Текст книги "Snow Wolf"

Автор книги: Glenn Meade

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So he and his wife had packed their belongings and with a horse and cart donated by a relative had set off with their son for Estonia. What little money Jakob's parents had begged and borrowed went on tickets on a Swedish schooner bound from Tallinn to New York.

It was a difficult winter crossing, made all the harsher because of savage easterly winds. The schooner was buffeted and tossed in twenty-foot swells and in the holds the immigrants suffered the worst. On the fifth day Nadia Masensky went into premature labor.

Stanislas Masensky lost not only a child but a young wife, and when the bodies were buried at sea young Jakob remembered the desolate look on his father's face. The man had loved his young wife deeply, and after her loss he was never the same. A friend of his father's had once told Jakob that the loss of a beautiful young wife was something a man never really got over, and he believed it, watching his father retreat into himself year after year.

Until the Depression came, life had been reasonably good in America for Stanislas and his young son. He had settled in the area of Brooklyn called Brighton Beach, known as Little Russia because of its wave of Russian immigrants who had fled the brutality of the Tsar, Lenin, and Stalin after him, and while Stanislas went out to work on the building sites he found an old babushka to take care of his son.

That first day on Ellis Island, like so many thousands of other immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia, Stanislas Masensky had his name changed to an Anglicized version, Massey.

This was partly because of the immigration clerk's impatience and inability to understand or spell the Polish name, and also because it somehow affirmed Stanilas's belief in a fresh start in life and satisfied an unconscious wish to erase his troubled past.

An only child, young Jakob Massey proved to be an ardent pupil at school, but what appealed to him most was to sit at his father's feet and listen to stories of his Russian homeland. About the assassination of the Tsar Alexander and the countless attempts to establish democracy by students and workers put down mercilessly by a succession of Tsars, long before the revolution was even a gleam in the communists' eyes.

And later he was to learn from the immigrant newspapers how the Reds had moved whole villages to Siberia, killed anyone who got in the way of their lust for power; how millions of small peasant farmers called kulaks had been savagely annihilated because they dared to speak out against Joseph Stalin's agrarian reforms. Whole families brutally wiped out, villages destroyed or deported, millions shot because of one man's lust for power.

When the Depression deepened and Stanislas couldn't find work, in his despair he never blamed America, but the Reds for forcing him to flee his homeland. When it became harder for him to support his son and their lodgings became squalid tenements, he finally moved to a hostel where he and the boy had to line up for soup from a charity kitchen.

For young Jakob, the nadir came one winter's afternoon at the age of sixteen.

He had walked home from school one day to see his once proud father standing on a street corner with a placard on which he had scrawled: "I am good honest carpenter. Please give me job."

To Jakob it was heartrending to see the parent he loved reduced to such humiliation. It was the final straw. That day he made up his mind that he was going to be rich and his father was never going to have to beg for work.

But Stanislas was to die on his forty-fifth birthday, a broken and disillusioned man.

Jakob himself never became rich. And it took him longer than he thought to make something of himself. He found a succession of menial jobs just to keep food in his belly. He earned a degree in languages at night school followed by a year at Yale. All paid for with his own sweat. Then in 1939, much to the surprise of his fellow students, he joined the Army as an officer cadet.

After Pearl Harbor there had been rapid promotion for those who sought it but Massey was more interested in action. Within six months of America entering the war he was based in Switzerland with Allen Dulles's OSS, organizing reconnaissance missions deep into German-occupied territory.

After the war, America soon discovered her former Russian ally to be an enemy.

The wartime American Intelligence had little or no knowledge of the KGB and knew still less what went on behind Soviet borders. In a frenzy to gather intelligence information, growing numbers of immigrant Russians, Poles, young men with a knowledge of Soviet languages an customs-were recruited from the cities and prisoner-of-war camps all over Europe, and the Americans picked their brightest and best officers to train and oversee them.

It seemed a job Massey was curiously fitted to, and so after the war he had remained in Europe, working out of Munich and dispatching agents onto Soviet soil on long-term reconnaissance missions, hoping they could send back detailed information on the alarming postwar Soviet military buildup of the patriots, freebooters and renegades, some of them restless men still thirsting for action after a war that had not provided them with enough.

