It was then that things had become very interesting.
Chapter Twenty
Anna Wolff stood by the window of Fabel’s office, looking out across the dark shapes of the trees in Winterhude Stadtpark. Outside, the light was fading but the sky, now clear of clouds, was a sheet of dark blue silk.
‘That was a long coffee break…’ She turned when Fabel came into the office.
‘What’s this? You our new time-and-motion monitor?’ He sat down behind his desk. ‘I’ve just had a very interesting chat with Fabian Menke of the BfV. About the Pharos Project.’
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. That and what Technical Section have retrieved from the computers we seized this afternoon.’ Anna tapped a document folder on Fabel’s desk. ‘Interim stuff. As we speak, geeks are burrowing deeper and deeper into silicon.’ She imitated a small crawling animal, wrinkling her nose.
‘Anything hopeful?’
‘Absolutely nothing,’ she sighed. ‘It looks like these guys are clean. Weird, but clean. Of course, we did come up one computer short.’
‘I couldn’t take it away from him, Anna. If you had been there…’ Fabel frowned. ‘Actually, no… if you’d been there you would have taken it. And probably confiscated his wheelchair, too.’
‘We really do need to check it out,’ said Anna. ‘Even if he is physically unlikely to be a suspect, there may be something in his interactions with the victims that could give us something.’
‘I’m well aware of that, Anna. I’ve arranged to send one of Kroeger’s people around to Reisch’s home to check the computer.’ Fabel picked up the folder and flicked through the report inside. ‘I guess we just have to keep plugging away. Hit the next bunch of IP addresses.’
‘We could be at that for ever,’ said Anna.
‘It’s all we’ve got,’ said Fabel. He nodded to the chair opposite. ‘Sit down, Anna.’
‘I’m okay,’ she said absently. ‘I’d rather stand. I’ve been sitting all day and my leg stiffens up a bit.’
For a split second, Fabel found himself lost for words. Anna picked up on it.
‘Jan,’ she said. ‘I’m fine. I wish we could stop dancing around this. It wasn’t your fault.’
He stared at the report in front of him, more to avoid making eye contact with Anna than to study the file’s contents.
‘It was my fault,’ he said. ‘I was in command. Just like I was the night Paul was killed.’
‘This is a dangerous business, Jan. I know that and Paul knew that. You can’t legislate for every eventuality.’
‘I dream about him all the time,’ Fabel said in a flat, quiet voice. ‘Nearly every week or couple of weeks. Always the same dream. We’re always in my father’s study, up in my parents’ house in Norddeich, and Paul talks to me. Not about anything important or significant. He just sits there and chats to me. But I know he’s dead. He has the wound in his head and sometimes he explains that it’s difficult for him to have an opinion or perspective on whatever it is we’re talking about, because he’s dead.’
‘I thought all the dreams had stopped,’ said Anna.
‘That’s what I tell Susanne. The official line. It’s tough living with a psychologist. I don’t know if she believes me, but that’s what I tell her. The point is, I know that if I had done things differently Paul would be alive, Maria Klee wouldn’t be in a mental hospital and you wouldn’t have got shot.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry — can we drop it?’
‘You’re the boss.’ Anna smiled at him. ‘About the Pharos Project, if I show you mine will you show me yours?’
‘Go ahead…’ Fabel leaned back in his chair.
‘I don’t know why you wanted me to look into this for you, but I’ve been hearing some very dodgy things about Pharos. And — how you knew I won’t ask — but there is a connection with the murders.’
Fabel looked stunned.
‘You did ask me to look at this because there’s some kind of connection?’ asked Anna.
‘No… no, not at all — like I told you, it’s something unrelated.’
‘Then it’s quite some coincidence,’ said Anna. ‘It took a bit of unravelling, but Dominik Korn, who heads the Pharos Project, also heads the consortium that owns and operates Virtual Dimension, the simulated-reality game that all the victims were logged into. So why were you interested in Pharos?’
‘A long shot… I thought there might be a link to the other body we found. The wash-up.’ Fabel sighed. ‘There’s a woman who seems to have gone missing: Meliha Yazar. I think there may be a link to the Pharos Project. She might have been investigating them.’
‘What have you got yourself into, Jan?’ Anna left the window, came over to Fabel’s desk and leaned on it, the concern in her expression genuine.
‘Something I maybe shouldn’t have,’ he said, and meant it. ‘I got talked into it by Berthold Muller-Voigt. This is strictly between us, Anna…’
She nodded.
‘Muller-Voigt is involved with this woman…’ began Fabel.
‘And half the female population of Hamburg, from what I’ve heard,’ said Anna.
‘It’s not like that. Muller-Voigt is nuts about this woman. And he is really concerned about her disappearance.’ Fabel sketched out some of what had passed between him and the Environment Senator.
‘You know,’ said Anna when he was finished, ‘I think I’d better sit down after all. You have no idea what I found out about Pharos. If Muller-Voigt’s latest squeeze really was investigating them, then she could well have got out of her depth. The Pharos Project is the brainchild of Dominik Korn. Have you heard of him?’
‘Not until Muller-Voigt mentioned him to me,’ said Fabel.
‘That’s hardly surprising. Dominik Korn is one of the world’s richest men — worth billions, as is his deputy, Peter Wiegand — but he’s also one of the world’s most reclusive men. No one outside Wiegand and his circle of closest advisers has had contact with him for years. Occasionally he will take part in video conferences with other key people in his business empire. He lives on a massive yacht. And I mean massive. It would make the average Russian oligarch feel inadequate.’
‘Why is he so reclusive?’
‘Apparently he had a diving accident that caused him to have some kind of cataclysmic stroke brought on by severe decompression sickness and other complications. He shouldn’t be alive; it was a miracle that he survived it, but it’s left him in the same kind of condition as the guy you interviewed earlier today. Since then he’s needed round-the-clock care.’
‘And he’s also head of this cult?’
‘Guru number one, apparently. He may sound like a nut-job, but he’s said to be as rich in brains as he is in cash. His IQ is said to be off the scale. He studied…’ Anna referred to her notebook ‘… oceanography, hydrology and environmental science in the United States — he has dual German and US citizenship, by the way — then did a doctoral thesis in hydrology, and then went on to become a hydrometeorologist.’ She looked at her notes again. ‘ Studying the interaction between large bodies of water and the climate. Korn became the world’s leading expert on ecohydrology. That’s what he was doing when he had his accident. He had designed this unique submersible for research work and was taking it on its maiden dive when it all went tits-up.’
‘His accident?’
‘And his epiphany, apparently.’
‘Yes…’ said Fabel. ‘Muller-Voigt made mention of some kind of revelation at the bottom of the sea.’
‘Right up until the accident, the Pharos Project had been an oceanographic research study. Korn had poured millions of his own money into it. It was examining the environmental impact of various human activities at the deepest ocean levels. Then, after his accident and the damage it did to him, Korn changed the nature of the Pharos Project. To start with it became a lobbying body, campaigning against oil exploration in deeper waters. It gained a lot of credibility after the BP thing in the Gulf of Mexico. Then Korn approved members of Pharos getting involved in protests and direct action. After that, about nine months after his accident, Korn started to talk about his epiphany and what it meant.’