Serhii K appeared relaxed as he checked in to the glamping resort near Italy's Adriatic coast with his wife and young children.
Dressed in shorts, sandals and a dark baseball cap, the former Ukrainian Special Forces soldier strolled back and forth, chatting with the receptionist and dipping repeatedly into a bowl of free snacks.
But German police were already closing in on him.
After a painstaking investigation, they had concluded that Serhii K had commanded Europe's biggest act of sabotage in decades: a series of explosions in September 2022 deep beneath the Baltic Sea that ripped through the giant Nord Stream pipelines and ruptured the supply of Russian gas to Germany.
Next week, following his extradition to Germany and months in isolation in a high security prison, Serhii K will go on trial in Hamburg. He is charged with causing an explosion and a war crime – attacking civilian infrastructure – allegedly acting on behalf of "state agencies of Ukraine".
Both he and his country have denied any involvement.
Under Germany's privacy rules, he will be named during the trial only as Serhii K, but during extradition proceedings he was identified as Serhii Kuznetsov.
It was 02:03 am on 26 September 2022 when the first blast severed part of the Nord Stream pipelines, sending vast quantities of gas gushing through the surface of the Baltic Sea.
There were two further explosions targeting both Nord Stream 2 – not yet in action, but already full – and the original Nord Stream 1 that had supplied around half of Germany's annual demand for natural gas.
Both have been inoperable ever since.
Prosecutors say "high-performance explosives" were planted approximately 80m (260ft) below the surface: four devices weighing up to 27kg each, activated with timers.
They "strongly suspect" that Serhii K led a crew that included four deep-sea divers, using a rented yacht called Andromeda.
Once their complex, dangerous mission was done, the saboteurs slipped back into Ukraine unaware of the DNA evidence some had allegedly left on the boat.
As word of the blasts spread, experts and some governments initially rushed to the same conclusion: they blamed Moscow.
Russia had a history of hybrid attacks, after all, and of using its energy supplies for political pressure.
But as the airwaves filled with commentators citing "suspicious" Russian naval activity near the blast site, German police ignored the noise.
They went on following the forensic crumbs.
Eventually they led to Ukraine.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c317ke5ngrq7o
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