A shadow falls, p.22
A Shadow Falls, page 22
part #2 of Jenny Aaron Series
‘Exactly. In which case there’s only one person who could have switched the transmitter on.’
‘Layla.’
‘That would mean two things: she knows that her husband was a criminal, and she’s looking for an opportunity to secretly attract attention.’
‘And she suspects that Vesper’s lot are tapping the phone,’ he agrees.
‘She might not know for sure. She’s probably thought about picking it up a hundred times, but hasn’t found the courage to do it.’
‘Meaning: she’s only cooperating out of fear.’
‘If what we’re thinking is right. How’s your hip doing?’
‘Like new. And I’m pretty high too.’
‘Let’s go on up.’
He stops at the bottom of the stairs. ‘There’s a golf bag here.’
‘With gloves?’
‘Yes, lying on top.’
‘For a man or woman?’
‘His.’
They start with the master bedroom. Aaron inhales the smell of the room. Beeswax and a hint of lilac.
‘Double bed, two pillows, both sides are made up. There’s a photo of Jansen on the bedside table.’
She clicks her tongue: there’s a second door. ‘Dressing room?’
‘Yes.’ Pavlik goes in with her. She runs her fingers over cashmere, linen, mohair, silk.
‘Elegance for every occasion,’ he says. ‘Chanel, Kenzo, Armani and all the rest. And a few sporty things too; I bet Layla looks like a lady even in those. About a hundred pairs of shoes, most of them with high heels.’
‘What colours?’
‘Muted, you’d like them.’ He opens a sliding door. ‘His stuff is still hanging up.’ Pavlik crouches down. ‘There’s a box here.’ Aaron hears rustling. ‘Letters from him, sorted by year.’
‘Where’s Layla now?’
He checks his mobile. ‘As before, Hivernage.’
Aaron feels her way back into the bedroom and sits down on the bed. ‘Read out the letters.’
‘Vesper’s already had these in his hands. There won’t be anything about Jansen’s dealings in them.’
‘Vesper was only interested in whether they were a risk to his boss. I’m looking for the key to Layla’s head.’
‘How long will that take you?’
‘However long it takes.’
‘I hate to seem impatient, but we’ve got stuff to do.’
Aaron asks: ‘What do we think we know about Layla? That she takes tranquillizers and painkillers, drinks too much, is receiving medical treatment, that she loved her husband and wants to leave Marrakech. Are we sure about these things? Perhaps she’s a teetotaller, and Vesper drank like a fish. Is that her medication? It could have been Jansen’s. Perhaps there’s an offer on the villa, but Layla doesn’t want to sell. And the photos? What if Vesper told her to have them on display, in order to create the semblance of a happy marriage? The appointments and contacts in the organizer: are they real or fake? Jansen’s clothes: just for show? Is Layla’s son still alive, or is the boy she took to school a different child, a decoy? You have to question everything. Even so-called facts are never a certainty; if you change your perspective, the house of cards can collapse in an instant. At the BKA, we locked ourselves in for days. Once, a colleague addressed me with “Jenny” and I said: “I’m not Jenny.” It’s the ideal job for someone who wants to gradually drive themselves round the bend. At the moment, you’re my entire team. Just try to contradict me on everything – even if you agree with me.’
‘No way.’
‘Wonderful, you’ve grasped it.’
20
The first letter is sixteen years old. Jansen wrote it on paper from the Four Seasons in New York. Layla is living in Berlin, on Mexikoplatz. An area patronized by the wealthy who don’t wish to brag.
‘“Dear Layla,”’ Pavlik reads out, ‘“you will be wondering how I got hold of your address. Well, I have ways and means. I’ve been thinking of you a lot since we met in the airport café. I will be in Berlin next week and would like to meet with you. You can say no of course, but until then I remain hopeful—”’
Jansen suggests the Grand Slam, a two star restaurant in Grunewald, on a Tuesday evening in April.
‘What was his handwriting like?’ Aaron asks.
‘Confident, a cocksure kind of guy.’
