horrible, horrible things they put into your head. Is that the real reason you tortured and killed Drescher? To achieve some kind of fulfilment? Do you have any idea of the kind of money they will have made out of their meetings? Oh yes, when the Wall came down, Drescher and his girls embraced capitalism with real enthusiasm. They have been killing for private enterprise as a private enterprise.’
‘She…’ said Margarethe.
‘What?’
‘She. Not they. Georg Drescher had a favourite. He works with only one woman. The other Valkyrie has no part of it. She has another life.’
There was a short, electric pause. Fabel felt his pulse pick up a beat. He was aware that Anna and Susanne were staying very still and quiet.
‘Names, Margarethe,’ he said. ‘What are their names? The woman Drescher worked with, the professional killer. What is she called?’
‘We were friends,’ said Margarethe. Now there was emotion. Not much, just a hint of wistfulness. ‘As much as we could be friends. All three of us were loners — part of what they needed from us. But, in our own way, we were friends.’
‘They left you behind, Margarethe. You owe them nothing.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that. You don’t need to manage me. I will tell you what I want to tell you. Not what you think you can make me tell you.’ She paused. ‘It was a rule that we didn’t know each other’s names. They were very strict about that. We knew each other as One, Two and Three. I was Two.’
Fabel felt the hope slip from him. He sighed.
‘We got on well,’ said Margarethe. ‘We were supervised most of the time. Watched and monitored. Our sleeping quarters were kept separate. But we were trained together for most things.’
‘Did the other girls tell you anything that gave a clue to their true identities?’ asked Fabel.
‘They thought they could control us completely. Make us like machines. But they couldn’t.’ Margarethe smiled. Not a fake smile. Not something she had been trained to use at appropriate moments. Her smile. And it terrified Fabel. ‘Liane Kayser. Anke Wollner. It was our rebellion. Our way of keeping a little of ourselves outside their control. We told each other our real names.’
Fabel kept his gaze on Margarethe, but to his left he heard Anna Wolff scribbling the names into her notebook before rushing out of the interview room.
‘There was something else. We knew that we would be sent to different places. That we maybe wouldn’t see each other again. So we worked out a plan. A place we would meet.’
‘Where?’ Fabel tried to keep his tone dispassionate.
‘You have to remember, we were all living in the East. We didn’t know then that the Wall would come down. We didn’t know that one or more of us might be sent into the West, into deep cover. So we picked somewhere we all knew. Halberstadt.’
‘In Saxony-Anhalt?’
Margarethe nodded. ‘One of the girls, Liane, came from Halberstadt. She said that if we needed each other we would meet at the cathedral in Halberstadt.’
‘How would you know to come?’
‘Two newspapers, one in the GDR, one in West Germany. We would run an announcement. It would be a quote from Njal’s Saga: “The heavens are stained with the blood of men, as the Valkyries sing their song.” If we saw the announcement we would know to meet up in Halberstadt at eight a.m. on the first Monday of the month following the announcement.’
Fabel leaned forward. ‘So, if we ran this announcement in the appropriate newspapers, we could bring the other two Valkyries to Halberstadt?’
Margarethe shook her head. ‘It was compromised. They caught us talking about it. We were stupid: we were being trained by the Stasi and didn’t think that they would have bugged us.’
‘So you don’t think the others would respond to the announcement?’ asked Fabel.
‘No. And we didn’t arrange another code. After that we were separated. We didn’t see each other again.’
‘And you’ve had no contact since then? With any of the other Valkyries?’
‘None.’
‘You said Drescher had a favourite. This is the woman you think he’s been operating with. Which one, Margarethe? Who was his favourite — Liane Kayser or Anke Wollner?’
‘Anke Wollner. Liane… well, Liane was different. She didn’t respond as well to discipline. She wanted things her own way. It was Anke who was Drescher’s little protegee.’
Anna Wolff came back into the room and retook her place. She responded to Fabel’s inquiring look with a sharp shake of her head.
‘I’ll ask you again…’ Fabel turned back to Margarethe. ‘If it wasn’t one of the other Valkyries, who set you up with everything you needed to kill Drescher?’
The blank mask fell again.
‘Was it someone else from the Stasi? Maybe someone who worked with Drescher and saw him as a threat.’
Nothing.
‘Does the name Thomas Maas mean anything to you? Ulrich Adebach?’ Fabel ran through the other names he had obtained from the BStU Federal Commissioner’s office. It was clear that they had come to a dead end. It was almost as if Margarethe had realised that she had opened up too much and was now shutting down. No, thought Fabel, she was too much in control for that. Any information she had given had been released in a controlled manner.
Fabel terminated the interview and Margarethe was taken back to her cell under heavy guard. Fabel ordered that she be placed in a video-surveillance cell.
‘So nothing on these names?’ Fabel asked Anna as soon as they were in the corridor.
‘Nothing. But that’s hardly surprising, Chef. If these girls were chosen by the Stasi, especially if they were orphans or from broken homes, then I would guess that the first thing the Stasi would do would be to wipe all trace of their real identities from the public record. An easy thing to do if you’re in charge of that selfsame public record.’
‘I want you to get back on to the BStU Federal Commissioner’s office in Berlin.’ Fabel leaned against the wall. ‘Give them these names and see what comes up. The Stasi thought they were invulnerable — maybe they thought any mention of the girls’ real identities within the context of a Stasi HQ file was relatively safe.’
‘It’s a very, very long shot, Chef,’ said Anna.
‘At the moment it’s the best we’ve got.’
They were joined by Karin Vestergaard and Werner Meyer, who had been watching the interview from the next room.
‘Well?’ Fabel asked Vestergaard.
‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘It’s difficult to read expression and body language over a CCTV link.’
‘There was none to read, believe me. There’s a very big chunk of humanity missing from Margarethe Paulus. But you heard what she said about Jespersen’s death. She claims she had nothing to do with it and she has a point when she says she has nothing to gain by lying about it.’
‘That’s the thing,’ said Vestergaard. ‘I tend to believe her.’
‘So do I,’ said Fabel. ‘So where does that leave us?’
‘Well,’ said Anna, ‘we’ve got a professional assassination in Norway, Jorgen Halvorsen, and the death of Jens Jespersen in Hamburg. It’s pretty safe to assume that they are directly linked.’
‘Then we’ve got the murders in the Kiez — the Brit Westland and Armin Lensch,’ said Werner. ‘The so-called return of the Angel of St Pauli. They must be connected.’
‘And the murder of Georg Drescher,’ said Anna. ‘Whether Margarethe was involved in the Jespersen and Halvorsen killings or not, there is a connection. So effectively we have three sets of murders that have a common link, and that link is this Stasi conspiracy to place Valkyrie assassins in the West.’
‘There’s maybe one more,’ said Fabel. ‘Peter Claasens — the suicide that maybe isn’t a suicide in the Kontorhaus Quarter. Maybe the link lies there.’ He turned to Karin Vestergaard. ‘And I think maybe you and I should
