‘New kitchen? Get your loan approved instantly! FHO Bank.’
Julius Schönberg put on the reading glasses which were hanging on a chain around his neck and read the text message while the large iron gates in front of the house slid open. He adjusted his bow-tie, slightly absent-mindedly placed his pipe in the cupholder between the front seats and contemplated his home while reflecting on the meaning of the SMS. It was undeniably a beautiful home. The small castle in Pullach Kolbermoor looked old-fashioned with its romantic turrets and ponds filled with water lilies, its carefully laid out parkland and the old stone wall around it all. It was like something from a fairy tale. The original castle had been built in 1430 but it was in no way stuck in the past. In fact, Schloss Pullach was an almost impenetrable fortress with multiple alarm systems, full CCTV coverage including heat cameras and night vision, and a safe room. It featured buried gas canisters whose contents could be released through concealed nozzles across the site, electrified paving and floors that could effectively neutralise intruders. And a respectable quantity of weapons in the hidden safe room.
Whether all these security arrangements were really needed he had no idea, but he appreciated the feeling of assurance they provided – not so much for his own sake, but because he felt it came with his job. It was a sign of his seniority, confirmation of the importance of his work fighting the evil forces that constantly sought to crush free society. It was ironic that those who fought hardest for a free world had to operate in one that was closed and he was glad to have been allowed to keep his systems despite his redeployment. When he retired, they would probably have to be taken away.
The lights along the driveway up to the front of the house illuminated as he approached. If the camera had been unable to read his number plate, powerful floodlights would have come on and dazzled him while an alarm went off inside the house and all doors and windows had locked automatically.
Renate had been amused by the automatic lights and had never had to see the floodlights turned on, as luck would have it. That would probably have made her reconsider the risks that her husband’s job entailed, and whether they could truly be lived with.
Schönberg stopped and looked up at the grand building. Twenty-six rooms, three storeys and a splendid tower. A very old building in an austere, classical style. He wondered what it would feel like to live here all alone when he retired in a year or so – a retirement that had been postponed multiple times.
Schönberg reread the text message.
‘New kitchen.’ That meant that Koch was dead. The chef had been deactivated. ‘New car’, ‘new roof’, ‘rebuild’ and so on stood for a series of old spies and agents. But on this occasion it was the kitchen that mattered.
He parked his Mercedes-AMG G63 and got out, watching the gates close and the stinger strip outside sink back into the ground again. No tails to stop this time either. The motion-detecting cameras followed every step he took as he approached the manor, and the facial recognition opened the door well before he reached it. He knew that it could tell the difference between his calm facial expression and the same face if he were very stressed or frightened. A vital feature to protect against extortion or hostage situations.
He had once triggered the alarm when he had just heard that his goddaughter had been run over and he still didn’t know whether she was unharmed. On that occasion, his face had apparently displayed so much mental distress that the system had reacted. Five cars filled with armed personnel had driven over from the old headquarters at breakneck speed, while two helicopters had been diverted to rescue him. At least he now knew that the system worked.
Once inside the echoing, magnificent hall with its shiny stone floor and vaulted staircase to the upper floors, he opened the cloakroom door concealed behind an oak panel. He put the palm of his hand onto the scanner and his eye in front of the small sensor that was almost hidden behind a beam. Noiselessly, a section of the wall opened itself. He pushed his coats aside and stepped into the safe room, which constituted its own structure within the house. It was fully clad in metal, a cocoon that could withstand explosions and fire. If anyone burned down the house, the safe room would remain unharmed amidst the smouldering remains. The cables ran through fireproof conduits straight into the ground – impossible to access unless you moved the entire castle.
There were several rows of screens, some dark but most of them constantly switched on. This represented both the castle’s own security system and that of German intelligence – the BND’s internal systems – including the part that only those personnel with the highest security clearance were permitted to connect to. Now he was finally able to receive confirmation from his colleagues in the new headquarters in Berlin that the former Stasi officer, Jürgen Stiller, code-named Koch, had been found dead in his home in Sweden.
When Stiller hadn’t shown up for a baptism, the agitated grandfather of the child in question had made his way to the vicarage and there he had found him hanging in the kitchen. His wife, it was discovered shortly afterwards, was lying upstairs – stabbed to death. The local police were working on the theory, so Schönberg was informed, that the uncovering of the old spy ring that the priest had been in had triggered old traumas, and that he had either believed his life to be in ruins, or he had simply been so tormented by his guilty conscience that he had taken his own life.
On the floor beside the pastor they had found a bloody knife that had been used to kill his wife, Karin. That he had killed his wife first was interpreted as an attempt to spare her the shame, or else indicated that she had said something that had enraged him so much that he had stabbed her to death with the kitchen knife and then hanged himself in regret.
On the kitchen table there had been a Bible opened to the passage in which Judas takes his own life, which the Swedes had assumed to be a sign that Stiller had felt himself to be a traitor. But Schönberg knew exactly what the message meant. It was an altogether different Judas who had been on the scene. Or rather, it had been a devil.
The important thing, nonetheless, was that it was regarded as a suicide. That was very good.
Hopefully, it meant the end of the BND’s operations in Sweden, allowing them to concentrate on other countries – the ones that actually mattered in this context.
And hopefully it meant that Rau’s identity remained protected. He just hoped that Nowak woman – not to mention Hedin – didn’t stick their noses in. They had been the ones who had tipped off the police about Stiller when the old spooks had begun to be knocked off one by one in the early summer.
Schönberg leaned back in his ergonomic office chair and wondered whether he should do anything about Nowak and Hedin.
He realised he probably should.