Former SS with Russian-language skills who were destined to face long terms in prison or, worse, death for war crimes, like the two men being dropped tonight, risked nothing by parachuting into KGB-controlled territory. If they performed their tasks and somehow made it back over the border they were free men with a new identity and a clean slate-at best they prolonged their life; at worst, they forfeited it in the gamble.

Jake Massey ran the Munich station with ruthless efficiency, relative success, and nothing short of hatred for the Soviets, and with an intimate knowledge of their wiles. In Washington, it was acknowledged he was among the best.

Massey heard another distant fog-horn blast the air somewhere out in the drizzling darkness of the lake and looked up.

There was another thing Jake Massey was unaware of that cold January evening as he looked out at the icy waters.

At that moment, less than two thousand miles away in Moscow, the wheels were already turning in a plot that was to consume the next six Weeks of his life and bring the world to the brink of war.

Massey took one last look out at the dark shore, then pulled up his collar against the cold and started the jeep. There was just time to write his monthly report to CIA Headquarters in Washington before bed.

Moscow.

January 13th It was almost 2 A.m. as the Emka sedan and the two Zil trucks trundled out through the massive black gates at the rear of KGB Headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square.

As the vehicles headed south toward the Moscow River, the plain-clothes officer seated in the front passenger seat of the car removed an old silver case from his pocket, flicked it open and selected a cigarette.

Major Yuri Lukin of the KGB 2nd Directorate knew that his task that morning wasn't going to be a pleasant one, and as he sat back in his seat and lit his cigarette he sighed deeply.

He was thirty-two, of medium build, a handsome man with dark hair and a calm, pleasant face. He wore a heavy black overcoat and a gray civilian suit underneath. His left hand from the forearm down was missing, and in its place was an artificial limb, sheathed in a black leather glove.

As Lukin drew on his cigarette he stared out beyond the windshield.

The snow had come early to Moscow the previous November, and now the streets were piled high with thick banks of slush. It seemed to fall incessantly, giving no letup even to the hardened citizens of one of the coldest capitals on earth.

As the convoy passed through the Arbat and headed east along the banks of the frozen Moscow River, Lukin consulted the list of names and addresses on the metal clipboard on his lap. There were nine, all doctors, to be arrested that freezing morning.

He turned briefly to his driver. "We'll take the next left, Pasha."

"As you wish, Major."

The driver, Lieutenant Pasha Kokunko, was a squat Mongolian in his late thirties. His yellow face and muscular, bowlegged body gave the impression of a man who would have looked more at home sitting on a horse on the Mongolian steppes than driving a four-seater Emka sedan.

As Lukin glanced out at the frozen, deserted streets, the passenger sitting alone in the back leaned forward.

"Comrade Major Lukin, may I see the arrest list?"

Captain Boris Vukashin was somewhat younger than Lukin, and had been assigned to his office only a week before. Lukin handed over the clipboard as the interior light in the back flicked on behind him.

Vukashin said after a few moments, "It says here the doctors are all Kremlin physicians. And to judge by the names, at least five are Jewish. It's about time we got firm with these Jews."

Lukin turned around. There was a smirk on Vukashin's face. He had sharp features and a thin, cruel mouth that suggested a brutal manner, and Lukin had taken an instant dislike to the man.

"Six, actually," he replied. "Not that it matters whether they're Jews or not. And for your information, Vukashin, they haven't been tried and found guilty of anything yet."

"My father says that Comrade Stalin believes the eminent doctors are involved in a plot to poison half the Kremlin, and has suspected them for some time."

Lukin blew smoke out into the freezing cab. Vukashin's father was a senior Party official with friends in the Kremlin. Lukin said dismissively, "Your father ought to keep his opinions to himself, at least until the courts have done their work. One mad physician with a grudge I can understand. But nine?

It beggars belief."

Lukin rolled down the window and a blast of freezing air stabbed at his face. As he flicked out the remains of the cigarette and rolled up the window again, Vukashin said frostily, "May I be permitted an observation, Major Lukin?"

"If you must."

"I think your comment was dismissive and insulting to Comrade Stalin. My father was simply repeating what Stalin believes to be true."

Before Lukin could reply, Pasha flicked him an irritated look. "How come we always get the assholes assigned to us?" Vukashin said to Lukin angrily, "Really, Major. This man makes a mockery of my rank. You ought to report him. And if you don't, I will."

