A Shadow Falls, page 18
part #2 of Jenny Aaron Series
She chased him when she was still a fledgling police cadet, but eventually gave up for the sake of her own sanity. The three women that Runge went on to murder afterwards haunt Aaron to this day. She feels accountable to them.
She is merciless.
Nobody can take everything away from her and think he’ll survive it. Pavlik will have to decide whether he is going to take this possibly final journey with her too.
No words were needed.
She wants to kill one of the most powerful men in the world.
When she said ‘Get the hell out of Morocco,’ she built him a golden bridge supported by glass pillars. If he had consented, it would have been their farewell. Even if Aaron would never hold it against him, it would always stand between them.
Pavlik isn’t like that.
Rather than killing the two men he traded fire with in the souks, he just incapacitated them.
He isn’t on a revenge campaign.
That’s easy to say. You haven’t lost everything.
It would be too simplistic to tell himself that he promised Sandra. Supporting Aaron isn’t the same thing as going into battle with her.
He doesn’t owe her that.
But he owes himself the truth.
Our doubts don’t count, only our actions.
The moment he had entered the Palmeraie into the navigation system, his mind was made up.
*
He has long left the city and the last street lights behind. Sand is blowing across the road in streaks. The headlights pluck white scraps out of the darkness; Pavlik hasn’t seen another car for several minutes. At one point he spots the reflection of a camp fire, camel herders that have settled down for the night.
Then he sees distant lights, dumped in the middle of nowhere.
The Palmeraie welcomes him with a parade of flags. A toothless Berber is squatting beside a guard’s hut. His braces rest against his pointy ribs as he sucks on a watermelon. The oasis was wrested from the desert in the nineties and is now home to the luxury resorts of large hotel chains. Pavlik zips along. The satnav leads him past a golf course and into a residential estate, where some of the plots are so enormous that the villas can’t be seen from the road.
Jansen’s house is large without being swanky. Compound wall, closed gate. Two floors, no light. The opposite side of the road is undeveloped; a palm grove.
Several cars are parked on the street. One of them contains two men. A grey Range Rover. Pavlik can look across without worry as he passes it, as his tinted windows hide him. The guy behind the wheel is an Arab, the other one he can’t make out. There are a hundred reasons for a car to be passing at this hour; provided he doesn’t stop, he is of no interest.
As he drives round the block, he registers another three inconspicuously parked vehicles.
Their positions are straight from the surveillance manual.
Eight men.
Pavlik drives on, doubles back and parks the BMW behind the palm grove. He shoulders his equipment bag and silently disappears into the dark. The knife scar is no longer bothering him. The graze wound stings, but barely impedes his movement. He stops at the edge of the grove. Opposite is the south face of the villa, with the gate.
Pavlik looks around. There are two refuse containers partially covered by palms. He climbs onto one of them. The Rover is thirty metres to his left; for the men inside Pavlik isn’t even a shadow. He takes the night vision goggles out of the bag and takes a closer look at them. He recognizes the one on the passenger side. He’s the supposed tourist who offered to help yesterday, when Aaron was shuffling about in front of the bank. Nordic type, wiry, awake, busy cracking nuts. The other has neck muscles like a wrestler; a real bulldozer.
Pavlik switches to thermal mode and focuses his attention on the villa. On the first floor, he receives the heat signature of a person lying down, probably Layla. She is tossing and turning, wakeful. He changes back to night vision. The front door and the gate have electronic locks. A Smart car and a Mercedes are standing in a carport. He briefly considers attaching a camera to one of the palms, but it might be discovered.
He thinks of Aaron on the terrace at the Djemaa el Fna, the unbelievable moment when she told him what the man had whispered into his phone. That’s better than a camera.
Pavlik reaches into the bag and slides a dummy and two magnetic miniature tracking devices into the magazine of the compressed air rifle. He selects a parked car on the other side of the road. Renault, hundred metres.
Pavlik sends the dummy on its journey. The shot is silent, but the alarm system of the Renault starts to wail when the rubber projectile hits the radiator grille. The men immediately leap out of the Rover. Nutcracker speaks into a walkie-talkie; Bulldozer draws a revolver and runs along the compound wall.
Pavlik fires off the tracking devices. The gentle smack of the magnets as they attach themselves to the number plates of the Smart car and the Mercedes in the carport can’t be heard in the noise. He has placed the GPS trackers right on the digits, only very close inspection would reveal their presence.
In the house, a light comes on upstairs. Pavlik catches sight of a woman’s outline behind the curtains, but he hasn’t got time to look more closely right now.
When Nutcracker runs into the palm grove, Pavlik is already a hundred metres away. He gets into the car and drives southward without having been discovered.
As he cruises along the Circuit de la Palmeraie, the only thing in the rear-view mirror is the moon, a bright disc that rolls out from behind the clouds. Pavlik switches on the radio and finds a station that plays schmaltzy pop songs. All that’s missing is a cigarette and it would be perfect.
16
Finding sleep is impossible. She lies there for an hour, rigid and stiff, as if trapped in an iron lung.
