Chasing the Storm (7 page)

As he was swimming back to Ocho’s ship, he saw the square goon at the sentry box, and knew he was being fingered. So he swam for half a kilometer through the freezing Baltic, clutching the camera, until he got beyond the wall of the port. “When I come out, I have no clothes, I am naked, with Vaseline. Very funny.” He had an almost girlish way of putting his hand in front of his mouth when he laughed. “There is window open. I take curtain from window and put on my body. I get into taxi, I tell driver story about how I am thiefed.” Yuri laughed again, hand cupping his mustache.

“So what did the pictures show?” Rygg asked.

Yuri nodded. “I cannot look at them very good, I have not computer. You see, I have to leave Kaliningrad very quickly. But I think they show something interesting, okay? Something very interesting to Marko Marin.”

“Do you have them?”

Yuri shook his head. “Not here.”

“Why didn’t you bring them with you?” Rygg asked, exasperated.

“I don’t know who is coming to shoot this time. I am frighten. Maybe they find me. So I leave the pictures somewhere. A secret place.”

“Can we go get them?”

“You meet me tomorrow.”

“Here?”

“No!” Yuri looked shocked. “No, no, no, no. We meet in café. You know the Speicherstadt?”

“Down by the water?”

“Ya, along the canal.”

“Sure.”

“You come tomorrow. Is café, Café Mendelssohn. Very nice. You feel like rich man. Eleven o’clock. Sit beside me on the bar. Don’t speak, don’t look to me. You will find there my cigarettes. Marlboro, ya? When I go, I leave my cigarettes. You take.”

“I got you.

“Marlboro.”

“Got it.”

“What time?”

“Eleven.”

“Okay. Now I take the money.”

Rygg paused.

“You have information. I take the money please.”

“I will wait until I get the pictures. Marko said after I get all the information.”

“You don’t give me money, I don’t give you pictures. All my money, I have used. I have no work, like I tell you. Tonight I want to drink vodka, I want find nice Turkish girl. You want pictures?”

Rygg made the decision. “I’ll give you half,” he said. “Half now, half on delivery of the pictures. Hand me the briefcase.” He unpeeled the leather from the bottom and took out the envelope. It seemed very slim. He opened it and counted out ten five-hundred euro bills and slid them across the table. Yuri counted the bills again, carefully, slipping his forefinger under his mustache to wet it.

“Okay,” he said. “I like you. Okay. Tomorrow. Eleven. You will take the cigarettes and leave the envelope. I am Yuri. I will be there.”

Emerging from the Pleasure Hole, Rygg marched fast away from the entrance, stopping once he got outside of the Reeperbahn, checking for shoes, checking for anything familiar. Once, looking up from buying a bag of apples, he thought he recognized a pair of black Vibram-soled loafers, and quickly ducked into an alley, walked across to a parallel street, and took a taxi to the Chilehaus bar. He stayed there the whole afternoon, making sure to let the bartender know that he was back in Hamburg to do more work on the Evagas project and that he’d spent the morning in the office.

April 19

As the days passed, Dmitri got to know the commandos. At first, in their wet suits and balaclavas, they had seemed like a tribe of identical siblings: burly and barking. His fear had homogenized them. But they had removed their balaclavas and were dressed now in looser khaki. And though they still brandished identical squat machine guns, and were all shaved down to the scalp, he began to discern them. The kitchen commando, who watched over Dmitri and Ilya in the galley, was a ropy, sour character. Once, Dmitri had offered him a piece of raisin bun, and he’d snarled and told him to keep his treats. But a couple of the others were more jovial, and one, a blue-jowled, blue-eyed giant whose forearms were completely submerged in tattoos, even cracked an occasional joke while he was watching over their meals.

Dmitri, almost unconsciously, began to divide the hijackers into two groups. The first group, to which the kitchen commando belonged, spoke flatter Russian, some of them with a high-class accent, others with a foreign accent. They were surlier, more taciturn, and watched over their charges with a steadier gaze.

The second group, which included the jovial giant, spoke to each other in a salty Russian that Dmitri occasionally found incomprehensible. He’d heard the argot before, though, in certain bars: it was the Russian of the criminal class. He noticed something: the commandos watched over their meals in pairs. And the pairs always contained one commando from each group. Dmitri couldn’t be sure, but he thought the “elite commandos” were in charge, because once or twice he’d heard one of them say something to his companion in a sharp tone.

