Private Berlin (8 page)

THE HOLE IN the slaughterhouse floor stank of urine and something fouler.

As Burkhart set the false well aside, Mattie held her arm across her nose and shined her light into a metal-walled shaft that
dropped eight feet before giving way to four feet of space and then a gravel floor.

“Probably a secondary drain field system,” said Dietrich, who’d come over, and looked somewhat rattled by their discovery.

“Someone needs to go down, but it’s too tight for me,” Burkhart said.

“Me too,” the high commissar said.

Inspector Weigel peered down the shaft and shook her head. “There are rats down there. I can smell them. I hate rats. My brother
had one. Used to taunt me with it. I hate them.”

“Then I guess it’s me,” Mattie said.

“You know I can’t let you—” Dietrich began.

Mattie cut him off. “If I find anything, Hauptkommissar, I’ll back out. Besides, you’ll see what I see. I’ll be wearing a
camera.”

After hearing what Mattie proposed, Gabriel went out to his equipment van and returned with a white disposable coverall, a
hard hat, goggles, knee pads, and a headlamp attached to a fiber-optic camera, as well as a radio headset with a supersensitive
mic that he taped to the side of her neck, and a respirator to keep her lungs protected from any diseases that might be airborne
because of all the rat feces.

They put her in a climbing harness and attached her to a rope.

“Sure you want to do this?” Burkhart asked.

“No,” Mattie said before kneeling and backing slowly into the shaft.

Burkhart and Dietrich lowered her while Gabriel watched a laptop receiving the signal from Mattie’s camera.

The shaft was barely bigger than Mattie’s shoulders. For a moment she felt a growing claustrophobia, but then the shaft gave
way to open space and her feet touched ground.

She released the rope from her harness. Crouching down and swinging her headlamp, she saw that the gravel surface went out
in all directions in a black space that swallowed her beam.

“It’s like a huge drain field or something,” she said.

“We can’t see very well,” Gabriel said in her ear. “Use your SureFire, too.”

Mattie got out her flashlight and flicked it on, instantly happy for the powerful beam that shot through the space.

She spotted something dull white about ten yards ahead behind a load-bearing steel column. Then she heard chattering to her
left. She swung the beam and spotted dozens of rats watching her, and sniffing her presence, some of them scolding her angrily
while others worked their chops.

It was creepy, and she heard Niklas’s voice telling her to get out of there.

Instead, Mattie crouched and duckwalked toward that white object behind the column. Three feet from it, she saw what it was,
and froze.

A bone stuck up out of the gravel.

“That’s a human femur,” Gabriel said in her ear.

Mattie swallowed hard and swung her lights deeper into the subbasement, seeing more bones.

And then a human skull. And then two more.

And then more bones and skulls, scattered like seashells everywhere.

“IT’S A BONEYARD,” Mattie whispered.

“We see them,” Burkhart said in her ear. “Dietrich wants you out of there.”

Mattie had no argument. She’d never been in a more frightening place in her life, and she wanted out before everything went
claustrophobic.

But as she pivoted to leave, her beams played across something twenty meters away. Mattie rocked back on her heels as if hit
on the chin.

Two fresher corpses lay there, both almost devoid of skin.

A woman. A man.

Clothes hung in tatters from them.

Though she absolutely did not want to, she moved to within several feet of the bodies. She recognized a black ribbed turtleneck
that hung off the larger of the two, and felt her whole world cave in.

Mattie fell to her knees and stared, her breath coming hard and fast, echoing in the respirator and making her feel like a
zombie, the living dead.

“Mattie?” Gabriel’s voice came in her ear.

“Do you see them?” she asked numbly.

“Mattie, we do. Please, come up out of there.”

“The bigger one is Chris,” she said.

“My God, no,” Gabriel said.

Mattie swooned and thought she was fainting.

She rocked her head back, gasping and feeling drunk, when through the spots dancing before her eyes she spotted the first
package. It was strapped to the ceiling support about four feet in front of her.

