A Shadow Falls Read online

  A SHADOW FALLS

  Andreas Pflüger

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  About A Shadow Falls

  Sometimes the only way to fight your enemy is to fall into his trap…

  Five years ago, Jenny Aaron was a covert ops agent working for a discreet body known as the Department. Then a shot to the head left her blind and ended her career with the police.

  Four weeks ago, Aaron finally killed the psychopath who stole her sight. Ludger Holm hunted her with a vicious determination but, even in the dark, Aaron fought back.

  Now, Aaron has learnt that Holm left her two billion dollars. She knows it’s a trap. Holm would have been planning this for years. But if Aaron is ever going to find peace, she must play his game to the bitter end.

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About A Shadow Falls

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  A note on German police and politics

  Rome

  Barcelona

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Wiesbaden

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Berlin

  Avignon

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  The Real Enemy

  Afterword

  About Andreas Pflüger

  The Jenny Aaron Thrillers

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  For the one

  Happiness makes us blind

  But pain enables us to see

  A note on German police and politics

  The Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA, is the German Federal Criminal Police Office, the federal investigative police agency directly subordinate to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, and based in Wiesbaden in the west of the country, with a second large base in Berlin. The agency coordinates cooperation between the federation and state police forces, and focuses on cases of international organized crime and those involving terrorism and national security.

  The Landeskriminalamt, or LKA, is the State Criminal Police Office, the independent law enforcement agency in most German states, analysing police intelligence from home and abroad and investigating serious crimes such as drug trafficking and terrorist offences.

  The Interior Ministers’ Conference – Ständige Konferenz der Innenminister und Senatoren der Länder, also known as the Innenministerkonferenz – is a regular conference on law enforcement issues of the Interior Ministers of the various German states.

  Rome

  Ten years ago

  She imagined the man for whom she might have to die to be taller. As she steps out of the Grand Hyatt Berlin and into the drizzle, she sees him leaning against the James Dean Porsche, on his face a smile like a postcard from the South. She walks towards him, knows that he will kiss her. His lips are cool against her cheek. He smells of a clean shave and the kind of confidence that doesn’t need cologne. The second longer that he holds her in his arms betrays his surprise at how beautiful she is. That is compliment enough for her.

  Casually, as if they were just out for a spin, he drives to the airport and they talk like two people who haven’t seen each other for weeks because they are both terribly busy and she lives in Rotterdam. For an Irishman, his German is impressive. And the charming way in which he fails on the umlauts makes it perfect. He calls her Sarah, as her cover story dictates; he’s never heard the name Jenny Aaron.

  They know that every word is being recorded.

  Aaron tells him about a business lunch with a promising Berlin sculptor, whom she would like to engage for her internet auction house. As they cross Checkpoint Charlie he passes on greetings from a friend, Benjamin, who thought it was a pity that she couldn’t join them yesterday evening. She reapplies her lipstick and checks in the mirror to see if they are being followed.

  BMW, 7 Series. Two men. Pretty close behind.

  On the Kochstrasse, the Porsche speeds up.

  ‘Honey, please drive a bit slower, I’ve got a headache.’

  ‘Sorry, darling.’

  Reassured, she sees the BMW overtake them.

  With a yawn, he mentions that he didn’t get to bed until one, had five hours before the alarm went off, one whisky too many, which was Benjamin’s fault of course. Today it’s been meeting after meeting, now he feels like a boxer in the final round. Yet his glacier-grey eyes shine as if he’d just climbed out of the pool, totally relaxed after his fifty lengths.

  Aaron reckons he slept better than her.

  Even though Leon Keyes has every reason to be afraid.

  By the time he was in his mid-thirties, he was already a partner in Dublin’s leading law firm. He wanted more. Keyes went to Singapore and learnt to print money. When he settled in Berlin with his own corporate law firm, he had already made his fortune.

  He’s a bachelor, jogs round the Grunewaldsee three times every morning, puts in eighty hours a week in a glass tower in the Friedrichstrasse, likes linguini with salsiccia from the best Italian on the Gendarmenmarkt, and had no idea that his phone calls were being tapped by the BKA, Germany’s Federal Office of Criminal Investigation.

  They’d found out that he was hiding a client’s illegal funds in offshore companies on Antigua. There are two options in such cases – arrest, or what is known in BKA terms as a solid investment: wait and bank on the likelihood that a smart guy like Keyes will sooner or later enter in his diary an appointment with one of the top players.

  Pay-day came at the end of June. Keyes received a call from Italy. And the name of the man who wanted to meet with him was so big that the BKA Commissioner got straight on the phone to the Federal Minister of the Interior.

  Matteo Varga.

  Capo dei capi of the Camorra. On the wanted list of dozens of countries.

  He invited Leon Keyes to Rome for the weekend, to discuss a business opportunity.

  Further details to follow.

