The Hunt

9

Narov moved back to face Isselhorst, taking up her grip again on the pair of syringes. ‘It is a start. But I need more. Addresses. Phone details. Email. I need everything.’

‘I don’t have much. He only makes contact with me, never the other way around. And if he calls, his number is always untraceable. I have never known such secrecy, even with my most paranoid clients.’

Narov pulled out a tourniquet and went to fasten it around Isselhorst’s arm. She could see him desperately trying to struggle; to break free from his bonds; to stop her getting the tourniquet fastened. But it was no use: he couldn’t move.

‘Keep still,’ she murmured, almost as if speaking to herself. ‘Ah, good. A nice prominent vein.’ She moved the needle towards Isselhorst’s forearm.

‘I tell you, I don’t know!’ Isselhorst yelled. His terror was plain to see: it had darkened his crotch where he had wet himself with fear. ‘The meeting. Three days’ time. In Dubai. Please. Please. That will get you to him.’

Narov proceeded to extract every last detail she could about the coming meeting: location, purpose, date, time. She realised she would need to hurry. She was never happy to approach a target unless she had done a detailed reconnaissance.

Questioning finished, she settled down for her final chat with Herr Isselhorst.

‘There is one more thing about your grandfather that you need to know. In 1944, he was transferred from the Eastern Front to SS headquarters in Strasbourg. From there, he oversaw a concentration camp called Natzweiler. I’m curious: have you ever heard of it?’

‘No. Truthfully. Never.’

She looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Few have. It was built on French soil on what was once a beautiful ski resort. At the start of the war, my grandmother joined the French Resistance. She was captured and incarcerated in Natzweiler, on your grandfather’s personal orders.’

She paused, gazing at Isselhorst with an odd, unsettling dispassion. ‘You see, in a way we are alike, you and I. I also should not exist. I am the union of two things that should never have been joined.’

She brought her mouth close to his ear, as he had done to her in the taxi. ‘My grandmother, Sonia Olchanevsky, was a very beautiful Russian Jew. She was raped by an SS officer at Natzweiler. Repeatedly. That officer was my grandfather, and I – I am the grandchild of that rape.’

With that, she picked up her bag, re-secured Isselhorst’s gag, pocketed his mobile phone and left the room. Behind her, she could hear the man sobbing exhaustedly.

She made her way to the kitchen, pausing at the stove and turning all the gas rings to the fully open position. Then she took Oscar’s lead, clipped it onto his collar and coaxed him out of his basket. Before she left the house, she struck a match and lit three fat beeswax candles in an ornate silver candelabra.

They flared into life. She placed the candelabra on the shelf and closed the door, Oscar following her obediently. The dog had to be wondering what he had done to deserve such a rare treat as this: midnight walkies.

He paused once only as they walked up the gravel driveway. Narov had dropped something. He pulled on his leash and whined, only for her to signal him onwards, leaving behind a battered, moth-eaten wallet containing an ID card belonging to one Leon Kiel.

Kiel was one of Heidelberg’s better-known petty criminals. Narov had observed him picking pockets in the city’s narrow, twisting streets. While she didn’t exactly relish fitting him up for tonight’s crime, there were far greater matters at stake. The last thing she could afford was the authorities somehow linking it to her, or with what was coming.

Wallet dropped, Narov strapped her backpack to her shoulders and hurried into the woods, settling into a ground-eating run, Oscar jogging at her side. Some ten minutes later, the night sky behind them was ripped apart by an almighty explosion, a plume of bluish-yellow flame punching into the darkness as shards of glass and steel tumbled through the air.

The cloud of gas had seeped out of the kitchen, finding its way along the hallways and spreading through the rooms. Finally it had made contact with the candles.

At which point Erich Isselhorst’s house – and the man himself – was no more.