"The man's a Mongol. Allowance must be made for that. Do you know anything about the Mongolian race, Vukashin?

Apart from the fact that they were the best fighters the Red Army ever had, they're impossible to discipline."

"I know this one needs to be taught a lesson."

Pasha turned around and glared back at Vukashin. "Why don't you shut the fuck up? You're getting so far up my nose I can feel your fucking boots on my chin."

"That's enough, Lieutenant," Lukin intervened.

The Mongolian was an excellent policeman, a good friend, and totally without fear, but Lukin knew he was wildly undisciplined and quite capable of stopping the car and hauling the captain from the back seat and beating him half to death, despite their difference in rank. Besides, carrying out arrests in the early hours of the morning was always a tense and irritable time, and Vukashin's arrogance didn't help.

Lukin swung around in his seat. "And with respect, Vukashin, I'm in charge here. And my comment was an observation, not a criticism. So why don't you do yourself a favor and just sit back and enjoy the ride."

He turned back and saw Pasha smile faintly.

"Wipe that grin off your face, Lieutenant. Take the next left. We're almost there."

The first address was on the left bank of the Moscow River. It was one of the big old houses from the Tsar's time, converted into apartments, and one of the better areas in Moscow. Street lamps blazed onto the frosty snow and the river was frozen solid.

The cavalcade came to a halt and Lukin climbed out of the Emka. As he lit a cigarette he looked over as Vukashin went to assemble the men. The captain's face looked white with rage.

Lukin had been wrong not to take Vukashin's side but his type irritated him. Arrogant, all polished boots and discipline, and everything done by the book. Lukin saw the men jump down from the backs of the big, sharp-nosed Zil trucks as Pasha came over, rubbing his gloved hands to keep out the cold.

The Mongolian lieutenant snorted. "That bastard's been getting on my nerves all week, Yuri. Can't you get him transferred back to wherever he came from?"

"Impossible for now, I'm afraid. His father arranged his posting. So a word of warning-from now on watch yourself and keep your mouth shut. Are the men ready?"

"Sure."

"OK, let's get this over with."

Lukin crossed to the front door of the apartment block and rang the bell of number eighteen. He saw a light go on behind the frosted glass.

The approach often favored by the KGB was to break down the door of the person being arrested. It immediately put the victim in a state of unease and softened him up for any interrogation. Lukin, however, preferred the civilized approach. See the accused and read him the charge to his face. The first name on the list was Dr. Yakob Rapaport, a pathologist.

A middle-aged woman wearing a dressing gown finally opened the door and peered out. Her hair was covered in a net, curlers underneath. "Yes?"

"My apologies, madam. Is Dr. Rapaport at home?"

Before the woman could reply, Lukin heard a voice in the hallway behind her. "What's wrong, Sarah'@ Who's calling at this unearthly hour?"

The man who appeared had an overcoat thrown loosely over his shoulders. He wore pajamas and his white beard gave him a distinguished look. He put on his glasses and peered out at the trucks and men in the street, then at Lukin.

"Who are you? What is this?"

"Dr. Rapaport?"

"Yes."

"My name is Major Lukin. It is my duty to have to inform you that you are under arrest on the orders of KGB 2nd Directorate. I would be grateful if you would kindly get dressed and come with me. And dress warmly, it's cold outside."

The doctor's face turned chalk white. "There must be some mistake. I have committed no crime. I don't understand."

"Neither do I, Doctor. But I have my orders. So please be so kind as to do as I ask."

The doctor hesitated, and suddenly his wife put a hand to her mouth and her face was a mask of fear as she stared back at Lukin.

"Please ..." the woman pleaded.

"Forgive me, madam," Lukin said as reassuringly as he Could. "Hopefully this is all a misunderstanding. But it's best if your husband comes now."

The doctor put his arm around his wife's shoulder and nodded shakily to Lukin.

"Come inside, Major, and I'll get dressed."

It was almost six when the arrests had been completed.

Most of the physicians on the list had come resignedly, but all in shock and some in protest. One had to be dragged forcibly to the back of a truck. None of the doctors seemed to believe that it was happening to them.

. At the last address in the Nagatino district there was an incident, and it was recorded in the KGB arrest report for that morning. The doctor in question was a widower in his late fifties, and lived alone on the third floor of the apartment block.