The ‘criminals’, as Dmitri thought of them, were all intricately tattooed. When he commented on this one evening in the room, Wolfie said that they were from Siberia.

“How do you know?” Dmitri asked.

“I was in prison for five years. I got to know all the tattoos. These are the Siberia guys. Look at the backs of their necks. They’ve all got the little shape, looks like a spider. Like an evil little spider crawling up their necks. The Siberians are the worst. They aren’t afraid of anything.”

“But why are only half of the commandos tattooed?”

“Fuck knows. Best thing not to think about it.”

That was the advice Ludo had given him, but Dmitri couldn’t help it: he thought about it all the time, and it was torturing him. Why were there two groups of hijackers? What were they protecting? What was in the hold?

Chapter 6

Speicherstadt

April 27

The next morning,
Rygg left himself a good hour to get to the Speicherstadt. He sauntered across the canals, swinging the briefcase normally, checking the passing shoes automatically, looking for anything static: someone reading on a park bench, someone buying roses. He glared suspiciously at a man tying his shoe, then laughed when the man looked up at him in alarm and walked quickly off.
Easy there, Torgrim
, he thought.
You’re fine. No one’s on your tail
.

He came down Speicherstadt from the canal, looking at the ducks on the water. The ducks trailed long, intersecting Vs of light on the water, which widened and batted the shore. He leaned against the railing, watching the webs of light. He still had seven minutes.
And in a quarter of an hour or so, you’re all done,
he told himself. He felt almost sorry. It seemed too easy, after all the preparation. Once, when he had looked down at the briefcase and thought about the concealed knife, he felt a little surge for action – that sensation he’d stepped away from twenty years ago and still craved.

Gold flickered across the ducks’ wakes, slipping into the furrows and brushing the tops of the waves again. He looked up to see where it was coming from. A hundred yards to his left, the rump of a car stuck out from an alley, and he recognized the blue-and-silver coloring of the Hamburg police vehicles. A strobe beat from the roof of the car, gilding the railings along the canal. Above the car, on a sign supported by scrolled ironwork, he read “Café Mendelssohn”. Beneath the words was the painted portrait of a pale, dark-haired man with immense sideburns.

Walk
, he thought. Walk away. Slowly. Easy, easy. Swing your briefcase. That’s right. He walked along the canal for a few feet, then turned north along a side street. Backing into a doorway, he looked down the street, left, right, checking for passing shoes. There seemed to be no one else around. He waited until his heartbeat subsided a little.
It’s real
, he kept thinking.
It’s real.
Up to now it had seemed a little game, with artificial dangers, like hide-and-seek.
Okay, what’s the plan now?

He knew he had to come up with something smart to fit the situation. He needed the information from Yuri and weighed the danger against the reward: he could walk away, but then he would have to do it immediately and not look back. No – the information was too important to walk away from. He’d come this far and if the police were there, the danger was over. Or at any rate, it was less than it had been. “All right,” he muttered aloud. “This is your chance. This is why I’m here. This is action.”

He turned right, passed two streets, and then turned right again, heading around the block to come at the café from the west. He walked along the canal. Two policemen were standing on the steps below the sign. Their heads were down and they looked as though they were conferring about something. Jaunty, he told himself. A little bit hurried. You’re just a goofy tourist, you have no idea what’s going on. Head slightly down, he moved toward the policemen and started up the steps. “
Halt
!” one of the policemen said, but he kept plowing ahead until he felt a hand on his shoulder swing him around. “
Wo mochten Sie hin? Dies ist ein Tatort
.”

“What?” he looked up, glancing from one policeman to the other. They were both large and blond. The one who had grabbed his shoulder wore a gold stud in his left ear.

“
Hat es eine Schießerei wurden.
Sie konnen nicht hinein gehen
.”

“What’s up?” he said in his cleanest English accent. “I just forgot something.”

“There has been a crimen.”

“What?”

“A crimen. A gun shooting.”

“Shit! When did that happen? I was just here.”

“Five minutes ago it happened.”

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Who was it?” Don’t overplay it, he told himself.

The policeman shrugged. “He was Russian. Probably drugs.”

“Is he okay?”

“He is dead.”

“Well, look, I just forgot my cigarettes. They’re on the bar. Marlboro’s.”

“I am sorry.”

“Look, they’re right there, I can just …” He took the next step.

“You must another buy.”

