Фолькер Кучер - Babylon Berlin

‘At this hour?’

‘I urgently need a few signatures. You were never at home when…’

‘I was away.’

She seemed suspicious, but opened the door. Rath went inside. The flat hadn’t changed since his previous visit.

‘So, Herr Lennartz, if you could show me the papers I need to sign, we can get this over with. I’m tired.’

In the electric light Rath could see how beautiful she was. It almost knocked him off his feet.

‘I lied to you,’ he said. ‘My name isn’t Lennartz, just as yours isn’t Steinrück. I’m Gereon Rath and I work for the CID, Countess Sorokina.’

‘I know your name,’ she said harshly. ‘You’re the policeman who issued a warrant for me! What do you want? To arrest me?’

‘To talk to you. I…’

Suddenly he was staring down the barrel of a gun.

‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to betray you,’ he said. ‘Now put that thing away.’

‘Why should I believe you?’

‘Because I’ve helped you many times already.’

‘Not that I’m aware of. Put your hands in the air, and don’t try anything. I’m a proficient markswoman.’

Rath obeyed. ‘I found your hiding place in Delphi and kept quiet. I know it was your hairdryer that ended up in Selenskij’s bathtub, and I also know you were in Yorckstrasse when Nikita Fallin fell from the fourth floor. Yet I haven’t put you on the list of murder suspects.’

‘Am I supposed to be grateful for that?’

‘It would be enough if you stopped waving that pistol in front of my face.’

‘I don’t owe you anything,’ she said. ‘I didn’t kill those two men. Even if they deserved it. I wanted to kill them, I admit, but you can’t be punished for intent alone.’

‘No,’ Rath said. He tried hard not to show his surprise. Was she telling the truth? ‘Then why were you at Yorckstrasse when Fallin died? It was you who lured him into the trap.’

‘I was waiting for him a floor higher, that much is true. I wanted to shoot him, just like I wanted to shoot Selenskij. But when I arrived at the house here, the police were already outside the door. I didn’t find out he was dead until a day later.’

‘So how did your hairdryer end up in the bathtub?’

‘I didn’t throw it in, anyway.’

‘And you didn’t cause Fallin’s fall either?’

‘When I called him, he was leaning over the banister. I wanted to pull the trigger, but then he fell, and I ran downstairs after him. I swear I’d have shot him, if he had still been alive, but there was a man crouching beside him who said Fallin was dead.’

‘My colleague.’

‘At any rate, I got away. I had a pistol in my handbag after all.’

Rath considered for a moment. There was someone else who might be interested in seeing the two Russians dead: Bruno Wolter. The pair had become a security risk and he must have disposed of them, before attempting to lay the blame at the Countess’s door.

He nodded. ‘Sounds plausible to me. In the meantime the dust appears to have settled on the matter. Homicide have been looking into other cases for quite some time.’

‘So why are you paying me a visit?’

‘You haven’t been here for a long time. I’m your neighbour.’

The astonishment suited her.

‘Believe me, I’m not trying to trick you. The case is closed. Even the police know Fallin and Selenskij got what they deserved. Can I lower my hands? My arms are beginning to hurt.’

She nodded. Nevertheless, a tiny bit of suspicion remained in her eyes. She kept hold of the pistol.

‘I’ve just made some tea,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup?’

‘Yes, but no rum please.’

A short time later they were sitting at her small kitchen table drinking tea. She had to get a second chair from the bedroom.

‘You’re the only person who knows what happened with the gold,’ Rath said. ‘Did it ever leave the Soviet Union? Or did the Red Fortress get it after all?’

‘You’re very inquisitive.’

‘Occupational hazard, but the question is private in nature.’

‘The Red Fortress doesn’t exist anymore,’ she said. ‘The organisation still calling itself that doesn’t merit the name.’

‘What about the gold?’

‘In its rightful place.’

‘Marlow found the hiding place, didn’t he? Even without the map. And he gave you your share?’

‘The gold has long since been sold. Everyone got what they were entitled to.’

‘Marlow most of all.’ Rath nodded. ‘So the deal has already taken place. Then can you tell me how you smuggled it?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because I don’t understand. I assume it was in the tank wagons.’

‘Correct. Only the outer wall of the tanks was steel. On the inside they consisted of a thick layer of gold.’

‘How did it get there? The cars didn’t come from Russia, they came from East Prussia.’

‘They were built in Russia though.’

‘Sorry?’

‘My family didn’t exploit serfs, but was involved in industry. That’s where the Sorokins’s fortune comes from. In St Petersburg we owned a rail wagon factory. By the time the war began, my father had already invested a large percentage of his assets in gold. When the Bolsheviks staged their coup, he had it melted. After that a whole series of tank wagons were built, whose actual worth only very few people knew about.’

‘But they weren’t built to the Russian track gauge.’

‘No. That way the Bolsheviks wouldn’t get it into their heads to confiscate them for their own purposes. Father wanted to get them out of the country, there had been orders placed for all of them from abroad, from family friends.’

‘One of whom was from East Prussia.’

‘Correct.’

‘So the gold has been in Germany for years?’

‘No. During the Civil War normal trade was impossible. Then the communists started making trouble, so it took almost ten years before the wagons were finally allowed to cross the border. Foreign capital makes even the Bolsheviks weak.’

‘The buyers were Vereinigte Ölmühle Insterburg ?’

‘The company belongs to a good friend. He was in on it.’

‘So why didn’t he just send the wagons to you in Berlin?’

‘Someone would have noticed. Too many people knew about the gold. Some people knew who I was and were waiting for me to make a move.’

‘What about the rest of your family?’

‘No longer alive.’

‘So everyone was circling around you like vultures?’

‘That’s why Alexej and I arranged this spectacle. We thought if everyone was concentrating on the cargo, no-one would be paying any attention to the wagons.’

‘Which is why Marlow had to order chemicals in Leningrad when he could have got them far cheaper along the Rhine…’

She smiled, and it looked as if she hadn’t done so for a long time.

‘The chemical company he ordered them from also used to be a Sorokin factory,’ she said. ‘It was all pretty obvious – but then it was supposed to be.’

A little later Rath was climbing the stairs back down to his flat. There were a thousand different thoughts milling around his head. But he knew what he had to do; he knew exactly what he had to do. He wanted to feel comfortable in his own skin again.

He fetched the keys to the caretaker’s flat from the shed. Lennartz had started to repaper the flat, but left the poky grey corner where he did his paperwork. Everything looked the same as always. Schäffner’s old typewriter was still there, it was part of the inventory. Rath sat down and took a few leaves of paper from the drawer. Then he wrote it all down, the whole story. From the perspective of the simple SA Scharführer Hermann Schäffner. With every letter that he typed he felt his heart grow lighter.