JF01 - Blood Eagle (40 page)

‘There’s nothing been said or done yet that suggests we should intervene. Anna’s looking after herself all right. And we’re tight on their tail. Try to relax.’

The blank stare Paul gave Maria did not suggest that he was in any way convinced or reassured by her comments. He lifted the radio mouthpiece to his lips and demanded an update from both close-surveillance vehicles. They both confirmed that they had good and close visual contact.

‘The target has just turned into Helgoländer, heading south,’ reported the radio voice of the lead surveillance car. ‘We seem to be heading towards the Landungsbrücken …’

Paul adjusted his hold on the radio, as if a tighter grip would squeeze more satisfactory information from it.

‘Kastor four-one to Kastor four-two …’ the first car called the second, ‘I’m going to pull back now. Overtake and take up the lead. Kastor four-four …’ He now called one of the motorcyclists. ‘See if you can get ahead of him and down onto the Landungsbrücken …’

Another silence.

‘Kastor four to Kastor four-four …’ Paul’s stretched thread of patience snapped once more: ‘report …’

‘We’ve turned onto the Landungsbrücken …’ he paused and then added with a puzzled tone: ‘… we seem to be heading towards Baumwall and the Niederhafen … or the Hanseboothafen … the target is now on Johannisbollwerk.’

Anna felt the knot in her gut pull tighter. MacSwain turned off the main city harbour road and onto the pontoons that separated the bays of the Niederhafen and the Schiffbauerhafen, which offered berths for exhibitors and visitors to the Hanseboot Boat Show. He parked the Porsche and came round to her side, holding the door open for her to get out. Anna sat still for a moment. She could hear the creaking, tinkling and ringing sounds from the forest of yacht masts around her.

‘Come on,’ said MacSwain without impatience, ‘I’ve something to show you.’

Anna gave a small involuntary shiver as she stepped out of the car, although the evening was far from chilly. MacSwain missed it, because he was reaching into the back seat to remove the wicker hamper. He closed the door and used the key-ring fob to lock the car and set the alarm. He extended an elbow, the hamper in his other hand, indicating that Anna should take his arm. She smiled and did so. They walked along the pontoon towards Überseebrücke. Suddenly MacSwain stopped beside a small but sleek and expensive-looking motor cruiser.

‘Here we are … she’s small, but she’s comfortable and she’s fast. Nine point three metres. Three-metre-plus beam.’

Anna stood and stared at the craft. It was pristine white with a single blue line along its bow. In prestige and elegance, it was the water-going equivalent of MacSwain’s Porsche.

‘Beautiful …’ Anna’s voice was dead and empty. At that moment she didn’t have a clue what she would do next.

‘Fuck! He’s got a boat.’ Paul stared wildly at Maria. ‘If Anna gets on it and he takes it out of harbour, we’ll lose them. Shit. We never thought he’d have a boat. I’m calling in the team to pull her out of there …’

Maria Klee frowned. ‘But that’ll blow the whole operation. We can’t arrest him for anything … he hasn’t done anything wrong. All we’ll succeed in doing is blowing Anna’s cover and alerting MacSwain to the fact that he is under suspicion. And Anna isn’t calling us in yet.’

‘Christ, Maria … if he gets her out onto the water she is totally unprotected. We can’t leave her exposed like that …’ He grabbed the radio. Maria placed her hand over his.

‘Wait, Paul,’ said Maria. ‘We can get the Wasserschutzpolizei and maybe even a helicopter out here. We’re sitting smack bang in the middle between the WSP river police Kommissariat on the Landungsbrücken and the Wache in the Speicherstadt … we can get water-borne support out here in minutes. Move the team in but keep them out of sight. If we suspect Anna’s in trouble then we can move them in before he clears his berth.’ She snapped up her cell phone in a decisive gesture. ‘I’ll get on to the Wasserschutzpolizei …’

Anna’s mind raced. This was an element she had not factored into her plan. She simply stared blankly at the sleek lines of the craft as if she were looking at a loaded weapon pointing in her direction. Her guard was down and MacSwain noticed.

‘Sara? Is there something wrong? I hoped you’d be impressed …’

MacSwain’s voice snapped Anna back to the task in hand. She turned to him and smiled weakly. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that boats aren’t really my thing.’

