Tretjak Read online

  TRETJAK

  MAX LANDORFF

  translated by

  Baida Dar

  Originally published as: Der Regler by Max Landorff

  © S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 2011

  First published in English in the United Kingdom in 2013 by

  HAUS PUBLISHING LTD

  70 Cadogan Place, London SW1X 9AH

  www.hauspublishing.com

  English translation copyright © Baida Dar 2013

  ebook ISBN 978-1-908323-35-4

  A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library

  All rights reserved.

  Prologue

  He looked across the smooth, lead-grey surface of the lake and watched the ship come towards him, bow first. The invisible line along which she had been approaching for the past few minutes stood exactly perpendicular to the bench he was sitting on. It was a Wednesday in October, the first Wednesday in October to be precise, and it was a quarter past six in the evening. Apart from him and the employees of the ferry line, nobody was awaiting the arrival of the ship, which was called Alpino and which criss-crossed the Lago Maggiore on a regular schedule year-in year-out. In the summer, sometimes she was so packed with tourists and lay so low in the water that it looked like a refugee boat, pounding the water heavily. In this season, however, she appeared to be fast and elegant, and one could make out her white colour, white with dark blue lines at the side and around the doors and windows.

  At the pier, two round signs indicated the arrival times of the next two ferries, one from Cannobio and the other from Luino: they looked like big white clocks with red arms on the dials, which were moved by the ferrymen – both showed these ferries were due at five past six. The sun had already set behind the mountains and the lake lay in shadow. The bow of the Alpino had appeared from the mist which had descended onto the water’s surface. The ferry was late.

  In the last few days, the weather had changed. The warm autumn had become a harbinger of winter. Up on the mountains the first snow had fallen, and down below freezing cold water flowed into the lake. Gabriel Tretjak wore a black cashmere coat and a dark grey scarf. He stood up, walked a few steps along the pier and stood next to the signs, his hands in his pockets. He was not wearing gloves, but the metallic surface of the gun in his right pocket felt warm.

  In his line of business one could not avoid occasionally threatening people, and he had got himself into some quite dangerous situations. On principle, however, he did not use any weapons. Never. He did not even own one. However, this was something else. Never in his life had he been so afraid of anything as he was of the events which were about to unfold in the next few minutes on this pier.

  The Alpino swung around and moored alongside the pier. An aluminium landing bridge was put across to let the passengers come ashore. There were only three of them. The first one was a tall man, who was holding a young boy with one hand and the child’s yellow bicycle with the other. Then she came ashore. She was smaller than he remembered, somehow more fragile. The brown woollen coat, which she had wrapped around her, seemed a tad too big, the cap made her face look gaunt.

  When she reached him she put down her bag on the wooden planks, looked up at him and asked in an almost embarrassed way: ‘Did you wait long?’

  He nodded. ‘Twenty years.’

  She threw him a strange glance. He picked up her bag from the ground and headed into town. She walked beside him.

  ‘There is only this one hotel in town,’ she said and pointed at the cream-coloured building ahead. ‘What is it like?’

  ‘Not up to your usual standard,’ he replied, ‘but alright.’

  By the time the Alpino set off again, to cross the lake in the direction of Cannobio, they had reached the entrance to the hotel. In golden letters it said Torre Imperial on the glass door. And below were painted three stars.

