At the mention of the Brotherhood, Isselhorst visibly stiffened. Narov ignored the reaction. There was so much that she knew. This had been her life’s work, and for a very particular set of reasons. But that she would keep until the very end of Herr Isselhorst’s interrogation.
‘So, his name. His real name,’ she demanded. ‘Not the one you have used on the documents submitted to the court.’
Isselhorst tried to shake his head, but it was taped rigidly to the back of the chair and it barely moved. ‘I don’t know his name. He protects it jealously. I only know him by his assumed name: Otto Marks. I’m not lying. You’ve said my life depends on it. So would I risk a lie? Would I?’
Narov held her silence for a long beat. Then she reached into her backpack. ‘This will decide it.’ She retrieved two syringes and held them up. ‘One contains suxamethonium chloride, a paralytic. The other naloxone hydrochloride, an anti- opioid.’
She paused. Isselhorst’s expression was a mixture of fear and confusion as he stared at the needles.
‘None the wiser? In layman’s terms, this,’ she held up the first syringe, ‘is a respiratory depressant: it stops you breathing. You remain fully conscious, yet you cannot breathe.’ She held up the other syringe. ‘And this reverses the effect.’
She paused. ‘And I control the timings.’
She glanced up from the needles, eyes cold, expression ice calm. ‘Too long under the first shot and you might never recover. You might survive, but brain-dead. A vegetable. Or you might never start breathing again. Either way, you remain totally conscious, so that you get to feel what it is like to die. Over and over again.’
‘I tell you, I don’t know who he is!’ Isselhorst blurted. ‘I don’t! But there are clues. Other means. My phone. I took a photograph, at dinner, the last time we met. That could help. Plus our next meeting. It’s scheduled for three days’ time. You stake it out, you get to see him in person.’
Narov glanced at Isselhorst’s phone. She’d placed it to one side when she’d searched his pockets, intent on checking it later. Now she reached for it, stood behind him, and held the screen before his one good eye as she flicked through the images.
‘There! That’s him! Otto Marks, or whatever the bastard’s name is.’
Narov studied the photo for a good few seconds, using the thumb and finger of her free hand to zoom in on the face of the man she sought.
Could it be? The features seemed familiar, but somehow not exactly right. But it was the eyes that were most compelling.
They were his, of that she was certain.
9
Narov moved back to face Isselhorst, taking up her grip again on the pair of syringes. ‘It is a start. But I need more. Addresses. Phone details. Email. I need everything.’
‘I don’t have much. He only makes contact with me, never the other way around. And if he calls, his number is always untraceable. I have never known such secrecy, even with my most paranoid clients.’
Narov pulled out a tourniquet and went to fasten it around Isselhorst’s arm. She could see him desperately trying to struggle; to break free from his bonds; to stop her getting the tourniquet fastened. But it was no use: he couldn’t move.
‘Keep still,’ she murmured, almost as if speaking to herself. ‘Ah, good. A nice prominent vein.’ She moved the needle towards Isselhorst’s forearm.
‘I tell you, I don’t know!’ Isselhorst yelled. His terror was plain to see: it had darkened his crotch where he had wet himself with fear. ‘The meeting. Three days’ time. In Dubai. Please. Please. That will get you to him.’
Narov proceeded to extract every last detail she could about the coming meeting: location, purpose, date, time. She realised she would need to hurry. She was never happy to approach a target unless she had done a detailed reconnaissance.
Questioning finished, she settled down for her final chat with Herr Isselhorst.
‘There is one more thing about your grandfather that you need to know. In 1944, he was transferred from the Eastern Front to SS headquarters in Strasbourg. From there, he oversaw a concentration camp called Natzweiler. I’m curious: have you ever heard of it?’
‘No. Truthfully. Never.’
She looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Few have. It was built on French soil on what was once a beautiful ski resort. At the start of the war, my grandmother joined the French Resistance. She was captured and incarcerated in Natzweiler, on your grandfather’s personal orders.’
She paused, gazing at Isselhorst with an odd, unsettling dispassion. ‘You see, in a way we are alike, you and I. I also should not exist. I am the union of two things that should never have been joined.’
She brought her mouth close to his ear, as he had done to her in the taxi. ‘My grandmother, Sonia Olchanevsky, was a very beautiful Russian Jew. She was raped by an SS officer at Natzweiler. Repeatedly. That officer was my grandfather, and I – I am the grandchild of that rape.’
With that, she picked up her bag, re-secured Isselhorst’s gag, pocketed his mobile phone and left the room. Behind her, she could hear the man sobbing exhaustedly.
She made her way to the kitchen, pausing at the stove and turning all the gas rings to the fully open position. Then she took Oscar’s lead, clipped it onto his collar and coaxed him out of his basket. Before she left the house, she struck a match and lit three fat beeswax candles in an ornate silver candelabra.
They flared into life. She placed the candelabra on the shelf and closed the door, Oscar following her obediently. The dog had to be wondering what he had done to deserve such a rare treat as this: midnight walkies.
He paused once only as they walked up the gravel driveway. Narov had dropped something. He pulled on his leash and whined, only for her to signal him onwards, leaving behind a battered, moth-eaten wallet containing an ID card belonging to one Leon Kiel.
Kiel was one of Heidelberg’s better-known petty criminals. Narov had observed him picking pockets in the city’s narrow, twisting streets. While she didn’t exactly relish fitting him up for tonight’s crime, there were far greater matters at stake. The last thing she could afford was the authorities somehow linking it to her, or with what was coming.
Wallet dropped, Narov strapped her backpack to her shoulders and hurried into the woods, settling into a ground-eating run, Oscar jogging at her side. Some ten minutes later, the night sky behind them was ripped apart by an almighty explosion, a plume of bluish-yellow flame punching into the darkness as shards of glass and steel tumbled through the air.
The cloud of gas had seeped out of the kitchen, finding its way along the hallways and spreading through the rooms. Finally it had made contact with the candles.
At which point Erich Isselhorst’s house – and the man himself – was no more.
10
Jaeger leant back with his feet up on the bed. The Zum Turken hotel was equipped with fine turn-of-the-century furniture. On the far side of the room was a polished oak coffin chest: literally where a coffin would lie in the family home prior to burial.
He hoped it wasn’t some kind of prophecy for how the next few minutes might go as he called his wife.
He knew it wasn’t Ruth’s fault. He knew that it was all due to the years of abuse she’d suffered. But Jaeger was no saint. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep taking the punishment; turning the other cheek. There would come a time when he would just want out.
Either the past was the past and they could put it all behind them, or he was done. He had longed for his wife to come back to him; the woman he’d married. But maybe they were beyond that now.