Lukin rang the bell several times but after a minute there had been no reply and he saw a curtain flicker in one of the upstairs windows. In exasperation he rang another apartment, and when the woman tenant appeared and saw the KGB men and vehicles outside she was rooted to the spot and started to shake, but Lukin went in past her, followed by Vukashin.

Lukin reached the third floor and pounded on the door of the doctor's apartment. When Vukashin finally kicked it in, they found the man hiding in the bathroom. The doctor had obviously seen the men come to arrest him and was in a state of shock.

Lukin's orders had been to carry out the arrests discreetly and with no fuss, but before he could get to the doctor, Vukashin had crossed to the cowering man and started to lash out with his fists.

"Get up, you Jewish filth! Get up!"

Lukin came up smartly behind Vukashin and hit him hard across the back of the neck, a blow that sent the captain crashing into the wall.

As Vukashin slid down, blood on his face, Pasha came rushing up the stairs to investigate, his pistol drawn.

Lukin barked, "Get the doctor downstairs. Now!"

Pasha did as he was ordered and Lukin dragged the captain to his feet and stared angrily into his face.

"Understand something, Vukashin. You don't ever hit a prisoner while I'm in charge of an arrest. These are people you're dealing with, not animals. Have you got that?" Vukashin glared at Lukin arrogantly but said nothing. A trickle of blood dribbled from his mouth. Pasha came back up the stairs, and as he came into the room Lukin shoved Vukashin aside. "Get this idiot out of my sight before I throw up."

Pasha smiled. "A pleasure."

Lukin left KGB Headquarters well after seven that morning.

Lights were coming on all over Moscow as he drove to 'his home on the eastern end of Kutuzovsky Prospect.

The olive-green BMW 327 Lukin owned had been built in 1940, was still reliable and ran sweetly, and the car was the one worthwhile luxury his KGB officer status allowed.

He parked on the street outside the one-bedroom apartment he and his wife occupied near the Moscow River. It was in a district once favored by Moscow's wealthy merchant class, but now the buildings looked shabby from the outside, the pastelgreen paintwork cracked and peeling, but inside the plumbing and the heating always worked, a minor miracle in Moscow. He climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and let himself in quietly.

The apartment was cold and Nadia was still asleep. He filled an enamel kettle in the tiny kitchen and lit the gas stove to make coffee. As he removed his overcoat and unbuttoned his shirt, he crossed to the window and looked down, resting his forehead against the cold pane of glass.

As Lukin stood there he thought about the arrests that morning.

He had lost his temper with the captain but the arrogant fool deserved it, though no doubt Lukin would receive a reprimand.

He knew several of the doctors on the list by reputation. All respected physicians with no hint of crime in their past. The arrests puzzled him, especially since most of them were Jews. No doubt he would find out eventually why they had been taken to the Lubyanka.

The KGB Headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square which housed the Lubyanka prison was a huge seven-story complex of office blocks that took up the whole northeastern end as far as the top of Karl Marx Prospect. The building was actually a hollow square, with a courtyard in the center, the front and side wings up to the top six floors of which were devoted to the various KGB offices and departments.

And although it contained eight separate directorates, or specialized sections, which dealt with internal and external Soviet security, only four were considered important enough to hold the title Chief Directorate, of which each had a separate and distinct function.

The 2nd Chief Directorate, to which Lukin belonged, was perhaps the most important and largest.

A purely domestic security branch of the KGB, its responsibilities were the most wide-ranging, and included the surveillance of all foreigners and foreign businessmen resident or visiting the Soviet Union, foreign embassies and embassy staff; the hunting down and arrest of Soviet nationals who had fled abroad or escaped from prison camps or who had committed murder or serious crimes; the supervision of artists, actors and actresses; recruiting and controlling informers-, and curbing the black market. And last, but hardly least, the pursuit and capture of enemy agents from the moment they entered Soviet territory.

There was one other noteworthy section in the bowels of the KGB building: the Lubyanka prison itself, a grim maze of torture chambers and windowless cells where Lukin knew the doctors were destined to be sent.

He poured himself hot coffee and spooned in three spoonfuls of sugar. As he went to sit at the kitchen table, the door opened.

Nadia stood there wearing a pale blue dressing gown. Her head of red hair was down around her shoulders. He saw the slight rise in her belly and smiled.

