In the Evil Day

75

…HAMBURG…

It was cold outside but still. Just streaks of day left, lines of light running down the sky like the marks of raindrops down a dusty pane. His breath was mist as he did his rudimentary warm-up, his stretches.

The pain of the start, the complaints of the knees and ankles and hips, of ligaments and tendons and muscles. They did not want to do this any more.

Anselm got into his stride, no one on the path, a good time to be running, the day’s traffic of walkers and runners and tourists and lovers and young mothers with high-speed babycarts and in-line skaters, all gone. Too cold, too dark.

You got used to running with a bag, passing it from hand to hand. It was heavier tonight, the bottle of Glen Morangie he’d bought from the supermarket in Hofweg. He reached the ferry landing, no sign now of what had happened, he shook the thought from his mind. Just run. Try to run at a decent pace. Don’t slop along. Run. You used to be a runner. You could run.

It was dark now. Alex was somewhere ahead, coming towards him. Was she running? I’ll meet you, she said.

A runner coming towards him.

Alex?

No. A thin man. They both grunted, runners’ greeting grunts.

The path turned right, following the lake. There was a moment when he heard the sound of the city, when his brain for some reason registered the noise. A loud hum, a soup of a thousand sounds, like living in the innards of a machine.

Go away, he thought. Would she go away with me? Somewhere quiet. We could read. And make love. Then eat and read.

She would be coming towards him, not far away.

To kill Serrano and Kael, they would trigger a bomb in a ferry. Kill anyone near the pair. Tilders had been close. He had managed to get within two metres, a few seats. Wearing glasses and an invisible hearing aid.

Two figures ahead, coming towards him, walking, heads together.

He felt the familiar alarm, the signs of panic.

There was nowhere to go here, no sideways escape.

He slowed. Heart beating much faster than it should from running. Dry mouth, the tightness of skin.

Relax. The pair from the other night? He picked up his pace. No, it wasn’t, just two people out for a walk. One medium, one small, they parted to let him through. He was close, he started to say Guten Abend.

The bigger one on the left had his right hand in his coat, high up, at his chest.

A few paces away. The smaller man smiled at Anselm, white teeth. Polite.

The bigger one’s hand came out of his coat, something caught the light, a blade, Anselm saw it clearly, the man’s arm was back.

He tried to get out of the way, go to the left, but the blade came across him, it felt as if an ice cube had been passed over his flesh. He looked down. The old tracksuit had opened across his chest, parted.

He had stopped. He had not intended to stop. He stood there, bag in hand.

The knife man had the blade upright. Just a sliver of steel.

A thin expressionless face. Moustache and eyebrows of thatch. The man was in no hurry.

He’s cut me and now he’s going to knife me, Anselm thought. The traditional way of doing things. Not a German tradition but this is the new Europe. He had no feeling of panic or fear. It had happened. He was glad. All the waiting was over.

The man said, ‘Tschus.’

The cheerful chirping goodbye.

Anselm swung his bag at the man. It knocked the knife hand back, the full weight of the whisky bottle caught him in the face. He went backwards, his knees bending.

Anselm hit him with the bag again, heard the bottle meet bone, felt it, turned, saw at the edge his vision something in the smaller man’s right hand-a pistol, a pistol with a silencer.

Awkwardly, off balance, Anselm swung the bag at him.

Missed.

The man had stepped back, out of range.

He raised the pistol.

Anselm heard nothing but he felt an impact against his chest.

The smell of something.

Whisky.

He had raised the bag without thinking and a bullet had hit the bottle of whisky.

‘Leg den Beutel fallen,’ said the man. He had both hands on the pistol now, but not sighting, holding it at his chest. Unhurried, confident.

Anselm threw the bag at him, it missed, went into the dark.

‘Stupide,’ said the man.

‘Shit,’ said Anselm and it came into his mind that it wasn’t an awful thing to die here, in the open, beside the lake. He could have died in a stinking hole in Beirut.

‘Nochmals Tschus,’ said the man.

He raised the pistol, sighted.

Nothing to do, thought Anselm.

The man grunted and pitched forward, came towards Anselm, falling, the pistol pointing down, someone behind him.

Alex. She’d hit the man with her left shoulder, run into him at full stride.

As the man fell, met the ground, Anselm, the calm still upon him, stamped on the hand holding the pistol. He wished he wasn’t wearing running shoes.

The pistol came free.

Anselm picked it up and pointed it at the man’s head. ‘Bewegen Sie sich nicht,’ he said.

Alex was standing behind the man, winded, bent at the waist, holding her shoulder, looking up at Anselm.

‘O mein Gott,’ she said.

Anselm held the gun on the smaller man and walked backwards to the knife man, bent to look at him. He was breathing. There were blood bubbles at his nostrils, foamy blood bubbles.

‘Was is los?’ said Alex.

Anselm said to the gunman: ‘Steh auf. Zieh die Hose aus.

’ ‘Was?’

‘Ziehen sie Sich aus oder ich tote sie.’

The man had to take off his shoes to remove his trousers. He stood awkwardly, pale legs ending in short black socks.

‘Machen Sie schon,’ said Anselm, showing him the direction with the pistol. ‘Bewegen Sie sich.’

The man took off at a half-run.

‘Come,’ he said to Alex.

‘What about him?’ she said, pointing at the man on the ground.

‘His friend will be back for him,’ said Anselm. He took the pistol by the barrel and threw it into the lake.

They walked back towards the office. Anselm put his hand to his chest and it came away black with blood.

He was beginning to feel nausea rise.

She took his arm and they walked back along the lake shore towards the cheerful lights.

‘Where’d you learn to knock someone like that?’ he said.

‘Gridiron. I played in the States.’

‘We didn’t pass in the dark,’ he said.

She leaned towards him and touched the side of his face with her lips.

‘No,’ she said. ‘But it was close.’