Hamburg Thursday, 25 June 2009

39

It took De Villiers only eighteen hours from boarding the first flight in Durban to get to Hamburg and St Catherine’s Church.

When he left Johann Weber’s chambers, he had an electronic ticket – business class, for Durban-Johannesburg-Frankfurt-Hamburg – in his pocket. Weber took him straight back to the airport to catch the first flight. Everything would depend on the timing, and they couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

He made the telephone calls his New Zealand operation required while waiting for Lufthansa to call the passengers to the boarding gate. He also had to wait for the time zones to allow him to phone his daughter in New Zealand. He phoned Zoë at the appointed hour and told her again to cooperate fully with her captors and to be a good girl. He phoned Emma and promised that Zoë would be home within forty-eight hours. He phoned his men in Kawerau to make sure everything was in place for the final push. And then he made the most difficult call of all. He phoned his erstwhile colleague, Tau Kupenga.

The relationship between De Villiers and Kupenga had been a stormy one. The Maori detective had been suspicious from the start when De Villiers had joined the International Crimes Unit in Auckland as the most junior detective on the squad. De Villiers had ignored Kupenga’s snide comments about Sharpeville, the 1981 Springbok tour and other events, but when Kupenga called him a japie once too often, De Villiers had reacted and, for his trouble, had been suspended and charged with racism. They had made up later when Kupenga had withdrawn his complaint. The affair had ended with their simultaneous promotion, which had resulted in De Villiers being appointed head of the unit and Kupenga being returned to his home district as head of detectives for the region. De Villiers needed him now to bring Zoë’s recovery within the bounds of New Zealand law.

While De Villiers had no compunction to break the law in Europe or, for that matter, in South Africa, he had no intention of putting his New Zealand residence at risk by committing a serious crime there.

He got the number from DS Veerasinghe and called Detective Chief Inspector Kupenga on his cellphone. They were on first name terms, although Kupenga outranked De Villiers by one notch.

‘Tau,’ he began. ‘It’s Pierre de Villiers here. I’m calling from South Africa.’

There was a moment’s silence on the line, which could have been due to the distant connection or to Kupenga’s surprise. ‘What the fuck are you doing over there while we are looking for your daughter over here?’ Kupenga asked.

‘It’s a long story, my friend, but I don’t have the time to tell it now. I’ll tell you everything when I get back home.’

‘And when will that be?’

De Villiers had to make a quick calculation. New Zealand was two long-haul flights from Europe and he needed two days for his operations in Hamburg. ‘Four days at the most,’ he said.

‘Why are you calling me?’ Kupenga asked.

De Villiers didn’t waste words. ‘I think I know where Zoë is. I’m pretty certain she’s in your district.’

Kupenga played by the book. ‘You were ordered not to interfere with the investigation.’

‘I didn’t,’ De Villiers said. ‘I don’t even know who they are and what they are doing. They interviewed me in the beginning, and since then I haven’t heard from them.’

‘Umpff,’ Kupenga snorted. ‘I know you better than to believe that crap. And it’s no wonder, if you’re not even in the country.’

‘Tau, I don’t have time for games. Do you have good men at Whakatane?’

‘Is she in Whakatane?’ Kupenga asked, incredulity in his voice. ‘The last I heard they were looking for her in Auckland.’

De Villiers knew precisely where she was and had even viewed the address on Google Earth. ‘I’ll know the exact address in forty-eight hours,’ he lied, ‘and will tell you immediately so that you can take action.’

‘What action?’ Kupenga asked. ‘Are we talking AOS here?’

‘If my information is correct,’ De Villiers replied, ‘the Armed Offenders Squad will be out-armoured and outgunned by the kidnappers. We’re talking Special Forces here.’

‘How many people?’

‘Two men, heavily armed and well trained in urban guerrilla warfare, and two women. Not much known about them.’

‘Pierre,’ Kupenga said slowly, ‘you’re not telling me everything you know.’

‘Tau,’ De Villiers responded, ‘I’ve told you as much as you need to know.’ He made another calculation. At this time of year, in June, Hamburg was in the same time zone as South Africa, ten hours behind New Zealand. ‘I’ll phone you on your mobile at precisely 4 a.m. on Friday and give you the exact address. It will be within half an hour’s drive from Whakatane,’ he said and cut the connection.