‘What?’ MacSwain mimicked shocked surprise. ‘You’re from Hamburg, aren’t you? The sea’s in your blood!’ He climbed down the small metal ladder, carefully carrying the hamper in his free hand. He placed the hamper on the deck and held his hand out to help Anna down from the quay.

‘No … honestly, John … I have a thing about boats. I get sick. And I get scared …’

He smiled broadly and the green eyes glittered in the dim light. ‘You’ll be fine. Come and try her for size. I won’t even start her up. If you don’t feel happy, then we’ll eat in town … I just thought it would be nice to watch the city lights from the water.’

Anna made a decision. ‘Okay. But if I don’t feel happy about it, then we go somewhere else. Deal?’

‘Deal …

Back in the Mercedes command van, Paul turned to Maria with a hard stare and said: ‘Phone Fabel.’

Friday 20 June, 9.30 p.m. Speicherstadt, Hamburg
.

‘I was a major in the Soviet interior-ministry forces. MVD Kondor. The Americans had been supplying the rebel forces with the most highly sophisticated weapons and the war in Afghanistan was fast becoming the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. It was a desperate time. We had always prosecuted the war aggressively, but more and more of our boys were coming back in body bags. Worse still, a lot of them were disappearing without trace. It was clear we were not winning the conflict and attitudes were hardening.’ The Slav pulled a cigarette packet with Cyrillic writing on it from his coat pocket and offered it first to Fabel and then to Mahmoot. Both shook their heads. He shrugged and pulled an untipped cigarette from the packet and placed it between his slightly fleshy lips. He took a heavy chromium-plated lighter from his pocket; Fabel noticed it carried some kind of crest, featuring an eagle. The strands of tobacco crackled as he lit the cigarette and took a long draw.

‘I am not proud of all that happened in those dark days, Herr Fabel. But war is war. War is, unfortunately, fuelled by retribution. In Afghanistan, the retribution became more and more extreme. On both sides.’

The Slav exhaled the smoke in a forceful blow before resuming.

‘The sheer number of ground-to-air missiles the Americans had supplied made air support and supply practically impossible. Units became cut off. Often they were simply abandoned to fight their own way out or otherwise fall into the hands of crazed fanatics. One of these units was an MVD Kondor Field Police Spetznaz.’

‘Commanded by Vitrenko?’

The Slav thrust the cigarette in Fabel’s direction, causing a small cloud of grey ash to drift slowly towards the floor. ‘Exactly …’ He paused. ‘I think that now I should tell you something about Colonel Vitrenko’s
special
abilities. Command is a gift. Commanding men in battle is like being their father. You must make them believe that their trust in you is total and unique, that only you can guide them into the light and safety; only you can protect them. And if you cannot protect them and it is their time to die, they must believe that you have chosen the only true and proper place for them to die … that survival and life in another place and time would be a betrayal. All of this means that the commander’s most important strategies are psychological, not military. Vasyl Vitrenko is a unique commander of men. As a child he was identified as having a special, powerful intellect. Unfortunately, he was also identified as having certain potentially problematic personality traits. He was born into a military family and these
quirks
in his make-up were considered to be best managed in a military career.’

Another long draw on the cigarette.

‘He did excel as a soldier, and it was soon recognised that he had a very special ability as a leader. He could make people do things they wouldn’t consider themselves capable of … exceptional things. What the authorities were less comfortable with was his almost cult-like status. He propagated a philosophy of the “eternal soldier” … those under his command saw themselves as the latest in a long line of warriors that stretched back two thousand years.’ The Slav leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. A curl of smoke cupped his small baby chin and traced its way up his cheek, causing him to narrow the green eyes against its sting. ‘Your killer. He has a noble mission, no? He sees himself as a Viking warrior returning his people to the true Nordic faith?’

Fabel felt his chest tighten as he heard an almost perfect repetition of the description Dorn had given him. ‘Yes … but how …’

The Slav cut him short. ‘And you are, therefore, looking for a German or Scandinavian?’

‘Well, yes …’

‘You disappoint me, Herr Fabel. You studied medieval history did you not?’

Fabel nodded curtly. ‘What’s your point?’

