions of galaxies—tens of thousands of stars in clusters, splashes and pinpoints, a chemiluminescent,
glowing-blue constellation of blood.

THE CHEMICAL REACTION ended in less than thirty seconds. The blue glow died and the slaughterhouse returned to its ruined self. The sheer scope
of the blood evidence revealed by Dr. Gabriel’s device stunned everyone into silence.

Except for Weigel, who whined, “It’s everywhere, High Commissar!”

Dietrich scowled at her. “As I said last evening, Weigel, this
was
a slaughterhouse. Luminol only gives us an indication of the presence of iron in blood hemoglobin. It says nothing about
that blood’s source.”

Dr. Gabriel cut in. “In any case, we’ll have to microgrid the place, sample every three inches, say.”

Dietrich looked annoyed. He hesitated and then nodded with little certainty before saying, “I think six inches will do.”

Mattie closed her eyes, seeing the glowing-blue galaxy of blood traces in her mind, and noticing that one area seemed more
saturated than others. She went to the video camera and replayed it just to be sure.

“What’s up?” Burkhart said.

Dietrich was off talking to one of his forensics men.

Mattie gestured to the glowing-blue pattern on the camera screen. “See where it’s more concentrated?”

Burkhart looked and nodded. “Over in that corner.”

They walked through the trash and filth to the corner and an iron sewer grate. They shined flashlights into a steel-lined
well, seeing that at the bottom, some three feet down, there was a second grate of sorts where the metal had been perforated
with pencil-sized holes.

“Why isn’t there stuff on the bottom down there?” Mattie asked.

Burkhart said, “I don’t follow.”

“It’s like a drain catch in a kitchen sink, right?” she asked. “But in this trashed place, except for a few leaves, it’s clean.”

Burkhart thought about that, and then said, “Well, maybe it is a catch, which means there’s something underneath it. Let’s
take a look.”

He squatted down, got his fingers entwined in the sewer grate, and with a grunt lifted.

Mattie had expected to see the grate come free of the floor.

But to her astonishment, the grate and the steel tube welded beneath it came up, leaving a gaping hole that gave off a horrible
stench.