The driver stopped the cab under a streetlamp in a decrepit industrial neighbourhood in one of Moscow’s suburbs. The dull sulphurous glow gave Holger a feeling of security in this rundown industrial area. Tatjana studied the note she had gotten at the discotheque again and tried to read the street sign on the opposite corner. After double-checking the address with the driver, she nodded to Holger. They were where they were supposed to be. She tried to hide her anxiety. But who wouldn’t be a bit edgy here? she thought and caught Holger’s eyes. Is there a hint of protectiveness in his eyes, or is that just wishful thinking? She shrugged it off, opened the door, and climbed out. There was no turning back now. The streetlamp cast a sinister glow over the empty Alexandrej Prospekt, and unwittingly Tatjana shuffled closer to Holger. As the cab pulled away, the feeling of being alone and vulnerable made their hair stand on end. The only sign of life was a scrawny dog rummaging through an overturned trashcan. They started ambling as they searched for number 133 H, which turned out to be a gated courtyard. Hesitantly, Holger slid through the gate and stretched his arm back towards Tatjana.
Relieved, she grabbed it firmly and felt an utterly unfounded 311sense of reassurance that the surroundings by no means encouraged. Holger paused and tried to get a feel for the lay of the land in the pitch-black yard under the weak light of the stars. Holger struggled to see through the blackness. As cloud suddenly cloaked the night sky, he stopped so abruptly that Tatjana bumped into him. The courtyard was now black as ink, and Holger closed his eyes and opened his mouth to sharpen his hearing, precisely as he had learned at the patrolling course in Aalborg many years ago. Confident that they were alone, he slowly opened his eyes and let them adjust to the lack of light. Early in his military career, he had discovered that he possessed extraordinary night vision, which once again came to his rescue. The contours of the courtyard slowly appeared, and in the far corner, he could just make out the outline of a doorway. Gently, he pulled Tatjana’s face close and, with a finger pressed to his lips, signalled for her to keep quiet. Once she nodded, he slowly inched forward towards the doorway. Tatjana kept a firm grip on his coat and followed with halting steps. Holger ran his fingers over an enamel sign next to the opening when they reached the doorway.
‘133 H,’ he whispered and pointed down towards a staircase that opened up next to them.
A faint light glowed alluringly at the bottom of the steps, like a candle flame attracting a mosquito. Holger started down the steps, feeling his way along the wall. Tatjana followed with a firm hold of his hand. Holger stopped after a few steps and held his breath. The silence was palpable, and their breathing sounded like bellows in his ears. He noted that her hand felt clammy now. Cautiously, he continued down the steps, feeling his way forward with his feet to avoid making any noise that might give them away. When he 312reached the bottom of the staircase, he could see the light from a window left ajar. He signalled for Tatjana to stay silent, took a deep breath, carefully opened the window, and peered inside.
The room beyond was dark. The light source came from a door left slightly open at the room’s far end. Holger strained to listen, and having assured himself that no one was asleep inside, he hoisted himself through the window. Tatjana followed agilely, and together they tiptoed alertly towards the door. Holger kneeled and leaned his head in close to the narrow fissure between the door and its frame. The slim opening restricted his field of vision, but he did not dare to push the door wider open. Instead, he tried moving his head from side to side. That did little to increase his field of vision. Carefully, he pushed the door in tiny jerks to prevent the old hinges from creaking. Holger now had a full view of the room beyond. It was a mess. There were a couple of tables, a low bookcase, a sofa and some chairs, a few camera stands and lighting mounts. Dead ahead, behind a video-editing console, sat a man. He was wearing headphones, smoking noisily on a cigarette, and was absorbed by whatever happened on the screen in front of him. In the blueish light from the screen, he looked unshaven and dishevelled. Holger scanned the room again and was convinced that the man was alone. Immersed in his work. Holger squinted and strained to see what was on the screen. Colours fluttered every time the man rewound or fast-forwarded. It looked like human bodies. Naked human bodies. And then the penny dropped: the man was editing a porn movie.
Holger turned to Tatjana and pointed, with the index and middle finger of his right hand, first at his eyes and then at the man at the editing console. Tatjana stretched her head forward, 313narrowing her eyes, focusing on the screen. Instantaneously, she swivelled back to face him with an expression revealing that she too understood what he was doing. Holger motioned for them to move towards the man. One foot cautiously in front of the other, careful not to step on anything. He was still engrossed in his work on the adult movie. The journey through furniture, lighting stands and camera mounts felt like an eternity, and Tatjana got impatient. A camera tripod caught her coat, and it fell to the floor in a split second with a loud noise. Holger froze to the spot as the man behind the console jolted and turned towards Tatjana. She tried desperately to blend in with the wall behind her, but the man shouted something at her and seized a handgun from the table. He had still not seen Holger. As the man raised the gun and trained it on Tatjana, Holger instinctively grabbed a screwdriver from a table, and in swift steps, he reached the editing technician and sent the gun flying through the air with a precise kick. In a fluid movement, Holger grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair and pressed the screwdriver to the throat of the terrified technician while Tatjana collected his gun from off the floor. The adrenaline rushed through Holger’s body, and unwittingly he levied still more pressure against the man’s windpipe.