It was about the size of a paperback book and wrapped in green wax paper that had Russian Cyrillic writing on it, and a fuzzy
stamp in German.

For several seconds nothing about the situation seemed real, and what she was seeing did not compute.

But then she lolled her head over, seeing similar green paper packages strapped to the ceiling supports, scores of them.

They were all connected with electrical wire.

“Engel!” Burkhart yelled. “Those are bombs! Get the hell out of there!”

ALL THINGS MUST pass. Isn’t that what they say, my friends?

It’s certainly what my mother said the last time I saw her, traitorous bitch.

All things must pass. As if that explains anything to a boy of eight. As if that justified what she’d done to herself, to
my father, and to me.

But this time, the old saw is true. All things must pass. I know it as sure as I know myself despite the masks I’m forced
to wear.

I’m musing this way in the driver’s seat of the ML500 because I’ve just driven by the entrance to the slaughterhouse at an
insistent speed, as if eager to be somewhere else.

There are more vehicles there than yesterday, twice as many, police cars and forensics wagons, and unmarked sedans, and the
whole place roped off with yellow crime scene tape.

But instead of feeling on the edge of panic as I did the day before, I go cold, almost reptilian inside. Pulling past the
apartment buildings west of the slaughterhouse, I swiftly come to a difficult decision.

A long time ago, very early in my life as a matter of fact, I learned that survival means acting in the moment with the best
information you’ve got. With that many people inside, they were bound to find the secrets of the slaughterhouse eventually.
It’s just logical.

So I pull over several hundred yards away at the top of a slight rise where I have more or less a direct line of sight to
the roof of the abattoir.

For a moment, I feel stricken by nostalgia. The slaughterhouse has been part of my life for so long, I’m conflicted about
what I must do.

But there’s no way around it, is there?

I open a paper bag on the passenger-side floor, and come up with an old, bulky Soviet-era military two-way radio with a whip
antenna. I find the battery and snap it into the housing.

I turn on the power switch. For a moment, the little bulb by the switch is dark and I feel concerned.

But then it glows green.

The air tastes bittersweet as I adjust the radio to a channel with a frequency I set almost twenty-five years ago.

My fingers find the transmit button. My throat clicks with pleasure.

Well then, my friends, I guess it’s about time we raised a little hell in Berlin, hmmm?

“MATTIE!” BURKHART ROARED. “Get out!”

Down in the basement of the slaughterhouse, Mattie snapped out of the haze of shock. She reached up, grabbed at the green
wax paper, and tore off the area with writing on it.

She took one last look at Chris’s body, and started going as fast as she could to the shaft, all the while fighting the urge
to stop, lie down, and sob her heart out.

When she reached the bottom of the shaft, she looked up and saw Burkhart looking down at her with great concern. “Clip in,”
he ordered.

Mattie stuffed the green paper in the pocket of the coverall, attached the line to her harness, and yelled, “I’m on.”

She rose instantly. She guided herself into the narrow tube and closed her eyes at the tightness of the passage until Burkhart
snagged her by the back of the harness, lifted her, and set her firmly on the slaughterhouse floor.

Mattie trembled as if she’d just been blasted by cold air. “Did you see?”

She addressed the question to High Commissar Dietrich, who appeared stunned. “How many bodies are in there?”

“Twenty? Thirty? Like I said, it’s a boneyard.”

“I don’t care what it is, we are getting out of here, now,” Burkhart said. He looked at Dietrich. “The place looks booby-trapped.
Get your people out now, and call in a federal bomb squad.”

Dietrich hesitated, clearly upended by the scope of what lay before him.

Burkhart got more insistent. “Hauptkommissar, I worked for GSG 9 in an old life, and I’m telling you to get your people out
until the experts can get in there.”

Dietrich’s face contorted and then paled. He looked over at Inspector Weigel and the rest of his team watching him.

“Out!” the high commissar finally barked. “Everyone. Take only the essentials. Now!”