  PART 1

  THE DECEPTION

  First Day

  11 May

  Galle, Sri Lanka, 7.30pm

  Gabriel Tretjak was sitting in a deep English armchair watching the waiter fixing him a G&T. The steward was dressed properly: black trousers, black jacket and a neatly buttoned white shirt. He was quite old and something about him – maybe his nose, slightly squashed and pushed upwards – reminded Tretjak of the rhinoceros he had observed in the Hellabrunn Zoo. The director of the zoo had been blackmailed by one of the keepers and had hired Tretjak to put an end to the unfortunate business, which concerned the administration of illegal drugs to exotic animals. Tretjak had waited next to the rhinoceros enclosure where the keeper was on duty that day. He loved rituals, so they kept on meeting in the same place from then on, until everything was settled. That is how Tretjak had learnt such a lot about the rhinoceros. They were quite touchy about even the slightest alteration of their environment: they immediately became suspicious and their actions became unpredictable. They had this in common with practically all animals: change spells danger. Gabriel Tretjak knew that it was no different for human beings. With humans, change brought about alertness, something he had often been able to use to his advantage. But compared to the rhinoceros, for human beings the transformation had to be on a larger scale. If only details were altered, if there were only small digressions from business-as-usual, human beings remained docile, good-natured, almost naïve. They misinterpreted and dismissed these details, and only understood their true significance later. Sometimes there were only a few minutes between misinterpretation and the realisation that something was wrong; at other times, decades lay between these two points.

  The waiter asked him whether he would like something to eat. Tretjak declined. He had already made a reservation in the restaurant adjacent to the lobby area for 9pm, where the tables had been laid with white linen.

  Tretjak was pretty sure that the man he was waiting for in the lobby would misinterpret the small change in his daily routine. The small alteration was the fact that his wife had not yet called him. If Tretjak knew the man well enough, he probably had not even noticed that the call had not been made – despite the usual routine on his business trips. Never mind, he would soon find out the significance of this vicissitude.

  Tretjak looked at his watch: it was a quarter to eight. Suddenly he had this ‘feeling’ again, a feeling which he had experienced quite often lately. It was a kind of tiredness, a sense of tedium and over-satiety. In the past, he had enjoyed precisely these moments, the moments of critical importance, the approach of a dramatic turning point in the life of the other, who as yet had no idea what was to happen to him. But for a few weeks now he had caught himself wishing that these moments would pass without any interference.

  Tretjak was sitting with his G&T in the lobby of the New Oriental Hotel in Galle, a harbour town in the south west of Sri Lanka. An eleven-hour flight lay behind him – Lufthansa LH 2016 from Munich to Colombo – as well as a four-hour car ride. The short, silent driver of the Peugeot had smoothly negotiated huge potholes, donkey carts and swarms of tuk-tuks, as well as seriously dodgy lorries. In a few hours time the same driver would take him back the same way, to the airport in Colombo where he would board flight LH 2017, which would take off for Munich at sunrise. Tretjak was here only for this one evening – to tear a human being out of his lethargy.

  It was hot in the lobby. The old wooden ceiling fans were going round and round rather drowsily. The one directly above the black piano in the left corner of the lobby, where the bar was located, was squeaking. A group of three Englishmen was sitting there, each with a cocktail in front of him, at times emitting short bursts of a strange hissing noise as one of them cracked a joke.

  At this moment a brawny man in khaki trousers and a green Ralph Lauren polo shirt came through the wide open entrance door. He was sweati
ng, his face was flushed, and he was wearing aviator sunglasses. He purposefully strutted towards the reception and said in a deep voice and with a slight German accent: ‘Room Number Seven, please.’

  Tretjak got up and stood behind him, slightly to his side, at a distance of about two metres. ‘Congratulations, Mr Schwarz,’ he said. ‘Number Seven is the best room in the hotel.’

  The man turned around, pushed his sunglasses up, and looked at Tretjak with inquisitive blue eyes.

  ‘Are you enjoying your short holiday, Mr Schwarz?’ Tretjak enquired.

  The man was now obviously searching through his memory. Did he know this stranger from somewhere? ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I am,’ he replied in the end, ‘may I ask...’

  ‘We’ve got to talk, Mr Schwartz,’ Tretjak interrupted. ‘I’ve booked a table in the restaurant for 9pm.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know...’ The man shook his head. ‘I don’t know you and I have no idea what we should talk about.’

  ‘I beg your pardon. My name is Tretjak. We’ve got to talk about your life, Mr Schwarz. I’ve come here to change it. With your help, of course.’

