otherwise sought tirelessly to erase the traces of their electronic trespasses. If W amp;K was interested in you, the safest thing was to ensure that your name or names and the names of anyone near you, did not appear on the electronic record: no bank accounts, no vehicle registrations, no passport or visa applications, no customs records, no credit-card transactions, no plane tickets, no car hire, no hotel bookings, no bills from public utilities or department stores, no electronic commerce, no emails, no accidents, no hospital admissions, no court appearances, no nothing.
It was safe only to have your death recorded.
W amp;K was not the only company providing this kind of service.
What set W amp;K apart was that, when their own efforts bogged down, Baader could ring some faceless secret servant in Munich or Moscow or Madrid or Montevideo. Then there was a chance they would get moving again. That came from fourteen years with German intelligence, the BND, the
Most of W amp;K’s work was commercial, companies spying on each other, on themselves, trying to find out where executives went, who they saw, who visited companies, what people said, what they wrote. But the firm took on missing persons, anything it could handle.
Just before ten, Carla Klinger knocked and came in. She used a rubber-tipped aluminium stick to walk. She was in her late thirties, thin and angular, a scar on her nose where it had been broken. The BND had sacked her because she was found to have had an affair with another female, possibly once a STASI person, Baader had been vague about the details. Then she had a car accident, broke one side of her body, arm, ribs, hip, leg. Someone told Baader about an expensively trained talent going to waste and he offered Carla a job.
‘Serrano,’ she said, taking the logbook out from under her left arm and offering it. ‘He rang this man and they’re meeting tomorrow. At the Alsterarkaden.’ She always spoke to Anselm in English.
Anselm looked at the log. The man’s name was Werner Kael. He lived nearby, off Sierichstrasse, in the millionaire belt, a wide belt.
‘What shows on him?’ said Anselm. Carla wasn’t much for volunteering information, a trait she shared with Baader. Possibly something nurtured in the BND.
‘Calls himself an investment consultant, holiday house in France, four weeks in the Virgin Islands in winter. He used to travel a lot, short trips. Not for a few years. Four tax investigations in the past twelve years, no action taken.’
‘Tell O’Malley,’ said Anselm. ‘It may have meaning for him.’
She nodded, put the logbook under her arm and left.
Anselm waited, then he went down the passage. Baader was staring at his big monitor, figures.
‘Werner Kael,’ said Anselm from the doorway.
Baader didn’t look at him. ‘What’s he done?’
‘Arranged to meet O’Malley’s man, the money man.’
Baader touched his chin with a long index finger. ‘Arms, drugs, slaves, body parts. Israel, Palestinians, Iranians, Iraqis, Sud-Afs, Tamil Tigers, everyone. Sold the IRA half a container of Semtex. Then there’s a fucking shipload of ethyl ether to Colombia out of Hamburg. Five thousand per cent profit.’
‘What’s his secret?’
‘Party donor. Learned the trade from one of Goebbels’ cocksuckers. Dieter Kuhn. Dieter only died last year, the year before, about ninety, the old cunt. Fascism is good for health. Hitler would still be alive. Plus Kael’s got American friends, a big help in life.’
Baader swivelled. ‘O’Malley’s chasing money?’
‘As far as I can tell,’ said Anselm.
‘Well, there’s no knowing. Kael’s got to put his dirty money somewhere, could be this man does it for him, what’s…?’
‘Serrano. You don’t know the name?’
‘No. Tell O’Malley that as far as I know Kael doesn’t talk to his clients. He’s got cut-outs for that. So Serrano isn’t buying or selling. Which probably means he’s doing something for Kael.’
Anselm went back to his office, tried to concentrate on the task, focus on the logbook. He had to work at concentration. His mind wandered, wanted to go back to dark places, drawn as a dog was to old buried bones, rotten things, just a layer of earth on them.
The mobile on the desk rang. It was said to be secure. But nothing was secure or W amp;K wouldn’t have a business.
9
…LONDON…
Niemand had a long wait at Heathrow customs. When his turn came, the dark pockmarked man looked at him for a time and said, ‘Central African Republic. Don’t see a lot of these. No. Quite unusual. What’s the population?’
‘Going down all the time,’ Niemand said. ‘Volcanic eruptions, human sacrifice, cannibal feasts.’
The official didn’t smile, kept looking at him while he photocopied the passport page. Then he said, ‘Enjoy your stay in the United Kingdom, sir. Mind the motorised vehicles now.’
Niemand changed a thousand dollars into sterling, rang a hotel, bought a pre-paid mobile phone, and took the underground to Earls Court. He didn’t trust taxis, the drivers cheated you and then things became unpleasant.
It wasn’t until he came up from the tube station that he felt he was in England: a cold late-autumn day, soiled sky, an icy wind probing his collar, chasing litter down filthy Trebovir Road. The hotel was close by. He had stayed there before, on his way back from his uncle’s deathbed in Greece. That was a long time ago and they wouldn’t remember him. Besides, he had a different name now.
The woman at the desk was somewhere out beyond sixty, crimson lips drawn on her face, high Chinese collar hiding chins, slackness.
‘I rang,’ he said. ‘Martin Powell.’
‘Did you? Just the night, dear?’
‘Three.’
‘Forty pounds twenty a night,’ she said. ‘In advance.’
‘I’ll pay cash.’
She smiled. ‘Always happy to accept real money.’
He waited, looking at her, not producing it. He didn’t care about the money but he liked to see how people behaved when off-the-record money was offered. ‘What does that come to then?’
‘One hundred pounds exactly,’ she said. ‘Dear.’
Niemand registered and carried his pilot’s flight bag up the stairs covered with balding carpet. In his room on the third floor, he went through his no-weights exercise routine, twenty minutes. Then he showered in a scratched fibreglass cubicle. The water never went above warm, gurgled, died, spat into life again.
Towelling himself, he thought: A gun, do I need a gun?
He considered it as he dressed, put on clean black jeans, a black T-shirt, the weightless nylon harness that carried his valuables, a black poloneck sweater, his loose-fitting leather jacket. He didn’t know who he’d be dealing with. Guns were for showing. Guns were like offering cash. People understood, you didn’t have to spell it out.
Downstairs, unconsciously hugging the inside wall like a blind man, around the corner to a pub, a mock-old place with fake timbers, hungover staff, just a dozen or so customers, one sad man with a pencil moustache drinking a pink liquid, possibly a Pimms, the last Pimms drinker. At a corner table, he ate a slice of pizza, tasteless, just fodder, rubber fodder, he was hungry, couldn’t eat much on planes, someone sitting so close to him he could hear their teeth crush the food, the drain sound of swallowing. When he was finished, he moved his plate to an empty table. He couldn’t bear smeared plates, dirty cutlery, mouth prints on glasses, the cold, congealing bits of leftover food.
From under his sweater he brought out his nylon wallet and found the number. He looked around,