“With your German taxes? It was a brand new package. Four fucking euros right out the window and I didn’t even get to finish one smoke. I’m on my way back to England. Don’t have the time to buy another package now. You know what cigarettes cost in England?”

Rygg did his best to look upset.

The policeman laughed and said something to his companion. Then he shrugged and pushed open the door to the café. “
Walther … Werf mir mal die Zigaretten zu
.
”

Yuri’s body lay slumped against the bar. His head was propped on the brass foot-railing, and one arm was tucked beneath him. A barstool had fallen beside him, and an empty glass lay at his foot. His forehead was gone. In its place was red pulp. Blood filled his eye sockets and slicked his hair to his neck, but his mustache was unsullied, still combed down across his mended harelip. Rygg had a sudden vision of the palm grove south of Cairo, the body of his friend with the shattered head, the gashes of light through the trees.

A suited man holding a gun reached along the bar and picked up the cigarette packet between thumb and forefinger. He tossed it through the door and the earringed policeman caught it and handed it to Rygg. “Thanks, man,” Rygg said. “Saved me my taxi fare.” And his grin, suddenly, was not acted. He stuffed the pack in his shirt pocket and strolled off along the canal.

This is the dangerous part, he told himself. If they’re watching, they know you now. This is where they come and get you. Just get some kind of cover, stay away from open spaces and always leave yourself an escape and you’ll be fine.

He ducked into the first alley and immediately started running, trying to put as much distance between him and the café as he could. It felt good to run – he could feel the adrenalin pumping into his limbs. He tried swinging the briefcase, but it was too awkward, so he tucked it under an arm. At the end of the alley he swung right and flattened himself against the wall.

Through the surf of his blood, he thought he heard a distant shout and the clickety-clack of footsteps. “
Løp
!” he said aloud. “Move!” He had, he knew, at most five seconds to get under cover. Across the street was a newsstand. Dodging through traffic, eliciting one trumpet blare from a blue VW, he slid behind the flimsy wall of magazines and pulled the startled vendor down by the elbow. “Someone’s trying to kill me,” he said.

“
Wass
?” The newsvendor was an elderly man with a gray beaked cap out of the 1940s. He looked annoyed, and tried to pull away. Rygg kept a grip on his arm. “Stay here,” he said. With his other hand he pointed a two-finger gun at his temple, then pointed toward the street.

“
Nein, nein, ich … nicht …
” the vendor gabbled, and Rygg put a palm over his mouth. He could feel the wet lips working against his skin.

“Sorry, old man,” he said. Peering through a gap between two motorcycling magazines, he saw a woman in a business suit stride out of the alley. She was blonde and carried a purse, and he had a moment’s relief: just some Fraulein heading to lunch. But she stepped sideways and stood beside the wall, in almost the same place he had stopped, and her hand was in her purse. He didn’t think she was looking for lipstick. Her face was white, her mouth a scarlet gash, and for a moment he remembered Lena. Had she ever done anything like this? Everything was very bright and clear in the Hamburg sunshine. The cars seemed to waft by at a walking pace. The woman looked slowly from side to side, then up at the windows in the building behind him. Then she walked off, deliberately, to the left. What would you do if you were her? He immediately knew that she’d look around. Hold still, he told himself. But he was unprepared for the suddenness of her swivel. She scanned the street slowly.

The old man kicked out and Rygg was thrust against the magazine rack. He managed to catch one of the wire struts before the rack toppled, but he knew she’d seen the movement. Ripping open the leather covering on the handle of the briefcase, he pried out the knife and held the blade to the old man’s throat. “Normal,” he murmured, praying it was one of the German words that were close to English or Norwegian. The old man kicked. “Sit still.
Sitt stille
,
for faen,
” he added in Norwegian, wishing he’d paid attention in his junior high German class. He released the man’s mouth and prodded his skimpy loins. The old guy tottered upright and began arranging newspapers with palsied hands. The lead article in one of the papers, Rygg saw, like a fever dream in which all his obsessions and paranoia swarmed, was about the
Alpensturm
. There was the photograph of the ship, with its thick antennae, the deck cluttered with containers. Peering between
Stern
and
Die Spiegel
, Rygg saw the woman actually in the street, a couple feet from the curb, looking toward the rack. For half a minute or so, she watched the old man arranging his newspapers, then turned and stalked off. She wore flat-heeled shoes, almost like ballet slippers. There was a sudden hot stink, and Rygg’s right knee was wet with urine. The old guy had pissed his pants. Pressing the knife back into the recess in the handle, he shoved a fifty-euro note into the rack in front of the old man’s face. He waited until a trio of portly businessmen strolled past, deep in conversation, and walked a pace behind them, in the direction the woman had gone. At the next street, he turned right and caught the first taxi that went by.