  Of course Keyes knew who he was dealing with. To his credit, he did ask for a little time to consider. Shortly after the call, BKA investigators turned up at his office and put it to him that his life as he knew it was over. The pencil Keyes was holding in his hand broke. That was the only display of emotion he permitted himself.

  *

  As they pass behind Platz der Luftbrücke and drive onto the urban motorway, Aaron checks her make-up again. The mirror tells her they aren’t being followed. But that doesn’t mean anything.

  Keyes keeps strictly to the speed limit, and she feigns delight when he says: ‘Haven’t you always wanted to see the Rolling Stones live? They’re playing at the Waldbühne next Friday; I’ve been given backstage tickets.’

  This shows he’s got a firm grasp on their relati
onship story. How they met. (A cocktail bar in Berlin, last year.) Whether he minds that she smokes. (Likes it.) What films they enjoy. (Hitchcock, Scorsese, Fincher.) Where they spent their one-week holiday. (Palm Island, The Grenadines.) Shared friends. (Three.) How close they are. (As close as two people for whom work is better than sex.) Does she like operas? (No.) Has she ever been to Rome? (Many times; she loves everything that is made of light.) What style is her Rotterdam penthouse with harbour view furnished in? (Bauhaus.) Does she sleep naked? (Pyjamas.)

  A few more details; but not too much, otherwise one gets bogged down. Most of it is close to the truth. A completely fictitious cover story has no life, appears contrived.

  Aaron splits her internal RAM into three parts, one that continuously scans their surroundings and analyses every car, one that chats to Keyes in a seemingly relaxed manner and one that memorizes his dossier.

  The BKA had handed him the bill for his little misdemeanour in Antigua. He could either work with them or be remanded in custody awaiting trial.

  Keyes decided to hang on to his Porsche for now.

  In Rome, Varga met him at his town villa and said that he wanted to get into the German gas business; a joint venture with the Russian Danilowskaja Mafia, which was going to be in charge of bringing the Gazprom managers to heel. Varga needed a fixer who would establish contact with the right people. Keyes’ firm secures Gazprom’s German investments; he knows everyone who’s important to Varga and the Danilowskaja.

  He has since been to the Italian capital three times, and once to Naples. He has delivered a non-stop stream of information to the BKA. Most recently, that Varga is planning to fly to Norilsk in October to seal the deal with the head of the Danilowskaja. The BKA told their Moscow liaison officer to share this information with the Russian secret service, who in turn promptly issued an arrest warrant.

  Everything was going like clockwork.

  Until two weeks ago, when BKA investigators found a bugging device in Keyes’ Porsche that wasn’t from them.

  Varga.

  This could mean two things: either he liked to keep his associates on a short leash, or he suspected something. The BKA much preferred the short leash theory.

  The following day, Varga invited Keyes for the fifth time.

  Again to Rome. For today.

  Aaron had read the transcript of the phone conversation. ‘A relaxed dinner among friends,’ said Varga. ‘Bring your wife or your girlfriend along – assuming you’re not gay.’

  Though there’s nothing noted down in the file, Aaron knows what they were agonizing over at the BKA.

  Since discovering the bug, they couldn’t rule out that the Capo knew who his new associate was running back to. In which case Rome was Keyes’ death sentence. But if Varga was unsuspecting, cancelling would be fatal. He would become wary and wouldn’t fly to Siberia.

  They had to protect Keyes in Rome. But how? The BKA couldn’t go there without making an official request to the Italians. The chance of this being successful was equal to zero, and in any case, the information would be fed straight to Varga.

  The BKA Commissioner was running out of options.

  This is where the Department came in.

  It isn’t part of the BKA, it is autonomous; Germany’s smallest and most secret organization. Forty men and one woman take on assignments that are too risky for everyone else. As Aaron’s boss Lissek put it: ‘We’re the bad bank of the German police.’

  BKA Commissioner Palmer took Lissek for a long walk along the river Spree. Unofficially of course – if necessary Palmer could feign innocence.

  Lissek took it in his stride. Though he did record the conversation, ‘just to be on the safe side,’ as he later revealed.

  Keyes is patted down for weapons before each meeting with the Capo, so he has to be accompanied by someone who is a weapon in themselves.

  Aaron.

  *

  As they glide along the urban motorway, she loads Varga’s dossier into her working memory. The dossier that she knows off by heart because Leon Keyes’ life might depend on it.

  And her own.

  Varga started out as a run-around in his Camorra clan and cold-bloodedly fought his way out of Naples’ Quartieri Spagnoli, all the way to the top. Like his predecessor, he initially lived off the weapons trade. Then he decided to specialize in a business that is even more profitable, and less risky too: the disposal of toxic waste. He set up shipping companies with front men and ships that operate under flags such as Liberia, Tonga or Tuvalu. Multinational corporations employ Varga to dispose of old pesticides, chemical waste, asbestos and radioactive sludge, and they don’t want to know where the muck ends up. When even puppet regimes no longer wanted to accept the cargo, Varga took to sinking countless ships across the world’s oceans. He rakes in the cash for the passage and the fictitious disposal, and finishes up by collecting the insurance sum. The environmental catastrophes don’t bother him in the least.

