Babylon Berlin, page 19
‘Why are your people looking for Kardakov? Has he been misappropriating cocaine?’
‘Why don’t you tell me why the police are looking for him.’
‘Allow me to place my cards on the table. The police aren’t looking for him. I’m looking for him.’
‘Why?’
He had a moment of sudden inspiration. ‘The Sorokin gold.’
Marlow appeared unruffled but Rath sensed that he had scored a bull’s eye. It took a little too long for the man to formulate his next sentence. A wave of a finger and the Chinese man refilled Rath’s glass.
‘Don’t you think you’re overstretching yourself a little there? Is it not a few tons too heavy for someone acting on their own?’
‘Who said I was acting on my own?’
‘You don’t have the police force behind you at any rate.’ Marlow laughed. ‘Perhaps you’re dreaming of an early retirement! You wouldn’t be the first cop to switch sides. Are a few corrupt colleagues involved too? The one who pulled the courier out of the canal? Perhaps he wasn’t even dead and you managed to squeeze a little more out of him? And now you’re going after the big money? Be careful. Even with a whole heap of cops, you’re still out of your depth.’
The courier! Rath’s ears had pricked up, yet he was trying to appear as bored as possible. Marlow was obviously talking about Boris.
‘Do you know why Kardakov went underground?’
‘Probably because he’s playing his own game.’
‘And the courier? Why did he have to die?’
‘Inspector Rath! Don’t play dumber than you are, what do you know about the gold?’
‘That it’s in Berlin.’
Marlow gave a forced smile. ‘Nor should you make the mistake of playing me for a fool. Let’s get down to brass tacks! You want the gold and I want the gold. We both know something. If we combine our information and our capabilities, then perhaps we have a chance of getting it. What else do you know?’
Rath shrugged. ‘That it’s supposed to be worth around eighty million.’
Marlow laughed loudly, but he sounded anything but amused. ‘You need to tell me something more than I already know!’
‘I’d love to, but clearly you know so much that I can’t.’
Marlow stubbed out his cigar. It looked as if he was squashing a bug.
‘Perhaps I should give you a little more time to think about it. Kuen-Yao will see you out.’
‘How can I reach you?’
‘If you want to speak to me, come to Venuskeller. But for that reason only! If you want to have a good time, go somewhere else. Sebald doesn’t like cops taking coke in his club.’
The Chinese man stood behind him holding his coat and hat. Rath stood up.
‘Goodbye, Inspector,’ Marlow said. ‘Kuen-Yao will return your weapon when you are back on the street.’
‘Thanks for the whisky,’ Rath said.
‘The pleasure was all mine. It was nice to meet you, Inspector,’ Marlow said in a friendly tone that sent a shiver down Rath’s spine. ‘I hope for a little more cooperation the next time we meet.’
It sounded like a threat, and no doubt it was supposed to be one.
Sometimes he regretted not having a car. The neon signs outside Plaza were out and the taxi rank at Küstriner Platz looked as abandoned as a bank vault after a visit from the Brothers Sass. There were no more trains running at this hour either. A good thing he didn’t have to go into the office tomorrow. He wasn’t on duty again until the evening – when Operation Nighthawk was set to go off. He would take Venuskeller off the list. No-one needed to know where he had been tonight. They wouldn’t get to Marlow with a raid anyway, only to his front man, Sebald. Worse still, Marlow would know who to thank for this blue-uniformed company away day.
The nearest taxi rank was at Schlesischer Bahnhof. He had no option but to set off, turning up the collar of his coat and burying his hands in his pockets. A penetrating wind was blowing across the square. It seemed a storm was brewing.
He tried to assemble the pieces of the puzzle. Lana Nikoros, alias Countess Svetlana Sorokina, tells her lover, Alexej Kardakov, about her family’s gold and they decide to smuggle it into Berlin. To this end, they engage the services of a courier, a Russian named Boris. Why a courier? Is he taking the gold to Berlin, or just a message? Whatever the case, the courier dies after looking for Alexej Kardakov in a foreign city. He seems to be furious with Kardakov. Why? Did he pull a fast one on him? Play his own game, as Marlow put it? At any rate, Kardakov and the Countess go to ground. Perhaps they deprived Boris of his rightful reward, or eliminated an accessory? Before making off with the gold.
