‘I work hard.’ Slavko looked close to tears. ‘I work so hard. I want send money back to family in Ukraine. But I can’t. I work all day and most of night and I have to give half to the man who brought me here. Then he take half of what left for where I sleep. It not fair. Not fair at all.’
Maria noticed Slavko trembling. She began to feel sorry for him. She also began to regret fooling him into believing that she had some official clout. She knew that she was exposing him to danger from which she couldn’t protect him. Or herself.
‘Slavko, all I need is a list of names. A name. You know this isn’t right. This isn’t work, this is slavery. These people will have you working for nothing for ever. And you’re one of the lucky ones. Think of the women and children who have been sold into God knows what.’
Slavko gazed at her intently. He seemed to weigh up his options.
‘I was brought here by container lorry. From Lvyv to Hamburg. Then they took us in middle of the night in van. We were dropped at different places in Cologne. I was brought here, to restaurant. It was middle of night and I was told wait here, at the back, until the morning and someone came to open up. Then I have to work for fifteen hours and after they take me to the apartment. Eight of us. Two bedrooms. We take turns sleeping.’
Maria nodded. So there was still a Hamburg connection. Vitrenko’s empire hadn’t withdrawn from the city, just from visibility.
‘Who arranged it all?’
‘There is man back in Lvyv… all I know him as is Pytor. I don’t know names of any of other people who collected us from the container in Hamburg. Except man who drive minibus… we see him every week. His name Viktor. But at the first stop we made here in Cologne, a big black Mercedes was waiting. Man got out and gave orders to minibus driver. He was tough-looking man. Like a soldier.’
Maria scrabbled in her bag for one of the scaled-down copies of Vitrenko’s photograph.
‘This man… could this man be the soldier?’
Slavko shook his head. ‘No, soldier-type much younger. Thirty. Thirty-five, maybe.’
‘Ukrainian?’
‘Yes. I hear him speaking. Not what he say, but I hear it was Ukrainian.’
At that moment a tall, slim African came out with a pail of scraps, which he put into one of the bins. On his way back in he looked suspiciously at Maria.
‘Boss is looking for you,’ the African said to Slavko.
‘I come right now…’ Slavko was clearly concerned at having been seen talking to Maria. ‘I have to go.’
‘Then I’ll have to come back,’ she said.
‘I told you everything. I don’t know no more.’
‘I can’t believe that. Who takes the money from you for your accommodation?’
Slavko looked confused.
‘Your apartment,’ said Maria. She really did feel sorry for him. But she needed a lead. ‘The man who brought you here in the minibus. Viktor. You said he takes your money.’
‘Oh… him.’ Again Slavko looked anxious. ‘If you talk to him, then they know it me who talk.’
‘I’m not interested in him. It’s his bosses I’m after. He won’t even know I’m onto him.’
‘All I know is his name Viktor. I don’t know last name.’
‘When do you see him? How often?’
‘Friday is when we get paid. Most of us work until late Friday nights and sleep on Saturday because we work again Saturday nights. Viktor comes to collect money Saturday and Sunday. Around lunchtime. Some people working Saturday lunchtime so he makes second call Sunday.’ Slavko shook his head despondently. ‘He leave us nothing. Says we have to pay back all expenses in getting us here. Viktor bad man. Everybody frightened of Viktor.’
‘Do you think Viktor is an ex-soldier, like the other man?’
‘He don’t look like soldier to me. Gangster. One day one of the men in the apartment say it not right Viktor take everything. Viktor hit him with heavy piece of wood. Beat him bad. Next day the man gone. Viktor say he send him back to Ukraine and keep his money.’ The memory of the event seemed to disturb Slavko further; he stole another glance back at the door the African had left wider open. ‘I go now. I don’t know nothing else.’
‘The address…’ Maria ordered. ‘Give me the address of your apartment.’ Seeing Slavko’s alarm she held her hands up in a placatory gesture. ‘Don’t worry, no one will know anything. I’m not going to visit your apartment or send other police or the immigration people. I just want to see what Viktor looks like. That’s all. You’ve got to trust me, Slavko.’
Again Slavko hesitated, then gave Maria an address in the Chorweiler part of the city. She tried to remember where it was from the maps of Cologne she had sought to memorise.
Slavko went back into the kitchen. Two other Slavic types looked up from their work and eyed Maria suspiciously through the open door. As she walked away, Maria could still see the fear in Slavko’s eyes; his timidity and his hungry gaunt look. Most of all she thought about how she had given him assurances; how she had told him to trust her. Just like she had told Nadja, the young prostitute in Hamburg, to trust her. Just before Nadja disappeared.
CHAPTER FOUR
21-25 January
1.
Buslenko had arranged for the team to assemble at the hunting lodge on the Monday afternoon. He himself had arrived in Korostyshev two days early. Buslenko had been born in Korostyshev and, since it was a hundred and ten kilometres west of the capital, it was far enough away from Kiev for him to feel reasonably satisfied that he could carry out a secure pre-mission briefing. The city lay under a blanket of thick crisp snow as if the buildings were dust-sheeted furniture waiting for summer visitors. The sane inhabitants of the city were indoors or traversed Chervona Plosha with definite purpose: dark bustling smudges over the Plaza’s white expanse. But Buslenko did manage to find a pirog vendor who had been enterprising or mad enough to set up his paraffin-heated stall for the occasional passer-by. Pirog was bread baked with meat inside, and Korostyshev pirog was famous throughout Ukraine.
Buslenko wandered down between the naked chestnut trees to the War Memorial. Behind the obelisk stood a row of sculpted granite commemorative stones, each carved with the face of the officer whom it honoured. He had come here as a child and his father had explained that these were the men who had died saving Ukraine from the Germans. Fourteen thousand had lost their lives defending the city. The young Taras Buslenko had been hypnotised by the remarkably detailed faces, by the concept of being a defender of Ukraine, just like Cossack Mamay. He had been much older when his father had gone on to explain that many more had also died in Korostyshev in nineteen-nineteen, unsuccessfully defending Ukraine against the Bolsheviks. There were no memorials for them.
Buslenko sat on a bench and contemplated his pirog for a moment before taking a deep bite into childhood memories. He dabbed his mouth with his handkerchief.
‘You’re late,’ he said, as if talking to the graven likeness of the long-dead Red Army lieutenant facing him.
‘Impressive…’ The voice came from behind Buslenko.
‘Not really.’ Buslenko took another bite. The meat inside was hot and warmed him all the way down. ‘I could hear you coming across the snow from twenty metres away. You stick with your job pushing paper round and snooping on adulterous politicians and I’ll stick with mine.’
‘Killing people?’
‘Defending Ukraine,’ said Buslenko, his mouth full. He nodded to the memorial sculptures. ‘Like them. What did you get, Sasha?’
Sasha Andruzky, a thin young man in a heavy woollen coat and with a fur hat pulled over his ears, sat down next to Buslenko and hugged himself against the cold.
‘Not much. I think it’s genuine. From what you told me there will be absolutely no official sanction for what you’ve been asked to do. But unofficially I think that taking out Vitrenko is a government obsession.’