The ten people inside the slaughterhouse went into gear, grabbing computers, cameras, and the evidence samples they’d already
gathered. In under a minute they were all hustling through the barn and out the front doors.

The rain had settled to a mist as they came out and trotted back toward the road to Ahrensfelde. Mattie followed Burkhart
mutely, feeling battered by what she’d seen underground.

Chris was gone. He would always be gone.

When she was almost to the police barrier the first bomb detonated.

Mattie spun around.

Smoke and dust billowed out the windows and doors before a giant, deafening eruption hurled Mattie off her feet and blew the
slaughterhouse to smithereens.

JACK MORGAN WALKED down a hallway in a large two-story apartment north of Monbijou Park in central Berlin.

He was following a slim, pale man in his late twenties with ice-blue eyes, pierced eyebrows, a long black trench coat, bleached
white hair, and leather half gloves with studs, all of which made him look like he belonged in a vampire movie.

But Daniel Brecht was one of Private’s best detectives in Europe, a fascinating character who slipped easily through cultures
and languages.

Brecht shifted a black book bag to his left shoulder, wrapped his studs on the door, and turned the handle. They entered a
dark room that smelled of sex.

Brecht flicked a switch. Light flooded the bedroom.

An angry, fit, caramel-colored man shot up in bed and began shouting at them in Portuguese. Morgan didn’t understand a word
Cassiano was saying.

Brecht did. He flashed his badge, which cooled the soccer player. That’s when Morgan noticed the woman, a blonde with enormous
breasts, who lay passed out next to Cassiano.

It surprised Morgan. Earlier he’d seen Internet photos of the striker’s wife, Perfecta, a Brazilian model with stunning, exotic
looks and an incredible body. The woman in the bed looked plain in comparison.

Over the next five minutes, Brecht interrogated Cassiano and translated for Morgan.

“You know Christoph Schneider?” Brecht asked. “He works for Private.”

The striker shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

“Where’s your wife?” Brecht asked, nodding at the passed-out woman.

Cassiano shrugged and smiled. “Perfecta’s on a photo shoot in Africa. Be back the day after tomorrow.”

“Be tough if she found out you had a sleepover,” Morgan said.

The athlete sobered. “Okay. So I met with Schneider for ten minutes last Monday. He asked me about games where I played poorly
earlier in the season.”

“You mean these?” Brecht asked, removing an iPad from his carryall. He gave it a command and a clip played of Cassiano missing
a great pass.

“We looked at all the videos this morning,” Morgan said. “You don’t look anything like the scoring machine you are in other
games.”

“I was sick, nauseated all those times, the shits,” Cassiano said indignantly. “I went to doctor. He says I am having problem
with German food. It came and went, but I still played. Sick. Hurt. I play. I’m known for that.”

“Sure you weren’t taking a dive?” Morgan asked.

Cassiano turned furious after Brecht translated, and started shouting at him in Portuguese. “No way. There is World Cup in
three years. Do you honestly think I’d screw that up?”

Brecht gestured at the woman, who had stirred and groaned at the shouting. “You look like you’re trying to screw up a marriage
with a supermodel, so what do we know?”

“This is recreation,” Cassiano said, indignant once again. “And my answer is still no. I was not taking a dive. I never take
a dive. It is a matter of honor.”

“You know Maxim Pavel? He owns that drag-queen club, Cabaret.”

Cassiano looked insulted. “Do I look like fan of female impersonators?”

“Doesn’t answer the question,” Morgan shot back. “Do you know Pavel?”

Cassiano sighed. “Like I told Schneider, I met him once at another of his clubs, not Cabaret, Dance, I think.”

“Did you know he’s associated with Russian mafia?” Brecht asked.

“Not until Schneider asked me the same question,” he replied evenly. “Like I said, I met him once. We talk for maybe five
minutes.”

“About what?”

“He says he is a big fan. Gets my autograph.”

“Can anyone corroborate this? Your wife?”