"Did I wake you?"

She smiled back sleepily. "You always wake me. Are you coming to bed?"

"Soon."

Even that early she looked very pretty. Far too pretty for him, Lukin always thought. She was nineteen and he thirty when they first met at the summer wedding of a friend. As the wedding band played, she had smiled across the table at him and said impishly, "What's the matter?

Don't KGB officers dance?"

He smiled back. "Only if somebody shoots at them."

She had laughed, and something in her girlish laugh and the way she had looked at him with her soft green eyes made him know he was going to love her. Within six months they had married. And now, three years later, she was four months pregnant and Lukin felt happier than he ever imagined.

She came over to sit on his knee and began to massage his neck. He could feel her small, girlish breasts brush against his chest.

"How was your night shift?"

"You don't want to know, my love."

"Tell me anyhow."

He told her about his morning's work.

:"You think it's true about the doctors?"

"It's probably Beria up to his tricks again. He enjoys killing."

He felt the hands stop massaging his neck and saw the shock on his wife's face.

."Yuri, you shouldn't say such things. You never know who might be listening."

"But it's true. You know how the head of State Security gets his kicks?

Marakov, his driver, told me. He's driving along and Beria sees a pretty young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. He has her arrested on trumped-up charges and rapes her. If she dares to protest, he has her shot. Sometimes he has her shot anyway. And nothing is done to stop him."

"Yuri, please. Skokov might he listening."

Every apartment block, every house, had its KGB informer. Skokov, the block janitor who lived on the ground floor, was theirs. It wasn't beyond the man to crease his ear against someone's door. Lukin saw the fear in his wife's eyes and stood and cupped her face in his hands and kissed her forehead.

"Let me get us some coffee."

Nadia shook her head. "Look at you. You're tense. You need something better than coffee."

"And what would you suggest?"

Nadia smiled. "Me, of course."

Lukin saw her pull back her dressing gown to reveal her flimsy pink underwear. Even though she was petite, she had perfect legs and full hips, and there was something faintly erotic about the gentle rise of her stomach which embarrassed him.

She smiled. "A surprise for you, Yuri Andreovitch. I bought them on the black market."

"Are you out of your mind?"

"Where else in Moscow can a woman buy underwear like this? You don't think Comrade Stalin would have me sent to Siberia for a pair of panties?"

As she laughed she brushed herself against his body. Lukin smiled despite himself. "Do you know what the French say?"

"No, but I think you're going to tell me."

"When a woman opens her legs for a man, her secrets fly away like butterflies."

He looked into her face. "But with you, somehow the secrets multiply."

He kissed her forehead and her arms went around him. "I love you, Nadia."

"Then come to bed."

He gently caressed her belly. "You don't think making love would be bad for the baby?"

"No, silly, it would be good for the baby." She giggled. "Make the most of it while you can. In another few months you'll have to keep your fly closed."

She took his hand and led him into the bedroom. The bed was still warm as Lukin and his wife made love, and beyond the glass the early morning traffic hummed as Moscow came awake.

Washington, D.C. January 22nd The collection of wooden buildings on the bank of the Potomac River looked to the passerby like a dismal, run-down barracks.

The walls inside were pockmarked with holes, the plaster ceilings were smudged with damp stains, and the rain leaked through the fragile roof. The view from the two-story building was equally dismal: a decayed red-brick brewery and a distant roller-skating rink. Only a handful of the shabby buildings had the distinction of overlooking the famous reflecting pool further along the river.

Originally a First World War army barracks, the ramshackle collection of wooden huts had later housed the offices of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the organization responsible for America's wartime foreign intelligence. Transformed only in name and function four years after the Second World War, the buildings now housed America's Central Intelligence Agency.

Fresh CIA recruits, expecting their role in intelligence work to be glamorous, soon found their expectations rapidly diminished when they got their first glimpse of their dingy offices. It was difficult to believe that these same buildings had been home to one of the most intrepid wartime agencies, one that had taken on the collective intelligence might of Germany and Japan.

The CIA barracks complex was divided into sections with alphabetic titles. The "Q" building, overlooking the river, housed the section known simply as the Soviet Operations Division. Living up to its title, it was here that highly sensitive and secret operations were planned and executed against the Soviet Union, clandestine work known only to a handful of highly trusted and trained senior intelligence and government personnel.

