Mueller walked over to the blue shroud on the ground and saw Adler avert her gaze as he lifted a corner. “Not so bad,” he said. “The dirt from the water makes him look worse than he really is.” It was true, but Adler had not been entirely wrong. The deceased was bloated enough that identification would be problematic. Obviously male, a little under two meters, and moderately overweight, though his swollen tissues made his true weight difficult to estimate. Mueller scanned the muddy ground around the corpse and saw no sign of disturbance. Adler looked ill to him, trying to control her rebellious stomach, but questions had to be asked. “And there were no other tracks on the ground?”
“None that we could find other than those left by Herr Gauck and Fräulein Weidmann.”
“The ground is too soft for anyone to come and go and leave it unmarked,” Mueller observed. “It seems likely that the body floated here.”
“Ja,” Adler replied. “The Spree River inlet is a half kilometer from here, close enough to create a slight current that could have pushed the body from there to this point overnight.”
Mueller nodded. “I cannot say there was violence involved in this, but if so, it is possible that it could have been deposited here in the lake a few days ago, improperly tied and weighted, and worked its way to the surface. Decomposition creates gases in the tissues that make the corpse buoyant. They can be quite difficult to keep submerged.”
He’d recited the science as pure facts, not thinking about the woman standing to his left. He heard her make an unpleasant sound and he turned, seeing Adler’s face pale at the thoughts his words had drawn in her mind. Poor girl, Mueller thought. Such a thing to see before the holiday. He regretted that she would have to suffer through for a few minutes more. Procedures had to be observed. “Did you examine the body for distinguishing marks?”
“Only the areas we could see without moving it,” she said, her voice tenuous. “Obviously, the rigor has passed, but we did not want to disturb the site until you had a chance to inspect the area. He has a military tattoo of some kind on his left shoulder, but I’m not an expert on such marks. We did find something unusual when we checked his pants. If you’ll check the interior label—?”
Mueller donned a pair of latex gloves, then followed the young woman’s suggestion, turning the waistband of the wet blue jogging suit over. Adler saw the older man’s eyes widen when he saw the marking. He let the pants go, extracted a pair of glasses from his overcoat, put them on, and repeated the inspection.
Mueller let the pants go and pulled the suit top away from the corpse’s shoulder until he could see the tattoo. He stared at it for several seconds, committing it to memory, then stood, removing the glasses and the thin gloves. All sense of charm had vanished, replaced by a more serious demeanor in the time it had taken him to come to his feet. “I will talk to the witnesses and call in a forensic unit. We will take responsibility for the remains and the site, but I doubt there will be any evidence to collect here beyond the body itself. If you would share your interview notes and any suspected evidence, I would be most grateful. And could I trouble you to please summon the Bundesamt für Verfassungsshutz? The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution might have some domestic intelligence that could be useful. Interpol may also become involved.”
Adler’s brow furrowed deep. Mueller saw her confusion. “You recognize Cyrillic letters when you see them, yes?” he asked.
“Of course, Herr Mueller.”
He nodded. “I am familiar with military tattoos. The one on the victim’s shoulder is not uncommon among soldiers of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate. You might know them as the GRU, the old masters of the Spetsnaz Special Forces. That and his suit label together suggest this gentleman was a Russian intelligence officer at some point in his life. If he was still a military officer at the time of his death, then this is almost certainly a murder. No Spetsnaz soldier, past or present, would drown in the water unless he suffered a cardiac arrest or some other medical issue. The gray in his hair and his weight, even accounting for the bloating, suggest that he’s likely an officer, possibly a senior one. Enlisted soldiers of the Russian military are typically conscripts, and tend to be younger and more trim. So we face the possibility that a ranking Russian Special Forces officer died on our soil, possibly from misadventure or natural causes, but murder seems more likely to me. Unless we can rule that out, we must consider this as a potential national security matter, possibly involving espionage or organized criminal activity. So you are freed of responsibility for this matter.”
Adler exhaled. “I cannot say that I am sorry for that, Herr Mueller,” Adler said. “My men and I will be most grateful not to have to work this case.”
“I would say that you’re most welcome, Fräulein, but I’m not pleased to catch such a case myself.” He was past the age where he sought the big cases that promised recognition and advancement.
“I understand,” Adler said. “I will fetch my case notes for you and place the call.”
“Danke.” Adler trudged away toward the officer interviewing the witnesses and Mueller knelt down again and pulled back the plastic sheet. Thus ends my holiday, I think, he told himself. Perhaps next year.
The Boeing 777 carrying Alden Maines arrived late, which chafed him but created no real inconvenience. Nothing short of incarceration would truly upset his schedule. That was a real possibility, though a small one and not enough to cause him any anxiety as he made his way through customs. If the Germans had known to detain him, they would have sent men onto the plane before allowing anyone off. His logic proved right and the customs officer hardly looked at his face as she processed his passport and waved him into the Federal Republic of Germany without a welcome.
A driver was waiting for him, holding a card with the cover name the Russians had assigned him. The car was more average than Maines thought he deserved, but he supposed that anything expensive would’ve drawn attention. The driver gave him a sealed envelope before leaving him at a boutique hotel near the St. Clement-Kirche Chapel and the Hebbel Theater. He opened the letter in the privacy of his room, and the cryptic instructions inside ordered him to dine at a local eatery before calling a contact number. The operator at the other end of that call sent him another mile northwest on foot to a pub in Tiergarten, giving him time to walk a surveillance detection route and buy the current copy of the Economist. He held the magazine in his left hand at the intersection of Stulerstrasse and Cornelius at 2:45 local time to signal another driver, who was punctual.
Maines would’ve preferred some time to shake off the jet lag before the meeting, but he knew that he wouldn’t have slept. The world was going his way. The Russians had sampled the product he was offering and liked it enough to pay him a nice sum and ask him to come here. They would want to control him, of course, but he was the one selling the secrets, so the advantage was his. The Russians would follow his lead or they would lose his services. It was his neck on the block, wasn’t it?