The scorpions head, p.5
The Scorpion's Head, page 5
Shivering, he tried to ignore the cold climbing up his soaking trouser legs. To prevent the snow from crunching under his feet, he stood perfectly still. He held his padded gloves to his face to protect his skin from the biting wind.
The bigger soldier was by the fire again. Michael could see another building nearby, presumably the barracks, where the rest of the soldiers were asleep. He hoped the two soldiers who were on guard wouldn’t be relieved any time soon. They clearly preferred standing by the fire to exploring the area.
But they were both armed.
He looked up. The moon was lonely in the sky. This was not a night for stars. Silently, he took off his coat and hid it under the snowy bushes. He looked at the shed. He was nimble enough to hoist himself up on the planks of the wooden wall. Then it would all have to happen very quickly. From where he was standing, he could no longer see the two soldiers, but he could hear the crackling of the fire and the sound of their voices.
One slow step at a time, he moved through the snow. Luckily, it was no more than a few metres from the bushes to the shed. After each step, he turned and tried to erase his footprint with his gloves. Then he placed his feet in the trail that the patrolling soldiers had left around the depot. When he reached the shed, he found spots for his hands and right foot in the boards of the wall and pulled himself up. But as he tried to stand on a protruding board halfway up, his foot shot free and he landed in the snow.
A dull thud, like snow falling from the roof.
He could only hope the two soldiers would think the same. Scrambling quickly to his feet, he found another foothold and stopped to listen.
He could no longer hear voices coming from the front of the depot.
Perhaps they’d been alerted after all.
He pulled himself up, scraping his knee on a protruding nail, ignored the pain and hoisted himself onto the flat roof, where he lay in a thick layer of snow.
Just in time.
He heard one of the two soldiers coughing as he walked past the shed. The crunching footsteps stopped close to the wall he’d just climbed up.
He heard a sound coming from nearby but didn’t dare to move. Maybe the soldier was aiming his rifle.
Michael’s cheeks were ice-cold and he was shaking all over. Without a coat, he wouldn’t last long.
Down below, he heard the snow crunching. It sounded like footsteps moving away. A while later, he peered over the edge of the roof. The smaller soldier was disappearing around the corner, smoke swirling around his head.
Nothing had happened. The man had just stopped to light a cigarette.
Michael crept to the window high on the wall of the depot. The shed roof creaked beneath him.
Or maybe it was the snow down below.
He was close to the window now.
He could hear the soldiers laughing.
Clenching his fist, he gave the window a tap with his thick glove.
It smashed.
He heard the soldiers laughing even louder. Moving quickly, he removed the rest of the glass from the frame. One of the shards pierced his glove, but he pulled the piece of glass from his hand without flinching.
Drops of his blood dripped into the snow on the roof. He would have to bandage his hand before he went back down, so that he wouldn’t leave a trail.
Michael squeezed his way into the building. He stood on a platform and lowered himself to the ground floor. Then he took off his gloves and took the lighter that had belonged to his father out of his pocket. He lit it, cupping the flame with his hand. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The room was crammed with food. There were whole shelves full of tins, sacks of potatoes and packet upon packet of grain, rice and flour. There was enough food here to keep several villages going through the winter. He took the sack he’d been carrying on his back and quickly filled it with everything he could grab.
On one of the top shelves, he spotted tinned peaches in syrup.
As far as he could remember, he had eaten them only once in his life. It had been his father’s last present for his mother’s birthday.
She’d thought they were delicious.
A tin of peaches would be sure to make her feel better.
With his left hand, he lit up the shelf and stood on tiptoe to take the tin. He could just reach it.
Outside, the talking had stopped.
He had to hurry.
As he lifted the tin of peaches from the shelf, it caught on another tin.
Before he could grab it, it clattered to the floor.
For a fraction of a second, he froze.
Then he picked up his sack of food and hurried to the platform so he could climb back out of the window.
I can do this, he thought. I’m the smartest boy in the class. And the best at climbing.
They were waiting for him by the shed, their faces next to the barrels of their guns, their expressions grim.
He raised his arms in the air and watched as his injured hand slowly turned the snow red.
13
Michael left his hotel near Schloss Sanssouci, the most famous of all the palaces in Potsdam, as the receptionist had just enthusiastically informed him without any prompting. There was some irony, thought Michael, to those words today: sans souci, without worries, which the Prussian king Frederick the Great had had written on the façade of his palace in the eighteenth century.
Michael had never felt more worried before. The night hadn’t brought any rest, only the bad dream that recurred far too often. Again and again, it threw him back into the past and once more he became that scared little boy in the snow. Bellefleur said that he screamed in the night. He’d never wanted to tell her why.