‘Where is your boss? Is he coming here now?’ Tatjana shouted agitatedly and pointed the gun to his head.
Holger was also unsettled by the sudden violence, and when the Russian gasped heavily, he briefly relaxed his grip on the man’s hair. The man suddenly grabbed the iron rod of a camera stand. Holger had no time to think. The hand-to-hand combat training kicked in automatically. In a swift move, he drove the screwdriver through the man’s throat and up into his brain. The technician 314went limp instantaneously. The screwdriver had pierced the man’s jugular, and the blood gushed onto Holger’s hands when he let the dead man fall to the floor in a heap.
‘No, no – shit!’ Holger blurted and stared dumbfounded at his hands and the corpse at his feet.
The sight of blood made him gag, and he ran to a washbasin across the room and feverishly began scrubbing his hands of the blood. Tatjana stepped over the corpse and noticed a small box falling from his pocket. She picked it up and shouted at Holger:
‘Pull yourself together! Fuckin’ pull yourself together!’
Holger turned, blood drained from his face, gasping for breath, fighting the overpowering urge to vomit that rolled over him like a tsunami. Most of all, Tatjana wanted to take him in her arms and hug him, but Holger was clearly losing it.
‘I’ve never killed a man with my bare hands. Now I understand why the US soldiers in Vietnam called it getting wet; look!’ he said, pointing to the wash basin where the blood remains had clogged around the drain.
His hands were shaking, and he tried to prevent his voice from cracking while scrubbing traces of blood off his knuckles.
‘Get a grip!’ said Tatjana sternly.
A poster on the wall caught Tatjana’s eye. It was a political recruitment advert. A smiling Andrej Nitchenko confidently gave the thumbs-up.
‘For Russia’s unity – against foreign involvement – the future belongs to Mother Russia.
‘Come to the meeting on 29 September in Mother Russia’s political headquarters by the Rzhedka airfield,’ she read aloud. ‘Jesus Christ! Let’s get out of here before I get sick.’315
Holger nodded and turned towards the corpse sprawled on the floor. He was still visibly shaken.
‘What about him? I’m not sure anybody will buy the story that he just had a screw loose,’ he said with a wry smile, pointing to the screwdriver’s handle jutting from the dead man’s jaw.
‘Leave him. We need to move. Now!’
Tatjana took the small tin box out of her pocket and lifted the lid. It contained ten white pills. She selected one and examined closely the mark imprinted on it. It resembled a logo from a Japanese car brand. She passed the pill to Holger.
‘It’s ecstasy. I’ve seen pills like those on TV in Denmark,’ Holger pensively said.
Tatjana kneeled down by the dead man and hiked up his shirtsleeves. Even in the low lighting, the blueish track marks were visible on the inside of his forearm.
‘He would never have betrayed Andrej Nitchenko. He’s his biggest pusher,’ she said as she rummaged through the dead technician’s pockets.
Tatjana found a folded-up piece of paper, unfolded it and glanced at it, handing it to Holger.
‘We now have one more address. Another studio. It’s one of the addresses my research group flagged earlier. It looks like we’re going to St Petersburg now,’ she said and stood.
‘Let’s go back to the hotel and get my stuff, and we can leave for St Petersburg immediately. We need to act fast. Someone will undoubtedly come by here tomorrow morning, and then it’ll be a matter of hours, not days, before they figure out that we’re on Kaare’s trail. By then, we need to have found him in St Petersburg; still alive, hopefully,’ said Holger.316
The last sentence prompted foreboding thoughts in Holger’s mind. He knew well that hostages were often killed early on simply to save the hostage takers all the hassle. They were only interested in the money, and nine out of ten ransoms were paid with no guarantee of the hostage’s safety other than the kidnappers’ word. Everybody on the receiving end just wanted a happy ending and thus simply paid the ransom. The reality was, however, often far more tragic. Kaare’s kidnappers had not communicated since the forwarded videotape, which was a bad omen. Holger had an unshakeable feeling that Kaare was alive. But action was necessary, and it had to be swift.