The Carnival Master

5.

It was about half an hour before the man whom Maria had seen Viktor talking to left the bar. He came out alone, but Maria recognised him. He was shorter than Viktor and not as heavily built, but there was something about his physique and the way he moved that told Maria that this was the ‘soldier’ Slavko had talked about. Maria had made an in-depth study of Soviet and post-Soviet Spetsnaz soldiers. Vitrenko was the devil she had had to get to know. Part of the selection criteria was that the men chosen were never particularly tall or muscle-bound: they had to be able to dissolve into the background, whether that was in a desert, a jungle or a city. But there was always something in the way they moved that identified them. Maria had no doubt that she was looking at an ex-Spetsnaz. And that she had just taken a significant step up in Vitrenko’s organisation.

Maria felt afraid. She knew that tailing this man was a whole different ball game. Unlike Viktor, this guy would have been trained to spot surveillance. She would only have one shot at this.

The Ukrainian got into a mid-range BMW and drove off. Maria waited until there were several cars between them before she pulled out into the traffic. She would have to risk losing him rather than have him detecting her too close on his tail. They headed out of Nippes. Maria struggled to steer with one hand while stealing glances at the Cologne city plan in her other. They seemed to be heading along Kempener Strasse towards Neu Ehrenfeld and she guessed they might be destined for the autobahn. It started to rain heavily and Maria had to switch the wipers on to the fastest setting. Her head ached after the adrenalin rush of testing her new look in the bar and from concentrating through the dark and rain on the distant tail lights of the Ukrainian’s BMW.

They joined the autobahn heading north. Maria relaxed a little. She could drop back even further, accelerating only as they approached an exit, in case he took it. Eventually Cologne’s silhouetted skyline disappeared from the edges of the autobahn and they seemed to be heading towards Dusseldorf. The BMW suddenly veered off the autobahn without indicating. Maria felt a tightness in her chest. Was there a significance in him pulling off without signalling? She put her indicator on and followed him off the autobahn. As she followed the circular sweep of the exit, she found she had lost sight of the BMW. The rain still pounded on the windscreen and the unlit arc of road seemed crowded in by trees. The road straightened and she came to a junction. She could see as far along the road in both directions as the darkness and the rain would permit. No tail lights. She stopped. There were no cars behind or in front of her – she was isolated in the tiny universe of her car and the silver rods of rain caught in her headlights. She sighed. She accepted she would have to lose him rather than stick too close and if she had to pick up his trail every night at the bar where he obviously had a regular meeting with Viktor, then that was what she would do. She put the car back in gear and drove off.

Maria knew she would get lost if she blindly followed the road, so she decided to turn and head back in the direction of the autobahn. She reckoned that the Saxo’s turning circle would be tight enough for her to swing round without finding a junction to turn in. She checked her rear-view mirror. Clear. Maria swung the Saxo around and, apart from the right front tyre mounting the verge a little, did a perfect turn. It was then that the headlights of the BMW came on full beam, blinding her. The Ukrainian’s car was on the wrong side of the road and she realised that until that moment it had been heading straight for her at high speed, its lights switched off. Maria pulled hard on the steering wheel and the BMW flashed by, but it caught the rear right wing of the much lighter Citroen and sent her into a sideways skid. Maria’s training took over from her instinct and she straightened the Saxo. She floored the accelerator and the little car surged forward faster than she had anticipated. She checked the rear-view mirror: the BMW had been forced to do a three-point turn, giving her time to open up a precious lead on it.

Maria’s mind worked hard and fast. Bastard, she thought, you were hiding with your lights out in that entrance to the woods. She knew what he had intended: to knock the Saxo off the road, then probably smash her head in and make it look like she’d been killed in the crash. Maybe that’s what they had done with Turchenko, the Ukrainian investigator who had come after Vitrenko. Maria was aware of the nauseating fear that gripped her, but there was also a sense of exhilaration. And defiance. There was no way this prick was going to chase her to her death.

She saw the headlights of the BMW behind her. A couple of cars passed in the opposite direction, then nothing. He had known that this was a relatively deserted stretch of road and had led her here deliberately. The BMW was still some distance behind, but she calculated that he was closing. If there had been more bends on the road she would have stood a better chance: the Saxo was quick to accelerate and handled corners well, but on a straight stretch like this she was no match for the BMW’s horsepower. Maria kept her foot pressed hard to the floor and tried to achieve the same with her mental processes. He was a soldier. A Spetsnaz. He could probably kill someone with a paper clip in a snowstorm, but that didn’t necessarily give him an advantage in this environment. There was a gentle bend ahead; he would lose sight of her for thirty or forty seconds. She took the bend fast, the rain now driving hard against the windscreen. As she did so she unbuckled her seat belt and killed her lights. She swung the Saxo round in the road as fast as she could without losing control on the rain-sleeked tarmac. The BMW was already round the corner by the time she had completed her turn. Maria braked hard, leaving the Saxo on the wrong side of the road, hit the lights and jumped from the car.