It was nine in the morning, and the sun was shining away in the sky, with the promise of a nice day. Michael walked along the pavement behind a group of Japanese tourists heading towards the palace. He’d exchanged his business suit from the previous day for a pair of jeans, a grey polo shirt and comfortable shoes. He walked into the park of Schloss Sanssouci and sat down on a bench by the large pond with the fountain, surrounded by statues of the twelve Titans. The sight of those powerful giants only added to his unease.
In his head, he went over what was going to happen in about three hours’ time.
They were going to strike on the route Gaelle cycled every afternoon when she went to pick Lukas up from school. She only took the car when the weather was really bad, as Michael had ascertained when he’d followed her every day last week. Their bike route ran alongside the canal, a secluded road with one-way traffic for cars. There was a bend in the road – and it was going to happen after that bend. While Vasili stood guard to stop any cyclists or drivers and ask them where the nearest garage was, Michael would be around the corner, carrying out the job as quickly as possible. He would lie in wait for Gaelle and Lukas, while his van, with false number plates, stood at the side of the road. He’d told Vasili yesterday that it would all happen quickly: he’d stop the two of them with some excuse about a breakdown, and then knock Gaelle out with ether, deposit her son and their bikes on the verge and put the antidepressants in her handbag, along with a note saying sorry in the hasty scrawl of a woman saying farewell to a world she can no longer face, a woman who wants to spare her son that same misery. Then he would throw the two unconscious bodies into the canal. As the drowning process takes a couple of minutes at most, death would come quickly. That, at least, was what he’d told Vasili.
From that last point, his actual plan went differently. The van, which Michael had hired from a company that could be found only on the Dark Web, had a false base. The vehicle was designed to conceal weapons, contraband and/or a maximum of two people. Michael would place the unconscious Gaelle and Lukas in that space and tell Vasili and Scorpio that he’d thrown the bodies into the water and that the strong current meant they might never be found. He would drop off Vasili in the centre of Potsdam at the spot where he’d picked him up and then they’d go their separate ways. As soon as Gaelle woke up, Michael would explain to her that his intentions were good.
It was doable, Michael thought. He couldn’t make any mistakes, but the plan was not impossible.
As he listened to the splashing of the fountain and the twittering of the birds in the trees, an old woman took out a bag of bread and scattered crumbs on the ground. She smiled as the first birds descended. The group of Japanese people came past, following the guide who was steering them through history and through the park towards the monumental steps to the palace. All of them people without a worry.
Michael thought back to the previous day. He could have followed Vasili to his hotel room, killed him there and made sure no one found the body. But Vasili’s sudden disappearance would alert Dolores and she wouldn’t rest until she got her hands on him, Gaelle and Lukas. He might be able to save his own skin, even if it meant he’d be on the run for the rest of his life, but it wouldn’t take Scorpio’s contract killers long to track down Gaelle and Lukas. Not everyone had the camouflage skills of a chameleon.
Another thought occurred to him: for the first time in years, he was going to do something that would make his mother proud. Perhaps that would give him the courage to visit her grave in Poland after all this time.
The woman with the bread had gone and a jackdaw had landed on the ground, chasing all the sparrows away. “Might is right” – a universal law, thought Michael.
He stood up, left the Titans behind and walked out of the park.
14
Michael’s hunch hadn’t deceived him. Something was wrong.
It had started when he’d stopped his white van beside Vasili at the agreed meeting place, a supermarket car park in the centre of Potsdam. Vasili, who had blond hair today, no glasses, and was dressed like an average family man, didn’t climb in on the passenger side. Carrying a plastic shopping bag, he walked around the vehicle and opened Michael’s door.
“Get out,” he said. “I’m driving.”
Michael stayed where he was. “You’ve no need to doubt my driving skills,” he said. “I can manoeuvre a truck down the narrowest of streets without any accidents.”
Vasili didn’t budge.
“Instructions from Dolores,” he said.
At that moment, Michael’s phone beeped. He took his mobile from his pocket. The message was from Dolores, confirming what Vasili had just said. Michael got out and, as he walked round to the other side of the van, he tried to work out what was going on.
He sat down, and Vasili started the car. Without saying a word, they drove out of the car park. Michael focused on his own body language. He knew Vasili would be able to read his anxiety and suspicion in the smallest of gestures: a nervous cough, tensing up in his seat, checking his safety belt a few times and looking around too much.
He tried to avoid doing any of those things, but when Vasili turned left at a junction instead of right and towards the canal where they were going to wait for Gaelle, he whipped his head around to look at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Instructions from Dolores,” Vasili said again, staring ahead. “The plan has changed.”
Michael swore to himself. That was why it had gone so smoothly yesterday. While he was revealing his plan, Vasili had known all along that Dolores would come up with a different one. It was a test, and nothing he did or said now could suggest he was anything but obedient.
“Fine,” he said. “But it’d be nice if you could tell me what is going to happen.”