The office at the end of a long corridor on the second floor of the building had no title on the door, just a four-digit number.

It was pretty much like all the other offices, with the same green desk and filing cabinet and standard-issue calendar, but on the desk alongside the photograph of his wife and two grown children, Karl Branigan had placed a Japanese officer's ceremonial dagger.on a brass mounting.

At fifty-six, Branigan was a blubbery but muscular man with a tightly cropped GI haircut and a fleshy ruddy face. Despite his name he was neither Irish nor German in background but third-generation Polish, the surname arrived at by having a Brooklyn-Irish cop for a stepfather. And despite the closecropped army haircut and the ceremonial dagger, Branigan had never seen front-line action but had been a desk-bound intelligence officer most of his working life. But the presence of the keepsake gave some indication of Branigan's character. He was certainly a tough man, a man who made decisions quickly and decisively, who was almost savage in his dedication to duty, and as a senior CIA officer those virtues were valued by his superiors.

It was almost two o'clock that cold January afternoon when his secretary rang to say that Jake Massey had arrived.

Branigan told her to organize a car to take them to the morgue.

A small elevator led down to the morgue. There was just enough room for the three passengers-Massey, Branigan, and the attendant.

When the elevator halted and the attendant opened the door, they were in a cold, large, white-tiled room with four metal tables at the far end. Two of the tables had forms under the white sheets. The attendant pulled back the sheet on the first table.

Shock and a terrible anger registered on Massey's face when he looked at the body underneath.

The man's face was frozen and white as marble, distorted in death, but he at once recognized the features. There was a hole drilled through Max Simon's forehead, a purple swelling surrounding the wounded flesh. Massey noticed the traces of a powder burn around the skull wound, then the tattoo of a white dove above his wrist. He grimaced and nodded and the attendant drew back the sheet and moved to the second table.

When the sheet was pulled back this time, Massey wanted to be sick.

He saw the perfect white face of the child, the eyelids closed, the same neat hole in the flesh of the forehead. Nina lay on the metal table as though asleep. Her long dark hair had been combed and for a moment Massey thought that if he touched her she might come awake. Then he noticed the dark purple bruises on the body, around the arms and neck, and the marks where the forest rodents had gnawed at her flesh.

The attendant pulled the white sheet over the girl's body and the two men turned and left the room.

Jake Massey and Karl Branigan had known each other for almost twelve years and their relationship had not improved with time.

There was often an air like crackling electricity between the two men which some claimed was the result of professional rivalry. Both were capable and hardened men and both were dangerous to cross. Today, however, Branigan seemed civilized and courteous. "Tell me how it happened."

Branigan hesitated. "I guess you and Max Simon were friends a long time?"

"Thirty years. I was Nina's godfather. Max was one of the best people we had." Massey's face suddenly flushed angrily. "Goddamn it, Branigan, why were they killed? Who did it?"

"We'll come to that later." Branigan's hand stretched to a cigarette box on the table, popped a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He didn't offer Massey one.

"But I'm sure you realize that what happened to Max and his daughter was an execution pure and simple. They were both shot in the head at close range. I assume the girl was killed because she saw whoever shot her father, or they meant her death as a further warning."

"They?"

"Moscow, of course."

"What do you mean, a warning?"

"Max was gathering some pretty sensitive information for us before he was killed. We didn't know about the deaths until a routine Interpol report reached our office in Paris. We had the bodies identified and shipped back." Branigan hesitated. "Max arrived in Lucerne from Paris on the eighth of last month, after traveling from Washington. He took his daughter with him for the trip. She'd been ill recently, and he wanted her to see a Swiss doctor."

"Is that the reason he was in Switzerland?"

"No, it wasn't. He was there to arrange a meeting with a highly placed contact from the Soviet Embassy in Berne. They were to meet in Lucerne, but Max never made the meeting, nor did his contact. We think Max and his girl were abducted from their hotel, or maybe outside in the street. The police checked but no one saw anything. You know the Swiss, they're upright citizens. They see you parking a car on the wrong fucking side of the street and they scream for the cops. It would have been reported if anyone had seen an abduction. But one thing the Swiss police do know is that the hunter, Kass, stumbled on the executions, tried to stop them, and was killed for his trouble."