‘Then make it your own history,’ said Fabel. ‘Change things. Give it up, man. Tonight history won’t repeat itself. Tonight no one dies.’
Grueber smiled. A smile that was as scalpel-bright and hard and cold as the knife in his hand. ‘Really? Then we must see, Herr Chief Commissar.’ The blade flashed upwards to the kneeling man’s throat.
There was a scream. And the sound of gunfire.
Fabel turned in the direction of the shot in time to see Maria fire again. Her first shot had hit Grueber in the thigh and he had buckled. Her second caught his shoulder and he lost his grip on the kneeling man. Werner rushed forward, grabbed Grueber’s captive and pulled him clear.
Maria moved forward, keeping her gun trained on Grueber, who had now sunk to his knees. Her face was streaked with tears.
‘No, Frank,’ she said. ‘Tonight no one dies. I’m not going to let you do that. Drop the knife. There’s no one left to hurt.’
Grueber looked at the retreating figures of Werner and the man Grueber had intended to kill. The final sacrifice. He looked up at Maria and smiled. A sad little-boy smile. Then he took a long, deep breath. There was a flashing bright arc as he swung the blade up with both hands and brought it back down with all his strength into his own chest.
‘Frank!’ Maria screamed and ran forward.
Grueber’s head sank slowly forward and down. As he died, he spoke a single word into the night.
‘Traitors…’
1.40 a.m.: Wesermarsch-Klinik Hospital, Nordenham
When Fabel and Werner entered the hospital room on the third floor of the Wesermarsch-Klinik, Criminal Director Horst van Heiden was already there, standing at the bedside of Hamburg’s head of government, First Mayor Hans Schreiber. The nurse at the desk had informed Fabel that Schreiber had been given a mild sedative but was otherwise alert.
Schreiber’s forehead was covered by a heavy surgical dressing, but Fabel could see that the ridge of his browline had swollen and discoloured in protest at the violence done to his scalp. The rest of his face had a puffed-up appearance and Fabel would hardly have recognised him. Schreiber turned in Fabel’s direction but clearly did not have the strength to ease himself up into a sitting position. He smiled weakly.
‘I’m glad you’re here, Fabel,’ said the First Mayor. ‘I owe you my thanks.’ He paused and corrected himself. ‘I owe you my life. If you hadn’t got there when you did. If Frau Klee had not fired when she did
…’ He left the thought hanging, to emphasise the unspeakable alternative.
Fabel nodded. ‘I was just doing my job.’
Schreiber indicated his bandaged head. ‘I’m told that I will need plastic surgery. There’s quite a bit of nerve damage, too.’ Two uniformed officers entered. Fabel ordered them to take their position outside the room.
‘No one is to enter other than the medical professionals directly involved in Herr Schreiber’s care,’ Fabel said to the two officers as they left.
‘My wife will be here later,’ said Schreiber.
‘No one,’ repeated Fabel.
‘Surely that isn’t necessary, Herr Fabel,’ protested Schreiber. ‘The danger is past. Grueber is dead and he was clearly acting alone under his own insane agenda.’
‘So why did he pick you?’ asked Fabel. ‘Every other victim was directly connected to Red Franz Muhlhaus and The Risen. Why did he single you out?’
‘God knows.’ Schreiber’s swollen face was incapable of expression but his tone was one of irritation. Fabel half-expected van Heiden to protest at his questioning of the First Mayor, but the Criminal Director remained silent. ‘Listen, Fabel,’ continued Schreiber. ‘I am in too much pain and too exhausted and distressed to psychoanalyse a lunatic who just tried to kill me or to speculate about his motives. He was mad. He also styled himself as a terrorist. I am the head of the Hamburg city and state government. Go and work it out for yourself. After all, that’s what I pay you to do.’
‘Oh, I have, Herr First Mayor.’ Fabel turned to Werner and held out his hand. Werner handed him a clear plastic evidence wallet. Inside was a thick notebook, its leather binding stained with damp and age. ‘Red Franz Muhlhaus knew that his time was over. He knew that the authorities would track him down. He was, however, determined that he would not be taken alive. He also had very grave doubts about the loyalty of his followers. Particularly his deputy, whom the journalist Ingrid Fischmann identified as Bertholdt Muller-Voigt. It was also Muhlhaus’s deputy who had been the driver of the van that abducted the industrialist, Wiedler, eight years previously. Whereas the rest of the group had disappeared into the undergrowth after the Wiedler kidnapping, Red Franz and the Dutchman, Piet van Hoogstraat, were the only members identifiable by the authorities and were forced to continue to live fugitive lives, funded by their fellow former gang members.’
‘Fabel…’ Schreiber sighed and turned his head painfully in the direction of van Heiden. ‘Can we talk about this some other time?’
‘That’s what happened that day in nineteen eighty-five on the platform in Nordenham,’ Fabel continued as if Schreiber had not spoken. ‘The Dutchman, van Hoogstraat, did not share Muhlhaus’s revolutionary zeal. He was exhausted after nearly a decade of living on the run. He wanted a way out without having to spend the greater part of the remainder of his life behind bars. So a deal was done. A deal to get van Hoogstraat a reduced sentence. A deal conceived by the remaining gang members who wanted to close that chapter in their lives. A deal conceived by Muhlhaus’s deputy and brokered anonymously by the group’s head of planning, Paul Scheibe. They knew that Muhlhaus would not be taken alive, and that his death would finally close the door on the threat of exposure and arrest. They had already bought the Dutchman’s silence with the deal they had done with the authorities, but it was a bonus for them that van Hoogstraat also died on that platform. The silence was total. The Risen would rise no more.’
Fabel paused and looked at the bagged notebook in his hand.
‘It’s funny,’ Fabel said, with a sad half-smile. ‘It was Frank Grueber who said to me once that “truth is the debt we owe to the dead.”’ Fabel moved closer to Schreiber’s bed. ‘The puzzle is, how did Grueber find out the identities of the former members of The Risen? The only people who knew were the members themselves. If Brandt had been the killer, then it would have made sense – his mother, a former member herself, might have confided in her son. But the secret was so great, so closely guarded, that she didn’t even tell Franz Brandt that Muhlhaus was his father. So, how did Frank Grueber discover their identities? After all, he had been adopted when he was eleven and brought up in a different universe with wealthy adoptive parents in Blankenese. His early childhood, constantly on the move, being deprived of any education apart from political brainwashing by his parents, must have seemed like a distant nightmare. But there was one thing he remembered. Like I said, Muhlhaus had not trusted any of his former associates, but there’d been one person he did trust. His son. Franz Muhlhaus was an archaeologist and he must have told the young Frank how the earth protects the truth about the past for future generations. Muhlhaus told his son how he had buried the truth in the earth, carefully wrapped and protected and hidden from the world. He must have made the young Frank memorise the location so that, if Muhlhaus was betrayed, then the others would not be free to live their lives with impunity.’