My birthday, I was so disappointed when I had unwrapped my presents, so sad when I went to bed. But then came quiet steps, a package with a bow, a beautiful Starfire 9 mm. His smile. ‘I’ll keep it safe for you, your mother mustn’t know.’
She spends a further hour trying to cry. The few tears she manages to squeeze out are as hard as grit.
She remembers what her father once said: ‘If you’re hurting, buy yourself a pair of shoes that pinch.’ Sometimes an ache can help to take your mind off the pain.
Aaron feels around for her mobile and asks Siri for the time difference to Taiwan. ‘The time in Taipei City, Taiwan, is zero nine hours and twelve minutes.’
Thomas Reimer should have had breakfast by now. She knows his number off by heart.
‘Yes?’ he mumbles sleepily.
‘Jenny Aaron. Did I wake you up?’
‘No problem at all. I have to get up in four hours anyway.’
‘I thought you were in Taiwan?’
‘Until yesterday. Now I’m in Nairobi.’
‘I’m sorry. We can talk another time.’
‘I’ll have room service bring me a coffee, then I’ll call you back.’
Her telephone number is withheld, so she gives it to him.
Aaron lights a cigarette, counts the seconds. She can’t concentrate, starts again, and again and again, and only ever makes it to ten.
Finally the mobile rings.
‘What can I help you with?’ Reimer asks.
‘For several months now, I’ve had specific symptoms. I wanted to tell you about them in Sweden, but it was all too much that evening.’
‘What symptoms?’
‘I almost constantly have cold hands and feet. I’m never thirsty, and I have a low pain barrier.’
‘Do you react to weather changes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Vibration sensitivity?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do smells sometimes make you nauseous?’
‘Yes again.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Am I ill?’
‘It’s the Flammer syndrome.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You have an unusual name. Are you related to Jörg Aaron?’
‘He was my father.’
‘Thought so. Flammer mainly affects women of your age who are extremely ambitious, overexert themselves to the point of exhaustion and have a compulsion to be in control. Those affected are often unable to process grief and pain, and have a tendency to try to struggle through it alone. The super-ego dominance plays an important role. Given who your father was, I don’t need to ask who shaped your super-ego.’
‘Is that all you can offer? Kitchen sink psychology?’ she asks sharply. ‘How disappointing.’
‘Direct hit?’ he replies.
Angry silence.
‘Have you tried to live up to his expectations all your life?’ he continues.
‘Given how little you know me, you’re surprisingly quick to pass judgement.’
‘And you denounced me as a phoney in record time.’
‘I just wanted to know whether I’m ill.’
‘No, you’re not. The Flammer syndrome is an indication of the permanent stress you’re under.’
‘Thank you. I’m sorry that I got you out of bed,’ she says frostily and is about to hang up.
‘My secretary has told me that you haven’t registered for the therapy,’ she hears Reimer say. ‘I’m wondering why.’
‘Something came up.’
‘I see. One has to set priorities,’ he drily replies.
‘I’m on a mission in Morocco.’
‘Have you noticed any changes over the last few days?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘I’ll take that as a yes.’
Reluctantly she says: ‘It used to take about half an hour before my eyes responded to light again. But today it’s been pitch black since lunchtime.’
‘Are we talking adrenalin?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve tried to explain to you that adrenalin is counter-productive. You have to reduce your exposure to it.’
‘If you jump in the water, you get wet.’
‘And if you don’t climb out, you stay wet.’
Her heartbeat is taking her on a merry-go-round.
‘Imagine you’re flying over Amsterdam and you see lots of large and small canals. That’s your blood circulation. The aorta, arteries and veins are the main channels, they don’t care if they are flooded with stress hormones. Unfortunately, your retina and your brain are full of very delicate capillaries, which are extremely sensitive to stress. It causes the cells to go into hibernation.’
‘For how long?’
‘Come on, you’re an intelligent woman.’
The merry-go-round is spinning so fast she feels dizzy.
‘Stress is a pick-pocket, but adrenalin is a killer. For a while, your cells can protect themselves against it by shutting down. That’s what I mean by hibernation. The Flammer syndrome is an indication that your blood supply is dysregulated. That’s why you permanently have cold hands and feet. The adrenalin is causing a spasm in your cerebral vessels, which is cutting off the oxygen supply to the cells. If it continues for too long, the cells die off. That’s permanent. I don’t know whether my therapy would be successful with you. But I know with absolute certainty that you will never be able to see again if you carry on the way you have been.’
She hears the echo of a drop thundering into the bathroom basin.
The dynamo on a bicycle whirs past outside.
A key jingles down in the lobby.
Continental plates are shifting under the Atlantic.
All she keeps thinking is: Never Never Never.
Reimer asks: ‘Are you still there?’
‘That’s bullshit. That would mean everyone who’s under permanent stress would go blind,’ she blurts out.
‘People deal with it differently. Somebody who has been on an adventure trip down the Amazon, during which he was nearly strangled by an anaconda, had to flee from natives with blowpipes and survived a crocodile attack, isn’t going to get in a lather when he comes back and finds there’s a scratch on his car. His neighbour, who fights his way through the urban jungle of Berlin every day, also finds a scratch in the paintwork. And this man goes berserk.’
‘I’m more the Amazon type.’