At Frankfurt International, De Villiers bought three cellphones, one from each of the different cellphone outlets in the duty-free. He paid cash.

When he arrived in Hamburg, he didn’t go to the seamen’s lodge in St Pauli but booked into the Grand Elysée on Rothenbaumchaussee near the university where Mohammed Atta and the other nine-eleven plotters had planned their attacks on America. Once he was in his room, which faced the university complex, he sat down and perfected his own plotting. He strapped his Leatherman to his ankle and went downstairs for a light lunch in the Brasserie Grand Elysée. He played the tourist and stopped in front of a stand with brochures of the city’s attractions. The words Sankt Katharinenkirche caught his eye. The brochure was in German, but he picked it up in any event. He read as much as he could understand during the meal.

St Catherine’s Church was named after the patron saint of fire-men, nurses and the sick, De Villiers gathered. St Catherine of Siena (1347–1380). Known even during her lifetime for her ecstatic visions and for being immune to fire. He wondered whether she would care for him if his cancer came back. Not if … when, a voice whispered in his inner ear. His hand dropped involuntarily to rub the operation scar below his belly button. On the way out, he took an English version of the brochure and slipped it into his pocket.

There was a line of taxis waiting outside the restaurant. De Villiers asked the driver to take him to the Hamburg International Maritime Museum. He waited for the taxi to drive out of sight before he walked back towards St Catherine’s Church at Katharinenkirchhof 1.

The church was far more impressive than De Villiers remembered. He slowly walked around it, not like a tourist, but as a soldier scouting the scene of an operation. He craned his neck to look up at the spire a hundred and fifteen metres above the ground. The roof of the church and the spire were covered in verdigris. He’d read that the base of the church tower was the oldest remaining building in the city, and that it, together with the walls of the church, was the only part of St Catherine’s left standing after the Allies’ bombing raid named Operation Gomorrah. The sounds of an organ and a practising choir drifted out from one of the windows at the back of the church. De Villiers looked across to the churchyard where generations of parishioners had been buried.

According to the tourist brochure, the church dated back to before 1256 and was built on an island next to the harbour. A haven for sailors from around the world, it had served the spiritual needs of the maritime fraternity ever since. The church was destroyed by British bombers during Operation Gomorrah in July 1943, when forty-two thousand civilians were killed by the bombs and the firestorm they unleashed. A million Hamburgers had to be evacuated from their homes.

Where was St Catherine then, De Villiers wondered. Will she be here now to put out the fires burning inside me?

He carefully scouted the area around the church. There was a secluded area behind the church on Grimm-Strasse where tall shrubs would give some privacy. A body could be hidden there. The front steps of the church stood out in the open and were clearly visible from the road. Across the busy Bei den Mühren dual carriageway in front of the church was a canal. It would not do, he concluded, as it had a busy pedestrian and cycle path flush against its wall. There was continuous traffic along Bei den Mühren as it carried the road traffic along a principal quay of one of the busiest ports in Europe. De Villiers stood and watched for a while as heavy trucks laboured past in a continuous roll of thunder, almost to a schedule, like airplanes landing at a busy international airport. A gunshot would go unnoticed here. There were nooks and crannies behind the church. A man could be lured into one of the corners and dealt with there.

There were several cars parked behind the church, out of sight from Bei den Mühren. One in two was unlocked. A man could insist on a meeting inside a car and do the business there. He looked up at the spire of the church, as a tourist would. There were no windows. No one would see what was happening inside a car parked in the churchyard. There were no CCTV cameras in sight.

There was a notice board in front of the church with a stack of brochures for tourists. De Villiers took one. It was in English. It invited contributions towards the restoration of the choir organ. He put the brochure in his pocket and started making his way back to the city centre. At fifteen degrees and with a clear sky, the Hamburgers might think it a nice summer’s day, but to De Villiers it was cold. Auckland might be wet, he thought, but it isn’t cold. Yesterday, in Durban’s winter, the temperature had been in the mid-twenties.

He zipped up his jacket and walked on.

At a bicycle stand near St Pauli, he surreptitiously snipped two stainless-steel bicycle spokes from a thick wheeler chained to the rack. It appeared abandoned, its rear tyre flat and its front wheel missing.

St Catherine won’t do the job for me, he thought. She might cleanse by fire, but she won’t do the job for me.