The next letter is dated two weeks later, sent from Jerusalem, for collection at the post office: ‘Dear Layla, it was a mistake to tell your husband about us. But it can’t be helped now. The bastard beat you. You have to leave him, right now. A single word from you, and I will be at your door. I will talk to him in a language that he understands—’
Another two weeks later, Singapore: ‘My darling, I don’t understand why you’re still scared of him. You say that he disappeared three days ago. Believe me, he won’t be back. I know his type, he’s hooked up with someone else already—’
‘Jansen had him eliminated,’ says Aaron.
‘Speculation.’
‘Probability calculation.’
‘Perhaps he just went out to get some cigarettes,’ Pavlik suggests.
‘Yes, where the Wannsee is at its deepest.’
After that, there is post from Oslo: ‘My darling, I hate to leave you alone, especially at this time. But a lot depends on this conference. Let us forget about the ugly quarrel. There are questions one simply doesn’t ask. You know that I love you. Nothing else matters—’
Pavlik mutters: ‘I take back the cigarette theory.’
Layla and Jansen become a couple and live in Geneva and Monaco. The age difference isn’t an issue; if it is mentioned at all, it is in a playful manner.
From Milan, Jansen writes: ‘When I was your age, everyone over forty seemed ancient to me, and today everyone under sixty is a spring chicken. That means that at forty-six, I am virtually still a child.’
They want to marry – which isn’t possible because Layla would first have to get divorced and her husband is unlocatable. Once, Jansen lets drop a sarcastic remark about the fee of an interior designer, mainly to tease her; money is not a problem. On her twenty-eighth birthday he surprises her with a jet that takes them to the Virgin Islands. They watch the sun set as they picnic in White Bay and must have spent their days in rapture, as a few weeks later Jansen confesses: ‘That night in White Bay I could have died and my life would have been complete.’
On letter paper from the Mumbai Plaza he quotes Rilke: ‘Everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin’s bow, which draws one voice out of two separate strings.’
Aaron thinks of the study without books. Jansen had probably never read Rilke’s ‘Love Song’, he probably discovered the lines by chance. But well chosen, he was clearly a romantic.
He travels continuously, jetting around the world, and her happiness suffers from it. Any mentions of his work are incidental and vague. He speaks of conferences, meetings, deals, without ever specifying a sector or providing a name. Both of them want to have children. For Layla this becomes increasingly important; Jansen implores her time and again not to lose hope. He now tenderly refers to her as Amari, ‘my moon’.
‘There’s no way he was a lobbyist for the German arms industry,’ Pavlik mutters. ‘He never spent any time in Berlin.’
‘You think Harry told us a fairy story?’
‘One Thousand and One Nights.’
‘Why?’
‘The answer to that is probably unpleasant.’ He picks up a new letter. ‘This is where it gets interesting. In October, eight and a half years ago, he writes from Alexandria: “I’ve met someone very influential and I’ve invited him to Boca for two days.”’
He means Boca Raton in Florida. They know from previous letters that Layla and Jansen had a holiday home there.
‘“Amari, I know we wanted to have that week to ourselves. But he’s an important man. He’s got amazing ideas, you can never think too big. I’m sure you will like him; he is phenomenally well educated and an art lover. Just imagine—”’
‘Why have you stopped reading?’ asks Aaron.
‘“Just imagine, he owns a Lucas Cranach.’”
It is very quiet for a long time.
Varga.
It’s true.
Varga is alive.
Varga is the Broker.
Aaron composes herself. ‘Sinking ships got him the necessary spending money. He had completely repositioned himself once before already, when he gave up arms trading. Someone like him gets bored if he stays with the same thing for too long.’
‘He doesn’t seem to be bored at the moment.’
‘I’ve never underestimated anyone as much as him. I realized that when I stood in front of the painting. He knew that I had been at the safe. It didn’t worry him. He could’ve had me killed in the house, but that would have been too distasteful for him. He set ten men on me at the hotel, including Vesper. I didn’t stand a chance.’
‘He let you live.’
‘I’ve often wondered about that.’
‘Certainly not for sentimental reasons.’
‘Lissek thinks it’s because I was of no relevance to him.’