‘No, you’re not. You’ve snapped at me twice, just in the course of this phone call. You’re a ticking bomb. It depends on how often a person is exposed to adrenalin, for how long, over what time span and, most importantly, how they dispel it. You’ve been living at the limit for a long time, without compensating for it, Ms Aaron. Now it’s coming back to roost.’
‘For five years I was totally blind, and then suddenly I was able to differentiate between light and dark. That means something in me has improved, not worsened.’
‘There are spontaneous recoveries. We’re a long way from knowing everything about the human brain. Sometimes coma patients wake up after years. We have to acknowledge that. It doesn’t mean that the laws of biology are erased.’
‘I can’t pick and choose my stress levels right now.’
‘I’ve never had a patient for whom the terms we use have such a different meaning. It’s as though we have insufficient command of each other’s language. You speak of stress and mean adrenalin. I speak of meditation and you of combat training. It’s about time you find out who you are. When you’re on your deathbed, it won’t matter whether you were able to see or not, only what kind of person you were.’
‘There’s something I have to see through,’ she whispers. ‘After that I’ll be all yours. You can ask of me whatever you want. If the therapy involves standing naked on one leg in the pedestrian zone all night, then that’s what I’ll do.’
‘What I expect of you isn’t important. What do you expect of yourself?’
‘You said that my visual centre is able to protect itself against the adrenalin for a certain amount of time. How long for?’
‘Ms Aaron—’
‘Please!’
Reimer takes a deep breath. ‘I’m not going to give you an exact figure. That would be unscientific. And you would count the minutes.’
‘How could I prevent this spasm?’
‘No doctor in the world would support you in doing that.’
‘You’re not a doctor. The doctors have given up on me.’
It feels like his silence will never end. Then he grumbles: ‘An endothelin blocker would improve the blood flow and relax the blood vessels.’
‘Is it sold as a medicine?’
‘Yes. For the treatment of epilepsy, for example.’
‘What is it called?’
‘Endothelinac. It has strong side-effects. Headaches, mood swings, tiredness, vertigo.’
‘Sounds as though I’ve been swallowing it for years. What dose do I have to take?’
‘There’s no way I’m going to tell you that. When are you coming back to Germany?’
‘I don’t know.’
She wants to cry.
She wants to so badly.
‘I should turn you down as a patient. You ride roughshod over everything that would be conducive to a successful therapy.’
Her heart is pushing against her cold chest.
‘And are you going to?’
‘Take care, Ms Aaron.’ Reimer ends the call.
Minute after minute she waits in vain for tears.
She capitulates, goes into the bathroom to wash her face with cold water and hears the door.
Pavlik pokes his head in.
He can see something is up, but he doesn’t ask.
‘And?’
‘The villa is guarded like Fort Knox. Eight men outside. I’ve marked Layla’s two cars.’
‘Are they her guys?’
‘They’d be on the premises if they were.’
‘Does she know about them?’ she asks.
‘Probably.’
‘Did you see her?’
‘For a second, behind the curtain. It looks like she’s alone in the house.’ He runs his hand over her hair. ‘It’s going to be a long day. Even fireflies need to sleep sometime.’
*
Ten words that Aaron loves:
wistful
smarty-pants
shenanigans
crux
sunset
fiddlesticks
clean
firefly
woebegone
sweet-pea
*
She’s been listening to Pavlik’s quiet breathing for an eternity. Now he’s mumbling something in his sleep, incomprehensible, but gentle, without fear. Who is he talking to? Perhaps he’s in a place where the dead console the living. Aaron wishes she could slip into his dream.
I speak of meditation and you of combat training.
It’s not that she doesn’t know how to do it.
It’s just that it’s been a while.
Aaron imagines walking through a museum where the world’s most complicated paintings are on display. Dalí’s Galatea of the Spheres, Berlin Linocut by Mark Webber, Jackson Pollock’s The She-Wolf, Giorgio Vasari’s Battle of Marciano; the big commentators. She stops in front of a Hieronymus Bosch.
The Wrath of God.
She studies the painting, then fades it out.
Aaron pictures herself in front of a white canvas and starts to fill it with the motifs of the painting: the burning palace, the winged two-horn rhino, the archangel on the mount of perdition, the waterspout made of gilded masks, the Cardinal with the tongues of fire, the Medusa in the mirror and the man without a face, the amorous couple with hair of locusts, the cat playing with a severed hand.
She contemplates her work. She sees that something isn’t right and ponders what it is. The waterspout. It belongs on the right, next to the beautiful woman in the cage of thorns, the dragon fish and the one-legged executioner.
The cat winks at her. ‘See, you’re dreaming already.’
I’m not.
‘You are.’
*
The water pouring out the spout is cool and fresh. Aaron quenches her thirst and looks across the harbour to the blue timber house, which is as one with the blue firmament and the blue sea.
Pavlik is standing on the jetty.
But he says: ‘You’re not here for me.’
She turns and sees her father. ‘I was beginning to think you’d stood me up,’ he tells her. ‘Not that I was bored. We’re never bored here.’ His eyes laugh sadly; seagulls fly out of his Havana and up into the sky.