Vasili told him, emotionlessly, as if he was reciting a shopping list. They weren’t on their way to the canal but to a dead end near where Gaelle lived. Vasili would park the van there, and then they’d walk to the vacant plot of land at the back of Gaelle’s garden. To anyone who walked by, they’d be potential purchasers interested in the wooded land, which had been for sale for some time now. They would climb over Gaelle’s garden fence, and no one would see them because of the dense trees and undergrowth. Then they’d enter the house through her back door without leaving any signs of entry and wait for her there. Overpowering Gaelle and Lukas before either of them had a chance to escape, they’d knock them out with ether. As soon as they were unconscious, they would inject first Lukas and then Gaelle with a lethal dose of the anaesthetic propofol. It was all in the plastic bag Vasili had brought with him. They’d leave the empty syringe next to Gaelle’s body with only her fingerprints on it. They’d also plant a box of antidepressants in the drawer of her bedside table, in such a way that it would be found quickly. The note saying sorry would be left beside her body before they silently made off through the back door. Their gossamer-thin gloves would ensure they didn’t leave any fingerprints.
They were getting closer to the neighbourhood where Gaelle lived. Michael glanced to one side, his gaze sliding over Vasili’s hands on the steering wheel. He knew there was an athletic body concealed beneath the family man’s simple attire. The man was a murder weapon in his own right.
But so was Michael. He and Vasili were the same size, over one metre eighty, and both were equally fit and equally capable of finishing each other without hesitation. Michael thought back to the jackdaw in the park and wondered in whose favour the universal law of “might is right” would decide.
Michael was not carrying any weapons today. Vasili didn’t appear to have any either, and Michael realised he’d made an error of judgement. They’d agreed yesterday that they wouldn’t go in packing guns. No weapons meant they wouldn’t have any trouble in the event that they got stopped by the police. It was something Dolores insisted on with operations that didn’t require weapons.
Vasili drove into the dead end, parked the van and took the keys out of the ignition.
“What explanation did Dolores give you when she asked you to change the original plan?” Michael asked in as neutral a voice as possible. “And why didn’t she inform me?”
“Someone like Dolores doesn’t owe us any explanations,” said Vasili. “Never. You should know that by now.”
15
Michael looked at the carving knives in the wooden block a metre and a half away from him. Like Vasili, he was standing ready against the wall, hidden behind the open door that connected the kitchen and the living room. He didn’t have much time. In a few minutes, Gaelle and Lukas would come into the kitchen either through this entrance or through the door into the hallway. Either way, before they realised what was happening, they’d both have an ether-soaked handkerchief pressed to their faces. The boy was for Vasili, and Michael would take care of Gaelle. As soon as Gaelle and Lukas were unconscious, Vasili would carry out the rest of the plan, meticulously and quickly.
Michael weighed up his chances. Vasili was standing just a little closer to the knives on the granite counter. It would come down to a fraction of a second if he dared to be the first to lunge and snatch a knife.
He heard voices outside, coming from the front of the house.
He took another look at the knives in the wooden block.
“Before I forget,” whispered Vasili, “Dolores has taken precautions in case anything goes wrong today.”
Michael heard the front door opening and thought frantically about the meaning behind those threatening words. He hardly had any time to do so, as Gaelle came first into the kitchen via the living room, followed by Lukas. They were so busy talking that they didn’t realise what was going on behind their backs. Vasili darted forward from behind the open door, grabbed the boy and held a cloth over his mouth.
Gaelle screamed. Michael went towards her and grasped her tightly, with his back to Vasili as he whispered in her ear that he could only save her life and her son’s if she cooperated by immediately pretending to lose consciousness.
Gaelle stopped screaming, slid out of his arms and onto the floor, where she lay with closed eyes.
By now, Vasili was stooping over the unconscious boy with a syringe.
“Let me finish up here,” said Michael, taking the box of antidepressants out of the plastic bag. “Go and put the pills upstairs in the bedroom.”
“Why don’t you do it?”
“Then you can personally let Dolores know that I don’t have a problem doing away with kids.”
Vasili looked at him without blinking.
Michael handed him the box of pills.
“Just put them on the counter,” said Vasili. “I’ll take the pills upstairs in a minute.”
As Michael followed his instructions, he saw out of the corner of his eye that Gaelle had something in her hand. She was still pretending to be unconscious and was lying with her face turned away from them, but her fingers were moving over her mobile, which she was holding against the side of her body.
Vasili had seen it too.
He looked at Michael with an ice-cold stare, leant over Lukas and jabbed the needle into the arm of the unconscious boy.
Michael threw himself upon Vasili, pushed him away from Lukas and tried with all his might to prevent Vasili injecting the rest of the propofol into Lukas’s arm. In the struggle that followed, the syringe fell onto the floor and rolled away into a corner. Vasili’s hands clenched around Michael’s throat, cutting off his air supply. A grin appeared on Vasili’s face as he said something Michael couldn’t make out.