‘The attack on the Yamal pipeline happened eleven years ago. So Varga must have already been involved in the terror business when we were in Rome with Keyes,’ Pavlik reflects. ‘Why didn’t he leave his clan much earlier?’
‘Perhaps it was only then that he asked himself what use it still was to him. From his time as an arms trader he’ll have had contacts to terror organizations all over the world. That and his wits were all he needed.’
She falls through time.
‘When I was about thirteen or fourteen, my father asked me what true power was. I didn’t know. He said: “An empire that nobody knows about.”’
Did Varga want to protect his son, and therefore placed him in the care of his brother?
In Bushid¯o, relinquishment is the ultimate form of love.
No.
It was all a big lie. His son was unimportant to him. He played with me the way he plays with everything.
‘Vesper went through the letters,’ she says. ‘Why didn’t he destroy that one?’
‘Varga is convinced that we already know.’
‘From Holm.’
‘Yes.’
‘In any case, Boca Raton was the start of the collaboration between him and Jansen,’ says Aaron.
‘Is it OK if I don’t contradict you?’
‘Just this once.’
Jakarta, the following month: ‘“Amari, your text worried me greatly. What does that mean: they found something in your kidney? What kind of a statement is that? I wanted to fly back immediately, but the local air traffic controllers are on strike and I can’t get away. You’re not answering the phone or replying to my messages. Why are you leaving me hanging like this? I’m sure I’ll be home long before these lines reach you. It’s ludicrous to write this letter, but I have to do something—”’
‘Jakarta – Hang on.’ Aaron reaches for her mobile. ‘Search in Google: Jakarta 2007 terrorist attack.’
‘I didn’t find anything. Sorry about that,’ replies Siri. ‘Do you perhaps mean: Jakarta 2008?’
‘Yes.’
‘Twenty-one thousand two hundred and four hits.’
‘Read out the top hit.’
‘Spiegel Online, 29 January 2008. Yesterday’s explosion at a research facility of the pharmaceutical company PT Kendari Chemical has claimed a further two lives. This brings the death toll to two hundred and ninety-one. The terrorist organization Masar Al Islami has since claimed responsibility for the attack, which destroyed the entire test series for an Alzheimer’s drug that had been hailed as groundbreaking by PT Chemical Kendari. The share price of the company has collapsed, causing stock exchange trading to be suspended today.’
‘His first job for Varga,’ says Pavlik.
‘No discussion.’
Jansen spends a lot of time at home that year. Layla needs him. She has a kidney tumour, is operated on and has to undergo radiotherapy. Her greatest fear is that this will damage her ovaries; she is still hoping for a child.
The six journeys that Jansen makes that year take him to Africa and North America. From Montreal he writes that they could adopt a child. He is distraught and worried for the woman who means everything to him. Jansen indicates that he is thinking of retiring, but it remains vague, just empty talk.
At the end of August he has to go to Nigeria for two weeks, which, as he insists in a letter from Lagos, could not be postponed. Evidently, he had tried in vain to persuade Layla to stay with her mother in Berlin for that time. Jansen tells her off. He says he doesn’t understand why she finds it so hard to accept help. Why she never thinks of herself, only of others.
The radiation therapy is successful, the letters express great relief.
In December 2008 he writes from Kathmandu: ‘Amari, my first letter to Marrakech, how wonderful. I am so glad that you love the city and the house as much as I do. I will be with you tomorrow and I’m already curious to find out what you and the interior designer have come up with. As always, this letter won’t reach you until I’m already holding you in my arms again. I really am an old-fashioned guy. But you say, that’s exactly what you love about me—’
He was wrong, she doesn’t feel at home in Marrakech. She grew up in Germany, that is her culture, even though her family is originally from Tunisia.
Jansen writes many letters, and each one of them mentions a quarrel. Layla is climbing the walls with loneliness, she doesn’t feel safe in the city. Her Arabic isn’t good, she continually feels that people are talking about her behind her back. She thinks of leaving him. That drives him crazy. Losing Layla would be the end of the world for him. Jansen is financially sorted for the rest of his life, why doesn’t he retire? For fear of Varga? He talks of something ‘very foolish’ that she has done. A half-hearted suicide attempt?
