Private Berlin (Private 5)

“You can and will if you want any chance at a judge giving you leniency.”

Perfecta nodded but went hesitantly to the door and opened it, saying, “Maxim! You’re early! I only just—”

The Russian nightclub owner smacked her in the face so hard she stumbled backward and crashed to the hotel room floor. “You whore!” he seethed, kicking the door shut behind him. “You stupid Brazilian whore!”

“What, Maxim?” Perfecta cried, cowering from him. “What did I do?”

“Do?” he shouted. “Your husband played brilliantly this afternoon, and I lost millions on the spread! Millions!”

With that Pavel threw himself on her, got his hands around her neck, and began to choke her.

“Now!” Morgan said.

Agent Johansson burst through the door into the next room, gun drawn, yelling, “BKA! German Federal Police!”

He grabbed the nightclub owner by the collar and swung him up and around and slammed him against the wall. “You’re under arrest.”

“For what?” Pavel managed to demand.

“Assault, to start,” Johansson said, snapping the handcuffs on. “Fraud. Conspiracy. Attempted murder. There will be other charges, I’m sure.”

“Like four counts of premeditated murder,” Morgan said as Johansson spun Pavel around and Brecht helped Perfecta up from the floor.

Pavel looked at her and Morgan with contempt. “I’ve never killed anyone.”

“That right?” Brecht said. “Where have you been the last few days? Take a trip to Frankfurt? Spend some time with Greta Amsel, Herr Falk?”

“Falk?” the nightclub owner said. “Frankfurt? I don’t know any Greta.”

“Then where have you been since we saw you last?” Morgan demanded.

Pavel hesitated and then shrugged, saying, “I have an ironclad alibi. I was with my lover, my real lover. His name is Alex. He lives in Vienna.”

“Alex?” Perfecta asked, incredulous. “You said you were straight.”

The nightclub owner laughed at her. “And you’re dumber than I thought. I own a drag-queen club for God’s sake.”

CHAPTER 110

FORTY MINUTES LATER, as the sun began to set, Katharina Doruk wandered off Oranienburger Strasse into Tacheles. She walked through the art collective’s archway, which led to the large outdoor art area behind the building. The dusk throbbed with a blend of hip-hop and techno and glowed like a movie set.

Spotlights were trained on the opening of Rudy Krüger’s Rude, Rot, Riot exhibition, which had attracted a crowd of anarchists, punks, street people, artists, musicians, poets, and other assorted Berliners who were drinking heavily from an open bar.

Katharina Doruk spotted the man of the hour, dressed entirely in black, standing with his arm around his “student” Tanya. He was holding a beer bottle and shaking hands with an admirer who had a fluorescent green mohawk and tiny skulls on chains hanging from his pierced nose.

Rudy Krüger spotted Doruk and grimaced when she came up to him after the mohawk man moved on. “Why are you here?” he asked caustically. “I’m not talking to you or anyone. You and Kripo let Hermann go, and now he’s shutting me out of planning for her funeral!”

“I work for Private—letting your stepfather go wasn’t my call, and I can’t control his actions either,” Doruk said. “I came to support your opening. I figured you could use it. But I see you’ve got more than enough, and I’m not wanted here, so I’ll go.”

Tanya frowned and squeezed him around the waist. “Rude, be nice. She’s just trying to help.” Doruk noticed then that Tanya was wearing a black leather jacket that had to have cost at least €1,500. It made Doruk more confident.

“Okay, all right, I’m an asshole sometimes,” Rudy Krüger said. “I’m sorry.”

“Apology acc

epted,” Doruk said. “Quite the bash.”

He shrugged. “One thing I learned from Hermann, you want to be known, you better yell a lot. Want a beer?”