Rubbish, he thought. In order to get that amount of gold from the Soviet Union across to Germany, you needed more than one helper in Russia and in Germany. How did Marlow know about the gold? Coincidence? Had Kardakov blabbed, or had he deliberately got the underworld king involved? Somehow they had to convert a lot of gold into cash, and that was only possible with connections such as Marlow had. And in Russia? The Sorokins still had friends there. What had the Reichswehr officer at Bruno’s said about communist separatists who called themselves the Red Fortress? Was Kardakov one of them? Why not? A hack writer…
A sound interrupted his thoughts. He stood still and listened. Nothing there. He looked around. The streetlamps were casting such a wretched light that the exterior walls of the houses lay in darkness. There was no-one to be seen. It had been raining. The wet pavement reflected the weak light. As he walked on, he thought he heard something again – an echo of his own steps. He was now certain that he was being followed. Someone was walking behind him who didn’t want Rath to see him. This neighbourhood wasn’t safe, especially not at this hour. He felt his left side, at the Mauser still in its holster.
At the next turning he veered to the right, even though the station was now in sight. He wanted to be certain. The echo continued. Rath increased his tempo, then stopped abruptly and turned around. There was still no-one there. Nevertheless, the house façades were in such darkness that he would be protected from view simply by moving along the walls. Rath waited until the next street and darted sideways again. He moved to the nearest courtyard entrance and leapt inside. His pursuer had also fallen into a cautious trot, but stood still for a fraction of a second too long.
Again Rath heard the artificial echo of his steps. He listened into the night, heard raindrops dripping onto the asphalt from gutters and window ledges. In between times, he thought he could hear the sound of soles on cobblestone. Only very softly, but it was there. His pursuer still hadn’t given up. Rath retreated inside the courtyard, still keeping the entrance gate in sight. He had to conceal himself, had to surprise his pursuer.
He looked around. It wasn’t a normal courtyard he had stumbled across. In the dim glow of the courtyard lighting, he could make out a construction fence, behind which a new building was being raised. In front of it was a trailer. Another look in the direction of the entrance, and within a few strides he was in the shadow of the trailer. From here he had a good view of the gate. It had started raining again.
He didn’t have to wait long. The shadow of a man in a hat and coat. Not a flat cap, just a normal wide-brimmed hat, the latest in fashion. One of Marlow’s people? Had Dr M. sent Benno or a similarly friendly customer after him?
The man stopped, obviously considering whether he should enter the courtyard. And then he approached, still slowly and cautiously, moving along the exterior wall, gazing around time and again. Rath unbuttoned his coat and jacket and loosened the push-button on his holster. He waited until the man reached the courtyard and released the safety catch of his Mauser. With weapon drawn he emerged out of the shadow of the trailer.
‘Looking for me?’
The unknown figure stood still, the surprise had worked. He turned his head, seemed to consider if he could still escape, and then drew closer. Silently.
‘Stop! Stay where you are!’
Rath trained his pistol on the stranger.
The man was still a few paces away from him. Not particularly big, it wasn’t Benno, at any rate.
‘Why you are following me…’
The man took another step closer.
‘Stay where you are, I said!’
Rath’s voice grew louder. The man was still silent, but was now standing still.
‘We can just as easily talk at the station, if it’s too uncomfortable for you here,’ Rath said. ‘Then you won’t need to worry about where you’re spending the night.’
He couldn’t make out the eyes under the shadow of the hat, but the narrow mouth had twitched at the word station. It was only a threat, Rath wasn’t seriously intending to take the man to Alex. And then he thought for a moment that he was the one who had been lured into a trap.
Behind him he heard a resounding clang, a small, wet explosion.
Instinctively he turned his head. There was no-one there, just a hissing, white puddle on the pavement and shiny, red-brown shards. Above him a window slammed shut and, in the same instant, he was attacked.