Then there’s wonderful news: Layla is pregnant. They can both hardly believe it. A boy! She is worried and prays that her child won’t be affected by the cancer therapy. Jansen reassures her with heartfelt words. If he shares her dark thoughts, he doesn’t let it show. Three letters focus on discussing names.
Until he writes from Dar es Salaam: ‘This evening, I spent a long time sitting in the hotel bar with my partner. He asked me what I thought of the name Luca. Well, I think it’s a great name! What do you think?’
‘Varga,’ says Aaron.
‘Could’ve been someone else entirely.’
‘Luca. Like Lucas Cranach.’
‘Coincidence,’ Pavlik asserts.
‘What seems like a coincidence is nothing other than fate.’
‘Let me guess: says Bushid¯o.’
‘No, says my horoscope.’
Luca is born and is healthy. In his next letter Jansen brims over with joy: ‘I’m so incredibly proud. I tell everyone that I’ve become a father, regardless of whether they want to hear it or not. Yesterday somebody asked me what it was like to be there at the birth. I thought about it for a long time and then said: “It’s as if you’re really tiny and really enormous both at the same time.”’
Pavlik mutters: ‘I know exactly what you mean.’
In the following years, Jansen travels more than ever before. But it no longer puts a strain on the relationship. At last, Layla is not lonely anymore. Her husband is declared dead. She and Jansen marry in Locarno. The wedding is a low key affair with a select few guests. It is their happiest time.
Pavlik picks up a new envelope. ‘Hello.’
‘What?’
‘When exactly is that businessman supposed to have met with the terrorist cell in Frankfurt last year?’
‘On 4 March.’
‘“Frankfurt, 3 March. Dear Amari, be glad you didn’t come with me, the weather in Germany is truly awful. Thank goodness you talked me into taking the coat, otherwise I would be miserably cold—”’
Silence.
‘You needn’t bother contacting your man in Peshawar,’ says Pavlik.
Jansen’s last letter is dated 2 July, a week before his sixtieth birthday. It is written in London and ends: ‘Soon I will be home. The decision has been made, I’m pulling out of the business. When a man of my age looks back, he should be able to do it without regrets. But all I see is the time I wasted, when I should have been at your side all along. Do you remember, Amari, how it all started? How I took your suitcase from the conveyor belt, thinking it was mine? You’ve never since looked at me as angrily as you did then. For this I am grateful to you. I am yours for ever and I’m thinking of you and Luca full of tenderness. Your Veit.’
They are silent for a while. Then Pavlik says: ‘That bastard has almost got me to like him.’
‘Apparently Josef Mengele played the piano most beautifully. Did that make him a likeable person?’
He is only listening with half an ear. ‘Jansen wrote to her from London to say that he’s retiring. He couldn’t have done that without Varga’s consent. That isn’t the kind of thing you discuss over the phone.’
‘The fund that Holm suggested to us is managed there,’ Aaron continues his train of thought. ‘A city in which you can make yourself invisible, after cosmetic surgery for example.’
‘Too vague.’
‘But it’s a lead,’ she insists. ‘It took us a day to find out who he is. And now we might know where he is.’
‘It’s all happening too easily,’ he objects.
‘Those three downstairs would have a different opinion. So would the ones in the souks.’
‘You wanted to see the kid’s room. Come.’
He crosses the hallway with her and opens a door.
Aaron smells crafting glue, intermingled with caramel; Luca likes sweets. She forms her lips to make an E sound and clicks her tongue until she gets a rough picture. The bed is on the left. She touches a set of shelves. Toy cars, stuffed animals, picture books. What is that by the window? A desk? As she steps towards it, she knocks something over with her foot. Toy soldiers?
Aaron stops.
She feels bad.
Pavlik says: ‘The walls and the ceiling are decorated with painted clouds, birds, aeroplanes and a Zeppelin. There’s an enormous sheet hanging above the bed; looks like he uses it to build a den. Lots of toys and stuffed animals, but he’s put those away.’
