Their situation, Buslenko explained, was like two hunters in the forest at the same time. It was up to Buslenko, Sarapenko and Maria to make sure they got to the game before the BKA Federal Crime Bureau, and without detection. All he wanted the access codes for was to pinpoint where the other hunter lay hidden in the forest. Maria knew it was only a matter of time before Buslenko became more insistent.

It was on the third day of sitting at the monitors that Maria noticed a huge black Lexus pull up at the villa’s gates. It was admitted immediately. Buslenko’s surveillance camera was set up so far from the house that it was difficult to see clearly the men who got out of the vehicle. But the final figure sent a chill through Maria.

‘Olga!’

Sarapenko ran over. ‘What is it?’

‘Him …’ Maria felt her throat tighten, as if the name would choke her if she said it out loud. ‘It’s him.’

‘How can you tell? It’s just a shape from this distance.’

‘That’s him, I know it. The last time I saw him he was just a shape in the distance, like now, only then he was running across a field. Where’s Buslenko?’

‘He’s collecting some stuff. Our contact here … it’s best if you don’t know.’

‘Get hold of him on his cellphone. Tell him we’ve found our target and he is in Molokov’s place right now.’ Maria watched the figure on the monitor. At last. At last she had him in her sights. It gave her an enormous sense of power to know that she was watching him and he was unaware of her observation. The dark, indistinct figure whose identity Maria knew with absolute certainty turned to speak to one of his heavies, then disappeared into the villa.

Maria watched with a cold, hard expression of violent hatred as Vasyl Vitrenko disappeared from view.

‘Now,’ she said in a voice not much louder than a whisper. ‘Now I’ve got you.’

3.

The television flickered mutely in the corner of the hotel room. A row of Funkenmariechen dancing girls in red-and-white microskirted versions of eighteenth-century Prussian military uniforms, complete with tri-cornered hats, performed a clumpily synchronised chorus-line high kick to unheard music. In the background the Elferrat, the Karneval Council of Eleven, presided with forced jollity over the proceedings. Karneval was beginning to build up to its Rose Monday climax. Fabel lay on his hotel bed, gazed blankly at the screen and reflected on the fact that the Karneval Cannibal too was probably building up for showtime on Women’s Karneval Night. Fabel had just finished talking to Susanne on the phone; it hadn’t gone well. After he had been unable to give her a clear idea about when he’d be back in Hamburg, they had fallen into a silence. Susanne had ended it by saying she would talk to him whenever he got back and had then hung up.