A firm grip clasped his right forearm and pulled it to one side, turning the muzzle of the pistol painfully downwards. Rath lost his balance and fell to the ground. It happened so slowly it was as if time had been frozen. It seemed to take minutes for him to crash onto the wet stones.
While he was still falling the shot went off. A reflex. He squeezed the trigger without taking aim. Without the first idea of what had happened. The shot was earsplittingly loud.
Along with the crack he heard a loud metal noise, almost like a gong, and then the zing of a ricochet. Still he fell endlessly but with the grip of the other man loosening. His pursuer crashed to the ground too, thudding against the pavement barely a metre away.
Rath climbed to his feet, ready for the next attack. He had the Mauser in his hand and could aim again, keep the aggressive terrier in check. But the man stayed down. The hat had rolled from his head to reveal a face that Rath still didn’t recognise. Thinnish lips, a crooked nose that hinted at numerous punch-ups, an eye that was wide open. Only one. There, where the other eye ought to have been, was a gaping dark hole. In the dim light, the blood running in a thin rivulet over his pale face appeared almost black.
Rath stood holding his right ear; it ached and there was a buzzing noise. Only now did he understand what had happened. Or try to understand. Was it the mixture of alcohol, cocaine and adrenaline that somehow made the whole scene seem so unreal? But it was real, terrifyingly real. He could kick the corpse with his foot.
He saw a shiny metal object next to his foot and could almost have laughed. A mundane, everyday manhole cover, through which the rainwater drained from the paved courtyard, had sealed his attacker’s fate. As in billiards, the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of refraction.
As if someone had kicked in a glass pane and the reality behind it was only just revealing itself now, Rath became aware that he was standing next to a corpse. Next to a person who had been killed by a bullet from his Mauser.
Who would believe his story? There was a corpse, and here’s Detective Inspector Gereon Rath, pumped full of cocaine and alcohol, claiming it was all just a mistake? He realised he wasn’t going to be able to sell that to anyone. He could hear the public prosecutor posing his questions: could you explain to us again why you took cocaine, Inspector? I see, to get closer to Herr Marlow, very interesting. And what did you want from him? What on earth were you doing in a notoriously shady part of town in the middle of the night?
This time he wouldn’t escape the courts in one piece. Let alone the press. A cop who shoots a person dead during a cocaine high – the boys in Kochstrasse had been waiting for a headline like that since the Kaiser abdicated.
He looked around. All the windows remained dark, but at least one person must have seen them fighting. Rath examined the brown shards. From the white of the puddle, nothing had remained, only a few little bubbles that were frothing. A familiar smell reached his nostrils. Next to the wet shards lay a metal holder with a porcelain stopper. A beer bottle. Some sleepless voyeur up there had dropped a beer in fright.
A witness!
So what? Don’t panic! A shot here was nothing unusual. No-one would expose themselves to the questions of the accursed cops, just because they had been witness to a shoot-out. He was telling himself all this, like a kid who claims not to believe in ghosts but is still afraid of the dark. He instinctively pulled his hat further down over his eyes, but then his thoughts were clear; he knew exactly what he had to do.
He replaced his weapon and began to search the pockets of the deceased. He recoiled as something pricked him in the finger. A lapel pin, no weapon, not even a wallet. Just a small, stylised steel helmet. Rath threw it into the drain. Then he buttoned the dead man’s coat to the top, put his hat back on his head and began to pull him by the collar of his coat.
The rain became heavier, as he hauled the heavy body to the construction fence and looked for a gap. He found the loose plank and gave one of the neighbouring planks a little nudge until the gap was big enough to drag the corpse through. He looked around. The contractor hadn’t got very far, only the foundations and the floor panels had been laid. Rath climbed into the excavation and tested the concrete with a timber beam. Still not set, they must have only poured it today. He dragged the dead man down and located a shovel from the trailer. He wiped down the lock with a handkerchief after he had broken it open. His dry mouth was making him crazy. He almost took a beer from a crate that was lying next to a rusty bike, but he managed to control himself. Instead he poked his tongue out into the rain.