  The man, whose name was Schwarz and whose life was an open book to Gabriel Tretjak, was losing his patience and becoming indignant. ‘Look, you are mistaking me for someone else. I have no intention of changing my life. And even if I had I wouldn’t talk to you about it.’ An amused twinkle was noticeable in his eyes, a sign that he was regaining his composure. This was a madman he was confronted with, nothing else. ‘You know, this country offers many attractions. I am not one of them. Good evening.’

  With these words he turned to the receptionist, took the brass key for Room Number seven from the counter and was halfway to the staircase on the left when Tretjak spoke: ‘If you can’t work out the deal with Union Carry, you are going to lose your job as CEO. At least, that’s what your Board of Directors says.’

  Schwarz stopped in his tracks and turned around to look at Tretjak.

  ‘Shall we say 9pm?’ Tretjak resumed. ‘And don’t worry. We’ll sort everything out.’ He turned to the receptionist behind the counter: ‘Room Number Five, please.’ Tretjak took his key, smiled at Schwarz – who was still standing there, dumbfounded – and walked past him towards the staircase.

  That went alright, he thought. Schwarz was irritated enough, and in his room he would notice that his wife had not called him and he would call her. Or rather, he would try to call her. This attempt would only increase his irritation, because dialling his wife’s mobile number he would only get the answer, ‘this number is not operational’. And nobody would answer the landline.

  Tretjak went to his room, put down his briefcase, moved the chair to the window, sat down and closed his eyes. The windows of this hotel had no glass in them, only wooden shutters. One could hear the noises from outside, of the chirping insects, of screaming kids. The New Oriental in Galle was an insider’s tip, an old hotel in the English colonial style. The big, dark, wooden four-poster bed was at least two hundred years old. It was covered by a light mosquito net, which came down from the high ceiling all the way to the floor. Tretjak was not going to use the bed. He got up, went to the bathroom and took a long, cool shower.

  Looking into the mirror, he decided he should become fitter. Now, with summer around the corner, he could go for a run again in the mornings, directly from his flat to the Isar, along the river and over Montgelas Bridge, then enter the English Garden and pass by the Haus der Kunst on his way back. Tretjak took pride in keeping his weight in check. He was 44 years old and for the past 25 years he had always worn size 50 suits. There was no trace of grey in his black hair and it would probably stay that way. He had inherited his hair from his mother, and in her whole family there was not a grey strand in sight. Tretjak’s hair was thick and he wore it a bit long. Now it was wet and he combed it back, out of his face.

  He took a new pair of underpants from his briefcase and proceeded to get dressed. A pair of synthetic navy trousers and a long-sleeved beige tee-shirt. He slipped his bare feet into his dark brown slippers. The room was perfumed by freshly-cut papaya, arranged on a flat dish on the table. Tretjak sat down again on the chair at the window and thought about how to start the meeting down in the restaurant. He must not lose the pace which he had set in the lobby, he must keep up the tension. Tretjak decided to go down a tad too late and to use as an excuse: ‘I just had your wife on the phone, Mr Schwarz, and... well, you know her.’

  The success of the mission, he knew from experience, depended on the beginning of the conversation. In this case the matter seemed not to be terribly complicated. It was actually a fairly routine assignment. Tretjak had considered turning it down, since he was in no mood to be bored. But then his client, Melanie Schwarz, had uttered a sentence which had made him smile. And it was because of that sentence that in a few minutes he would taste the ‘Great Curry’, the speciality of the New Oriental’s restaurant. He had pre-ordered the meal so as not to waste any time studying the menu. The Great Curry, it had been explained to him, consisted of numerous small dishes of the most delicate vegetables, meat and fish and an assortment of sauces, which were all already hot and would elicit beads of perspiration from your forehead.

