The Carnival Master

8.

‘They’re stopping…’ Buslenko’s voice broke the radio silence that seemed to have gone on for hours. ‘We’re at some kind of disused industrial building next to a reservoir or a flooded quarry or something. There’s another car here. They’re obviously meeting someone.’

‘Can you see who?’ Olga’s voice crackled across the airwaves.

‘No… no, I can’t. Where are you, Maria?’

‘I’m on the A57 north of the city, near Dormagen.’ Maria felt sick. She realised she was retracing the route she’d taken the night she had played cat and mouse with Maxim Kushnier.

‘Right…’ Buslenko sounded hesitant. ‘You’ll be here in about fifteen minutes. Head out along Provinzialstrasse towards Delhoven and you’ll come to a bend in the road. Take a left and you’ll come to a farm track that leads off of that. I’ve hidden my car, a black Audi, up the track. I’ll see you there in quarter of an hour.’

‘Okay,’ said Maria and found her mouth was dry.

‘Olga.’ Buslenko transmitted again. ‘I’m going in for a closer look. I want to see who Vitrenko’s meeting with.’

‘Wait, Taras,’ said Olga. ‘Wait until Maria gets there. I think you should get in touch with the local police. This is our chance to nail him.’

‘That’s not how we’re going to deal with it. I’ll be fine. But I’m switching off my radio until I get back to the car. Vitrenko has probably posted guards.’

‘Be careful, Taras,’ said Maria. She put her foot down a little more on the Saxo’s accelerator. Now, she thought. Now it’s going to be over for once and for all.

Olga guided Maria to the position Buslenko had last given. The roads became narrower and the houses fewer. Maria found herself in a landscape of open fields punctuated with scattered, dense clumps of naked trees. The inky blueness of the darkness outside yielded to a deeper black as she drove, marking the subtle change from late afternoon to true night. The rain stopped.

‘I’ve reached the junction on Provinzialstrasse,’ she radioed in to Olga Sarapenko. ‘Where now?’

‘Take a right and follow the road for about a kilometre. Then you should see the bend Taras talked about and the lane where he’s hidden his car.’

To start with, Maria drove past the entrance to the lane: it was crowded in by dense thorny bracken and she had to reverse to turn into it. After about twenty metres she discovered Buslenko’s Audi. She got out and shivered in the cold winter air. That old shiver. There was something about the lane, about the night, that gave her the darkest form of deja vu.

‘I’ve found the car,’ she said into the radio, her voice low. She peered in through the rain-speckled side window. ‘But no sign of Buslenko.’

‘Sit tight,’ Olga responded. ‘He’ll still be doing his recon. He’ll be back soon.’

Maria checked her watch. He had said fifteen minutes. It had taken her twelve to get there. Something caught her eye on the passenger seat of the Audi.

‘Olga… he’s left his radio in the car.’

There was a static-crackled pause, then: ‘He said he was maintaining radio silence.’

‘But wouldn’t he have just switched the radio off instead of leaving it here?’

‘Maria. Just sit tight.’

Maria slipped her radio into her coat pocket. She made her way back along the lane to the road, the mud yielding beneath her boots. Once out onto the road she checked, her body still concealed by the bracken, for cars coming in either direction. She heard nothing, but the chill breeze rustled as it stirred the naked branches. She made her way along the road to the bend. On the other side she could see an exposed field with a barn-type building at one edge. There were two cars parked outside. Maria felt the nausea well up inside her again and her heart hammered in her chest. The scene she looked upon was like some landlocked version of the field and barn near Cuxhaven. The place she’d last encountered Vitrenko. She found herself looking up at the starless, cloud-heavy sky and at the winter barren field as if to assure herself that she had not travelled back in time. No stars, no swirling grasses. Maria crouched low as she ran back along the road, the lane and into her car. She slammed the door shut and gripped the steering wheel tight. She looked at the keys in the ignition, still with the label of the garage she’d bought the car from attached. She could turn that key, reverse out onto the road and in minutes she’d be on the autobahn heading for Hamburg. She could put it all behind her. Start again.

Maria snapped open the glove compartment with a sudden decisiveness and took out both her service SIG-Sauer automatic and the illegal 9mm Glock and slipped them into her pockets. She reached over again, grabbed her binoculars and headed back out on foot along the lane.

There was no cover in the field. It would be almost impossible to cross undetected. Buslenko knew what he was doing. Vitrenko and his team certainly knew what they were doing. But Maria didn’t have the kind of training for this kind of stealth. She moved quickly and quietly to the corner of the field where a thin, wind-bowed tree and some leafless shrubbery offered meagre cover. She scanned the field, the parked cars, the barn with her binoculars. Nothing. No guards, no signs of life. There wasn’t even any hint of a light inside the barn. And no sign of Buslenko. She sat down on the damp grass, leaning her back against the tree. Apart from the wind, there was no sound. No hint that another human being shared Maria’s dark, frightened universe. She took one gun, then the next, and snapped the carriages back, placing a round in each chamber and snapping off the safety. She put her service SIG-Sauer back in her pocket. She could see the fumed ghosts of her hard, fast breathing in the chill air.

Maria took a deep breath and set off across the field towards the barn, bent over as much as she could while running, the Glock automatic held stiffly out and to one side.

She was about halfway there when the light came on.