‘Just that I would have expected you to think more broadly … both geographically and historically.’

The point hit home like a heavy blow to Fabel’s chest.

‘Shit …’ Fabel’s eyes darted around as he processed information retrieved from some deep storage. ‘Kievan Rus …’

‘That’s right, Herr Fabel. The Kievan Rus. The founders of Kiev and Novgorod and who gave their name to Russia. But they weren’t Slavs.’

Fabel felt the same thrill of epiphany that he had felt when he had sat in Dorn’s office. Here it was. The final link. The connection between the Ukrainian element and the rest of the puzzle. ‘No …’ Fabel said. ‘No, they weren’t. They were Swedes. Swedish Vikings.’

‘Exactly. They sailed up the Volga and set up their trading posts and cities at strategic points along the river. Warriors. And it is from this origin that Vitrenko drew inspiration for his quasi-religious philosophy of soldiering. He instilled in his subordinates a belief that they were the inheritors of a warrior code that stretched back to the Viking origins of the Kievan Rus. He made them believe that what they were fighting for did not matter in the least: it was the fighting in itself, the comradeship under arms and the testing of individual and collective courage that mattered … nothing else. They could be Soviet troops, mercenaries, even fight for the West … Vitrenko invested them with the belief that only the act of war itself was the single inalienable and indissoluble truth. And, I believe, he dressed up this philosophy in the semi-mythical codes of the Viking. The result was something in his men that went beyond all definition of loyalty … a total dedication and devotion. He was – he is – quite capable of talking people into committing the most atrocious acts. Even for them to sacrifice their own lives without a thought.’ The Slav gazed at the floor before absent-mindedly flicking some ash onto it. Then he looked up into Fabel’s eyes with as candid and uncompromising a gaze as Fabel could ever remember encountering. ‘I feel my words are inadequate to describe the raw, total power Vitrenko can exert on others … or the horror of the acts of which he is capable.’ It was as if the Slav had run out of fuel; as if the last reserves of energy that were stored in the heavy, squat shoulders were depleted.

‘I can understand why all of this leads you to suspect Vitrenko of these killings, but you said you
knew
he is the killer. How do you know?’

The Slav rose and walked over to one of the wide, shallow windows. Fabel could tell that, although he looked out into the dark void of the warehouse, he was seeing something and somewhere else. Sometime else.

‘Like I said, Vitrenko’s unit was isolated in rebel territory. And without air support. To say they were cut off would be to use the language of conventional war, and this was anything but a conventional war. To get back to friendly territory, they had to make their way through a rebel-controlled valley. It took them ten days to get from one end to the other, making short, fast runs at night from one cover to the next. Each night men would die … and, worse, some were left wounded and were picked up by the rebels. And during each day in that valley, pinned down and unable to move from their cover, the survivors would hear the screams of their captured comrades as the mujahidin tortured them. It was enough to break the spirit of the most dedicated and loyal soldier. But something happened in that valley, between Vitrenko and his men: something unbreakable was forged between them.’

He turned from the window and lifted the cigarette to his lips and snapped open his lighter.

‘Out of a hundred-plus-strong force, only about twenty men made it to the valley’s end. Of those, a handful were walking wounded. These were sent back to safe ground, but instead of returning to Soviet territory, Vitrenko and the rest of his men travelled only a short distance from the valley before turning back under cover of darkness. The mujahidin, of course, were not expecting them to return. Vitrenko and his men played the rebels at their own game, taking to the mountains and stalking any small group of fighters they encountered. They would kill all prisoners taken in any engagement except one. This prisoner would be tortured mercilessly for any intelligence he could give and then crucified, left to scream for hours until he died. At first the rebels would try to rescue the victim, but Vitrenko had snipers hidden to pick them off. After the casualties they experienced through these attempted rescues, the mujahidin learned to live with the screams. Vitrenko and his men became like bandits, outlaws, beyond the control of any military management. They also became heroes to the ordinary Soviet soldier in Afghanistan. It was only a matter of time before the GRU – the
Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye
, our main field-intelligence service – started to become frustrated: they knew that Vitrenko and his men were gathering important intelligence that was not being passed back. Then the stories became more gruesome. Reports of mass murder of anyone in the rebel-held areas; of robbing and raping.’