The Carnival Master

2.

Maria found that now when she woke up each morning she felt disconnected from herself; from reality. It frightened her to feel that she was watching herself as if she were a character in a film, or some distant figure in a landscape. She knew she wasn’t well, and not like before. It was as if something was broken inside her. It frightened her to think that she was now capable of almost anything; that she was more or less prepared to do all that the Ukrainians asked of her. Yet something held her back.

Maria had been with them for three days now. They met each morning, early, at the small former meat-packing plant which Buslenko had rented in the Raderberg area of the city. Maria continued to spend her nights at the cheap hotel and drove down each morning. Something warned her to keep the location of Liese’s apartment secret and she decided not to move into it for a few days. Where Buslenko and Sarapenko slept was unknown to Maria, and she didn’t ask. For a two-man operation, the Ukrainians seemed extremely well equipped. It highlighted to Maria how inept her attempts and how half-baked her planning had been. Buslenko and Sarapenko had brought masses of electronic equipment, as well as two weapons bags. Maria reckoned that her involvement in the illegal movement of guns and military hardware into Germany was in itself enough to guarantee her a prison term.

The strange thing was that she was now physically stronger than she had been for months. Since she had started to eat normally again, her frame had begun to fill out and her limbs no longer felt leaden. Her resolve, like her hunger, had returned. The way to make up for Slavko’s death was to kill Vitrenko. The way to make up for everything was to kill Vitrenko.

‘We’ve set up twenty-four-hour surveillance on Molokov,’ Buslenko explained.

‘How? There’s only the two… the three of us…’

‘Molokov’s got a place out in Cologne’s leafy suburbs, between Lindenthal and Braunsfeld. It’s a huge villa that’s supposed to be owned by a Russian importer-exporter called Bogdanov. Whether he exists or is just an alias for Molokov or Vitrenko we don’t know. We have set up remote cameras outside his villa – it’s on the edge of the park and the street is lined with trees so it wasn’t too hard.’ Buslenko grinned. ‘I worked for the City of Cologne’s Parks Department for a day. Anyway, they’re safe and undetectable but not as close as we’d like. Ideally, I’d like to get a listening device or camera into his place, but that’s impossible.’

Olga Sarapenko had helped Buslenko set up a bank of three monitors. She tuned them in and different views of a large modern villa appeared on the screens. Olga adjusted the zoom and focus on each with a joystick.

‘Even if we could get a device inside,’ continued Buslenko, ‘it’s a safe bet that Molokov has his house electronically swept every couple of days.’ Buslenko laughed bitterly. ‘That’s the problem with being on our side of the fence. Molokov’s electronic hardware isn’t restricted by government budgets. I’ll bet his kit is far superior to ours.’

‘The thing is,’ said Maria, ‘I didn’t come to Cologne for Molokov.’

‘Believe me, Maria, nor did we.’

‘What can I contribute here?’ she asked, with a sigh. ‘Why did you make yourselves known to me? God knows there was no way I was going to get anywhere near Vitrenko. It would probably have been easier and more secure for you to operate invisibly. I really don’t see what I can bring to the table.’

‘We left three dead behind us in Ukraine,’ said Olga Sarapenko. ‘What you mean to us is an extra pair of eyes. And an extra gun if we need it.’

‘But your true value to us, Maria,’ said Buslenko, ‘is the connection you offer. The potential access to intelligence that we can’t get at ourselves. There’s a dossier on Vitrenko. In fact there are two, but one of them, the more comprehensive one, is held by your Federal Crime Bureau on a secure computer. Hard copies are on very restricted circulation. The Federal Crime Bureau task force dedicated to Vitrenko obviously has access to inside information. We only had sight of the Ukrainian version which misses out key intelligence.’

‘Vasyl Vitrenko is obsessive about security.’ Olga Sarapenko took over. ‘He is driven mad by the idea that he can’t get at the dossier. He suspects that the informer is on Molokov’s side of the operation, maybe even Molokov himself. But he can’t prove it. We want you to try to get us a copy of the Vitrenko Dossier. The full one. If we can identify the informer, we can pressure him into setting Vitrenko up. It gives us someone on the inside whose survival would depend on us taking Vitrenko out of the picture.’

‘But I don’t have access to the Vitrenko Dossier. In fact I’m probably the last person they’d allow to see it.’

‘But you have access codes and passwords for the BKA computer system,’ said Buslenko. ‘That would be a starting point. It’s not practical to think that we can carry out a complex mission like this in just a few days. It could be that the best thing for you to do is to go back to Hamburg in a few weeks and ideally resume your duties with the Murder Commission. The information you can obtain for us is of much more value to us than your presence here,’ Buslenko explained.

‘I’m here to see this through. To see Vitrenko get what he deserves,’ Maria said defiantly. She was willing to do almost anything to bring down Vitrenko, but Buslenko was asking her to access government files on behalf of a foreign military unit operating illegally in the Federal Republic. It would be a betrayal of her office. It would probably be espionage.

‘I understand your hunger for revenge,’ Buslenko explained. ‘But this is not a Hollywood western. Your value to us is to pass on to us everything that the German authorities know about Vitrenko’s operation. I’m sure you’ll find a way,’ Buslenko said, not unkindly. ‘In the meantime, you may stay here with us and help us set up our surveillance of Molokov.’

Maria took her shifts watching the monitors, logging the activities: who visited the Molokov villa, when they arrived, when they left, the licence numbers of the cars that came and went. Always waiting for the arrival of anyone who could have been Vitrenko. Although she refused to supply the Ukrainians with the access codes they needed, she did share what intelligence she had been able to gather. She felt that this, in some way, could be regarded as the legitimate exchange of information between law-enforcement agencies.

Their situation, Buslenko explained, was like two hunters in the forest at the same time. It was up to Buslenko, Sarapenko and Maria to make sure they got to the game before the BKA Federal Crime Bureau, and without detection. All he wanted the access codes for was to pinpoint where the other hunter lay hidden in the forest. Maria knew it was only a matter of time before Buslenko became more insistent.

It was on the third day of sitting at the monitors that Maria noticed a huge black Lexus pull up at the villa’s gates. It was admitted immediately. Buslenko’s surveillance camera was set up so far from the house that it was difficult to see clearly the men who got out of the vehicle. But the final figure sent a chill through Maria.

‘Olga!’

Sarapenko ran over. ‘What is it?’

‘Him…’ Maria felt her throat tighten, as if the name would choke her if she said it out loud. ‘It’s him.’

‘How can you tell? It’s just a shape from this distance.’

‘That’s him, I know it. The last time I saw him he was just a shape in the distance, like now, only then he was running across a field. Where’s Buslenko?’

‘He’s collecting some stuff. Our contact here… it’s best if you don’t know.’

‘Get hold of him on his cellphone. Tell him we’ve found our target and he is in Molokov’s place right now.’ Maria watched the figure on the monitor. At last. At last she had him in her sights. It gave her an enormous sense of power to know that she was watching him and he was unaware of her observation. The dark, indistinct figure whose identity Maria knew with absolute certainty turned to speak to one of his heavies, then disappeared into the villa.

Maria watched with a cold, hard expression of violent hatred as Vasyl Vitrenko disappeared from view.

‘Now,’ she said in a voice not much louder than a whisper. ‘Now I’ve got you.’