As if in a frenzy, he dug a hole in the fresh concrete, placed the man inside and shovelled the concrete back over the top. There was a little left over, which he spread out. Then he returned the shovel to the trailer and wiped down the handle with his handkerchief. He wiped down everything he had touched, including the loose planks in the fence, once he had straightened them again. The rain would hopefully have washed away the blood from the courtyard by the morning.
Rath looked down at himself. His dark coat was glistening with rainwater, mud and concrete. He tried to rub away the dirt but it was pointless, he was only spreading it further. The way he was looking, he couldn’t show himself to a taxi driver. He went back to the trailer, retrieved the bike and gave it the once over. There wasn’t enough air in the rear wheel, but for his purposes it would do.
His gaze wandered once more over the dark apertures that looked out onto the courtyard. He wasn’t sure whether anyone had seen him, but he was sure that in this darkness no-one could have made out his face under the shadow of his hat. Even if there was someone here who enjoyed speaking to the police.
He wheeled the bike through the entrance to the courtyard. Still no-one on the street. He pushed off and jumped into the saddle. The bike bumped across the cobblestones. As long as he wasn’t stopped by a colleague for riding without a light he would be home within half an hour.
Part II
A Division
11th May – 21st May 1929
16
The rain was still beating on the roof of the car. The beat rose to a hiss as the car door opened and a huge body sank, with surprising force, onto the black leather of the rear seat. Liang must’ve lent a helping hand. The door closed with a resounding clunk and wouldn’t be opened again until Johann Marlow gave the signal. Through the ever-changing pattern of the raindrops on the windscreen, Marlow could see the dark coat of Liang Kuen-Yao, who had remained outside to ensure that any thought of escape died a premature death.
Marlow looked at his guest without saying a word. The man had thrown on a trench coat, upon which the rain had left dark traces, but underneath he was wearing only pyjamas. His grey face could have done with a shave, while his eyes told of too little sleep. The smell of alcohol, sweat and rain permeated the vehicle. Despite their tiredness, his eyes danced anxiously to and fro. In trying to mask his anxiety he ended up sounding a little brash.
‘What’s the big idea? Why is your Chinaman dragging me out of bed in the middle of the night? I have to be at Alex at six tomorrow. I need my sleep!’
Marlow turned his attentions to a cigar that was as thick as his thumb, calmly cutting off the tip. He allowed the snapping noise of the cigar cutter to take effect before answering. His guest had already seen once what else the device could be used for.
‘I had a visit from one of your colleagues today, and I ask myself why I didn’t know anything about it,’ he said.
‘Come again? Can’t be anything official. The raid isn’t until tomorrow…’ He corrected himself upon looking at his watch. ‘…until this evening.’
‘Not a raid, a lone cop. Rath, Gereon Rath. Does the name mean anything to you?’
The man considered, but all that followed was a shrug.
‘He doesn’t work in Narcotics anyway.’
‘I don’t pay you just to keep Narcotics off my back. I’d hope that you picked up on a little bit more than that at Alex.’
‘Who told you Vice were planning a raid? I can’t know everyone at the station. It’s probably someone new.’
‘There can’t be that many new people arriving at Alex from the Rhineland. Keep your ears to the ground!’
‘From the Rhineland?’ The man hesitated. ‘Maybe I have heard something about the guy. What was his name again?’
‘Gereon Rath.’
‘I’m not quite sure, could be from Vice. They’ve had someone new foisted on them. From Düsseldorf or Cologne. He’s supposed to be a friend of the commissioner.’
Marlow nodded thoughtfully.
‘You have a name now. See what you can do with it. I want to hear more tomorrow.’
A small hand movement sufficed for Kuen-Yao to open the door. It had stopped raining. The man stayed in his seat and looked around uncertainly.
‘Go and have your well-earned sleep,’ Marlow said, almost friendly now. ‘We’ll speak again tomorrow evening.’