  Melanie Schwarz felt trapped in a life from which she longed to escape but could not. A web of guilty feelings, responsibilities and a lack of courage were holding her back, as was the fear of failure in her new, her own, life. In her youth she had been a starlet with two songs on Top of the Pops: ‘You Are Alone Now’ and ‘Truth Hurts’. But her career had been a short one and soon there was nothing going anymore. She had once reappeared in headlines reporting an alleged suicide attempt and then finally she had disappeared completely from the limelight. Then she met Peter Schwarz, who erected a secure castle around her made out of family and a high standard of living. In the meantime, their grown-up daughter had left home for London where she was studying Dance. Melanie and her husband lived in a fantastic penthouse overlooking the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin and owned a small, restored estate outside Potsdam with a stable attached. Melanie had loved riding even as a child. Peter Schwarz had fulfilled her dream. But now she had a new dream. At the end of their conversation she had stared at the piece of paper on which Tretjak had jotted down his notes and said: ‘I don’t have any money of my own. I can’t pay you.’ Tretjak, who had been tempted to turn down the assignment, had pricked up his ears. He looked at her and observed how she gathered up all her courage to conclude: ‘you’ve got to make my husband pay you for your work.’

  The lentils had been the hottest dish. Even Tretjak, used to hot food from childhood, felt his eyes fill with tears. Schwarz had tasted a morsel and then refused to touch the rest.

  The waiter with the rhinoceros nose was busy cleaning the little dishes off the table. When he had finished, the only things left on the table were a glass carafe filled with mineral water, a scarcely touched bottle of Haut-Médoc and a few glasses.

  ‘Would the gentlemen like to order dessert?’

  Tretjak looked at Schwarz enquiringly.

  Schwarz shook his head. ‘Espresso. A double.’

  Tretjak nodded to the waiter and motioned that he would have the same. Then he reached for his briefcase, which he had placed on the floor next to his chair, put it on his lap and took from it a single sheet of white paper and a dark blue ballpoint pen, placed both in front of him on the table, and returned the briefcase to the floor.

  ‘So she wants to start a new life,’ Schwarz said, more to himself than to Tretjak. ‘But she can’t tell me herself... she needs somebody like you to tell me. How did she find you?’ He looked Tretjak in the eyes. ‘Are you sleeping with her?’

  Tretjak did not bother answering that question and remained silent. He gave Schwarz time. Some people fell apart when they received bad news. Others needed to utter the words, needed to repeat them in order to comprehend. Schwarz belonged to the latter group. He was hurt, one could recognise that much from his face. His hands
were shaking as he poured himself some water. The bull was swaying.

  ‘Spread her wings one more time, well, well... were those Melanie’s words, or did you make them up? A peaceful divorce... a small flat... just a small sum for a fresh start... What kind of start? And is that what we are now going to talk about? What do you hope to gain from all this, if I may ask?’

  The coffee arrived and both men, facing each other, let it grow cold in the cups. The whole restaurant was now empty except for one table in the back corner. The elderly lady sitting there was engrossed in a book. There was a faint clatter of dishes coming from the kitchen, a sound common to every restaurant all over the world at the end of a long day.

  Tretjak was satisfied. Now he only had to clearly explain the rules to this man sitting opposite him in a restaurant in Sri Lanka, who was soon going to disappear from his life again.

  He had to make it clear that there was not going to be any contact with his wife for the time being. That his wife was on holiday and only he, Tretjak, knew where she was. That she would only return when everything had been arranged the way she wanted. One more hour, that was Tretjak’s estimate, and he would step out onto the terrace and beckon the driver.

  At this moment the hotel’s receptionist came to the table. And it was this moment which Tretjak would go over in his mind later, again and again. He had caught sight of the man from the corner of his eye as the man had briskly crossed the lobby, stopped briefly when he reached the restaurant, looked around and then determinedly headed towards them. Tretjak was even convinced that he had seen him hang up the phone at the reception desk before setting off. With hindsight Tretjak knew full well that he had been annoyed at what was bound to be an unnecessary interruption.

  ‘Mr Tretjak, there was a call for you,’ said the receptionist.