Ansgar lay in Ekatherina’s bed and watched her sleep contentedly. Their lovemaking had been dramatic, violent, almost frenzied. Ekatherina had clearly taken it as the release of Ansgar’s pent-up passion for her. She was, of course, in part correct: he had been totally consumed by her flesh and had stood breathless before her nakedness, but what she hadn’t realised was that it had been only part of his passion that had been released.
The sex had been good for him. Or at least as good as any normal sexual activity could be for him. But, as he lay in the half-dark, looking at the shadowy sweep of Ekatherina’s hip, he felt the frustration of someone who had enjoyed an appetising starter yet had been denied the main course. But that first step had been taken. They were now intimate. Perhaps, just perhaps, in time he might be able to fulfil his darkest fantasy with her.
It was Sunday morning and Ansgar’s day off. Ekatherina left for her shift. She told him he could spend the day in her apartment and they would have Sunday night together. When she returned after her shift, tired, flushed from the heat of the kitchen and her skin shiny with sweat, Ekatherina said she would shower before coming to bed. Ansgar told her not to bother and the passion of the night before returned, redoubled.
They breakfasted the next morning on orange juice, coffee and bread rolls filled with a meat paste that Ekatherina said had come all the way from Ukraine. Sitting there at Ekatherina’s breakfast table, Ansgar felt suddenly melancholy. He saw himself as if through the window of the flat: sitting with a pretty girl several years his junior, breakfasting together like a normal contented couple. What pained him most was the fact that at that exact moment he was contented.
They agreed to arrive separately at work and to keep their daytime relationship professional, but Ansgar could tell that Ekatherina was going to have very great difficulty in keeping this new romance to herself. He kissed her goodbye and headed up to the wholesalers on An der Munze to pick up some stuff they were low on in the restaurant.
The gloom of the last few days had lifted and the winter sun hung bright and low in the sky. Ansgar felt good. It seemed impossible for the darkness within him to surface into the brightness of the day, added to which he had, for the first time in years, a sense of normality. Of living a life as others lived theirs.
Ansgar took a taxi across the Zoobrucke and picked up his car. He was very fussy about where he sourced his meat for the restaurant and never bought main ingredients from the wholesalers, but he did stock up on everything else there. It was handy for the restaurant and they always delivered his orders accurately and on time, which was important to Ansgar and his unyielding desire for order in his kitchen.
He took a flatbed trolley and loaded it up with cleaning materials, hand-wash, surface-wipes and other non-food items for the wholesalers to deliver. Then he headed for the drinks section. Ansgar always bought his wine directly from vintners along the Rhine and from several small vineyards in France, but he used the wholesalers to stock up on beers and spirits.
He saw her. He just happened to glance into the food section and she was there. He froze for a second, then shrank back behind one of the ceiling-high stacks of shelves. She hadn’t spotted him. Ansgar had only caught the briefest glimpse, but there was no doubt it was her. He recognised the bright blonde hair, the intense red lipstick, the deep tan even in February. Most of all he recognised her from her build: broad-shouldered and dense, as she had effortlessly pushed a heavily laden cart towards the checkout.
Another trade customer muttered complainingly behind Ansgar, who responded by pulling his trolley closer into the shelves and allowing them to pass. His heart pounded. He had always dreaded this moment. He had hoped it would never come. Yet he thrilled at the thought. He had hoped that she had left Cologne in the time since he had last encountered her. It had been so long ago. And in total the experience had lasted no more than a few minutes. But she had seen. She had seen his true nature.
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.’