  Last year, Varga decided to let a freighter go down near Heligoland, polluting a body of water the size of Slovenia. Understandably, the Russians are after him too. The chemical disaster in the Bering Strait, courtesy of Varga, is just two years back.

  There were several European requests for his extradition, but witnesses disappeared in mysterious ways or suffered fatal accidents. Although there is speculation that Varga has let ships from his fleet go down off the Riviera coast, the Italian government is keeping shtum. If the information were to reach the public, it would spell disaster for seaside tourism in one of the country’s most idyllic regions. Varga controls two construction firms which are raising one hotel complex after the other along that stretch of coast. A former justice minister is a member of the board. The Italian prime minister has been known to have dinner with Varga.

  Varga is untouchable.

  *

  They are on the slip road to the airport. Aaron can smell the dubbing on the leather seats of the immaculately restored silver 356 Speedster. She taps a Marlboro out of the case and christens the ashtray. It’s sacrilege. But Leon Keyes just smiles and, with that slight rasp in the voice that she likes so much in men, he says: ‘That was always missing.’

  She imagines him asking for her phone number. Aaron would bet anything that he’d casually scribble it onto the lily-white sun visor.

  At Schönefeld airport they get into Varga’s jet. For two hours, they sit in cream-coloured seats made of goatskin leather, telling each other stories of which not a single word is true and drinking still water out of crystal glasses with ice cubes.

  Keyes has cooperated with the BKA in every way. He has placed himself in the hands of a man who orders contract killings as though he was sending someone to the bakery. He is a textbook informant.

  But the whole time, Aaron is thinking: What are you concealing?

  *

  Rome Fiumicino is a shower of blazing light. On the tarmac, she sees Varga’s chauffeur leaning against a Daimler. Around a hundred kilos, she estimates, and well trained. When he goes to take Aaron’s travel bag, she pretends to let it slip from her hand and he catches it five centimetres from the ground.

  Along the motorway, fields lay creased like the abandoned bathing towels of giants. Grass bakes in the sun. It has been a long summer, and now, in mid September, every stone lies parched. The air conditioning of the luxury limousine cools Aaron’s first wave of adrenalin. As yet it’s no more than a twitch in her heart. But she already knows what lurks behind.

  Some cities are there all of a sudden, jumping up in front of the windscreen, like Hong Kong or New York. Rome has villas and antique ruins dotted here and there, then social housing that sprawls out into the countryside. Finally the car glides over boulevards lined with dusky pines, Aaron’s favourite trees.

  She hears Pavlik’s voice through the earbud. ‘Hi, beautiful.’

  Of course, Fricke has to put his oar in. ‘Nice rags. I bet you twenty Euros that Keyes will be needing a cold shower very soon.’


  ‘Your chauffeur is already being missed in the zoo,’ comments Nowak.

  A faint giggle tells her that Vesper is also online. He keeps quiet as usual. When he once put more than five words in a row, they teased him with ‘blabbermouth’ for days.

  Together with Aaron these men form the team. In the Department, they call it a ‘small set’. The others travelled here ahead of her in two cars. They couldn’t take the plane because of the weapons. Pavlik is the marksman and has picked a quiet nook from where he has Varga’s villa in his sights. He will have been lying in position for some time, observing the weather conditions, familiarizing himself with the wind speeds and thermals. She knows where he is and smiles involuntarily.

  Three days ago, they had brooded over the high-resolution images from a Federal Intelligence Service satellite, and Pavlik had pointed to a spot. ‘Hey, you’re not there as a tourist,’ Fricke teased.

  Pavlik acted hurt. ‘You’re just jealous.’

  It’s close to three hundred metres from there to the villa. No distance for him. They had considered using a drone, to get a view of the garden. But the risk of it being discovered is too great. In any case, the meal will take place in the house. According to Keyes, Varga hates the heat and spends almost all of his time inside, where the temperature is a constant twenty degrees.

  An adjacent building probably contains eight bodyguards. Perhaps ten. Varga likes his peace and makes a point of keeping the bodyguards out of view.

  No reason to relax. Two or three of his best men will be in striking distance this evening.

  ‘We’ll do it old school,’ Pavlik had said.

  The dining room faces the road. Two windows are situated in a clear line of fire, the others are hidden by cypresses. But they can disregard that. Keyes has told them that Varga always sits at the top left end of the large table, so Pavlik will easily be able to see him. He uses special ammunition he has cast himself, with a tungsten carbide core. This will allow him to shoot through the armoured glass if necessary and eliminate Varga. Even Marcus Aurelius knew that rule: if you want to defeat an army, kill the leader.