“Perfecta wasn’t with me when I went to the dance club. But Cabaret’s a ten-minute walk from here, so do the same thing I
told Schneider to do. Go there and ask Pavel.”

FIREMEN TRAINED HOSES on the smoking ruins of the slaughterhouse.

Her ears still ringing from the blast, her mind flashing with images of Chris’s corpse, Mattie sat on the bumper of an ambulance,
wincing as an EMT used a butterfly bandage to close the scalp wound she’d gotten during the blast.

Burkhart sat next to her getting his arm wrapped with gauze. Next to him, High Commissar Dietrich was being treated for a
cheek contusion.

They were facing Dr. Gabriel and Risi Baumgarten, a German federal agent who’d seized control of the investigation.

Dr. Gabriel said, “I just spoke with Jack Morgan. He’s given the okay for me to call in forensics teams from our offices in
Amsterdam, Zurich, Paris, and London. Anything you want from Private is yours.”

“I think Private’s already been involved too much,” snapped Baumgarten, who stood a full six inches taller than the hippie
scientist.

Mattie heard that through the ringing in her ears and said, “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means perhaps this explosion would not have happened had you not gone down there, Frau Engel.”

“Someone had to go,” said Dietrich. “She was the right size, and we had no idea there was a bomb down there.”

Dietrich had seemed much less tightly wound and adversarial since the explosion. Mattie smiled grimly at him, thankful for
the backup.

But Baumgarten was having none of it. “You sent in an amateur.”

“I am not an amateur,” Mattie cried.

“You set off a booby trap,” Baumgarten said.

“I did not set off anything. I did not trip anything.”

“So it’s simply a coincidence that the place blew right after you’d been down there?”

Burkhart shook his head. “If it was a booby trap and she tripped something, it would have gone off right away. I figure this
was done remotely, by radio. We just got lucky getting out before it blew.”

Baumgarten eyed them all, and then looked at Gabriel. “You said there was a video of what Frau Engel saw in the subbasement.”

Gabriel nodded and cued it up on his computer. Baumgarten was sobered by the images from the boneyard. Mattie could not watch
when the camera picked up Chris’s corpse. But she did see herself reaching up to tear green paper from one of the bomb packets.
She dug it from her pocket and handed it to the federal agent.

Baumgarten examined it for several moments before saying, “Czech-made Semtex, smiliar to C-4. Soviet era. Got to be twenty-five
or thirty years old.”

“Who put it down there and when?” Mattie said. “I mean, if Burkhart’s right, whoever set those bombs off had to have been
watching us, or at least had to have known there were police at the site. He didn’t know we were rushing to get out. He was
willing to kill all of us to keep that boneyard buried.”

While Baumgarten considered that, Dietrich said, “I agree. And more, I think what Frau Engel discovered could be a dumping
ground for a serial killer. How else do you explain thirty skulls in the same place?”

“Maybe he’s an assassin,” Burkhart said. “Maybe when people hire him to make their enemies disappear, this is where he dumps
them.”

Dietrich nodded. “I could see that too.”

Baumgarten did not comment on any of it. Another agent called to her and she left them just as Inspector Weigel reappeared.
“Where does this leave us, High Commissar?”

“Blocked, at least as far as this place is concerned,” Dietrich said. “We really have no other course of action except to
wait for the forensics teams to find us some evidence.”

“That could be a week or more!” Mattie protested.

“It could,” the high commissar said.

“So you’re going to put this investigation down?”

“Not at all,” Dietrich said. “But I know what my supervisor is going to say. We’ve got a backlog of homicide cases and the
federal agencies have taken the lead now. Until we get more physical evidence, I’m sure I’ll be spending my time working cases
with more short-term promise.”

Mattie looked at the Kripo investigator in disbelief and then anger. “Well, you can be damn sure of one thing, Hauptkommissar—Private
Berlin will be spending every waking moment working on this case. We are not resting until we nail the bastard who killed
Chris and the other people buried under that debris.”