He took a circuitous route back to the hotel, crisscrossing Hasselbrookstrasse three times in three different taxis, before finally walking toward it from the back. But the lobby was empty, and the concierge, polite as ever, informed him that no one had left a message or asked about him. He leaned back in the elevator and allowed his image in the mirror the smallest grin. You’re all right, he told himself. You’ve done it. It’s all over. And tomorrow, back to Zagreb, back to Lena and Marin and the farmhouse.

Inside the room, he went into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. But looking up at the mirror, he froze. The deodorant can. He’d placed the toothbrush and toothpaste at a forty-five degree angle to the mirror, like he’d always done. But he had a habit with circular objects of placing the logo facing away. So he’d deliberately turned the logo on the deodorant can toward the mirror, he was sure of it. He thought back. Yes, even this morning, he’d used it and turned the logo to the mirror. He remembered reading it backward: EXA. But now it was facing him. He felt as if someone had run a finger lightly up the back of his neck.

Leaving the lights off, he quickly went through the drawers, and the clothes in the wardrobe. He couldn’t be sure, but he had a sense that the hangers were spaced a little bit farther apart.
Okay
, he thought.
Okay
.
Move
.

He stuffed a couple shirts into the briefcase, patted his pocket to make sure the cigarette packet was still there, and left the room. He used the stairs and kept going, past the lobby, down to the sub-ground floor, where there was a car park. He peered out across the rows of BMWs and Mercedes, then stepped into the shadows. After a moment, he returned to the glass doors at the base of the stairwell, where there was a phone attached to the wall. The message said in English, German, and French that it only called within the hotel. He picked up the receiver and dialed zero for the reception. After a moment, the concierge answered.

“Rygg from 431. I need a taxi in the car park, as soon as possible.”

“Yes sir.”

“And listen.”

“Sir?”

“If anyone asks for me, I’m at a restaurant in the Binnenalster. I’ll be back at eleven or so.”

“Yes sir. The taxi will be with you shortly, sir.”

‘Shortly’ in Hamburg meant precisely forty-five seconds. The concierge must have sent down one of the taxis from the front of the hotel.

“Binnenalster,” Rygg told the driver. He slid down in the seat until they were well away from the hotel, then sat up. “Go slow,” he said. He took the laptop out of the briefcase and opened it. He clicked the “Connect to” button, and it showed half a dozen networks. “Slower,” he told the driver. The networks were all password protected, but as they drove past a café, a new one popped up. It was open. “Okay, pull over here, but keep the car running,” Rygg said. He opened the browser and Googled “Kunsthalle Hamburg,” as agreed with Sasha. He flipped through the pages of images until he found the stone dragon. He clicked on it. Up came a page on the museum site. It was actually hosted by the museum, Sasha had told him. He’d hacked into the site and modified it slightly. At the bottom of the page, Rygg clicked an image of a Chinese urn, and up came a page with a little form. It was done like one of the surveys you found on some sites, with buttons beside four options to click on.
How did you enjoy your visit?
the question read. And the options:
Optimal. No worries. Mediocre. I’m never coming back
. He clicked the button beside “I’m never coming back” and immediately shut down the computer.

“Okay,” he told the driver. “Hauptbahnhof.”

“Binnenalster?”

“No, I changed my mind. Hauptbahnhof train station, all right?”

During the long, rocking trip to Vienna, he read the first story of a paperback Chekhov he’d bought at the station. The story, though it had been written a century and more before, and took place in another country, seemed to be about him: ordinary people blundering through life. What else have I missed, in the fog of the last twenty years? he wondered. Every couple pages, he tapped the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket, like a tic. The pack itself seemed like a growth on his chest, heavy and warm. A tumor. He’d let Marin open it up.

He thought he’d sleep, but his mind was still jumping around. He could feel the weariness like a black weight in his chest, but every time he closed his eyes, the image of Yuri’s shattered face was before him, and then vivid moments as he hid behind the magazine rack. Once he dozed off and woke almost at once, clutching the briefcase. He looked out of the window at the passing lights. After a while he ordered coffee and drank it slowly.